Street Fighter IV is without question the worst SF in the series proper. The online mode is still broken in several, several ways. The interface is not nearly as smooth to navigate as any other $60 title. The game is completely devoid of color on LCDs without any in-game way of rectifying the issue (and is the only game I've ever played that has had this problem on LCDs). The anime cinmatics are terrible in every facet and not even fun in a corny, ameteurish way, just outright pathetic. The visual design of these (now) 'roided mongoloids is deplorable and completely suck the charisma of these iconic characters. Not to mention that almost all of the visuals are just 3D versions of SF2 elements done by artists who didn't understand/care about the source material. It is the equivalent of the movie version of Alone in the Dark; a hollywood bastardization of the game franchise. And from a technical standpoint, I feel pretty confident this game could run on an original Xbox; the visuals are that simplistic. Most newer XBL arcade titles trump this game visually.
Most of this wouldn't matter if the gameplay was great or even good, but it's not. I was not expecting a remake of SF2 or a game as complex as SF3 and its revisions, but I was expecting a level of quality twice above the original Street Fighter. Didn't happen. I can say with full sincerity that I found the original Street Fighter emulation on my PC and had much more fun than I did with this title, and I had never played the original before. SF4 takes what was great about SF2 and rubs it down into a fine powder then mixes that into a cup of dogshit. If you look hard enough, you can see what made SF2 so great, but it's been so entrenched in this sewage of bad game design that you can hardly recognise any of it. And as for any of the additions or changes to the SF formula the Alpha series or III series made; forget them. There is virtually nothing derived from those games in here.
With so many better fighters out on the market and this game being trumped by SF2 HD in the same relative timeframe, this title serves no other purpose than to milk the Street Fighter fans who have waited forever for this game. It is an unrivaled pile of shit atop terrible mountain.