Afterthoughts: Street Fighter IV
There’s a very good reason why my updates to this thing have been a bit sporadic as of late. First and foremost, I have recently reattained employment in spite of the global economic crisis thanks to my friends Shariq and Jeff. Additionally, I have been playing a lot of Street Fighter IV: A mere two months out from release date has me clocking over 100 hours of playtime – a threshold of time that is normally reserved only for the most compelling of RPGs. To say that I enjoy the game would be a massive understatement – as with so many other folks in the world, Hadokens and Flash Kicks and Focus Attack Dash Canceling consume my thoughts. My daily routine now involves a visit to the Cammy forums at shoryuken.com in hopes of picking up some tips and tricks for my current character of choice. And despite the fact that Street Fighter IV Cammy is considered underpowered and “low tier”, I still have a hell of a time playing her as my main character. There’s just something about this game that continually keeps me interested.
At the same time, there is an almost nagging feeling that even though it does so much good, Street Fighter IV could have been so much better. A recent skim through the SFIV Afterthoughts thread on NeoGAF has me thinking the same thing: what did Street Fighter IV do well and what can be done to make it a better game?
The Good:
1.) The Characters – Capcom’s decision to bring back almost all of the old World Warriors from Street Fighter II in SFIV was a conscious attempt to harness good feelings of nostalgia from the early 90′s 16-bit era. Countless memories from countless hours of playing Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, and others with friends or quartering up at the local arcade. The return of the icons that ruled the era of the arcade fighter in high definition acts sort of like comfort food, giving old SFII players a known quantity to go back to and serving as a nice reminder of the good ol’ days.
2.) The Art Style – Black ink sprays, splotches and broad paintbrush swooshes accentuate the focus attacks that define the latest generation of Street Fighter. The new world warriors maintain their personalities, stylized to have an almost hand-drawn look. The 3D-rendered environments are colorful and vibrant , capturing the full spirit of the franchise in 720p. Simply put, Street Fighter IV is beautiful, well-polished, and a worthy successor to the best 2-D fighting game of all time.
3.) The Fight System – At the core of the SFIV fighting system is the Focus System, represented by two simultaneously growing gauges – the Super Combo Gauge and the Revenge Meter. Filling these meters allow the use of Super and Ultra Combo moves respectively, which always allow for the chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. However the real meat of the fight system is the Focus Attack – Whether its the simple elegance of an attack-absorbing, unblockable focus attack or dash-cancelling that to enable trickier, more damaging (and prettier looking) combos, the Focus System is a player-friendly combat system that has something for both the Street Fighter IV novices and veterans.
5.) Challenge Mode – The skill gap between casual and tournament players associated with fighting games is leap that requires intense training and dedication. While Street Fighter IV certainly doesn’t change that axiom, it does a lot to help players bridge that gap. In addition to the standard Training Mode, SFIV introduces the Challenge Mode – an enhanced training stage which serves as a primer for players to learn basic moves and challenging combos typical to high level play. Each challenge has a list of commands for the player to perform in such a way that when performed correctly is unblockable, i.e. a combo. And if the player is successful, they earn some pretty nifty icons and titles to show off to the competition online. Good stuff.
6.) The Online Player Request System – One of the aspects of the arcade experience that is really missed is the phenomena of “quartering-up” – it’s a very unique experience having opponents interrupt your Street Fighter II game to challenge you. Capcom made a wise decision by emulating the formerly arcade-exclusive experience on the home console. In fact, the first time you play Arcade mode the game allows you to toggle this feature on and off, allowing “a new challenger to join the battle.”
The Not-so-good
1.) The Characters - While Capcom’s character choices and designs are for the most part excellent, there do exist a couple lingering questions. If Street Fighter IV was supposed to instill a sense of nostalgia into the player, where are the two missing SFII characters? Where are Deejay and T. Hawk? Why aren’t there any SFIII: Third Strike characters? And why do we have to jump through the obnoxious hoop of unlocking an astonishing 9 characters? News flash, Capcom – Lock away the superficial stuff like costumes and icons and titles. Don’t lock away items integral to core gameplay (cough characters) – that won’t extend the life of the game as much as you think it will.
2.) Anime cutscenes in Arcade Mode – They are ugly, bad, and campy. Street Fighter IV has a beautiful game engine – any movies should have utilized in-engine cutscenes instead.
3.) Arenas – While it seems like there are a fair number of stages to play on, a lot of them are merely night-time versions of the same stage. Conspicuously missing from Street Fighter IV are the majority character-specific stages. While Chun Li and Blanka have their native homelands represented, where is Ryu’s iconic shotokan dojo? Where are the elephants cheering in the background of Dhalsim’s stage? Where are the Northern Lights twinkling in the skies of Cammy’s stage? Where is the famous (and beautifully imagined) field from the first Street Fighter IV trailer where Ryu and Ken sparred? Yeah this is a small complaint, but hopefully this will be remedied with DLC in the future.
4.) Character balance – You can’t really complain about the fact that most folks online play Ken and Ryu – after all, they are Street Fighter. However, you can complain about Sagat’s exceptional range and overbearingly powerful moves. You can complain about the grapplers and their inhumanly high priority command-throws. You can also complain about the fact that most of the console-only characters feel somewhat unfinished. While I think that the notion of tiers will always exist in fighting games, it’s Capcom’s job to try to keep that somewhat minimized – it’s clear that there’s a fair amount of tweaking to be done to the individual characters. So far they’ve done a pretty good job.
5.) The Online – Street Fighter IV’s online play is where a lot of the complaints have been directed toward. After the success of HD Remix’s online system, it boggles the mind why the same changes did not make the transition to SFIV. There’s no lobby system for players to hang out and watch and “quarter up” – a must for any modern fighting game played online. The lack of double-blind character selection in online versus mode, despite what Capcom’s Seth Killian said on the recent Kotaku Video podcast, is necessary – waiting for the opponent to pick a character so that the player can counterpick a character with a favorable matchup is a bit silly. The biggest strike against SFIV’s online system is the lack of any penalty for disconnecting from ranked matches – I cannot even begin to count how many folks have disconnected on me during my ranked matches.
Despite its problems, Street Fighter IV will be at the top of my playlist for a long time. We already know that the upcoming Champion Edition patch will address the disconnect issue online. Hopefully it will address a lot more.
