First Impressions: Street Fighter 4

So, clearly not learning my lesson from Killzone 2, I picked up Street Fighter 4 last night. However, the mentality behind it involved the fact that I had birthday money and if I put it in the bank it would go to bills. So when I went to Wal-Mart, I picked up Bioshock and Street Fighter 4.

Outside of the disappointment that was SSF2THDR, Street Fighter 4 was the first fighter that I picked up for myself. All the other ones were for my wife. There was something that I liked about Street Fighter 4 and I wasn’t sure what. Originally it was going to be a rental, but I figured that this was my birthday money, so I’d buy it on a game that I technically wanted.

And while Street Fighter 4 may not be my renaissance of gaming, it does show promise.

Street Fighter 4 is heralded as the game that went back to the roots of Street Fighter 2. This, of course, intrigued me because I loved Street Fighter 2. But, one thing I learned – is that you can’t relive or remake your classic games. If you try to relive your memories of a SNES game on a new console, you’ll end up disappointed because the great memories are tied in with your initial experience and once you have your mind made up, it’s hard to break it. I can’t compare any new RPG to Final Fantasy VI because I have fond memories of that, and the makes it that much harder to compare anything to what I think is the greatest RPG of all time.

A big problem I have with fighting games is that they are generic and simple. There’s no real depth to them, honestly. Outside of the mechanics of the actual fighting – the game revolves around 1-on-1 fighting … and maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of boring after awhile. Taking that into consideration, fighting games aren’t games to be played constantly because they will lose their flavor along the way.

Street Fighter 4 comes with a bunch of little games to play though – time attack, trial/training mode, survival mode as well as your standard fighting, arcade mode and online mode. These are actually nice ways of getting used to your characters instead of just playing through arcade mode. Plus, each time you clear a mode with a certain character, you get an additional item for that character – mainly an alternative outfit. This can give the game great replayability for those who want to unlock everything.

The most depth is given with online mode though, where you are awarded medals and battle points through your fighting technique and your accomplishments. Battle points are given and taken away as you win and lose battles. My first experience with multiplayer wasn’t that great … as I won one and then lost about eight others. My reward of 95 battle points went back down to zero over the course of the other battles.

Despite me telling the game to find those with the same amount of skill as me, I found myself on the end of a rather brutal beating. The game got some criticism over input lag which I did notice and most of the time found myself a second too late with executing moves while my opponent was spot on – even if I hosted. Because it was my first night though, I attribute it to rustiness and not having played that much offline. I’m hoping that once I get more used to the game mechanics I will be more of a formidable opponent but will be rather ticked if I feel like I’m getting the short end of the stick with input lag.

The game itself doesn’t really pull out cheap punches until you get to the final boss where you are dished out a very unique set of combos against you and are initiated in a way that you really have a hard time getting one hit in. The first match fools you by giving you a less powerful final bad guy but turns it up with the second round. Otherwise, gameplay is pretty fair – unlike SSF2THDR.

The game also has a interesting action bar that can act as an offensive and defensive aid and your special attach that is initiated by a unique camera angle and can dish out a lot of pain – but you are still limited to either them jumping over it, blocking it or getting the killing blow before it hits them.

In the end though, the game will act as a backburner game. I will still focus my time on other games that I haven’t cleared yet but will play Street Fighter 4 as a happy alternative. It’s still a fighting game, so it has a tendency to wear on the nerves after awhile – and games like that can’t be played in long bursts, or else you’ll act like this guy (which, by the way, my wife says I’m very much like the guy in the second panel:

Taken from Ctrl+Alt+Del, a online comic from Tim Buckley.