Street Fighter IV – PC Review

Reviewed by Steve Rosenthal on February 8, 2010

Street Fighter IV - PC Review  | read this item

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two decades, or you’re older than about 30, you’d be highly familiar with the Street Fighter series of games. Insanely muscled characters defy both logic and physics while throwing each other around, while spouting poorly-translated Japanese phrases like “if your fists are strong but your honour is weak you will still lose”. A stable in arcades and a success on home consoles, the series has never really gained a whole lot of recognition on the PC platform – but is that about to change?

A full 22 years and a likely $22 trillion pumped into arcade machines, we witness the release of Street Fighter IV, the newest incarnation of Capcom’s insanely successful series. This time 25 of the world’s best fighters and defiers of conventional physics match up in a test of skills, with the ultimate victor awarded… well, actually, I’m not sure. Each of the characters has their own (poorly explained) back-story presented in an anime style cut scene, setting the stage both for their quest to punch the most people and the overall tone of the game – Capcom has not shied away from the traditional Japanese roots of the game, including poor translations and over-the-top, physically impossible combat. And it works.

Fight!

From the very beginning intro movie you can tell that Capcom is delivering exactly what the audience expects, and they do it with style. Street Fighter IV has everything that made the series popular, updated brilliantly for new technology. To get straight the point – if you enjoyed any of the old Street Fighter series, then this is everything you want in a sequel and more. If you’re the sort who plays games on the PC because you’d rather recreate World War I battles in the Somme in real time, then it’s a safe bet to say this game isn’t going to change your tastes.

While it would have been easy for Capcom to keep the game simple, offering only the basic story-mode whereby you select and character and battle your way through to the end boss, they’ve ensured that SFIV is significantly expanded to include every possible aspect of a fighting game. Not only can you easily select to play single fights to practice your technique, the game also offers a free training room against a dummy opponent to hone your skills, as well as an advanced tutorial mode that goes through every move a given character can perform. One of the biggest issues in all fighting games is working out the button combinations to execute complex attacks – SFIV eliminates this problem entirely by keeping a full list of all combos in the pause menu, so you’ll never have to mash random buttons in desperate hope again.

But mashing buttons is the heart and soul of fighting games, and SFIV does it brilliantly. Perfectly accessible to new players who can use basic attacks and simple combos, more advanced players can perform highly technical combinations to chain together devastating attacks. It’s hard enough to master just a single fighter, let alone the entire ensemble. In this way, SFIV does a great job of extending play-time by being easy to learn yet difficult to master. It’ll be a very long time before you can match the computer on higher levels.

The old and the new

Of course, all the old cast are back for the sequel. Ryu heads the pack of recognisable figures, followed by his long-lost American twin Ken, traditional chanko-slurping sumo E Honda, hairy Soviet wrestler Zangief, and Asiatic beauty Chun-Li. While fans will also gladly welcome back familiar faces like M Bison and Blanka, SFIV also introduces a group of four new fighters into the mix. Describing it as a “mix” is probably quite accurate as they really are a mixed bag.

Overweight American fighter Rufus is a poor addition – Capcom’s attempt at “surprising” us by making the fat guy move really quickly falls flat on its face as a tired cliché. Worse still is their attempt at a new character to appeal to US audiences – Crimson Viper is a 20-year-old double-agent single mother with ridiculous hair and the most incredibly bad sunglasses in the history of… history. As a fighter she plays well but I doubt anybody could survive more than 10 minutes looking at her.

More interesting is El Fuerte, a masked Luchador fighter clearly inspired by Iron Chef. El Fuerte tours the world to bash the best fighters into submission so he can ask them what they eat. I’m not making that up. While his character may or may not appeal to individuals, his play style of chaining running moves to intricate finishing attacks is a refreshing new way to fight and works surprisingly well.

Finally we meet new fighter Abel, an amnesiac French soldier voiced by an actor who’s never even heard of France, let alone listened to the accent. His horrifically bad voice acting, coupled with facial animations straight out of the worst Van Damne movies set him perfectly in a Japanese fighting game. He’s the ultimate of everything that’s so bad it’s good. This is the essence of what makes Japanese fighting games so much more successful than anything produced in the US – a genuine lack of understanding just how ridiculous their characters and scripts are.

The new and the new

As expected, SFIV delivers updated graphics, sound and music. The graphics especially are impressive, with highly-detailed 3D polygon characters fighting on beautifully rendered backgrounds. Here we see one of the major differences between the PC and console versions. A special “PC options” menu provides a wealth of graphic options not available on consoles, including a fascinating “extra touch” option. This option allows players to select ink, watercolour, or posterisation. Ink draws everything with black outlines, making the game look far more comic-like. Watercolour shades everything to a matte-finish like a painting, while posterisation removes many grades of colour tone to… err, makes things look like a poster I guess.

The graphics are simply brilliant, giving characters a perfect mix between realism and cartoon-likeness. Backgrounds are varied and animated, and while you’re unlikely to be focusing on them during combat, their addition to the overall feel of the game is welcome. Character animation is stunning, and expect to see faces of pain and surprise as fighters take blows to the stomach over and over again. Ultra-combo moves, which deliver 20 or more blows in a single combo, have highly-detailed animations that are almost cut-scene-like, as your character literally punches the opponent into the air before kicking them a dozen times in the head mid-flight and finally stomping on their face at the end. Top stuff.

Music is suitably fast-paced and sets the tone for action. For any Japanophiles out there, or just for people who like a bit of authenticity, options abound to change all or some of the voices to Japanese. Through and through this game displays polish and attention to detail; every grunt and groan voices the pain of anguish and defeat.

You want a fight? Fight me.

Street Fighter has never really been a PC game – not only is the demographic between PC and console very different, control with a keyboard is difficult for games specifically designed for joysticks. As a continuation of the franchise, there is no doubt whatsoever that SFIV is a complete success. I’d warn you however not to pass this off as mere fan-boy fodder; even as a stand-alone game, or an introduction to the franchise, Street Fighter hits all the right buttons and is guaranteed to be a smash hit addition to your game collection.

Tags: Capcom, combat, fighting, Japanese, karate, Kung-fu, PC Review, Street Fighter, Street Fighter IV