I have a Playstation thumb from playing Street Fighter IV for some four hours last night. What a cool game. The whole arcade experience of new challengers appearing to interrupt your single player game is something I’ve been looking for since the real arcades disappeared around here, although not really realizing it until now. It is an exciting thing to go against someone you don’t know. My hands trembled and I became short of breath for my first few matches.
That may have something to do with me being pants in Street Fighter. I can’t do anything against the computer, being barely able to clear the arcade mode on the easiest setting – that’s “easiest” as in Easiest, Very Easy, Easy, Medium and so on – and most online opponents just kill me. But it’s not all bad. Even against somewhat competent players, I have a chance if I’m keeping on the offensive and resorting to button mashing when I don’t know what I’m doing, which is most of the time. The game rewards being aggressive.
The final boss, Seth, must be the cheapest, most infuriating boss seen in a fighting game to date, and that’s saying something. I really can’t understand why I’m forced to play the broken singleplayer to unlock characters.
The character movesets are limited enough to not be intimidating and the special moves are quite a bit easier to pull off than I recall from previous versions. I’m doing just fine on the PS3 pad with regards to hitting the moves.
Street Fighter IV is in a bit of an awkward position as Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has just treated us to a sublime audiovisual barrage of world fighters, laced with an almighty dose of nostalgia. As it is, its presentation and audio just can’t stack up against its predecessor. The initially weird boyband theme song grows on you and as the actual in-game visuals are on the same level, the presentation’s lackluster qualities don’t really matter.
This is something I imagine to be playing at work quite a bit, even if the flawless qualities and greater speed of SSFIITHD beckon me.
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