Plotting Points by Tan(x)
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher
Game: Super Street Fighter 4
Platform: XBOX 360
Played For: 4 hrs
As an inveterate button masher I’m always amazed at the skill with which some people can approach fighting games. From that particularly annoying teenager who dominates the local old-style Arcade to the professional circuit players gearing up for their latest Evo Championship Series, there is a very wide spectrum of talent on display in this particular corner of video game culture. And yet I’ve never managed to feel quite so low on the totem pole until Super Street Fighter Four beat the stuffing out of me on the lowest of eight… yes, I said eight… difficulty levels. Maybe Hakan the Crazy Turkish Oil Wrestler wasn’t the most intuitive character to start with after all.
Super Street Fighter Four is not what one could describe as a beginner’s entry into the world of competitive fighting video games. Unlike titles like Tekken or Soulcalibur, SSFIV is not a game that is playable with random button mashing. Executing special attacks and combos, essential for victory at every level of play, requires a well-practiced thumb. Take Chun-Li’s Hosenka Ultra Combo as a typical example. To execute this move you use your left thumb to hold the left directional stick to the left before swiftly wagging it right and left while using your right thumb to push the right stick to the right and your spare fingers to hit the left trigger button at just the right moment. All in the space of less than a second, all while standing the correct distance from your opponent, all while said opponent E. Honda (for example) repeatedly tries to chump kick at Chun-Li’s thunderous thighs.
Most other special moves demand, if not quite that degree of delicacy, at least a number of repeated quarter, half or full rotations of the left stick while mashing other choice buttons. Even very basic signature moves insist that you develop a double-jointed thumb… or preferably a ball and socket joint cybernetic thumb replacement. Trying to play the game without mastering these techniques is a lost cause… especially as there is a significant pause (measuring minimum 35 seconds… I timed it) between consecutive matches against the CPU. To get to the next match you have to wait for the winning character to strike a pose and blather some text, and then you have to hit the start button to indicate you want to try again, and then you have to wait while it loads the character select screen, and then you select your character and choice of two ultra combos, and then you wait while it loads the stage, and then you finally get to play again. It may not sound like much, but this long a delay between matches really slows down the action, especially when the CPU is capable of handing you your buttocks on a platter in that amount of time or less.
However, if you are an accomplished Street Fighter competitor, there are a lot of things SSFIV gets right. There is a reason this series is always featured in professional tournament play. The game is seriously balanced, with each of the 35 characters carefully tuned to compete with the others at equal levels of power and ability. There is little chance here of a weaker player winning through luck or by manipulating an overpowered ability… skill is required for every victory and online rankings really do carry weight.
While I am a dedicated single player reviewer, I couldn’t resist a little dabbling within the arena of Xbox Live. Apparently it is now much easier to hold tournaments with your friends online, the player matching system is well developed, and response times are quick and reliable. However, the feature I appreciated the most was the insane replay channel, which lets you watch matches other people play and post on Live. These matches are organized into categories based on which previous game introduced the featured characters. This seemed a bit obtuse to me… but it might make more sense to people who played all the previous incarnations and care about when each iconic fighter was admitted into the Street Fighter pantheon.
Since I’m not very good at the game, I actually rather enjoyed the replays, which I could leave running on the TV while doing something else like grading homework or tormenting my cat. SSFIV has a pleasingly consistent visual style with bright, eager fighters and ink splash damage effects. The game strikes just the right balance in tone. The characters are larger than life, unobjectionable cartoons, but there’s still room for the glib malevolence of steamy newcomer Juri (I expect this particular Korean fighter is solely responsible for many purchases of the game. The manual refers to her as an “odd epicurean” for what that’s worth.)
Other new characters include a mix of favorites from previous Street Fighter incarnations. There’s the carefully manicured British boxer Dudley, the enthusiastic Muay Thai Adon, fan favorites Ibuki, Makoto and Dee Jay, and then other characters T. Hawk, Guy, Cody and my personal favorite, the “Oil-covered Daddy” Hakan. Each character in the game has a designated rival, for whom you get an extra little cut-scene before they match up. Rivalry is non-commutative, i.e. just because Juri is Cammy’s rival, it doesn’t follow that Cammy is Juri’s rival. The rivals are also not injective, meaning that Juri can be more than one character’s rival, and there may be characters who are rival to none. Hmm… maybe I should have my students draw out the rivalry function on a set of axes…
Super Street Fighter Four is a rather brazen release, seeing as it arives scant months after Street Figthter Four hit the streets. Almost the same game as the original Street Fighter Four, but including a slew of new content, the game is a good value to those few Street Fighter fans who passed on the original in the Fall, but may feel like a must-spend-an-extra-forty bucks annoyance for everyone else. Sure there are a few enjoyable new characters and significant improvement (I’m told) in tournament play… but couldn’t these things have been incorporated into the original release? There is value in SSFIV, but there is also an obviously transparent corporate bottom line.
Every time you turn the game on you have to wait a few extra seconds while the message “Checking Downloadable Content” flashes across the screen... just in case there is a chance of tempting you into buying something else. SSFIV is just SFIV with extras, but you still have to shell out more dollars for a second set of costumes for the characters, which rather than being included, were immediately released as DLC at extra cost. That’s one too many hadoken to the wallet if you ask me (plus, it compares extremely unfavorably to the multitudinous character customization options of the other 3D fighting games out there today). Perhaps all the DLC for SSFIV will be gathered in another release down the road, say Sizzle Salsa Supreme Super Street Fighter… IV. Waiting for that one may not be a bad idea.
