Community Street Fighter IV Review (360)

By jalexbrown — January 24, 2010
Tags: Review street-fighter street-fighter-iv

My review of the 360 version of Street Fighter IV (posted in anticipation of Super Street Fighter IV)

STREET FIGHTER IV REVIEW

Remember back in the old days when you could go to the arcades and watch the machines eat away at your seemingly endless supply of quarters? Those were good times, and Capcom has now found a way to bring that same feeling to the home with Street Fighter IV. Let's get one thing about this game out of the way up front, shall we? Street Fighter IV's gameplay doesn't do much new, but it doesn't need to do much new. If you go into this game expecting some new or drastically different formula, you'll be disappointed; if you go into this game expecting that same rush you got playing Street Fighter II in the arcades, this is your game.

The roster of characters in Street Fighter IV is large enough to satisfy your desires, and includes some new characters that all seem to fit in well with the existing roster of characters. Of course you get your Street Fighter staple characters like Ryu, Ken, Guile, Chun-Li, Vega, and the likes, but you also get four new characters as well: El Fuerte, a Mexican wrestler who is fast and agile; Abel, whose power-to-speed ratio seems to be the most balanced of the new fighters; Rufus, a heavyweight fighter who still manages to be surprising agile in spite of his size; and Crimson Viper, a female who is quick on her feet with a movelist that focuses on the use of high-tech weaponry. There is also a new boss who is unlockable, Seth, who has a movelist that is a mixture of other fighters in the game. Also new to the series as a playable character is Gouken, the mentor of Ryu and Ken. The character list in the game is balanced enough that you can be pretty much any character in the game and stand a fighting chance against any other character in the game, but for some reason I didn't feel very compelled to play much with the new characters. They fit well in the game, but they're just a bit less interesting than the more established characters.

Visuals in Street Fighter IV are great. The game looks sort of like a 3D cartoon. Characters have heavy black outlines, and the colors throughout the game have a water-color style to them that is appealing to the eye. The special moves are flash enough to be entertaining to watch as well. During the story mode, each character has an intro and outro movie that is anime-style, and these movies are all well-done as well.

Street Fighter IV's control scheme is intuitive rather you choose to use the analog stick or the D-Pad, although I did find that certain characters - Zangief, for instance - had moves that were easier to execute with the analog stick as opposed to the D-Pad. If you're familiar with the older Street Fighter games it won't take you long to pick up on your favorite moves of yesteryear, either; most of the older moves are executed the same way you remember, so the pick-up-and-play aspect of Street Fighter IV is heightened over some other fighting games, which seem to feel inclined to change the way you do moves between entries.

Most of the game's appeal is being able to play with other people. While I personally didn't get to take the online for a spin, I did play quite a few offline versus matches against various friends, and the game is great fun when you're playing with another person. Fortunately for Street Fighter IV, however, the AI is skilled enough on the higher difficulties that you can play against the computer and still feel like you're playing against another person. On the higher difficulties the AI does sometimes have a tendency to spam certain moves, but then again that's also a problem you'll experience pretty often against a human opponent. Characters with moves that are easy to spam - such as Blanka - are more difficult to fight against, but eventually you'll learn when the computer is going to spam a certain attack and act accordingly.

Overall Street Fighter IV is a great game in the Street Fighter franchise and a great game in general. The original $60 price tag was a bit steep, but now that the game has come down in price, it's definitely worth picking up. The fights are fun and always unpredictable, the characters are varied but balanced, and the general flow of the game is really everything we've come to expect from Capcom. I consider Street Fighter IV a must-own.

NOTE: Since Super Street Fighter IV has been announced, you may want to weigh out your options as far as rather to get Street Fighter IV or wait for Super Street Fighter IV. If I had to advise, I'd say you're better off to wait for Super Street Fighter IV. Of course if you can afford to do both, go ahead and go buy Street Fighter IV right now and beat it to death before Super Street Fighter IV comes out. I've heard that there will be some sort of bonus for people who own both versions, so perhaps that could be your incentive to spend a few extra bucks and own both versions. Whichever way you go, though, you definitely won't be going wrong.

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Community Street Fighter IV Review (360)

STREET FIGHTER IV REVIEW

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