I am a broken man.  My left thumb is ever so slightly stiff and unwieldy, like it’s been replaced by a Staedtler eraser, I’ve noticed some frown marks on my forehead that didn’t exist last Friday, I’ve got a slight twitch that makes me step back slightly whenever someone moves their hands too quickly, and I nearly nutted someone who said “sure you can” earlier today.  But i’m also a very happy gamer indeed.

Yesterday consisted of a 6 hour bout of Street Fighter IV, probably about 210 defeats and about 30 wins (against the machine, I’m too scared to go online just yet).  Some might say I’m the wrong person to review this — I was rubbish at Street Fighter 2, barely played 3rd strike, Alpha or the EX versions, and insist on falling back onto playing Blanka whenever i’m on the wrongside of a bad score.  But, looking at it as a gamer who has the nostalgia of Street Fighter golden days, without ever really being a champion of it, gives me a perspective I think a lot of people will share.  So, I’ll break this down into a few questions I know I was asking before I played, in the hope of helping you decide whether to pick it up or not.

Is it as good looking as people say?

Depends who you’ve spoken to, but yes, this is a great looking game — we’ve all seen the screen shots, and marvelled at the quality, but it’s in the intricacies animation that this thing blows you away – in the same way metal slug is one of the best looking games of all time, because of the wealth of detail in every second of the game.  Though you don’t always notice it at first (you’re too busy avoiding a Shoryuken) you stat to see that the stages react to what’s happenning centre stage — the first thing i saw was some plate jump in the air when I threw Vega into the ground…there are many many more, keep your eye out for them.  And the characters themselves are amazing — never adding too many frames as to ruin the gameplay, but adding more than enough flare and expression to keep you completely absorbed.  Colours pop, fists blur, Japanese faces gurn – its all there, and it’s all awesome.

Is it prohibitively difficult?

Short answer again, no, but it is bloody hard.  I first played it up to Seth then had to give up after half an hour as I was unable to beat him — for the first time in about 15 years I switched a game to easy and half an hour later had completed the game and unlocked Sakura.  This game is no walk in the park, button mashing will not work, unless you’re playing against someone equally inexperienced. However, with the exception of Seth sometimes being more than a little cheap, I knew that this was my failing, that i HAD to get good enough otherwise the online game would be pointless, as I’d never win.  Also, learning the fairly easily memorised moves made a world of difference – the windows for input are much wider than in previous games it seems, which merely means that you don’t have to worry if a move will work, and you can focus on worrying if it will leave you open to a foot in the face.  It’s the hardest game I’ve played since Devil May Cry 4 on Dante Must Die difficulty, but it just needs some work and your skill will improve exponentially.

I don’t want to shell out on a stick, is it playable on a normal controller?

Short answer: Yes. I’ve played this on a DS3, a 360 standard controller and a Hori stick.  Obviously the Hori stick is the best (I’ve yet to test it with the new Madcatz Fightstick, though I do have the Madcatz Fightpad on order) as it was purpose built for that sort of thing, and using triggers still feels odd in a beat’em up. However, the dual shock isnt too bad at all — be thankful you arent playing this on a 360 standard controller, that d-pad is brutally awful.  The increased windows for combos and specials really help with this, and the vital component of tactical play in SFIV – the Focus attacks, are on medium punches, so no trigger work necessary for those blocks.

Anyway, thats hopefully answered some questions for some people.  I’m personally extremely pleasedwith it – I’d had my worries as I was looking into guides and there was lots of talk of Focus cancels and “mad cross-ups” but it really is an accessable game, and more importantly, a really FUN game….though, as a final note, I must add – Seth is a %@$*@^}.

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