Super Street Fighter IV Review

Considering how popular fighting games are in Korea, it shocking it's taken Capcom his long to represent the country.

The eight new, yet familiar faces are a welcome and varied bunch, evolving from SFIV’s old-school revivalist line-up to include Street Fighter Alpha and III entrants. The Alpha trio of Adon, Guy and Cody play very differently: Adon’s perfect for dealing with projectile spamming challengers, while a quick visit to Guy’s trials reveal him to be a combo machine, capable of making an opening in a dizzying number of ways. Cody’s a fascinating character with a handful of unique gameplay attributes, most controversial of which is the knife. Picking up Cody’s weapon increases his range, damage, and most critically, causes chip damage on block. In a game with an Alpha Counter-style guard break this could be shaken off, but eating four hits of chip damage from a high priority flurry that costs no super gauge is dangerously close to cheap.

An EX Oil Shower will go straight through projectiles, giving Hakan plenty of opportunies to get oily.

Considering the range of idiosyncratic odds-balls present in the SF III series, the Ibuki, Dudley and Makoto selection is reservedly down to earth. Ibuki has made the journey to the third dimension wonderfully, with her trademark target combo into throw intact and Dudley, while still heavy on the target combos, seems to have a bit of an identity crisis – his English voice actor sounds less like he want to be Chris Eubank and more like somebody from EastEnders. Keep it classy indeed. Despite the huge shift in juggling properties from 3^rd Strike, Makoto still has a huge number of options against airborne opponents, and she’s still an offensive monster able to tear you apart with close-up mind games. Having narrowly missed out on inclusion in the console SFIV, T. Hawk and Dee Jay complete the Super SFII roster in fine form, even if T. Hawk’s Tomahawk Buster seems to have less priority than an athlete on a crowded bus full of pregnant women.

Meercats, hippopotamuses and a solar eclipse. The new stages really shine.

The hindsight of two years’ worth of hardcore play has given Capcom plenty of time to rebalance, and what you will get out of this is largely dependent on what you put in. Aside from the new Ultras (which open up plenty of new options for old faces), the changes are subtle and won’t leap out, but if you’ve invested a good amount of time with a character, the chances are you will see changes. Unless you’re a Sagat player, they are mostly for the better – case in point, players that stuck by Vega (Claw) through the hard times will be rewarded with a vastly improved Spaniard, while other simple damage/endurance adjustments even the playing field less visibly. Matches definitely last longer, with Ultras not quite as bar-emptyingly damaging as before.