Street Fighter IV: THE UNBOXENING!! & Initial Impressions
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It actually came on the ship date despite the man on the phone telling me it wouldn’t come until the day after. I rushed on over to pick up the ps3 version of the collector’s edition with the Ryu headband preorder bonus. The line was literally frozen in front of me, not because of excitement, but because the person ahead of me was trading in an entire stack of games. Finally, I made it to the counter and, for what is probably the first time in history, left GameStop without being asked to preorder anything.
Rather than opening it right away, we decided to savor the moment and have a meal first… at least until Jonah’s camera finished charging for the impending photo shoot. We then promptly went downstairs with our bag of delights. Since the headband was a preorder bonus, separate from the rest of the collector’s edition box, I knew what I had to do before going any further. I tied that piece of red cloth around my head, knowing full well of the ridiculous photos that would ensue.
It was a little weird to find out that most of the collector’s edition box is actually taken up by the plastic containing the Ryu figure. I mean, everything else is easily contained in 2 blue ray cases, so it makes sense. It was just a little surprising. The figure is pretty sweet, though it only stands somewhere between 2 and a half to 3 inches tall. I opened the movie case to see which things were inside. The case contained the 65 minute anime movie, the collector’s edition soundtrack, the collector’s hint book, and the voucher for the first costume pack, which includes Abel, El Fuerte, E. Honda, Rufas, and Zangief. Unfortunately, I found out that you can’t actually redeem the voucher until Thursday, when that particular DLC pack officially releases.
Despite what I thought, this does not come with the 2 disc official soundtrack. The collector’s edition soundtrack is a single disc with 17 tracks. It only contains the character themes and clocks at about 50 minutes. This is not bad, though, considering the character themes are what I wanted most. I have yet to watch the anime movie it comes with, but my understanding is that it takes place before the game. We’ll make sure to watch it before next week’s podcast. The collector’s hint book is cooler than I thought it would be. Basically, it shows you how to do the moves of the new characters, but displays them in comic frames with drawings accompanying each attack.
Finally, it was time to boot up the game disc!
I cleared the table and started setting up my X-Arcade Dualstick. In our haste, we ran into problems getting it to work properly on the ps3, but it was only a minor setback before it all was figured out. After changing the voices to Japanese, we managed to play one round before mutually deciding the install should be required instead of optional. Seriously, it was a really long load time. The install didn’t take terribly long, though it forced us to resync my Dualstick. After the install, loading times were improved tremendously.
Jumping into Vs. mode felt every bit as natural to Jonah and I as it should have. The controls felt super tight and many of the moves on the returning characters were already familiar. Once we took a look at how special moves work, though, things got even more interesting. There are essentially 4 kinds of special moves in Street Fighter IV. If you were to perform a quarter circle and punch with Ryu, you would perform the standard hadoken that takes no special bar to use. If you were to do the same action, but with 2 punch buttons you would do the EX version of the hadoken. This will take 1 segment of your special bar. Almost every special move has an EX version, so there are lots possible strategies. If your super bar was full and you performed 2 quarter circles and pressed one punch button, you would perform the super combo: “Shinku Hadoken”. There is a separate bar called the revenge gauge. When this fills up at least half way, you can perform the same action as the super combo with all three punch buttons instead of 1 to perform Ryu’s ultra combo: “Metsu Hadoken”.
While the super bar fills up by performing attacks, the revenge bar fills up from getting hit. An interesting thing about the 2 bars is that only the super bar will carry any remaining energy into the next round. The revenge bar will completely empty itself between rounds, so you need to make sure to use your ultra combo before it’s too late. The 4 types of special moves utilizing the 2 different bars makes for a very deep and enjoyable fighting experience.
The graphics are amazing thanks to the heavily emphasized style. The music fits the mood of the stages and is all around great to listen to. There was no lag on any of the matches I played online. There is a lot of extra challenges to keep you busy. There is even anime cut-screens at the beginning and end of each character’s story mode. The only real complaint I have with the game thus far is its final boss, Seth. To put it bluntly, Seth is a cheap bastard. Almost all of his moves seem to take priority over yours. Seth is a relic of the arcade scene, designed to make you put more quarters in the machine to finish up that last little bit before the credits roll. Despite all of this, he’s not nearly as bad as most SNK bosses.
Annoying final boss or not, Street Fighter IV is one of the most satisfying fighters I’ve played in awhile. It stays true enough to its roots that you can jump right in while adding enough extra layers of depth to really set it apart from its predecessors. It’s truly not a fighter to be missed.
For the full photo gallery: click here!
Tags: collector's edition, fighting games, initial impressions, ps3, street fighter 4, Street Fighter IV, unboxening, unboxing
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:What I have played thus far, I’m very impressed with. The new fluidity matched with the old school controls blew me away.
I agree about Seth (final boss). He is super annoying. He wouldn’t even be that bad if he didn’t have a move that is a mini-cutscene that he does over and over and over that interrupts whatever move you happen to be doing at the time.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:yeah, the fact that i have time to reposition the dualstick and then rest my head on my arm for awhile while he’s doing a single move is not a good sign.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:I was happy to hear about the possible Dee Jay and T. Hawk DLC:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/18/street-fighter-iv-producer-teases-future-inclusion-of-dee-jay-t/
Mostly because we’ve been teased that fighting games were going to use DLC to add more characters, and so far the only one I know of doing that was Soul Calibur 4, and that was a total co-out, because all they did was unlock Vader and Yoda on the opposite versions of the game.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:not too big on T-Hawk, but i do like me some Dee Jay
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
shaolinjesus says:I think fighting games in general have yet to really figure out a good last boss. He is usually either too easy (which is underwhelming) or way to hard (usually by being a cheating bastard).
I will say that I do raise my fist in triumph when I beat Seth (which is either sad or terrifying to my puppy).
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Wesley says:Perhaps I’ll return to fighting games now.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:OMG!! Ok, so using Ryu I have beaten Seth first try multiple times now, the first resulting in a faceoff with Gouken and the second with Akuma. So I unlocked Akuma and have been fighting Seth with him on Easiest mode 1 round for OVER HALF A FREAKING HOUR!! How the hell can I beat him first try several times in a row with Ryu but spend over half an hour and still not have him beaten on Easiest mode with Akuma?! Whoever programmed Seth needs to be SHOT!! Welp, time to go lose some more…
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:As Joystiq’s Justin McElroy would say, “That guy can die in a fire.”
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:Ugh, I gave up and chose Zangief, kind of ironically (he’s one of my worst characters), but then I ended up winning first try. I swear they made Seth 100 times harder if you’re playing as Akuma.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v454/Captain_Scumbag/HaggarSharkPink.jpg
This represents the final match. Wherein Zangief is represented by Haggar, and Seth is represented by a Shark.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:if only i had chosen the appropriate costume, that would’ve been even more true
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:I have to say, even though I lose a lot more than I win, playing online is actually a lot of fun on this game. I thought there would be too many hardcore people online, but there really seems to be a wide variety of skill levels. Also, I finally started using the fight request feature on arcade mode and it’s really cool.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:I was pleasantly surprised by this as well. When I tried to play Turbo and HD Remix online, people were always super cheap bastards and would only use E. Honda’s hundred hand slap over and over. That plus lag made it impossible.
So far, I haven’t had any lag with SF4 and have had several fun online matches. It might also help that it’s the PS3 version and headsets aren’t involved.