Street Fighter is one of those absolute classic pieces of gaming history, both on a general level and for me on a personal level. On the large-scale it’s managed to permeate through to consciousness of the masses so that even the Queen probably knows what it is. Street Fighter has traditionally been a game focused on one-on-one combat on a 2D plane. Over the years, the roster has evolved and various tweaks have been made to the formula, but the core components remain to this day. Street Fighter IV lets you select a character and square off against another warrior in the ring. Each character has a variety of normal attacks and Special Moves to take advantage of, but the actual gameplay boils down to a balance between raw physical skill and the mind games that play out between players.
The idea behind shortening the title though is the same as the theory behind the game as a whole, we reckon; trying to take things back to basics. Capcom hasn’t tried to bring the game kicking and screaming into the next generation and it hasn’t tried to tack on many of the mod-cons that other beat-em-ups do. There aren’t any destructable environments, no blood that splatters over the arena and no huge swords and guns. Leave those things to the Mortal Combats and Soul Caliburs, says Street Fighter IV, adamant that there is A Better Way. For example, one of the newest systems in Street Fighter IV is the Focus system, which allows a character to charge up an attack that will knock an opponent down if it connects properly. For a beginner, the Focus Attack isn’t necessarily needed to win. He or she could simply rely on the traditional assortment of fireballs and dragon punches to get by and have a good time doing it. But if the Focus Attack seems appealing, performing it is a piece of cake — just hold down both Medium Punch and Medium Kick together and charge it up (or alternatively, just assign the attack to a button of your choice in the options menu). With a simple input, the player now has access to an attack that adds another layer to the combat.
Once you’re actually in the fights though, it becomes apparent that some aspects of the core game play have actually been expanded – such as the new Revenge Meter at the bottom. The difficulty here though is that Focus Attacks are only really very effective if you charge them up. Again, it’s a balancing act; you can charge your focus up and eventually unleash an unblockable special assault, but you’ll be unable to attack until that point and your opponent may find a way to slip an unblock able of his own in.
For those people then, that’s as deep as the game needs to go too; it can all to easily stop being fun and Capcom’s retro approach makes it feel that the developers aren’t really all that interested in making it easier for you. More than once it struck us that, if our gaming interests were further on the casual end of the spectrum and we’d bought Street Fighter for some quick button-bashing fun, then we’d have turned the game off long ago.
