Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV

Lag-free online battles and a one-player challenge that’ll make a champion of you yet, this truly is Street Fighter for a new generation.

Street Fighter aficionados are servicing their heavily modified joysticks for what is hoped to be another long road toward mastery and fame via videos posted on YouTube linked to and analysed on the forums of Shoryuken.com. But this is not the reason publisher Capcom is viewing Street Fighter IV as a major event on consoles.

If the last time you threw a Dragon Punch was in Street Fighter II or any number of mid 1990s variations, Street Fighter IV is here to remind you of those good old days. Street Fighter IV is Street Fighter II as you might remember playing on a scruffy old coin-op in your local chip shop, but with amazing special effects and new characters springing to life in flashy 3D. Very little of 1997’s elitist Street Fighter III remains – most notably the parry, a trick that spoiled the fun for all but the best players.

There is an uncommon level of excitement surrounding Street Fighter IV despite it playing safe in many ways. There’s nothing too fanciful introduced that might bemuse first-time players. Instead there’s a single gameplay mechanic that changes the whole strategy for beginners and pros alike. It’s called the Focus Attack, which requires tapping a couple of buttons simultaneously to absorb and then counter moves from your opponent. Whereas the parry in Street Fighter III forced battles to be fought almost toe to toe, the Focus Attack puts emphasis back on distance.

Without wanting to make your eyes glaze over, we should quickly mention that the pros are using the Focus Attack to cancel out of moves and quickly transition into others, opening up a whole new world for the infamous Street Fighter combos. But if you know your range well enough you’ll always stand a decent chance.

The 12 World Warriors are back, boasting more charisma than any old school arcade technology could muster. In no particular order these are Chun-Li, Blanka, Zangief, Guile, Honda, Dhalsim, Vega, Balrog, Sagat, M Bison, Ken and Ryu. The team are all still hugely entertaining with larger-than-life combat moves that include the ability to breathe fire, throw fireballs, and move limbs so quickly that you see nothing but a blur. Oh and still nothing is more frustrating then being held at bay by Dhalsim’s stretchy limbs!

To be honest we’re not all that bowled over by the four newcomers. Abel, the Judo guy, is markedly pedestrian alongside green mutant Blanka. Secret Agent Crimson Viper has only her long ponytail and glasses to give her an edge. Flabby Kung Fu practitioner, Rufus, looks like a trucker meets an extra from Mamma Mia. Mexican wrestler El Fuerte is the only one with enough pizzazz to make the original grade. Their list of moves don’t express anything deeper about their personas in the same way that Zangief’s Spinning Piledriver made you believe he could be a bear wrestler, or that Sagat’s Tiger Knee celebrated his Muay Thai origins. Not that karate practitioners are in the habit of throwing fireballs in reality... okay perhaps we're just getting old!

You’ll be happier once you’ve unlocked some more of the classic returning characters from Street Fighter history, among them the Bruce Lee looky-likey Fei-Long, sprightly schoolgirl Sakura and Karate buffoon Dan. Capcom is already hinting that more favourites will be made available to download in the near future.

Classic versus gameplay triumphs overall however and will keep you hungry for more even if you side with Ryu or Ken for all eternity. That said we can’t imagine what it must be like for newcomers getting to grips with a control system built on six buttons (‘Light’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Fierce’ punches / kicks) plus circular motions on the directional pad to unleash Special Moves. You can just about get by with hit and hope against other beginners but you’ll have the proverbial handed to you against anyone with even the slightest experience of conjuring Super Combos and now Ultras. It could feel like a steep learning curve compared the button-mashing appeal of Tekken, but the purity of fighting left to right on a 2D plane is easier to deal with long term.

The big wins for the home version of SFIV are both its exhaustive range of single-player modes designed to test your skills to the limit, and an online mode that’s simple to navigate and smooth as silk when your opponents have a strong signal. Slo-mo juddering online experiences were our worst fear for Street Fighter IV. We just played another 10 out of 10 matches to confirm there’s not a hint of network issues. Another major hook is that after almost every online session you’ll be rewarded with new icons and titles to customise your profile, reinforcing your almighty presence as a renowned World Warrior!

Street Fighter IV will have the old crowd enraptured inside a split second. Gamers reared on GTA and Call of Duty (i.e. born after 1994) could find the undiluted fun factor a shock to the system – po-faced 3D brawlers Tekken and Virtua Fighter simply don’t have the same energy. If you’re looking for a great fight on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this year we suggest you form an orderly queue on or offline for Street Fighter IV.

5 out of 5