G.O.D. Mode

By Briant S. Davis

    OK. Street Fighter 4(SF4) is out, and it is a great game! It's easy for any player to pick up and play, has amazing visuals, and brings back the fighting game genre in the gaming scene. Now everyone has talked about how the game is great, but I felt that there are some small things that hurts this game for some of the street fighter fans out there.

    First off, versatility. In SF4, the game system has a super gauge and a ultra combo gauge. This sets up different styles of game play, but with some characters, the characters have basically the same move for a super and a ultra. One just does more damage than the other. Ryu is a good example of this. His super, the “Shinkuu Hadouken” is a super projectile move. His ultra is also a super projectile move called the “Metsu Hadouken.” In the past, characters like Ryu would have different supers to choose from. One of my favorites was the “Shin Shoryuken”. Having multiple super attacks helped to keep your opponent  on their toes. It's not the case with the characters with the same super and ultra moves. Yes, the ultra does more damage than the super, but trying to set up combos to get a super or a ultra off with these characters becomes predictable after a while.

    Next is the story. This is Street fighter 4, so what happened in making Alex the new hero?  Why is Street Fighter 4 before Street Fighter 3? Who know who makes the story line decisions over at Capcom. Some fans out there wanted to see progression in the story line. Instead, you brought back the classic roster with some new faces. That is fine. I'm cool with that. I would like to have Capcom explain the fall of Bison since shadowloo is gone in Street Fighter 3. My head is starting to hurt even to try to put the pieces together! Oh well! It's a fighting game, and fighting games are not known for the story. They are know by the characters. It still would have been nice to see Yun or Dudley in SF4. Then again, Capcom could make a dlc (downloadable content) of sf3 characters.

    Last is the focus attack system. Actually, I like it! It's not as cheap as parry system in SF3; however, it's a new idea and needs to be tweaked a bit. For example, you can only focus attack cancel one special move. Yes, I know if Capcom did do it to all special moves in the game it would be cheap, but imagine the possibilities. Another thing is some of the focus attacks just have no attack range to them. Yes, you must be skilled to use them, but some give you a false sense of range like Ken's focus attack. You think your close enough to hit a person but it misses. The charged up focus attacks are post to be unblockable and stuns a opponent's characters, but there have been times that players hit people with the charged version and the opponent's character recovers instantly. I wonder if that is a glitch from porting of to the consoles.  It's a good idea! It just needs to be tweaked. It took three versions of Street fighter 3 to get the parry system the way they wanted. Let's hope that the next street fighter game will have it perfected. 

    These is really the only issues that Street Fighter 4 has. It's a great game, and I love playing it! I hope when Capcom makes a Street fighter 5 that they take some things into consideration. Ether way, the game is a huge success, and the fighting genre is back.