"The King of all fighting games," does the Street Fighter series' latest release have what it takes?

User Rating: 3.5 | Street Fighter IV (Collector's Edition) PS3
By schlitze_is_god | Review Date:
The answer is a simple, but extremely loud "**** NO." Consider this, Street Fighter 4 was released in 2009 (earlier in arcades), yet it does absolutely nothing, I repeat, NOTHING new for the genre and instead removes interesting mechanics from other 2D fighters. Parries? Gone. Do you get punished for excessive turtling like with CvS2? No, you can block all you want. Any kind of air dash? No. Super Jump? Only C. Viper has that. Air block? That would be nice playing against a character with an excessively useful ultra (like Ryu, Sagat, Rufus, etc.), but no. Hops? No, wrong series, but at least Zangeif can do a short jump. Is the game even balanced? No, it's a tilted game that has a huge bias towards non-charge characters (though Balrog/Boxer is the only exception), and really, why does Claw, Guile, and the console characters have to suck so much (though Gen is better than given credit)? The system for the game is simple... too simple. You have 8 directions on a stick/pad and the antiquated 6 button layout. Unlike other fighting games, there is no real depth in the game aside from match-ups, the knowledge of how to punish attacks, when to block a cross-up, as well as timing your attacks to form links and combos. That's it.

Throws, though a tight window to escape, are still simple and dumbed-down. Most overheads are slow so with practice you can pretty much block or focus attack them on reaction if you put enough time into the game. The amount of effort to mount an offensive versus being on the defensive has a huge disparity that the average game turns in to an extremely boring to watch turtle-fest.

This game has a huge bias towards certain characters who have two tools: a fire ball, and an effective ultra that can be applied anywhere. I've met and played enough Ryus and Sagats to know that they prefer you to jump and attack so they'll get a nice trade and land an ultra on you. Yeah, the harder-core players will be saying things like: "then don't jump in!" but what else can you do as, let's say for this instance, E. Honda?

Lastly, it isn't necessarily the game's fault, but the community that revolves around this game (that brings the "HYPE") has to be filled with the most idiotic and unhelpful people on the planet (though similar can be said about the Tekken community, and Virtua Fighter's is only slightly better), so if you happen to like this game and want to learn how to play it, be prepared to be inundated with some insane amount of BS.

It is no doubt that Capcom pays reviews large amounts of money to review sites to give their games such scores, because anyone with the ability to critically think with find that they already played this game, except it had more depth and it was call super duper street fighter 2 hyper fighting championship world warrior edition 3000 (which was also the n-th version of a mediocre game as well).

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