It's another great Street Fighter game with great character balance but has new minor problems too.
I've been a fan of the Street Fighter series since SFII and I loved the SFIII and the SF Alpha series.As much as I loved those games,a problem with them was lack of character balance,which is why most players who played those games would mostly select Ryu,Ken,Akuma or occasionally Guile because those characters had such a big technical advantage over other characters in those games.
Capcom fixed this problem with Street Fighter IV and in Street Fighter IV if you master any character they can be very effective against any AI and human opponent and winning is more of a matter of playing well rather than who you select.
Still,gameplay wise Street Fighter IV feels like the great Street Fighter games from the past because the delicate timing for moves and strong use of positional play is still there and so is the fluid feel,in fact the controls for SFIV feel a lot more fluid and responsive than all the SF games released prior to it.
Known characters such as Ryu,Ken,Akuma,Chun Li,Zangief,Blanka,Honda,Dhalsim,Guile,Vega,Balrog,Sagat,Bison,Sakura,Dan,Vega as well as others return and some new characters such as Abel,C Viper,El Fuerte,Rufus are playable and so is the new,powerful boss character named Seth as well as Gouken who was Ryu and Ken's teacher(Gouken is a secret opponent and hidden playable character who only can appear as an opponent if you meet certain victory conditions).
There's a huge variety of very diverse fighting styles and the characters are well balanced.People can once again use the shotokan style,or use Guile's defensive style or Chun Li's aerial style or Blanka's powerful rolling attacks etc.As for the new characters,El Fuerte is a very mobile,mexican wrestler who likes to get hold of you and perform various moves on you and he can attack through the air and perform wrestling moves on you.Abel also uses a style that's similar to wrestling and he can perform some powerful body slams and good countering moves.C Viper is a woman who uses high tech gadgets as weapons in battle.Rufus is a fast moving obese fighter(imagine a faster,but slightly weaker version of E Honda).Seth copies moves from various charcters and can extend his limbs similar to Dhalsim.Gouken has moves similar to Ryu,Ken and Akuma in that he can shoot hadoken and various angles except he can do it whilst standing and he has some sort of power punch move in which he pounds his opponent with a powerful punch without leaving himself vulnerable in midair if he misses and he has a super combo attack similar to the shoryuken.
Once again super combo attacks play a bit part of the game and add more strategy to the gameplay.They can deplete most of your opponents health if fully charged or be used in weaker forms for powerful counter attacks,
You can also do a special type of move where you can combine a special move with your super combo gauge and it will make your special move more powerful and will allow your super combo to penetrate projectile attacks.
You can also do another type of attack that instantly stuns your opponent and gives you a free hit on them but it requires some of your super combo gauge.
As you can see,the fighting is very technical.
However,the AI is very vulnerable to aerial attacks,even on the harder difficulties and you can easily defeat CPU opponents with the exception of Seth by continuously using aerial attacks.
The multiplayer is great too,I usually don't like to play games in multiplayer or online,but due to the fact the characters are so balanced and there's characters who are suited for people with slower reflexes the multiplayer is fun.What makes it more fun is the fact there is tournaments you can enter or you can do ranked fights which means everytime you win you gain ranking points but if you lose you'll lose ranking points but if you defeat an opponent with a ranking much higher than yours you'll receive a lot of rankings points for defeating them.Let me put it this way,I don't like multiplayer/online but I played over 700 online matches when I played SFIV because it's online experience is fun.
SF4 is easily the best looking SF game technical wise.Although from an artstyle perspective it's not the most visually appealing game to me I still think it's graphics and artstyle are nice.The characters and environments have good detail and the character designs are diverse.
The body movements look more natural than in other SF games.I like how the environments come in variety from from Chinese streets,jungle,volcanic area,military bases,science labs and many others.Another thing I like about SFIV is you don't always fight an opponent in their home country,you'll fight them in random locations to give a more neutral feel.
Characters will now speak actual words during fights or between round or after fights.The dialogue is creative and relates to their opponent.
The music has a new,modern sound but you'll hear the classic music too at times.
Overall,this is a great fighting game.It's very technical and has good character balance and good diverse character fighting styles.