Lets get things straight out first: I hate the damn designs of the in game characters!! The 2d artwork they have presented for the characters? Love it. Character design in the OP movie? Like it. Design for in game characters? I freaking hate it so much I don´t understand why I even bought the game!!

With that out of the way. let´s get ready to RUMBLE!!

Getting into SF once again

I´ve been a SF fan since I first got to play it in the arcades when I was a little kid. So I can´t say that I don´t know my way around SFII and above. Never mastered it sure, but I was pretty good at it. And apparently still am.

Thanks to the gameplay videos I saw I was really confused if I should buy this game or not. It didn´t look like anything of the old SF games I had played before. To luggish and awful for my distinct love of 2d/2.5D loving brain.

Then I saw a Collectors Edition that came with a movie. Instant buy factor!! So I preordered it. Along the way I started watching more gameplay videos and I started to like it, it was becomming more and more like the old SF2 that I used to play and love.

My preorder didn´t arrive. Which bummed me out, but at the moment I liked the gameplay so I ordered a normal copy of it. Then I sat down and woops, it has been a long time since I had so much fun with a fighter. My memories and feelings were revived.

Story

Apparently this game is played out between Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 3 if I understood everything right. The main plot of the game is that Seth, a new mastermind wants to have a tournament to gather the world strongest fighters so he can assimilate their moves.

Give every character their own agenda, Ryu wanting to fight with Ken again while perfection the way of the fist and avoiding the satsui no hadou, the darker force of the hadou or C. Viper wanting to test the new suit out along with her own secret plan.

It is of little importance really. Every character has his/her own intro/ending movie in anime style. It doesn´t look good, but it is at least better than the in game graphics.

Fighting offline

This is what everything is about. And it is solid. For any SF veteran you can pick any of the old characters Ryu, Ken, Sagat, Bison, Balrog and more and start playing. They haven´t changed much :p

Chun Li has gotten a multi hit hard punch along with new animations for her moves as well as losing one of her moves that I personally enjoyed doing. Her anti-air move, instead that has been made into the last part of a 3 part combo. It looks really really nice if I do say so myself.

There are all kinds of stuff you have to think about, range, controlling zones and what not if you want to get good at this. It is well worth it though.

For arcade battles I tend to use characters that I know, so Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Zangief and such. But thanks to the very bad choice of having to beat the game to aquire new characters like Cammy, Fei Long, Akuma you have to play trough the game a lot of times if you want to find every character.

The fighting is fun though, really really fun. All characters have their good and bad things. The one I´ve noticed a big change in from the earlier games is Zangief as he now can be a pretty powerhouse with his grabs/command throws and lariats.

One thing I really hate though is the final boss Seth. As he apparently has assimilated some people from before the game he can do Shoryukens, Sonic Booms, Spinning Piledrivers and walljumps to mention a few of his tricks. Which makes him a real pain in the ass to defeat. And I´m not kidding here, be on his bad day and BOOM, it´ll take like 20sec before he´s driven you into the ground for the final time of the round.

This is why when you want to aquire more characters, play at easy mode and have the round set at 1 round matches. It´ll be a positive factor for your mental health.

Fighting Online

I do not understand why people have so bad internet connection outside of sweden, is it because they only leech porn or have a limit set to their broadband? When I´ve been playing it feels like I´m on a freaking dial up with all the damn lag going around and around. Sure I can understand if the servers and such are bad and the connections to the player I´m playing against is bad, but for the love of all that is holy, the lag makes it so easy, take a character like Vega(US) and use his high kick, it´s a multiple hit and it can destroy just about anything thanks to the lag, buttonmash it and it´s pretty easy to win.

This makes me really really mad as I played against such a player. Luckily I didn´t lose but I grabbed him into submission with Zangief. Powerhouse Zangief with his Spinning Piledriver is extremely usefull.

When I played against a friend here in Sweden though it was no lag at all. Which made the gaming so much smoother and fun it can´t be explained enough.

New additions

From SF3 the EX returns, you press two punch/kick buttons as you do the move to make it stronger. Example, Ryu´s Whirlwind Kick make a bit of a vortex that drives the opponents in and gets a multi-hit funtion instead of just being a one hit strong kick.

The newest addition though(lies I tell you lies!!) is the Focus attack which is a lot of things. It can be used as a parry from SF3 so you won´t receive any damage from 1 hit only, certain skills or EX moves destroy this parry. Otherwise it is used to start of combos or just if you want to finish your opponent in a flashy way as it makes you opponent stumble.

This is said to be a new feature, but being an unblockade attack that makes your opponents stumble is a load of crap as Street Fighter EX for PS already had this.

But both of these extra moves bring a new depth to SFIV whic can be used in a little new way. EX-cancel, where you use a bit of your Super Combo meter to cancel a move, then dash forward and then you start anew with another beating.

All this makes it fun and hard to master, but it is well worth the training time. And this is if you want to fight at the highest level, just for fun you don´t need to learn this stuff.

Summary

Street Fighter is back to where it belongs, easy to pick up, fun to thrash your opponents and hard to master. If you played the old games then this is a gem you want to own. First time playing SF? No biggie, you´ll learn how to do the basic combos and stuff in no time and then the fun will start again. This time with you trying out harder combos, maybe a different fighter or what not.

If you have the slightest interest in fighting games then for all that is holy get this game. It will be worth your while.

As I said in my previous post: If you want to have a little fight, then add “OverlordHB” without the qutotes to your PSN friends list and we might be able to work a time or something out so we can fight.