Street Fighter IV Review

After many years without a new Street Fighter game, arcade rats and casuals alike can rejoice on the newest Capcom's fighting game, Street Fighter IV. Truth is, the fighting gamer crowd is difficult to please, as a fighting game needs to have flawless gameplay and mind-blowing combos must be input into each character without making them too powerful as this could ruin the entire game. So, does Street Fighter IV lives up to expectations?

As soon as you enter the game you are welcomed by the catchy, cheesy and workout-ish song "The next door" by Exile, which makes you feel like running a stairway up and down Rocky-style, somehow fitting incredibly with the game. The menus are as simple as it can get, although they have a pretty annoying loading and saving times.

You can change the characters voice acting to be Japanese or English, and you can choose to change all the characters voices or each voice individually, and it's a very good touch, but it's really pointless that you have to beat the game once to do so.

The menu got also have a good training mode, a place to see your status, the versus mode, and well... everything a fighting game needs...

As for the online, arcade and challenge mode, i'll get deeper into them later.

Well, the gameplay is the heart of a fighting game. It must be flawless so no aspect of the game can be abused.

The special moves, the Ultras, the Supers, all of them got those button inputs needed to make them come out, some of them very tricky. The truth is, the game's controls are very forgiving, meaning it can count a 225º movement as a 360º movement on the stick (or analog, or d-pad) so your Zangief can do the Spinning Piledriver easier. Some moves even work backwards, as you can hold down+forward and then do a quarter cicle forward and punch to unlesh a Shoryuken, well... maybe you didn't understood this but believe me when i say this makes no sense. As good as it sounds, sometimes making a move by accident can open you to a fatal combo from your opponent. What i really enjoy is the fact that, as crazy as Vega's and Blanka's ultra combos look, there are no broken inputs and all of them can be done if input correctly (I'm looking at you, MK vs DC Joker). Also, even though a few characters moves can be spammed to death, most moves and tactics can be countered and the game is well balanced. Also, don't ever listen to tiers. Ever

The arcade mode is good, you will fight some random characters, then you will fight your character's rival and then the Boss, plus another boss if you fulfilled certain requirements. You can also allow other players to challenge you online while you are playing the Arcade mode. The computer's AI can be incredibly cheap at some points, as you can see Abel spamming Marseilles Roll and C.Viper spamming her Seismic Hammer, El Fuerte air-grabbing you in the nanosecond you jump and don't even get me started on Seth. All those cheap tactics can be countered but it will take some time to get used to them even if you have been playing fighting games for some time. But let's start with the character Roster.

All the 8 original World Warriors and 4 bosses from Street Fighter II are back, plus 4 new characters and 3 unlockable bosses. Also, Capcom made some pools on their site some time ago and let you choose between 2 character from Street Fighter II, The New Challenger, 2 from Street Fighter Alpha and 2 from Street Fighter Alpha II. Some would complain about the lack of Street Fighter III characters but well, that's good enough for me. The 3 bosses and 6 characters from the other games are all locked at start, but unlocking them is pretty fun and will help to increase your skill and find a character that suits you.

Each character have a Prologue and Ending anime cutscenes, plus a little cutscene before fighting your rival, which although are nice touches, putting together all the story cutscenes still won't help you making any sense with the game's plot. I know that a fighting game is not rich on plots, but introducing Abel's amnesia and not properly explaining it is at the ending is really a screw up from Capcom's side.

The game also got a Challenge Mode, in which you can choose to do Survival, Time attack or Trials, each one with Normal and Hard difficulties. Survival and Time Attack can be incredibly frustrating at times, since some of them double the CPU's health, make them invisible, make them auto-heal and so on... Adding that with the CPU's cheap tactics can ruin the fun of these modes, that otherwise could be used as a good hardcore practice.

Trials consists of picking up a character and performing some combos as indicated by the game. Some of them can be incredibly hard and frustrating but the truth is all of them are doable and will just require several days of training. Some very high level players will do at will at the middle of a game those combos that you and me took weeks to perform. Also, you get a title by completing a character's trial, and 4 icons for completing all trials, and they are pretty cool.

The online mode is mostly lag-free and this is a must for a fighting game (provided it has online). You can choose from a Player Match or a Ranked Match. Ranked Matches give you Battle Points when you win and take out some of them when you lose, it's just something to kind of measure your skill and put you to fight with someone at a similar skill level. Player Matches do not alter your battle points, and you can invite players and play several matches with them. The problem with the online part of this game is the community. I won't complain about the casual players that appear with their Kens and Ryus, but there are some really annoying move spammers and a lot of people that will disconnect when they realize they are losing. This is in no way capcom's fault and yes, you can have some epic brawls with some fighters in the online.

And to close this review, the graphics are really beautiful and i couldn't find another flaw apart from Vega's hair floating sometimes, the stages are full of colors and movement and there are also some simpler stages if you prefer (Deserted Temple for example, which is my personal favorite) and the moves can be mind-blowing, specially the Ultras. Every piece of sound in the game is also really good.

Street Fighter IV is an amazing game. Everything you could ask for in a fighter is there, and though i acknowledge you will get frustrated at times, fun is guaranteed. If you like fighting games, you will be playing this one for a long time.









Wow, my first review ever. What do you think guys, too big, too small? You can also point any grammar errors. And what do you think, Ramon?

Hope you guys like it

mmm, I will like a score to begin with.

Oh, i see. For some reason, i thought you didn't liked numerical scores

Scores for each thing (gameplay, graphics, etc...) or overall score only?

And what about what i wrote, is it good?

I just finished reading and is a nice review, I dont agree in some points... because at the moment I hate this game but the eview is fine.

I just need an overall score, also the review has to be trimmed to 3700 characters. Leave the big version here, since is fine

I'd give it a 9

So, where can i see how many words it have?

Flow wrote:I'd give it a 9

So, where can i see how many words it have?

Copy it to MS Word -> Tools -> Count words

Oh god damnit i wrote 6550 characters

That's gonna be a little hard to trim but whatever

After many years without a new Street Fighter game, arcade rats and casuals alike can rejoice on the newest Capcom's fighting game, Street Fighter IV. Truth is, the fighting gamer crowd is difficult to please, so, does Street Fighter IV lives up to expectations?

As soon as you enter the game, the catchy, cheesy and workout-ish song “The next door” by Exile, somehow fitting incredibly with the game, welcomes you. The menus are as simple as it can get, although they have a pretty annoying loading and saving times.

You can change the characters voice acting individually to be Japanese or English, but you need to beat the arcade at least once for this. The menu got also have a good training mode, a place to see your status, the versus mode, and well... everything a fighting game needs...

The moves got button inputs needed to make them come out, some of them very tricky. The truth is, the game's controls are very forgiving, meaning it can count a 225º movement as a 360º movement and some moves even work backwards, like the Shoryuken.... As good as it sounds, sometimes making a move by accident can open you to a fatal combo from your opponent. What i really enjoy is the fact that there are no broken inputs and all of them can be done if input correctly (I'm looking at you, MK vs DC Joker). Also, even though a few characters moves can be spammed to death, most moves and tactics can be countered and the game is well balanced. Also, don't ever listen to tiers. Ever

The arcade mode is good, you will fight some random characters, then you will fight your character's rival and then the Boss, plus another boss if you fulfilled certain requirements. You can also allow other players to challenge you online while you are playing the Arcade mode. The computer's AI can be cheap at some points, all those cheap tactics can be countered but it will take some time to get used to them even if you have been playing fighting games for some time.

The 8 original World Warriors and 4 bosses from Street Fighter II are back, plus 4 new characters and 3 unlockable bosses. Plus 2 characters from SF II, The New Challengers, 2 from SF Alpha and 2 from SF Alpha II.. The 3 bosses and 6 characters from the other games are all locked at start, but unlocking them is pretty fun.

Each character have a Prologue and Ending anime cutscenes, plus a little cutscene before fighting your rival, which although are nice touches, putting together all the story cutscenes still won't help you making any sense with the game's plot. I know that a fighting game is not rich on plots, but introducing Abel's amnesia and not properly explaining it is at the ending is really a screw up from Capcom's side.

The game also got a Challenge Mode, in which you can choose to do Survival, Time attack or Trials, each one with Normal and Hard difficulties. Survival and Time Attack can be incredibly frustrating at times, since some of them double the CPU's health and so on... Adding that with the CPU's cheap tactics can ruin the fun of these modes, that otherwise could be used as a good hardcore practice.

Trials consist of picking up a character and performing some combos as indicated by the game. Some of them can be incredibly hard and frustrating but the truth is all of them are doable but may require several days of training. Also, you get a title by completing a character's trial, and 4 icons for completing all trials, and they are pretty cool.

The online mode is mostly lag-free. You can choose from a Player Match or a Ranked Match. Ranked Matches give you Battle Points when you win and take out some of them when you lose, it's just something to kind of measure your skill and put you to fight with someone at a similar skill level. Player Matches do not alter your battle points, and you can invite players and play several matches with them. The problem with the online part of this game is the community. There are some really annoying move spammers and a lot of people that will disconnect when they realize they are losing. This is in no way capcom's fault and yes, you can have some epic brawls with some fighters in the online.

And to close this review, the graphics are really beautiful and i couldn't find another flaw apart from Vega's hair floating sometimes, the stages are full of colors and movement and there are also some simpler stages if you prefer and the moves are mind-blowing. Every piece of sound in the game is also really good.

Street Fighter IV is an amazing game. Everything you could ask for in a fighter is there, and though i acknowledge you will get frustrated at times, fun is guaranteed. If you like fighting games, you will be playing this one for a long time.


Characters (no spaces): 3.844

Characters (with spaces): 4.707

Well, you are counting spaces, aren't you? It's kinda hard to explain this game with 3.700 words but answer this and i'll keep trimming

Sorry for double post but i don't know if editing can bump a thread

I think is ok, leave it as it is...
Thanks Flow!

I'm glad you like it

I'll make sure my next review meets the word count.

I really love fighting games, I'm gonna make my cousin buy this one