Gamersmint Review : Super Street Fighter IV

Super Street Fighter IV began its development as a DLC content pack for last year’s successful iteration of Capcom’s beloved fighting game Franchise – Street Fighter IV. Soon the developers realized that the stuff they created in the hope of matching up to its name of “Super” had far exceeded the size of a DLC pack and decided to release it as a standalone version albeit at a lower than full-retail price. Does it justify its tag of SUPER or goes on to become “just another add-on pack” gone wrong? Let’s find out!

Super Street Fighter IV has a lot of new content to begin with. You get 8 brand new fighters added to the roster which marks the return of some of the franchise’s most popular heroes along with two completely new inclusions to the Street Fighter universe. This takes the total to 35 playable characters which is a really good sum. There are also two Ultras that you can choose from now, instead of one for each character and new fighters come with their own backstories and cutscenes for the arcade mode. The classic bonus stages in the form of car-crusher and barrel blaster makes a comeback to the game aswell and you get a “fight your rival” stage in the arcade mode which pits you against your rival starting off with a dialogue sequence between the two rivals.

Apart from these, there are several subtle yet great new modifications that have been added to the core-gameplay. The fighters have been balanced to a large extent to give anyone a fair chance at controlling them. Another great thing I noticed is that some overpowered fighters like Sagat have been tweaked to bring down their superiority to avoid giving online players an unfair edge while some characters like Ken have been infused with new life( better combos, quicker execution, etc) to make them handle that much better online. This has been done without hampering the actual combos that you can pull off if you’re a really skilled player. Frankly, I can see the online scene turn on its head with the 10 brand new inclusions and subtle modifications to almost all the existing characters moves.

The game also has all the characters unlocked from the get go and you don’t need to toil through the arcade mode to unlock bosses like Akuma and Gen, which means you can jump right into the online scene whenever you feel like. Some Classic fighters like Guy and Cody from Final Fight and Adon from the original Street Fighter make an appearance as part of the 10 new inclusions. The two completely new additions are Juri and Hakan. Juri is a protégé of Mr.Bison and a very fast paced fighter who is notorious and won’t let anything come in her way to victory and revenge, while Hakan is a good ol “Turkish Oil Wrestler” with some amazing grappling attacks and a oil booster move which when applied, makes him one of the best fighters in the roster to play with. He has come to promote Turkish wrestling in the tournament as he believes it’s the best fighting form in the world. To each his own I guess! All of these fighters have some amazing combos, super combos and ultras which will force you to try them out.

Something which Street Fighter IV did not do really well was its online functionality; the matchmaking seemed like a mess at times especially with so much activity happening online and the actual fun reserved for that. However, these have been taken care of in SSFIV as its main focus is its online play…thankfully! (Who the hell plays fighting games solo anyways?). It has also included a few new online modes to further enhance the experience. Team Battle will see you form teams with upto 8 characters and fight against an opposing team. You can flat-out go on to defeat the entire opponent team with a single undefeated fighter if you’re up to the task. There’s also a replay channel now which allows you to view replays of matches fought by other fighters from the world over and even view your own saved fights later on. You can also save replays in your PS3 HDD. I found this addition to be quiet interesting as it’s really fun and informative watching talented fighters in action aswell as observing your own fights.

The final new online mode is called Endless Battle and it does just that, pitting you against new opponents from a lobby of upto 8 characters until you face defeat. You need to be a spectator when other fighters are engaging in battle and wait for your turn. It’s rather fun though and I ended up spending quite a few hours trying this new mode out. The training mode also makes a comeback, making for some eventful hours as you try to master some moves in there but fail miserably. You can also unlock new colors, titles, costumes for your preferred character as you win more online matches or complete the arcade mode in different difficulty settings. Some characters like Guy has around 9 unlockable costumes alone and I am not really sure if something will unlock even more.

There’s also a challenge mode where you will have to perform pre-defined combo sets to progress further. Finish em all off with every single fighter (35 of them only) and you will unlock a trophy, so what if it takes you the rest of your life to do so, getting the trophy is all that counts! There is no championship mode in SSF4 but Capcom has promised to release a Tournament Mode as DLC on June 15^th.

The visuals have also been upgraded for this version and some of the new ultras are a pure bliss to look at. Ryu’s new Ultra is the best looking thing about the SSFIV; perform it to find out why. There are also some new locations included which are very well-designed. I like Africa – “Solar Eclipse” stage the most from among the new ones. Fighting it out when a solar eclipse is engulfing the sun in the background while you have some ugly fat hippos as your audience, beats doing anything else! Overall the graphics are smoother and look marginally better than SFIV. The cutscenes also look better and some of the new backstories are actually funny to watch while others maintain the absurdity that is synonymous with fighting game stories. The audio is as good as SFIV, if not better.

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