Going into Street Fighter 4, Capcom had one main goal: Bring the Street Fighter series back to the masses while still keeping the same amount of depth that makes the franchise such a tournament mainstay. While I may not be able to speak volumes regarding the amount of depth that a tournament level player may be looking for, I can confidently say that as a person who generally sucks at, and usually can’t get into fighting games, I absolutely love Street Fighter 4. Chalk that up as a success on at least the first part of that goal, Capcom.
At its core, Street Fighter 4 is really nothing more than one-on-one fighting on a two dimensional plane. There is a roster of 25 characters to choose from that each have their own set of basic attacks, special moves, super moves, and ultra moves. There are a total of six attack buttons – three for punches and three for kicks – that correspond to varying degrees of attack strength. All of this is pretty standard for Street Fighter and for many other fighting games as well.
The big addition to Street Fighter 4 though is the focus attack. Focus attacks are performed by pressing or holding down the medium punch and medium kick buttons. By holding down the two buttons, your character will go into a special stance and will look like he/she is bleeding ink. While in this stance, you are able to absorb a single hit. By releasing the two buttons, you will execute the focus attack which is a powerful blow that will generally knock the wind out of your opponent and put him or her on the ground. If you charge it the whole way, this attack is actually unblockable as well.
But it doesn’t end there. You see, the best part about the focus attack is that its uses increase as your own skills increase. After a focus attack hits, if you’re fast enough you can dash cancel out of it and follow up with a combo before you opponent hits the ground. Or you can use its absorption properties to eat a hit of your opponent, back dash cancel out of it and punish them while they’re in recovery from their own attack. Or you can actually use it defensively to block a projectile. You still take damage from any attack you absorb, but its damage that will regenerate over a short period of time.
Street Fighter 4 is also helped by its fantastic roster of characters. All of the original fighters that most people recognize from the days when Street Fighter 2 helped to save arcades from stagnation are back including Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, Bison, Balrog, E. Honda, Vega, along with mainstays of the series like Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li. The console versions of Street Fighter 4 also have the added bonus of nine secret characters including Akuma, Sakura, Gouken, Gen, Rose, Fei Long, Cammy, Seth, and of course, Dan Hibiki.
The main draw of course to Street Fighter 4 is the online fighting, and thankfully this is the part that Capcom nailed the best. Aside from being about 90% lag free, there are a couple of really neat things that Capcom did with regards to online play that we haven’t seen before in a fighting game. For example, you can actually turn on online challenges while you’re playing arcade mode so that instead of actually waiting at a lobby screen for minutes on end, you can actually play against the computer and wait for your game to be interrupted by the same “Here Comes a New Challenger!” message that you see at arcades. A very nice touch, I must say.
In addition, there is also a list of titles and icons that you can unlock as you play. Some titles reflect your play style (chicken, grab master, etc), some reflect an aspect of the character that you use (one of Ken’s titles is “Fighting Playboy), and others are titles that brag about your skill (Master, Self Proclaimed Best, Complete Package, etc.) It’s a small addition, but it is fun to mess with and it gives you some extra incentive to play through Challenge Mode and unlock each character’s titles and icons.
Challenge Mode consists of three sets of challenges that each have two difficulty levels. Time Attack has you competing in a gauntlet where you fight against a specific number of challengers and must beat them within a set time limit. Using Super Moves, Ultra Moves, or winning rounds with a Perfect will add more time to the clock. In survival you also fight against a gauntlet of challengers with the only aim of staying alive. The challenge is that your life carries over from fight to fight and only a specified amount of it is healed at the end of each round.
The final challenge of Challenge Mode, Trial, is probably the most useful for newcomers. In it you are given instructions on how to perform both the basic moves and advanced combos for each character. My only complaint with this mode is that they don’t have an option that lets you see the moves actually being performed with visual aids on when you’re supposed to press the buttons. Some of the later challenges have ridiculous timing windows that make them almost impossible to go in blind and complete.
Overall, Street Fighter 4 is easily the best entry in the legendary series yet. Its online play is flawless, its gameplay mechanics are unmatched, the game feels incredibly balanced (though over time that may change as players learn more about the characters,) and most of all, it’s just fun as hell. My only complaint with it is that the Xbox 360 controller is not meant for 2D fighting games. It has one of the worst D-Pads in the history of video game controllers and it makes performing ultra combos incredibly frustrating. I’d highly recommend 360 owners look into getting some kind of fight pad or fight stick to curb the frustration factor.
