|
Street Fighter 4 Home By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman In late 2008 we did a brief spread on the Street Fighter 4 arcade game. Now that Street Fighter 4 has come out for PS3 and Xbox 360 (PC users will have to wait until June), I’ve decided to share my thoughts on the home version as well.
I want to start off by saying that I really like this game. In fact, it is the only Xbox 360 game that I bought for the full $60 asking price (which I think is a joke, since games have always been $50). The fighting engine in this game is near perfect; however, that doesn’t mean the game is. My biggest gripe about SF4 is how SDTV unfriendly it is. While I do understand that we’re now living in the HD generation, do you really need your menus to only be visible in HD? It took Ron and me a ridiculous amount of time (over half an hour) just to set our buttons. The thing that really angers me about this is the fact that gamers had complained to Capcom about this issue before (with Dead Rising). After you get to know the menu’s layout, the unreadable font won’t even be an issue. However, it will be an ordeal and a half trying to set this game up on your SDTV.
One thing I’ve noticed about this game is that it’s pretty hard. Even though we love difficult games here at RwN, it’s almost hard in a frustrating way. Previous Street Fighter games’ AIs have been like Goku from Dragon Ball Z; they’ll toy with you for a bit, make you step up your game, and then will finish you off after you put up a good fight. Street Fighter 4’s AI is a lot less like a jovial Goku and more like the malicious Cell; this guy is going to kill you, your friends and your family as fast as it can. If it can get 2 perfects on you in the first match, it’s going to (and keep in mind we are not Street Fighter newbs).
The AI plays like a ruthless Korean punk with his hot Taiwanese girlfriend watching. It’s going to humiliate you and frustrate you, bringing you to your psychological limits. But when you do finally beat the game (on normal or above, since playing a fighting game on easy is pointless), you’d have felt like you earned it. You’d have felt like your gamer skills have made a marked improvement, since you need a solid and cohesive strategy to take down Seth (the last boss) or a decent player online. One stupidly innovative function to the game’s arcade mode is the “real arcade” (I don’t know the actual function’s name) setting. If your 360 or PS3 is connected to the web (and you have the premium online service) you can enable the “real arcade” option allowing any online player to challenge you at any time. This would be a really amazing option if they allowed a “shoulder tap”/nudge/alert system before someone challenged you, since I often ask people not to challenge me if I want to get through story mode on an actual arcade machine. However, you’ll find it near impossible to make any one player progress if you have this option enabled, as there are people willing to challenge you near constantly. The only reason I can see using this is if I wanted to play some online matches and couldn’t stand the fact that I’d have to wait a whole 15 seconds for my next match in the Xbox Live Battle lobby.
One good thing about home version is the extended cast of characters. Along with arcade cast, the home version also has: Fei Long, Cammy, Sakura, Dan, Rose, Gen, Akuma and Gouken (Ken and Ryu’s teacher who was once thought to be “Sheng Long” back in the early 1990s). I really appreciate that they made you unlock these characters in story mode, since it actually forced me to get good with Sakura (something I’ve been meaning to do for years, but never bothered to do so). Had I not been forced to use her to get Dan, I probably would have never discovered what an awesome character she is.
This game is probably going to win fighting game of the year (unless they actually get on the stick and make a Guilty Gear like X2/reload and not crappy Accent Core), so you might as well get on the ground floor and get good at it now. I honestly don’t see it dropping in price too soon either, since Best Buy and Gamestop are kinda lame like that and never drop the price on game that’s constantly in demand.
|
