I'm going to come out and say last week, despite some of it being really awesome (Street Fighter Awesome), pretty much sucked. I won't go into the speel of what happen, but little things kept stepping on my good fortune, building up to my firm belief that I have some really backwards luck. I mean it. I think someone's out to get me or something. It made me want to curl up and sleep for a few days, so when I'd wake up it was like nothing had happened, and hey, free sleep.
But that's neither here nor there. I'm going to write about Street Fighter IV. Oh yeah.
I was kind of pissed that it came out a day later than I anticipated, but it seems me pre-ordering it has some quaint advantages. As in I got the special edition no problem. I also got in my joystick controller, which did fine until the joystick stopped registering the left direction altogether. After reading some of the more disparaging things being said about this controller and how Madcatz can't do anything right on the 'Net, I was disheartened. As it turns out, though, I'm actually much better at the game with an Xbox 360 controller. Yup. Bite on that. The downside is that I have to send the broken joystick back. I was hoping for some magic, but as I learned last week with the other crappy stuff that happened, I can't win them all.
The Street Fighter IV "movie," The Ties That Bind, is a 65-minute festival of somebody trying to tell a SF story and pretty much failing to make any sense. And boy, if you thought any of the SF storylines to date were crummy, well, don't expect a jump away from that. Apparently some new shmuck called Seth is running around trying to take over the world and needs fighter DNA to do it, and Ryu is the perfect candidate. But Ryu has pals, and they don't take any crap off this guy. And Crimson Viper is a double agent? What? I'm not going to go deep into it because, sadly, it's just not that good and Capcom doesn't even seem to care at this point about stories. The animation is especially painful, because it looks like they just used key animation and felt no need to lip-synch the dubbing at all. That "ultamate" picture I posted last time looks better. This is a shame because I know Capcom knows better. After the spectacular Animated Movie they did, what, 15 years ago (gratuitous Chun-Li shower scene aside), and a 13-year wait for a proper sequel, and here we have this. And to salt the scrapings, I can only play this on my 360. Bleah.
The animation carries over to the prologue/epilogue scenes in the game, where it's even more obvious they assigned different animators to covers certain characters. All I can say is thank goodness this doesn't have anything to do with the game itself.
Fortunately, the 3D in-game animation is spectacular. I was a bit goosey about the transition, considering how great SFIII's 2D looked, but I am impressed. And it favors the 2D game plane so well I hardly notice it's really 3D. This is where I fell in love with the game, to the point where it still pisses me off like any other SF game.
Seth carries his stupid annoyance over to the game, where he's the obligatory space alien boss or whatever. "Let's give some character a 10-year-old Japanese boy drew on his Trapper Keeper various moves from other characters, but make them a hundred times cheaper. Also, unavoidable Ultra Combo." Yup. Seth is a BITCH, unless you know how to properly beat his ass. As in use a good character. Because I don't remember how many times I had to retry as Guile, but I continued my tradition of inventing curse phrases the whole time. "Fucking Medicine Ball Shitfag" was one.
The new stuff thrown in to the move mix work almost TOO well in this game. The biggest change is the Focus Attack (MP+MK), which can act as a parry, a means of avoiding attacks, a way to just screw with your opponent, or all three. I exploited how silly this was, but I'll admit it's much easier to pull off than the Parry system from SFIII. The Super Meter and Revenge Meter are also derived from standby meters of old, but take on a whole new meaning of strategy. Do I risk getting hit enough to do an Ultra Combo, or just beat his ass?
A lot of whimpering on the 'Net is how lame it is to have to unlock characters in this day and age. I agree with that, but I cannot find any reason to say unlocking all the fighters was a serious pain. It was lengthy, but I liked that I was at least unlocking the crappy movies during the whole thing. Getting Akuma was too easy (Thanks, Sagat!), and getting Gouken required little skill as well (Thanks, Dhalsim!). While I'm tickled they put in the original 12 from SFII in here, my biggest complaint about the roster are some of the choices for the unlockable characters. I'm so sick of seeing these Ryu/Ken wannabes cluttering up my Street Fighter games. Yeah, Sakura and Dan are silly and kind of fun to mess around with, but when they put in Fei Long and Cammy from Super SFII and leave out Dee Jay and T. Hawk, I point the finger at those two and ask "why?" Rose is cool because she's useable in the game, and Gen sucks but he doesn't shoot Hadoukens all over the place. Hell, even Akuma and Gouken are kind of different. At least they didn't rape character select space with some of the trash from SFIII. Yet. If they ever decide to give us downloadable fighters, I'll have to figure out a way to get Xbox Live.
The new characters themselves are meh at best. They stand out with impossibly tragic designs, and have some interesting move sets, but they don't bear any sense of memorability. And after characters like Dudley, Twelve, Necro, and Urien rearing their heads in the last game, I'm not that shocked when a fat man with a ponytail or a lucha libre fighter stumbles on the scene. And speaking of lucha libre, when did those become the necessary character to have in fighting games? I'm shocked Soulcalibur doesn't have one. This is like when they had to have a Bruce Lee in every fighter a decade ago. That said, Fei Long is cool. El Fuerte, notsomuch.
In the end, SFIV is as good if not better than I expected. The game part is traditional Street Fighter goodness, and despite looking like ass the cutscenes are practical since I don't have to read monotone jabberwatsis that earlier games needed because of tech limits. The Challenge Mode will give me some added content until I get pissed at it. And hey, the soundtrack disc isn't half bad, either. This game is goodness cubed.
Bent on homicidal rage, I continued my fighting game addiction when I found out Target was selling Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe for $40. A hearty deal, as I refused to pay full price for an MK game. Unfortunately, I was unaware of Target's ability to sell me an opened box with no game disc inside. This was a bit troublesome to explain to the return service clerk, but all was fixed because all I wanted was to have the game. I'd write in length about MK vs. DC, but sadly it's just not as good as SFIV. It's good in the sense that MK games usually suck balls by today's standards and this one plays well, but c'mon. SFIV beats it hands down. Except that MK vs. DC pretty much hands out achievement points, whereas SFIV runs with the old standby: Japanese games want to crush your spirit with impossible tasks. There's no goddamn way I can beat the game on Hardest with every character. Nuh-uh. I'm not even that good on Medium. I'd be lucky to get even 200 points out of that game. Oh well.
Keep on fighting.
-C.
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