Street Fighter returns from the ashes! But is that a good thing?
But you already knew this game looks great! You've already seen the screenshots, watched the HD trailers, and have no doubt read the countless reviews, all of which have several pages just telling you how good the game looks.
So how does this phoenix reborn actually fly? Well if you're like me, let's say, getting a little more seasoned with each day. You'll remember this game all too well!! The memories of the countless evenings after school, which you spent round at your friends pummelling your SNES pad till it hurt. And then weekends, which you spent most of the day in a grubby video store; hammering away at the buttons of the latest version of what was considered by many, the greatest fighting game of all time. You'll remember the familiar sounds of the "Hadoken's" screaming from the door ways of nearly every self respecting arcade in the country. Even if your were in a different country, in a totally strange arcade you never had to look for this game. It was probably the only arcade cabinet with 15 people stood next to it, all itching to have a go at beating the guy, who just refused to get of the player one stick. You know the GUY! He was just that little bit quicker than everybody else, which in turn made everybody else that little bit more determined to beat him.
So what exactly does my reminiscing have to do with Street Fighter 4? Everything!!! After all the spit and polish, this is Street Fighter! This is exactly the same game! The single player, lets face it, nobody ever really played SF for the single player experience. Character stories, yeah their in there, and not the best you will ever see. You beat several randomly selected computer opponents, before you get to the last guy SETH. Now this is definitely one of the games biggest disappointments. You beat Seth the first round, and think ok not too bad. The second round begins, and then you think "You Lose", what the hell? You see because Seth, during the transition from round one to two, went shopping at the SNK school of final bosses. I mean this guy is cheap!!! Special move after special move, countering everything you do, and then teleporting behind you to perform a nice unblockable throwing manoeuvre. Honestly this will pretty much ruin your single player experience with certain characters. I mean try beating Seth with Dhalsim on medium difficulty, and you'll quickly want to smash your game pad, and your game disk whilst simultaneously banging your head against the nearest brick wall. So be prepared to get so frustrated with the single player that you will be tuning the difficulty down to easiest, just to beat Seth.
Next we have the Multiplayer Mode. Yep you and your pals can once again grab a pad, substitute the root beer for a real beer this time. And start arguing all over again, just who is better Ryu or Ken? But then we have the Xbox Live mode, should be fun right? Well actually no! There is no proper matching system in place here; you can set the filter to look for the most stable connection. And guess what you get back five matches all from players with poor connections. The lobby tells you whether the player has actually created a VS lobby or is playing the single player with the Fight request mode enabled. So you try to connect to the guy hosting the VS lobby, only to get a message saying the lobby is full. Fair enough, you try and connect to one of the guys with the Fight Request mode on. And sure enough you get another message "unable to play", so you start another search. Again more matches are found, however when you try and connect to any of the matches you keep getting the same messages as before. Now get this, turn on Fight Request mode and start a single player game. Suddenly you'll be lucky to get through a cpu opponent without being constantly challenged by other players. Again many of the players the system matches you with, have little to no connection strength showing next to their gamertag. However I have played many of these players with alleged poor connections, and there has been no lag issues at all.
To summarise, this game looks beautiful, plays like the Street Fighter we all know and love. Has one of the most frustrating end of game bosses in history and some seriously strange multiplayer issues. Perhaps with this little revival, Capcom may now finally grace us with the next instalment of Street Fighter as a reinvention of the franchise as opposed to a reiteration, full 3D anyone? If Midway can do it I'm sure you can do it better Capcom.