Okay the big day in fighting game history has arrived! After its first inception, Street Fighter 4 left room for skepticism amongst fans of the genre after its initial announcement. Fighters blogged, tweeted, and posted their feelings on what to expect from the fighting game “giant”. Many of us were concerned with the art direction, the fact that it was 3 Dimensional, and quite frankly many thought this game would fail. But to the surprise of many, SF4 received high praise and really bounced the series back to life. So is Super Street Fighter 4 the definitive fighting game of this genre? You bet your SUPER FIERY FLAMING UPPERCUTTING FISTS IT IS!!!

Oh Capcom how you woo me with the dramatic and intense fighting goodness of SSF4. For starters this game is definitely not SF4 1.5, this is almost worthy of a full-fledged sequel. Several changes have taken place primarily with the networking features of the game. But I’ll get into that in a moment. The biggest change is with the roster. I for one love what Capcom has done with this game by featuring each set of fighters from their respective titles. Not only does this force you to re-learn your main characters, but it opens up the chess-like mentality of what you thought you’ve learned from the previous title. This can make for some great never-before seen match-ups.

Imagine Dudley vs. Rose, or Adon vs. El Fuerte? The roster totals up to 35 characters which are unlocked from the start. These new editions include, Guy, Cody, and Adon (from the Street Fighter Alpha series) Makoto, Dudley, and Ibuki (from the Street Fighter III series), T. Hawk, Dee Jay from (Super Street Fighter II Turbo), and finally two brand new characters Juri and Hakan make their first ever Street Fighter appearance. With all of these new editions available, veteran gamers may have their hands full by having to learn all of the new characters tendencies. It’s pretty exciting to see many of these characters square up for the first time. There’s nothing more visceral than seeing my dream match-up unfold between Dudley and the Boxer (sure his name is Balrog, but I think Boxer is more appropriate.) The excitement level is even more heightened now that there are special intros between character rivals. Expect to have some nerdgasmic episodes when watching them.

Improvements and Changes

So what else is new you ask? Well on the gameplay front it’s still the same SF4 engine. But what makes this unique from the original is that you get to select your killing deathblow- in the form of ULTRA 1 or ULTRA 2. So in turn all characters get to use “supers” in addition to the Ultra finishers.  Luckily they did not deviate from what worked well on its predecessor such as the “Focus Attack” and “Revenge Meter”. I think this time around, due to the balancing of most of the original characters, you’re more likely to see less spamming of moves as well as some of the bread n butter combos. Certain moves have either been toned down or with the case of Guile, sped up. These balancing tweaks have definitely made the weaker characters stronger and vice versa. With new characters come new circumstances.

Street Fighter Television?

The transition on the single player side has been pretty good so far, but the online features is what I think has gotten the attention of the SF4 fans. For starters they combined the Ranked match with the Battle Point matches so that you only have to concentrate on one universal ranking. Another slick feature is the online “Replay Channel”. During any of your online fights, you are granted with a replay. This gets saved into a queue of all of your recent matches. Afterwards replays can then be saved and shared amongst friends. Think of the replay channel as nothing but Street Fighter TV. There are dedicated channels for matches such as “Boss Battles”, “SF III”, or “SF Alpha”. Each will showcase match-ups between fighters of that respective title. The New Replay channel will only showcase matches of high win streaks and most likely will contain the higher level of play. The idea of the Replay Channel is simply for studying or in turn for bragging rights. This is very much a welcome addition.

Team Battles are finally here!

Lastly this is something that I was praying to the Capcom gods for in their next installment and they delivered….Team Battles! I cannot count how many times that I wished for this feature. Essentially you can pair with up to four buddies and challenge another team. The smack talking begins now folks. Team battles have always been present in professional SF tourneys and now we get to have them in the comfort of our own boxers. In addition there’s still the traditional Endless Battle (think quarter matches) which allows the other lobby members to watch all the fighting action while waiting their turn. In a future update, Capcom will release DLC which will contain the “Tournament Mode”. But at the time of this review it was not available. All of the online features allow for optional voice chat and works quite well this time around.

I honestly feel that Capcom delivered in a big way with Super Street Fighter 4. They seemed to have listened to the fans and really hit it out of the park this time around. SSF4 is easily the best in the entire SF series. I feel that it has taken the crown from SFIII 3^rd Strike as my all time favorite fighting game. There’s so much to love and too little to hate. Character balancing is apparent, controls feel so much tighter, and I forget completely that I’m playing a semi-3D game at times. The animations are like I remembered them from their 2-D predecessors. And thank the maker that they’ve finally ditched that awful “In-de-struct-able” track and replaced the game’s interface with artistic visuals throughout the various menus. SSF4 is definitely the game to beat as far as fighting games go. If you didn’t pick up the 1^st game, be glad you waited to grab this one – if you need to get your street fighting fix.  Otherwise, “You have no dignity……” @-;——-

GOD KING GRADE: (A)   ★★★★★