Posts tagged street fighter

Breathe easy. Street Fighter IV works as well as we could have hoped for.

I can’t pull off fireballs all the time, but I can’t in any version I’ve ever tried. (Hurricane kicks, however, come out a lot more easily, though still without any regularity. Again, like all versions I’ve tried. I think my thumb just likes going backwards.)

You’ve got a big virtual joystick that works well. You can see directions light up as you move it, so you can see exactly what you’re doing if you look down there.

There are four main buttons – punch, kick, special move and focus, which do the obvious. What type of punch and kick you perform seems to be dependent on how you’re holding the joystick, according to people who have investigated more thoroughly than me. Pressing forward and punch will do a heavy punch (when out of throw range) and pressing down and back and punch will do a light crouching punch, or something like that.

Take that, stupid Guile! Ha!

To do an ultra you can hit your little ultra bar when it’s lit up.

In a way, then, you’ve still got the tactical game, with some of the timing/moving skills removed.

There are a couple of options to make things easier. There’s Auto Block, which is on by deault, and a Special Move Assist, which is off. It apparently makes it easier to pull of specials, but I’ve not investigated it yet.

There’s not a lot in the way of the modes. You’ve got the main tournament mode, where you battle the other seven fighters. (Eight are included, I suspect more will come via DLC before too long – possibly when SSFIV comes out on the big consoles.) That means there’s no Seth, thank god, and you fight M. Bison last. Or I did, anyway, when I played. After winning you get shown a SSFIV trailer, which is a bit cheeky, but cool.

I’ve been through once on Normal I lost a few rounds, but no matches.

Apart from tournament, you’ve got sparring, training and dojo. Not looked at those yet.

There’s also multiplayer, which I have a feeling is Bluetooth only. Don’t think there’s any online play.

You can save match replays, but you can’t do anything clever like save them as iPhone movies or upload them to YouTube. Missed opportunity there.

Most importantly, it runs very smoothly and feels great. I really, really like it, arcade-stick-owning hardcore players will probably hate it and I suspect most other people will be probably be in the middle, leaning towards the happier end of the spectrum.