Being a huge fan of the Street Fighter games, I spent a lot of time building excitement for the release of SF4. After the release I developed a love-hate relationship with the game. Some of my favorite characters felt, broken, unplayable, or just worthless. (Im looking at you Guile.) And tho I enjoyed the unlocking of every single character, the process took away the time I wanted to learn the ins and outs of characters and really, just forced me to grind on the arcade mode. I must also say that when the initial announcement for Super was made I was among the haters, I didn’t wanna spend more money on another Street Fighter 1 year after launch. However, I will admit that once they discussed the proposed improvements, and the massive amount of changes, I supported the 39.99 re-release, and even went to a midnight SF4 tournament in Taylorsville to pick it up.

As I watched some of Utah’s top Street Fighter players tear into each other it became clear that the changes to the game were a much needed improvement. Pass-throughs worked much better with a lot of the match-ups, and the countering felt and looked a lot more fluid. The online match-up system was also given a strong overhaul, and a few new game features were added that really gave a nice touch. One of my favorite additions came through the video features where you can share your online videos, and brag yourself up. Cleverly divided into classic characters, new characters, and your videos. This new feature gives fighters an opportunity to study play-styles, and see what cool tricks are available to the different characters in street fighter. The other new mode that made me a fan is endless battle. With up to 8 slots available that can be either private or open, you can set yourself into a giant loser-passes style tournament reminiscent of my SF2 days on SNES playing with my friends. And once again the opportunity to watch others play gives you more tips and information on different characters play-style. Best of all tho, is they ditched their girly japanese pop music sound-track and gave us a generic guitar riff instead (It’s sad when a generic rock track is better than your original theme).

As far as character restyling, the development team did a stellar job in rebalancing the characters. The match-ups felt much more even, and going into any battle I felt less of a disadvantage based on who I chose to play with. Aside from T-Hawk who I’ve decided is the biggest I win button in any fighting game ever made, the characters felt well balanced, and fun to try out. Handing them all to you up front didn’t hurt either, giving you the chance to play anyone without frustrating yourself in the arcade mode for 2 weeks of unlocking.

As a whole Super Street Fighter 4 is a great addition to any fighting fans library, and I strongly recommend trading in your copy of the original SF4 for whatever you’ll get and grabbing Super. Besides, the online needs less hardcore players for me to battle. I haven’t won a match yet.

Loved:

• Re-balancing of characters, and the addition of 2nd ultra combos to each player.
• All characters available right away, no unlocking.
• Endless battle mode in online play, as long as video channel

Hated:

• T-Hawk is still a giant I win button
• Some of the characters speak too much during combat (Cody whistles all the time. he never stops. Face punch, whistle, kick, whistle, it gets bad).

Score:

• Graphics – 9
• Replayv- 10
• Audio – 7(too much talky)
• Controls – 9
• Overall – 9