A amazing game somewhat tarnished by its lacking multiplayer and game modes.
Graphics 10/10: The game looks amazing.. A serious upgrade from past Street Fighter games, both character models and stages look great.. The effects such as fireballs also look impressive.. Though I personally love the new art design, some don't. (Why people refuse to play games with cartoony graphics will always be a mystery, is it insecurity possibily?).. All and all the game is a great lesson to other fighters that constantly put the same realistic approach that gets boring because every one is doing it.
Sound 10/10: The sound is great, though I have to say alot of the voice acting for some of the characters are out of place.. Luckily you can turn them to the japanese varient. I suppose another thing tha tbother people is the pop-like song at the beginning the game.. I honestly don't mind it, though it can get annoying because thats all they play at menu/multiplayer areas..
Gameplay 9/10: The core gameplay it self seems quite solid.. With the revenge meter raising up as you take damage to do a ultra move, and the ex meter raises up as you do dmg gives you the ability to do supers or EX moves.. EX moves imo are quite genious, they are a super move of your regular move.. Take Ryu's move set for instance, a EX hurricane kick instead of hitting once and disrupting the guy.. It will hit him 4 times and fly him across the screen doing significant damage.. The character balancing seems to be quite balanced, though I have to admit I don't understand how El Furete can be balanced.. He is entirely too fragile and does not do enough damage. Infact the only way you really can get consistent wins with him is exploitation of a bug in his move set where he can do a infinte combo... All in all though, you can do well just with all characters.. Newbs be warned though, charge characters are many times harder to even get ok with.. Capcom hasn't made any changes with that, so chances are the only good charge characters you will see will be ones played by people who have been playing them for YEARS... Though luckily there is a large variety of 25 characters, which is really immense for a non Vs game (such as Marvel Vs Capcom 2).. The characters for the most part are varied and each one is quite good.. Unfortantely if your a newb or a average player to the Street fighter series you will most likely be cut off from half of the roster because they are charge up characters.
Singleplayer 7/10: Arcade mode is intact it also has a interesting multiplayer arcade mode, where people can challenge you while your playing arcade singleplayer.. Unfortantely Capcom frustatring enough is at its old tricks when it comes to past games and this one.. The severe lack of gameplay modes, this is 2009, gamers need to demand more than just a arcade mode, a vs mode, and some kind of trials mode for singleplayer.. To a non hardcore street fighter fan this will greatly reduce its life span.. The cutscenes themselves are quite bad aside froma few (more for El Fuerte and Zangief because they are hilarious). Than again who honestly cared for the majority of the story.. For the most part Street Fighter story has always been ridiculous for the most part game wise.. it just gets worse as each new player you try out, people like Fei Long joins it because his movie crew came under attack, and his movie was delay.. Yep thats it, quite original plot no?
Multiplayer 6/10: Connection wise and huge population of players to fight them fast is great.. Unfortantely that does not make a multiplayer great, infact that should be a given.. Unfortantely Capcom didn't get the memo that they need a multiplayer outside of a 1990's game... As a PC gamer I am just wondering wtf were they thinking.. I have played games in the mid 90s THE MID 90s! Have more customization and choices.. Here you got.. Single fight or.. Single fight.. Thats it.. There is no massive tournament mode.. There is no other unique gameplay mode or team mechanic.. Hell there isn't even a SPECTATOR MODE AT RELEASE. This is unacceptable.. Perhapes they should have taken notes from Super Smash Brothers Brawl with just the sheer amount of customization and game modes.. I mean this just isn't acceptable. As it stands there needs to be a huge tournmanet mode for both singleplayer/local and multiplayer.. I would like to see upwards to 64 people which you can fill up with computer (random or set difficulty) and human.. Not flat out elimintation either but losers brackets.. I mean Super Street Fighter 2 had this (not at this size though), a game of like 15 to 18 years old, and they havn't put it in sense.. There are also numerous other modes they should have added..
Now supposedly they will be releasing a new patch soon to add some functionality to multiplayer and hopefully singleplayer game modes as well.. Furthermore I hope they do some tweaking to characters such as el Furete.. In the end its a solid fighter that could have gotten a 10 by me and probably the majority of professional critics if Capcom didn't make their typical half ass job of adding bells and whisltes..