It's odd to see new faces, new moves, and new stages in a game you've played literally thousands of times already. SSFIV's big upgrade - bigger than anything EA bangs out in a typical annual update - is damned near finished, right now. Every one of the new characters is already in the game, together with the new stages, modes, and bonus rounds.
Juri, T Hawk, and Dee Jay are all playable when we sit down with the game and behind a character select screen (which Capcom hide when someone new is wheeled out) there are half a dozen more faces to choose from. SSFIV is feature-complete and ready for certification, but there's still a long way to go before the game we play in Capcom's Hammersmith offices is ready for release.
There are the usual technical problems to fix, of course - slowdown on the new stages, animation and lighting glitches, and unfinished moves for some of the newbies. Most importantly, none of the game's existing characters have been rebalanced yet - none have their new moves, damage changes, or miniscule adjustments which will shift the game's balance of power. Guile is still the Guile you know, and Ryu and Ken are still unchanged, and Sagat is still seven feet of pure bastard.
In three months it'll be a different story. The game that ships will be a far beefier package than SFIV, and will address the most obvious imbalances in the game. Sagat will be a little weaker (or at least more interesting to watch), Guile and Vega stronger. Little adjustments will change the way certain moves work or how much damage basic moves do, but the most obvious changes will be the all-new Ultra combos for every character.
Like the new stages, the Ultra combos are something Capcom are keeping quiet about while they drip information into the public domain in their Japanese blog, but it doesn't take a genius to see them in the game we played on a windy day in West London. Look to the Ultra meter and you'll see a 'I' or a 'II' - each representing a different Ultra. Like SFIII you'll pick between two combos before you enter the fight - Guile's Flash Explosion or Sonic Hurricane, for instance - and enter the fight with different tactics based around your choice.
It's not all speculation, of course. That Sonic Hurricane rumour popped up in a leak which smashed Capcom Japan's slow-drip of information and turned it into a flood. Back in September the deluge of fresh information detailed Juri, Dee Jay, and Hawk even before SSFIV had been announced. It exposed the return of the car-smashing and barrel-busting bonus rounds weeks before they were mentioned in the pages of Japanese mag Famitsu and laid out a compelling argument for what's in store for the next few months' worth of reveals.
In the last month Capcom have unveiled Final Fight's Cody and Guy, along with Shoto-punishing Adon, all mentioned in the big, fat leak. That means the likes of Dudley, Makoto, Ibuki, and Arabic grappler Hakan are waiting to be played in the rating-ready build, but it's just Juri, Dee Jay, and T Hawk who are up for discussion right now.
Little changes and a new move or two have made SSFII's Dee Jay and Hawk feel different but it's Juri who makes the biggest impression. She's an undeniably flashy fighter who looks great on-screen and better in motion.
Juri is just a Dragon Punch and an Air Throw away from being a boss-level monster. She has an incredible variety of options in any given situation and with her simple motions and links even lengthy combos emerge easily. Even without messing with Focus Attack Dash Cancels the results of her basic combos are impressive and she's powerful even in the hands of a beginner.
She's exactly what a modern Street Fighter character should be - like Rufus, Viper, Abel, or Fuerte - loaded with options and flashy techniques which look spectacular in HD 3D. She is, however, far too powerful and Capcom know it. Before launch, she'll be weakened to bring her in line with the rest of the game's cast. It's happened before - El Fuerte was fantastic in early builds of the original game but was weakened dramatically in the final version. When Capcom's team adjust Juri she'll lose power, but not options. In the next few months she'll get worse but over time she'll only get better in the hands of players.
It's been only a year since the last upgrade - a stack of new characters for the console port of SFIV - but SSFIV raises the character count to a whopping 35, makes the online mode all it should have been before, and dishes up new ways for solo players to play. Even the 50 lousy animated cut-scenes have been whipped out and replaced with 70 all-new ones. SSFIV is one of 2009's essentials made even better for 2010, and a game any other developer would have called Street Fighter V.
haha sagat comment was mint! hope this kicks ass, i was really let down by tekken 6, i mean when you got BOB moving quicker than Law then somethings clearly not right, i mean how big and fat is that pr**k! and so many other problems like that! owell heres to SSF4! bring the rain
I don't want to have to re-buy SF4 just for a couple of new characters. But if this is available as DLC for the original I'll definitely pick it up.
Then it's a good job it's not just a couple of new characters. Six announced so far plus another four yet to be announced that were on the character select screen, making 10 in total. Plus new normals, re-balancing, new Ultras/Ultra system, new/better online modes plus the not so important but nice anyway additions of new stages, new music and new intro/outro animations. Plus anything that hasn't even been announced yet, and it's up for preorder for 22 quid! If it was even possible to add those changes to the original SFIV, which Capcom say it wasn't thanks to the way SFIV was built, it would cost you that as DLC anyway.
I can't believe people are still whining about it not being DLC.
I can't believe people are still whining about it not being DLC.
Because this release will make the original release obsolete. I'm assuming that SFIV owners won't be able to play online with SSFIV folks so the online for the old one will be dead. I expect the sport franchises to do this, but not a standard fighting game.
Then again, if someone offers decent trade-in value of SFIV towards this (like HMV did with CoD4 for MW2) I might think about it.
Because this release will make the original release obsolete. I'm assuming that SFIV owners won't be able to play online with SSFIV folks so the online for the old one will be dead. I expect the sport franchises to do this, but not a standard fighting game.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether it's supplied as DLC or on a disk. The player base will still be split in the exact same way either way because it's not just a stage or costume pack.
And why would it be fine for a sports game to have a yearly update but not a fighting game. Fighters are pretty much sports games anyway and they need just as much tweaking, if not more. It's the same basic principle. I would put money on the vast majority of the people that seem to be complaining about it splitting the market being people that don't even still play SFIV regularly anyway, if they did at all in the first place.
If they had called it Street Fighter V noone would be complaining about it, but the have called it Super Street Fighter IV, atleast they don't take the p**s and are selling it at a reduced price unlike some other fighters, Dead or Alive series, Tekken, etc
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