The game that everyone’s been playing! What can I say? This is probably the most I’ve been excited for a video game release in a LONG time. It’s not every day, let alone year that Capcom comes out with a new version of their Street Fighter series. I’m not talking about the spin offs like the Alphas or the joint SNK efforts, but an actual Street Fighter original series addition.
Now Street Fighter IV has been out in arcades since September and I had a chance to play it when it was first released. At first sight it seems like it would play like 3rd Strike, but surprisingly played more like CVS2. There is the focus attack which can be useful and devastating at the same time. Then there is the ex gauge and revenge meter. All in all, not really much more to take in than in other releases such as Marvel 2.
I could rant for hours about this game but I’ll pick on a few topics and I can expand more in another installment of my little SF4 review series.
First on the list is single player mode. This has been said before in other articles and I’ll re-iterate it in my own words: fuck you single player. With Street Fighter, I hate playing the CPU because it’s fucking pointless. In SFIV you have to essentially beat the game with everyone to unlock all the characters. Once you unlock a character, you also have to beat the game with him/her as well. Is that not a waste of time? The solution circulating the web is to put it on easiest and best of 1 round. Sure that saves time, but that wouldn’t be necessary if all the characters were just unlocked initially.
Next we have the control settings. Just last weekend Bran and I hosted a mini tournament which we also participated in. With that many players participating, and not having the MadCatz Fightsticks/Pads available in Canada (that’s another post in itself), time was wasted going into the config and trying to decipher the settings. It doesn’t really take a lot of time to figure out how to map the controls, I can do it pretty quickly now, but it would make sense if you could save settings and load them before each match. It seems like it would be a simple function that would release a lot of edge on players fiddling with changes.
This one may be a bit controversial just because of my biased opinion, but I think the online play is horrible (sometimes). Having this feature is fucking awesome, but along with this feature you also get the added bonus of input lag. I have a long-standing career in playing SF and am really used to having instantaneous results when I press a button or move in a direction. To me this is essential to SF gameplay. No longer can I test with a c.mk before letting loose on my super. Part of this game is reaction-time and it just isn’t there with online play.
One may argue, “you suck Buyco, just learn to deal with the lag.” I say to you: fuck off. I do find it amazing that one could react quick enough to block a crossover with 700ms input delay, but that shouldn’t be part of the game. I shouldn’t have to worry that for the first round I’m getting a 20ms input delay, but in the next round all of a sudden I’m dealing with a 400ms delay. Timing is just another excuse for someone to use when they lose. It shouldn’t be, so play local.
It may seem like I have a lot of bad things to say about this game, but that’s only because I never mentioned any of the good. It feels just like any Street Fighter game with a bit of differences only to get used to. The trial mode is awesome! Here you are actually forced to learn characters’ abilities, and apply them in a game situation. I have always procrastinated with characters, I think even MVC2 I haven’t used every character (mind you there are a billion MVC2 characters).
There are tons of other pros with this game that maybe I’ll get into later. I will, although, follow up with some tips for trials. Bran already has several tips for more advanced players, so I’ll supplement with some more beginner tips for you would-be SF’ers.
So thus concludes our first installment, come back soon to hear more!
One last thought: C.Viper? Seriously? Wtf Capcom…
Related:
Designer, developer, and excellent napper.