7 responses so far ↓

• 1 Lamson

  If you enjoy older street fighters than this game is great. A great character selection, great fighting system addons and great graphics. It’s too soon to see if balance is bad or not but as far as gameplay this version delivers!

• 2 Quentin

  It has been a long wait, it seems, since game developer giant Capcom released it’s first screen shots of Street Fighter IV, the fourth game in the globally popular Street Fighter game series. I for one was very excited, since I have been a huge Street Fighter fan since second grade when I would rush home from school to play Street Fighter II on my SNES. Through the years I played all the Street Fighter Alpha games, fell in love with Sakura (like many SF fans), played through Street Fighter III, mastered the air combos in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and laid waste to my foes as Shin-Akuma in Capcom vs. SNK 2. With the amazing screen shots Capcom released to the world, I was more than hopeful. I was ecstatic. However…

  Though it is a great game still, and the graphics are fantastic, disappointment is all I can really feel for SFIV. It had so much potential. And so much hype. I even bought the limited special edition for the Xbox 360, and let me tell you now, just go with the regular edition. “The Ties that Bind” an hour long anime feature, which was included with the special edition, is just not worth it. That is what sold me, and I was tricked. Also the little figure that comes with the special edition is less than par and the soundtrack doesn’t even have that catchy opening song on it (you can buy that song “The Next Door” by Exile on iTunes for 0.99$). So you have the the regular edition, $51.00 at amazon.com, or the special edition, right now running at $119.75 at amazon.com. Don’t know why its that much now… even more not worth it. I just felt that the quality of the special edition was weak and I wish I bought the regular edition.

  So much for packaging! Let’s move on to the actual game play. Graphics is a given. Absolutely stunning. But we all know graphics don’t make the game. It is all about game play mechanics, characters, music, stages, and storyline, or in this case, lack thereof.

  One of my most favorite things about Street Fighter II is that it could be taken in many different ways. People can interpret the storyline however they want as long as it went by the basic template and fit in with the character endings. In the old Street Fighter games, the endings were usually two pictures and a few sentences. That is really all you got for the storyline and I liked it that way. That kind of story telling opened up many different tellings of the Street Fighter story including the original Japanese manga and the newer Udon comics interpretation. Basically, it allowed you to use your imagination.

  With SFIV, in arcade mode, when you choose your character it gives you a quick full animated introduction to that character’s story, which is usually really cheesey or pointless. “Who cares,” is what I usually think and I tend to skip the intros by pressing the start button. “Come on, just let me fight!” The animations seem to be straight from the same pool of animations used to make the anime “The Ties that Bind.” And the quality isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either. It is just mediocre, and it makes me feel like the designers sort of failed at what they were trying to express. I feel like these anime cut scenes were just added to appeal to anime fans. I am a anime fan and I don’t really buy into it. Also the English voices are lame.

  Endings follow the same kind of cut scene. Most of the endings are scenes that show what happens right after the last battle. Not many of them show what happen later on down the line. One ending, Ken’s, is pretty good (I’m not going to spoil it for you), but the rest are once again a “who cares” ending. I miss those picture endings like where Ryu is just shown walking away or when Chun-Li throws off her fighting outfit and into normal girl clothes. Those were cool endings. Simple, and open to imagination! You don’t need mediocre anime to make Street Fighter good.

  Most of the old fighters are back. The original eight are there as well as the four original boss characters. Bison is AWESOME! But they took away Dee Jay and T-Hawk from the new challengers! Why!? Cammy is there though as a unlock able character as well as Fei Long.

  Hailing from the Street Fighter Alpha games is Rose, Gen, Dan, and the lovely Sakura. Sakura is my favorite part about the game. The in game graphics and animations for her are awesome! She has a really well thought out costume set you can download off of Xbox Live where she is wearing her Japanese high school girl PE outfit. So hot. I always played as Sakura in the Alpha games and became pro with her so it was a great delight when I unlocked her (beat the game with Ryu).

  Also in the line up is Akuma and Master Gouken, which marks the first time you can actually play as Ryu and Ken’s master. His storyline is forced and in my opinion rather stupid, but it is great that you can actually play as him.

  When it comes to stages in this game, there are stages that go with the characters, but it isn’t like in SFII where it is a for sure thing you will be fighting, oh, Chun-Li, for example, in China. In the arcade mode of SFIV your stages are randomly chosen, I think except the rival stage and the final stage. Also there is no airplane sound and no cool voice saying, “CHINA!” that was half the fun if you ask me! Why did they go without it? Also there is no world map… I am saddened to see those things go.

  It is an entertaining game and has very nice visuals. It keeps most of the old school game play of Street Fighter with some new things added and some old things taken away. Most of the characters make a come back, but no T-Hawk or Dee Jay. New characters are kind of week. The anime “The Ties that Bind” is week and not worth watching. The C. Vipder fig that comes with limited edition is poor quality. The original soundtrack is pretty good. Sakura and Zangief are awesome!

  Over all I give SFIV four stars out of five. Good game, but it could have been better and certainly doesn’t over power the originals. Stick with the standard version, limited edition is a rip off.

  For my full and uncut review of the game see my blog at http://okinawaperson.blogspot.com/
  Thanks for reading and happy gaming!!

• 3 Pak

  I couldn’t even stand to watch a full 4 minutes of gameplay video here on Amazon. The fact that the game freezes the action on every attack just looks terrible to me. It looks like a glitchy graphics card, or bad streaming video, when it’s obviously the intended effect of the game. Just seems very halting and distracting. I wouldn’t want to play this game.

• 4 Knotts

  As with any other kid in the 90’s, Street Fighter 2 was all the rage in the arcades and when it was released on the SNES. It seemed like 2D fighters kind of lagged a bit in the 2000’s as everything moved to 3D and the Alpha series, Vs. games, and SF3 all kind of fell out of the spotlight despite being solid entries. Those games all seemed to attract more hardcore fighters and didn’t have the wide popularity that SF2 did.

  With SF4, I think the 2D fighter is back with a vengeance and better then ever. I’ve spent about 35 hours playing this already both against the CPU and online and the gameplay is fantastic, being both familiar to old Street Fighter fans and with enough new additions like the Ultra combo and Focus attacks to keep it fresh. While there are some minor issues like the CPU controlled boss Seth, as well as difficulties with the Quick Match options online, the bottomline is the game is just plain fun to play.

  The CE comes with an Anime movie which gives some decent backstory to the characters. Each character has their own little opening and ending in Anime form, and the movie does a good job filling in the gaps as some of the character stories in the game are a bit confusing. It’s worth a watch once, but nothing particularly great or visually pleasing. The soundtrack is ok, and the toy is a LOT smaller then I thought it would be. It’s only about 2 inches tall. The CE probably wasn’t worth it, but SF4 is fantastic!

• 5 Iverson

  good animation .but the game setting still too hard .which is a sham for a nice game .not for all audience and non skill players

• 6 Tausch

  I think this is the one I have. I doubt I have a full uncut version.

  Time to get to the actual review now. Do not get this confused with the Street Fighter Alpha series of movies. This one is actually good and does the Street Fighter name justice. There are some good fight scenes (especially the first one with ….). As an anime, it’s pretty good to me without straying far from Street Fighter’s legacy and what makes it great. ….. dies too easily. I wish …. was in the movie longer. Of course, everybody doesn’t get a chance to really fight or show up because there are so many characters but there is a good list of characters that show up in this movie.

• 7 Urich

  Classic Anime featuring Characters from the Video Game. The intro between Ryu and Sagat was awesome.

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