Description
Street Fighter IV was released on February 17, 2009 in North America. It was developed by Dimps and Capcom and it was published by Capcom. Yoshinori Ono is the Producer Designer of the game and Daigo Ikeno is the Character Designer. In the arcade mode of SF4 each character has their own mini story line. But all the characters story line have two things in common. They fight to destroy Seth, who is Chief Executive Officer of S.I.N. which is a weapons manufacturing company and they also all come together to fight in the global Street Fighter tournament to see who is the worlds best fighter.
Analysis
Street Fighter IV remained true to its classic 2D fighting plane although all of the characters and backgrounds are rendered into 3D. Street Fighter IV was built to play just like the style of Street Fighter II Turbo. They did this because this was the street fighter that was played at tournaments and had the most depth and consumer preference. SF4 has a new Ultra Combo system which is basically a last saving attempt if your are getting your butt kicked. Your Ultra Combo meter will only be filled if your health is low, so if you do get this combo off it will put you right back into the game with your opponent. Street Fighter IV still remains a 1 on 1 fighting game and also has a new Focus Attack system.
A Focus Attack is done by holding the medium punch and medium kick buttons together at the same time. There are 3 phases of the attack, if your press them and let go immediately you will absorb your opponents attack if they hit you and then you will hit them but they wont get knocked down, the second phase is if you hold the two buttons down for a second but let go and you will still absorb attacks but when you hit your opponent they will get knocked down, the last phase is if you hold the two buttons together until the attack finishes itself and you will still absorb attacks but this attack is also un-blockable and will still knock your opponent to the floor.
SF4 also now has online play where you can fight 1 on 1 with people all across the globe. Also with this online play comes titles and icons which you can add that have funny pictures and saying on them that attach to your gamertag when your playing Street Fighter IV. When you play online and win you gain Battle Points. The number of battle points that you receive when you win is determined by how many battle points you have compared to your opponent. Basically the battle points act as a ranking system. There is also a search criteria where you can fight people that are within a certain range of your battle points.
A new challenge mode has also been put into SF4. Where you can do Time Attack or Survival which is a series of challenges where you either have to defeat a certain amount of characters in the allotted time or survive a certain quota of opponents with the health you have
Interpretation
Street Fighter IV has great artwork and graphics. The graphics sort of have this cartoon feeling to them because between the characters muscles and such there is small amounts of black shading. Also when you perform a focus attack the fist or foot that you hit your opponent with is trailed by a black ink trail that looks very cool.
Although if you do not play on an HDTV this game may be difficult for you. This is so because if you were to go into your characters combo list you will have a hard time reading it because the text is very blurry. SF4 was most definitely meant to be played in high definition.
Street Fighter compared to other games is very rough around the edges. In SF4 it is very hard to chain moves together to create a combo. The timing to your moves has to be absolutely perfect to do so. So when your not doing combos your characters moves look very abrupt and non fluent. When you kick or punch with the medium or heavy you must wait a second or two after preventing you from doing any sorts of combos, although they do say it is possible. Where as if you were to play Dead or Alive 4 the moves chain together nicely and they all look very smooth instead of abrupt like street fighter.
Judgement and Evaluation
Street Fighter IV is overall a great game. Its amazing graphics and interesting Ultra and super Combo system really keep you into the game. Although the character design is pretty ridiculously un-proportionate. Some of the characters have very big feet and also some of their muscles are so big they would even be able to scratch their head if they wanted to.
Although some of Street Fighters gameplay is flawed they did do some things right with the game. They implemented the online play with the battle points system and they made enough un-lockable characters so that there is a reason for you to keep playing the arcade mode. Also the new challenge mode was a great idea along with the new training options because this is how new players are going to learn to be the best.
Street Fighter IV's new gameplay modes, un-lockable content, and new online play definitely surpass its rough gameplay. The new things in this game compared to the last street fighter will keep you busy for hours on end. Although in my opinion it is not worth the sixty dollars that it is selling for right now.