(Old review – from the original HNTDAAB) Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Year of Release: 2009 Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360 The Street Fighter series dates from a time where arcades...

(Old review – from the original HNTDAAB)

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

The Street Fighter series dates from a time where arcades where the kings of the console wars, the place where us gamers crowded into to play games, often with our parents loose change in the UK. Those days have passed and now the home consoles stand triumphant. Street Fighter IV did well on them last year, but does it work on the PC, the platform least friendly to split screen play?

In case you grew up in a cave and think Frogger is as violent as games should be, let me educate you. Street Fighter is a series of side scrolling beat ‘em ups where you play as one of a roster of fighters and attempt to “beat up” your opponent by pulling off various combos moves, which vary depending on your selected character. Based on the description of a 13 year old back in the ’90′s you “kick them, punch them, break their necks and other stuff. It’s really cool!”

Street Fighter IV has four main modes. These are Arcade, Versus, Live Versus and Challenge mode. Arcade feels like the main focus of the entire Street Fighter, and so is the main mode which is the only mode that unlocks new characters. The fights slowly step up in difficulty until you reach the final boss, Seth. The game recommend multiple playthroughs with different characters, as some of the better ones need to be played through with other unlockable characters, or by performing certain feats (such as achieving perfects in fights). If your wanting to just play a very quick game or take your man on man fighting online, there is Versus mode which is simply a single exhibition match, complete with several different options such as number of rounds or time limit. Finally there is also a Challenge, which forces you to complete certain moves in order to pass them. This leads me onto a problem…

On the PC, it is excruciatingly hard to play. Don’t even think of using the keyboard controls – they don’t let you pull off many of the moves you need to actually play the game, including its most famous the Hadoyken. The controller isn’t much of an improvement if you want precise control over which moves you use, making it the choice for the casual player. If you want to play SFIV to its best, you NEED to find an arcade stick and buttons set, which can set you back about £60. If you don’t get this then many of the more advanced moves are very hard to perform. For example, in the time I was reviewing it, I only managed to pull off 2 ultras and only got those by button mashing. So yeah, unless you know SF like the back of your hand or actually have 4 million hands, expect to lose.

That said, this is my first Street Fighter.

Anyway, the character roster is big and quite varied, with few characters sharing moves (apart from the series main characters, Ken and Ryu). Each of the characters have a certain look to them, due in part to the games art style and the sheer craziness of the Japanese (just look at Zangief). Also, each character has their own feel to them. Zangief has a feel of much slower attacks than stretchy armed man Dhalsim while Dhalsim himself has a much longer reach. This is the key to Street Fighter, forcing players to master the differences in each character.

Being on PC, SFIV looks absolutely stunning. As well as the beautiful anime cutscenes, the ingame graphics look really crisp while showing off the style. The backgrounds are also fully 3D, with some even featuring spectators that react to events. My personally favourite has to be the Scottish Distillery, complete with stereotypical ginger worker, wheeling barrels around in the background. The design is good, with good ingame music and dialogue. My only problems were the horrible menu song (which will stick in your head like a tumour) and a bug I encounter on my laptop, where the dialogue was in English, but the lip movement was in Japanese. As part of this the game also seemed to slow down slightly. However do not despair as it works perfectly fine on my main desktop pc. Finally, some issues may arise due to Games for Windows Live integration, which includes one of the hardest set of achievements I have seen. There are no easy achievements. None of them. If you’re a completionist who hates having games with really low number of achievements on them, then do not load this game up on your profile.

Street Fighter IV is THE version of Street Fighter to own. It looks good, runs well, packed with modes (hell it local multiplayer!) and with a still popular online crowd you will get many fun hours out of this, although many will just be learning how to play it. However, I can’t stress enough that you need to pick up either a gamepad or an arcade stick to fully enjoy the game.