Street Fighter 4 Review

Street Fighter 4 review by Raquay A. Holland

Street Fighter 4 is the fourth game in the popular Street Fighter franchise. It was released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. After playing it, I figured out why the Street Fighter series became so popular. Its fast and furious fighting, beautiful graphics, and stylish gameplay makes this an easy game to recommend.

First, we'll start off with gameplay. You have three types of punches and kicks; a high, medium, and low punch, and that's talking about damage, not position. I was originally a Tekken fan, so it took me a while to get used to having even the shoulder buttons as attacks. Some buttons work as all three punches and kicks. As the fight builds on, two meters will build up: the Super and Ultra Meter. The Super Meter builds up automatically, yet the Ultra Meter, also known as the Revenge Meter, builds up as you get hit, to turn the tide of battle, or end a round with an Ultra Combo Finish. Super and Ultra Combos are very stylish, and can take away nearly half of a full health meter. The Super Meter also helps with doing other special moves. Combining two specific buttons will let you do a throw move, and a new move called a Focus Attack. It's basically a charge up attack that lets you absorb one punch or kick, and then counter it. Each one has his or her own Focus Attack, which adds to the variety of modes you can do.

Next, the visuals. Street Fighter has it's own art style, with elements of ink in a lot of aspects. For the first time in Street Fighter history, it uses 3D grapics, but Street Fighter still remains a 2D fighter, either in homage to the arcade days, or that they know it just works well like that.

The modes are perfect for a fighting game. It has an arcade mode, which tells the story of each individual fighter, with an anime prologue and epilogue. I don't really like anime, mainly because of over-exaggerated facial expressions, and cutesy animals. But this wasn't so bad, since it doesn't have any of the things listed above. During arcade mode, just like the games of yesteryear, somebody else can join in locally or over Xbox Live/Playstation Network. Next, it has a Versus mode, which needs no explanation, and finally, it has Challenge Mode.

Flaws to this game, well, there aren't really much. It has a pretty cruel combo system. I would hit a guy 5 times, yet it would only say 2 or 3 hit combo, at the most. Street Fighter 4 demands your fastest button-pressing skills to the game. Some enemies are really cheap, especially the boss levels. For some reason, I decided to quit the game, but I kept coming back to it. But this game is perfect for beginners, like me. It has 7 or 8 difficulty levels, to put your skills to the ultimate test. The roster is pretty varied, and it has 16 characters already unlocked, and 9 more to unlock via Arcade mode. This game has been one of the greatest fighters I've ever played.

The good: fast and furious fighting, beautiful graphics, diverse roster, stylish combos, has all the modes a fighting game needs.

The bad: cheap enemies, cruel combo system, "bipolar" style.

Score:

9.0