Street Fighter IV Review

Reviewer: Roneel Rama

Rating: 8.8/10

New model, original parts. That was the slogan for the new Fast and Furious movie but, needless to say, I think a similar one should be applied to Street Fighter IV (that’s 4 for those of you who haven’t played Final Fantasy and don’t know your roman numerals). It’s the same game we used to love when we were younger, only a lot shinier. The Street Fighter name has been around close to 22 years, with its debut as an arcade game in 1987. Developed by Capcom, it has had a good many installments and spinoffs, so many that I won’t name them all as I have a word limit.

A new tournament has begun and it is our job to help an individual of our choice (Ryu’s a classic favorite) fight through other contenders to reach our rival and defeat them to make our little chap happy (Hadoken!). Street Fighter 4 is a long awaited game which has had a lot of rubbish preceding it (there are A LOT of spinoffs!) It’s pretty much gone back to basics: a simple fighting system with a health bar and super/ultra bar and for this I commend them. Taking a step back, Capcom were able to get rid of unwanted junk that cluttered the game up. They have also given this game a fantastic look with a unique cell shading technique (as seen in the next gen Prince of Persia).

This game gets 8.8 out of 10 from me. Street Fighter 4 lost marks from me because of the fact I’d have to play way too much to earn the trophies (this is Killzone2 time SF4 is cutting into) and a few other minor things like some of the music being way to poppy (the opening scene is kick-ass with everyone fighting and there’s some lame ass pop song going, we need some metal in there!) Another thing that annoyed me was the auto accept challenge option that was automatically set to yes, so while you were playing through arcade mode kicking away at some poor fellow when you’re about to deliver the finishing blow and you hear “A New Challenger has entered the Ring!” so basically after you tell the other guy to get lost you need to fight the guy in arcade mode all over again only to be interrupted again. Thankfully, there is a switch that isn’t easy to find that turns it off.

All I can say about this game is good fun if you’re into fighting games (I’m more a First Person Shooter/RPG guy myself), It stuck to its roots one on one action with a little bit of story but most importantly the butt kicking. But in one word this game is Shiny…shiny=good…