Street Fighter IV

"300 gallons of hype for an ounce of dusty gameplay."

I'll preface this by saying I'm not a fighting game junkie. I don't spend countless hours mastering every move, every combo, on one character. I don't bother learning the specialized lingo, I don't study the "Gokus" and "Sha-jee-bas" and "Ka-run-da blasts" and other assorted gibberish that is foistered on me by fighting game culture (if you can call it a culture). I work 50 hours a week and have a social life.

That said, I love a good fighting game. I've played god-knows how many hours of DOA, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, Fight Night, etc... It's a blast to get together with your buddies, knock back a few cold ones and scream obscenities while you virtually kick the crap out of each other, and that is the standard by which I'm judging Street Fighter IV. The casual "fun" factor.

By this standard, this thing is abysmal. Yeah. I said it.

GRAPHICS:
For my review, I played Street Fighter IV on a 52' HD-TV. The graphics... Meh. They're flashy and seizure-inspiring enough, to be sure. Characters are crisp, backgrounds are clean, actual combat animations are fluid. The intro and outro animations for the characters, where they do some goofy pose and say something equally silly, are terrible, and, quite frankly, embarassing if you've got another adult in the room with you. As it's a 2D fighting game, that's about all there is to the graphics. I won't even say it's the best looking in the series, as the art style is just obnoxious and cringe-inducing. I much prefer the old hand-painted characters.

It's anime-style, but BAD anime. I mean, it re-defines what bad anime is. Characters barely look human anymore. Fists and feet are often bigger than one's HEAD. The muscle definition is SO over the top that these characters would have to defy all known laws of physics just to wipe their own asses. And here's the really disturbing thing: the muscle definition is often semi-photo realistic, with veins, sinews, etc... While the head of the character is the standard smooth-skinned, cartoony little boy anime face... It just looks BAD. Like one artist did bodies, and another did the heads. It's beyond bad. It's freakin' CREEPY.

SOUND:
The first time you play the game, you'll be slapped in the face with some kind of J-pop anthem about being indestructable, sung by one of the most SOULLESS R&B singers I've ever had the displeasure of listening to. If I take into consideration that the dude singing probably doesn't know a word of English, and is singing the whole song phonetically, it's a little more impressive. Unfortunately, that sort of conceptualization doesn't come into play when you have to actually listen to it while navigating the menu. And just in case you don't immediately hop in the shower with your toaster once your aural cavities have been violated by this atrocity, Capcom will assure your eventual suicide by playing it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. your in the main menu. It NEVER stops. *Ever*. The rest of the music is, thankfully, easily forgettable.

Not that a fighting game needs a Hollywood-quality symphonic soundtrack to be good, of course. (Though it's one of the main reasons I liked DOA... GREAT score) So it's kind of a moot point. But SFIV's theme song is a level of awfull you rarely get to experience.

The punches, kicks, etc... Well... They pretty much sound like every other Street Fighter game. And special moves are vocalized, as par for the series. When you do a "Tiger Uppercut", for example, Sagat makes sure to let you know by saying "Tiger Uppercut". So that part works, for good or for ill. Congrats Capcom. Unfortunately, for some of the characters, the vocalization telegraphs their move about a second ahead of time, giving the opponent plenty of time to get out of the way. If that's a balancing decision, fine. But it's still annoying, and a poor way of balancing your characters.

GAMEPLAY:
This is where this thing falls apart for me. The controls are actually reasonably responsive. The junkies are all about their custom sticks; personally, I'm of the wacky opinion that once I drop 60 bones on a game, I don't feel particularly inspired to drop another 60 on a device I'll only use for THAT game. It's like the old days of buying a lightgun for something, only to realize... Yeah. They're only putting out 2 games in this consoles lifetime that you'll need it for. But the 360's stock stick is actually pretty decent, if a little hard to pull of the double fireball maneuver you need to rock an "Ultra" (basically, beat someone up for awhile, do a double move, screen gets epileptic and flashy, and your guy does some impossible-to control automated combo that takes off a chunk of health. Whoop-de-doo.)

The characters are, for the most part, well balanced, which is what stops me from giving the game a lower score. As a 2d fighter, it suceeds. When you press the buttons, they work. If you hold a direction and press a button, something different happens. So that's a plus. It's also a blast from the past to pick up the controller, and have all the combos and moves you learned in the arcade 15 years ago still work. You and your friends will get a kick out of the "old-skoolness" of it all... If you can get past the way they've ug-o-fied Chun Li and the rest of the gang.

The new characters are something straight out of a Saturday-morning cartoon; silly, over-the-top, and for the most part, forgetable. Secret agent chick with a weird rack. Big ol' fatty American Goober. Mexican Luchador/Fry Cook/Ethnic sterotype wacky guy. And there's another one. Don't spoil us, Capcom. Anymore than 4 new characters and my head would explode.

Backgrounds are full of goofy little characters doing goofy little things, but they're completely non-interactive. It's just a background. Hell, even Eternal Champions on the Genesis had ways to fling your oponents into the background for nifty finishers. Also, gone are the days of each character having a designated "stage". Now it's pretty much all random, everywhere.

STORY:
Err.. There really isn't one, as far as I can tell. The Silver Surfer got a Ying-Yang symbol implanted in his stomach, learned every other characters moves, and lives in the pacific ocean. You have to curb-stomp him. That's about it.

Each character has some sort of sequence before and after the game, rendered via "F" grade Anime: Blanka has a mom, Honda wants to leave sumo or something, Secret Agent chick is on the phone, Chun Li has to infiltrate Silver Surfer's HQ... It's all impenetrably convoluted and poorly executed, and frankly, about as exciting as story time in the kid's section of your local library, only minus the cookies and juice.

But hey, it's a freakin' fighting game. What do you expect from it?


CONCLUSION:
Like any fighting game in the last decade, Street Fighter IV is pretty in-depth. You can spend alot of time learning the intricacies of every character. My problem is, I had no desire to.

The art style turned me off, the computer cheeses you mercilessly, doing the same move over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, meaning you have to cheese back, which is boring for everyone involved; especially the poor bastards spectating. The 15 year old kids waiting to "PWN" you online are the same socially-inept, loudmouthed, pasty-faced, squeaky-voiced, bigoted, wannabe-alpha male doofuses that populate almost every other game on XBOX Live. I wouldn't want to have to play ANY game with the Street Fighter IV fans, let alone a competitive one.

The price point is also a factor. You can gussy it up all day long, but at it's core, it's the exact same game you played when you were a kid, with very little innovation in the past 20 years. If it were a download on XBOX Live Arcade for $15.00 or maybe even $20.00, I'd probably give it a 6 or a 7... But $60.00 BUCKS!? Are you kidding me!? Capcom's got to be laughing all the way to the bank. And with the hype around this thing, they're laughing pretty hard.

It held my interest for maybe 2 or 3 hours.. All four friends I had over to play it had the same opinion I did. Some things are better left in the past.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/09

Game Release: Street Fighter IV (US, 02/17/09)