Super Street Fighter IV Review
- Posted May 1st, 2010 at 11:45 EDT by Steven Williamson
- 24 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 9.5
- Avg. user review score:
- 8.4
Summary
What you have essentially got with Super Street Fighter IV is a more balanced Street Fighter game that represents the pinnacle of the franchise's glittering career.
We like
- The sheer variety of play styles
- The refined and balanced move sets
- The robust online features
We dislike
- Wondering where the franchise can possibly go from here
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
Anyone who read our review of Street Fighter IV (SFIV) last February will know where this review is heading. If you didn’t, or just want to remind yourselves why we voted it our Game of The Month for February 2009, then curl yourself up into a Blanka-like ball and roll on over to our SFVI homepage and read it now because Super Street Fighter IV (SSFIV) is essentially a refined, updated, polished version of that very same game.
We’re not about to cover too much old ground here then, but if you did play SFIV you’ll know that graphically it’s the finest looking game in the series -- with gorgeously colourful backdrops and wonderful animations that are at their finest when executing an orgy of feverish (yet strategic, of course) button-mashing, head-butting and face slapping violence. Suffice to say, SFIV managed to give the classic Street Fighter 2D perspective a fresh and very welcome lick of paint.
The gameplay was also something to shout home about. The iconic list of fighters have never moved around the arena better, showing off their Spinning Piledrivers, Tornado Throws and Super Onimusous with some style. Capcom cleverly fused classic gameplay with new ideas to deliver the finest fighting game of 2009. As we enthused in our review:
“While it's certainly nice to have a good mix of suitably impressive and opulently decorated arenas to battle in, it's still the fighting that shines brightest and makes Street Fighter IV so addictive and entertaining.”
That opinion still hasn’t changed for SSFIV. The foundations lay down by SFIV, and the serious as a whole, remain largely the same in this latest revision. Anyone familiar with the age-old Street Fight formula will immediately feel at home with the obligatory tournament mode, where you pick a fighter and trade Hadukens and Shyroukens across three frantic rounds before tackling the next player in the roster. Without it Street Fighter would be like eating bread without butter.
What intrigues us most about SSFIV is why Capcom is releasing it as a standalone game and not DLC, and whether it’s actually worth investing in what initially appears to be an upgraded version of game that we’re already playing. However, after spending a week in its company we’ve now come to a definitive verdict...yes it most definitely is.
Capcom has tweaked the move set of every fighter from SFIV. Gameplay styles remain the same but they’ve been refined, some more subtlety than others, in an effort to add a greater balance to the gameplay and ensure, specifically in the online arena, that some characters aren’t more over-powered or a lot weaker than others. Seth and Sagat for example, two ridiculously strong fighters in SFIV, are no longer overpowered. The damage they can dish out is much less, and the same goes for some of the weaker characters who can now punish more severely. This balancing act from Capcom has resulted in a more refined, challenging and less frustrating experience overall.
So, what of the roster? Well, all the characters from Street Fighter IV are back but there are also ten new additions to the line-up that offer up even more play styles and tactical challenges. Eight of these characters have been plucked from previous Street Fighter games, including the young Japanese Karate expert Makoto from Street Fighter II and Adon, Sagat’s student from the original Street Fighter. Old favourites such as the agile Native American T. Hawk and cheerful kickboxer D-Jay inject some new/old personality (depending which way you look at it) into the impressive 35 strong roster.
The arrival of two new characters, Hakan And Juri Han, in SSFIV is somewhat overshadowed by the addition of some familiar faces, who we were far more keen to take into the arena to see how they’d evolved. The new guys are still a fun addition to a roster that is brimming with personality and variety, but neither we speculate will ever be as memorable as some of Street Fighter's classic characters.
Hakan, the Turkish Wrestler, bizarrely covers himself in olive oil, which makes his body slippery. Though this allows him to move at speed for a short period of time it also leaves him vulnerable to attack ... (continued on next page)
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Comments
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Mainspring
- 7:16am EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 2
Mercy, you are not going to get much for vanilla SF 4 now that SSF 4 is out unfortunately.
anyway, SSF 4 owns. =)
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Makenshi15
- 7:24am EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 3
Really...the dislike is a con? -_-
But anyways...I'm tempted to buy this but I still have Sf4 sitting on my shelf. I love the idea of the revamped online for this game though.
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jello_snake
- 8:40am EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 4
Why buy this when super street fighter 4 turbo final remix complete collecters edition will be out soon?
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Mainspring
- 9:48am EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 7
4 is right and wrong at the same time.
future installments are going to be dlc, not a disc release.
Ono has stated that for SF4, SSF4 will be it with maybe updates for rebalancing and such.
knowing Capcom maybe SSF 4 Turbo or something other might be possible but...
Anyway, personally would have gladly paid $60 for SSF 4 even though I have SF 4.
the updated content is pretty extensive. more so then even some "sequel" of certain games most people gladly pay for and not complain.
you can wait it out forever hoping for the final release or join in the fun.
$40 price tag is very modest for this game. each to their own however...
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Ocelot1987
- 12:15pm EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 10
This game is fun and I hate this genre of video games. Really good character list.
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TwinSnakes89
- 1:25pm EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 12
BlazBlue is so much better than Street Fighter 4.....I just did not like SF4 at all. It felt so old and the online had so much lag.
BlazBlue beats it on all fronts:
1) Story
2) Gameplay
3) Online -
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mauricemclean
- 6:15pm EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 14
should have all capcom players on here an marvel players would have top it rite off
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jello_snake
- 8:17pm EDT - May 1st, 2010
- 15
Street fighter 4 isn't fun. Every character is nearly the same, and almost all their moves are the same button combos.
in b4 X's hadoken is faster than Y's hadoken while z's hadoken is bigger. lol.
I also hate the characters, I think they're designs range from generic to retarded. Street Fighter might be a lot more balanced than 3d fighters like tekken, mortal kombat, and soul calibur, but that only matters to competetive players. And the more competetive somebody is at a fighter, the less fun it is to play with them (I don't say this because I'm bad, as somebody is sure to suggest, in fact I'm better than all of my friends. Its just that block and jab competetive gameplay is not fun). So yeah sf = more balanced than 3d fighters, but it will never be more fun.
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arfi-gorgona-O
- 5:58am EDT - May 2nd, 2010
- 16
Who on earth banned me from the forums.The hacker must be a 360 fanboy lol
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TwinSnakes89
- 7:57am EDT - May 2nd, 2010
- 18
@17
BlazBlue has the best story of any fighting game, it was originally meant to be an RPG. So it's story is deeper than any fighting game could wish to be.
The fighting is fluid, unlike SF4 which is clunky and extremely slow compared to BB. And ALL the BB characters are different unlike SF4 which has many characters having the exact same moves e.g....Sakura, Ken, Ryu and Dan are all basically the same character.
Sure, there are some overpowered characters in BB and easily spammable characters such a Jin and his freeze attacks, but that doesn't mean they are impossible to beat.
BlazBlue > SF4 and any other fighting game.
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Very_Silver_Owns
- 8:31am EDT - May 2nd, 2010
- 19
Id rather play the Mortal kombat games and the Def Jam games on the PS2 then any of the Street Fighter games
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