Bloody High Claw!!!

Sequels that have reached the 3's and 4's often start faltering and forgetting what makes them great. Luckily Street Fighter has yet to do this, ever. It seems that with each new Street Fighter Capcom gives us something new to enjoy (excluding the EX series). I am proud to say that after 25 hours with Street Fighter IV there is no better game out there with a 4 tacked on the end of it than this game.

Let's first go over what SFIV does right.

Graphics: Outstanding. The graphics in SFIV may not be the most robust. You may not feel like you're playing a fighting game cinematic like you do in Soul Calibur 4. But what you do get is the distinct atmosphere of Street Fighter through and through.

Gameplay: Ah, of course the most important. Veterans of the series will instantly notice SFIV is a slower paced game than previous Street Fighters. This is not a bad thing though as now strategy becomes far more influencing than button mashing which is now all but abolished (thank goodness). Everything works flawlessly, (PS3 version) every input, everything! It feels right. Doing complicated moves, or nigh impossible moves from SF's past like the 360 Gief throw is now effortless. That's not to say, however, that newbies to the series won't be pulling their hair out trying to do stuff. This is not a newbie friendly game in any respect, and that is proven with the online.

Online: Fantastic. I think I've finally cleaned off the muck on me left from Soul Calibur 4 and its horribly laggy online. Street Fighter 4 is nearly perfect online. It is about as perfect as you can get these days. I use Vega online nearly 100% of the time so trust me when I say there is hardly any lag at all as Vega's success revolves purely around perfect timing. But this leads me back into how unfriendly this game is to newbies to the Street Fighter universe. I have probably played 20-30 matches where I have crushed an opponent so badly that I just started playing with them before I finished them. They were clearly new to the game, knew nothing about countering, or about defensive strategies, or about maintaining their zones, and nothing about even simple inputs that could have assisted them. To say the least, some of these fights are embarrasing.

While I don't claim to know all Street Fighter has to offer I will say that I have only been overwhelmed maybe 3 to 4 times. And that's mainly due to me picking the lowest tier character / facing good Gief players and Vega has nearly a 0 chance of beating if countered properly.

Still, online is a wake-up call for new players but also a great learning tool to understand strategies. But anyone complaining about "cheapness" should stop playing fighting games all-together since this is considered to be the most balanced fighting game ever. (review tier lists from other games and prove me wrong).

Story: lol.

Audio: I'm just glad Capcom decided to create new noises for everything unlike RE5 where they rehashed every noise possible from RE4.

Overall: Perfect. With the new additions of EX attacks and Focus attacks SF strategies have never been more diverse. If you buy one fighting game this year, or one game that ends in a 4, make it Street Fighter 4.

*Yes, I know, the picture has characters in it that aren't in SFIV. Deal with it!*