Never played a Street Fighter before.

I really do like fighting games. I've never really got into Street Fighter cos they haven't made a big release since I was about 7. So I bought this after watching a couple reviews.

It's not nearly as easy to get into as everyone says. They all say easy to learn hard to master, but it's not that simple. The first thing I did was go to the Challenge Mode, where it shows you all the moves. Hadokens and shoryukens are all pretty easy, but when I got to the super moves, it says stuff like two forward circles punch punch punch as if you're supposed to press punch three times. I tried it like a hundred times, it was driving me insane that it never worked. I got really annoyed that I didn't know what I was supposed to do. It turns out that punch punch punch means press the left and right bumpers at the same time. How am I supposed to get that

It happened again when I tried to learn M.Bison's moves. Alot of them say left charge right punch, but I've got no clue what a charge is. I tried everything and got annoyed again that I couldn't do these simple moves. I asked someone the next day and they said to walk backwards for three seconds then press right, punch. That worked. Why doesn't the game ever mention that? Jeez. I still don't know why people keep flashing yellow, or what that means.

Okay so apart from all that, it's a great game. The fights are fast and the moves are fun to watch. There's alot of characters and they're all really different. Like some guys throw and block alot while other guys can jump around the screen and do all stretchy crazy shit. It's also kind of funny. Like it's allways annoying when games try to be funny, but Street Fighter's just got this vibe about it. When you do Ultra moves on people, everything goes slow motion and they're

facial animation slowly changes to like OOOOOOOOHHHH SHIT. Loads of facial animation and lip-syncing in this game, I really like that. Fights are really satisfying to win, I can't really explain why but it feels more like you totally deserved it.

By the way, this game plays slightly different to most other fighting games. Firstly you can't run, so when you're all the way to the left and someone else is all the way to the right, you can't run over there and Kung-Fu kick em. That definately gets annoying when guys keep backing away. Also, the game doesn't focus on combos. So instead of givin someone the ol left right goodnight, you'll uppercut them, jump back, shoot a hadoken, jump forwards and sweep em. It takes away the requirement of having to learn all the combos for every character, but it's really hard to do a move right every time. Like you'll mean to do a shroyuken but accidentally duck and punch most of the time. It's so annoying when that happens and feels really unfair when you lose because you accidentally jumped instead of doing an Ultra move. This is one of those games that will make you really really angry. You know what I mean.

The graphics are fine. Alot of reviews are totally jizzing over it like WOAH SHIT THIS GAME LOOKS LIKE A FUCKIN PAINTING but no, they're just fine- average- on par. The ink stuff is cool, but that almost never happens. It's got alot of colour though, and again, the animation is alot of fun.



There's some cutscenes when you start and finish the story mode. They're not the awesome trailers you've seen, there's only one of those. They're like anime videos, and they're fucking stupid. I've seen some anime, and this is like really low budget stuff. I played through it with Ken and here's how his story goes. He's talking to his pregnant wife like
YO I JUS GOT THIS LETTER FROM RYU, I SHOULD TOTALLY FIGHT HIM
Then his wife is all YEAH THAT'S COOL, GO FOR IT.
but Ken's like NAW MAN, YOU'ZE HAVIN A BABY N SHIT
NO SERIOUSLY, GO FIGHT RYU
OK.
Then I played through the game, didn't fight Ryu once. I did manage to fight M.Bison ontop of a volcano and a metal man in a secret labratory, but he didn't mention that. He comes back home at the end:
HEY, DID YOU FIGHT RYU?
YEAH BUT IT WAS PRETTY SHIT, I FOUGHT SOME OTHER GUYS. HEY CAN I TOUCH THE BABY?
YEAH OK
OH SHIT HE KICKED ME ON MY HAND. IT WAS PROBABLY LIKE A TORNADO WHIRLWIND KICK HAHAHA.
HAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah. So it's fucking stupid.



The online is really very good. I've got a pretty bad connection; like I get up to about round 5 on Gears of War horde mode, then lose connection. But Street Fighter's fine, I can have loads of matches without falling out. It doesn't even lag or anything atall. People online seem cool, I don't think there's any headset chat in it atall. I still haven't beat anyone, but y'know, I'm new :(

So anyway, basically: It doesn't do you any favours in learning the moves, you'll have to find out on the internet or something. It's fast and super-move based fighting. It's got a funny vibe to it and has alot of fun animation. The anime cutscenes are shit. Zangief's a twat, he allways throws. There's alot of characters to unlock. If you like other fighting games, get it. If you don't really like fighting games, then I don't think this'll sway you. It's the most fighting game fighting game there is.