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PreviousGDC: Street Fighter IV First Impressions
Xbox 360
PlayStation 3
Import First Impressions
by
Tom Bramwell
Page 1 of 2.
Page 2 
Full disclosure: this hands-on preview appears with dinky PS3 and 360 icons next to it, but we haven't played those versions. In fact, Capcom refuses to confirm whether or not they even exist, despite admitting that it would be "pretty surprising" if Street Fighter IV failed to make the transition from arcade to home console. Still, it's worth pointing this out so that the PRs don't wake me up with a phone call at 2am PST to complain. I need my beauty sleep. As you'll know if you've ever seen my face.
Street Fighter IV ought to be a relic, but it seriously isn't. It's not a complicated mess of ideas dragged together from the disparate SF games, either. It's a very beautiful, accessible distillation of the best characters' best moments, brought together with some intuitive new systems. All your old friends are back - Ryu, Ken, E. Honda, Dhalsim, Zangief, Chun-Li, Guile and Blanka - and will be joined by new recruits Abel and Crimson Viper, and contests are still decided as best-of-three rounds with a time limit on individual bouts and a big old health bar running across the top of the screen. There are still six attack buttons - light, medium and hard of both punch and kick. Being KO'ed without landing a blow is still depressing, and people still refuse to ever play you again once they beat you. Even at GDC. Tossers.
Looking around the screen, you also notice a Super meter along the bottom. This builds up when you connect with an attack, or whenever you perform a special, even if it doesn't connect. The amount of specials a character has will vary, and the fighters draw their moves and characteristics from the likes of the Alpha and Third Strike games as well as raw SF II. Making sure it's instantly familiar seems to have been a very deliberate choice, and it works: picking Ken initially (I'm a sucker for blondes), I proceeded to land a flying hard-kick, punch and dragon-punch three-hitter repeatedly on a hapless US journo's C.Viper, before rocking out with a double quarter-circle-forward and punch Super attack finale. KO.
Sometimes the camera shifts perspective a bit to frame a particularly fancy move.
Another obvious element of the screen furniture is the Revenge meter - a little C-shape at the end of your health bar - which fills up in segments as you take damage from enemies. This obviously isn't great news, but the benefit of it is that it enables you to perform Ultra attacks rather than just Supers; Ultras are far more punishing and spectacular, and activate by pressing two attack buttons instead of one at the end of the Super joystick sequence. Ken's Ultra is a fireball and spinning flaming dragon-punch attack that made me laugh so hard that I then lost the bout, which is pretty impressive considering how decisive an Ultra's meant to be. Super and Revenge meters both reset at the start of each bout, so there's no pointing saving things up.
Less obvious but perhaps more important are the new Focus Attacks, also available to every character. To perform one of these, you use the medium punch and kick buttons together. Tapping them performs a sort of slap, while charging it up offers two additional levels of power, the third of which is actually unblockable. While you build up to the level-three version of this attack, you're fragile, but you can absorb one attack (although it will hurt). Unleash it and connect, though, and you will floor your opponent and get the chance to whack them again while they're going down. Be quick.
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Comments: 1-50 of 50 in total
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projectmayhem
21/02/08 @ 14:46
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this is one of my most anticipated games of the year.
...if it comes out on consoles of course. you never know :D |
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A super cancel...
Normally when doing a special move such as a fireball or hadoken has a "warm up" and "warm down" animation. For example you're vunerable a split second before the fireball as Ryu brings his hands together, then after the fireball as he regains his normal pose. During this time you cannot enter another move command. However, a super cancel would cancel the warm down animation straight into the super move animation. The effect being that in the fireball's case, you would unleash the fireball and instead of Ryu straightening up again, he would go straight into the animation for his super. |
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Muddtallica
21/02/08 @ 15:01
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"The Street Fighter II Animated Movie is the best videogame film ever. Discuss."
Probably true, but that's not saying all that much. It's a handsome-looking film with a great artstyle, excellent animation and fight choreography (Chun-Li vs. Vega, Ryu vs. Fei Long, Cammy's assassination attempt) and a pleasing reverence for its source material, but it's severely hamstrung by somewhat dodgy storytelling; the filmmakers clearly had a lot of trouble figuring out how to satisfyingly juggle that many main characters, so what you end up with is a film that lacks narrative focus, with characters and story strands phasing in and out of prominence with annoyingly little fanfare. Add to that a farcical non-sequitur cliffhanger ending (BISON COMES BACK DRIVING A BIG TRUCK!!!1), and you end up with a stylish and well-intentioned film, but one that felt a little hollow to me. Oh, and you see Chun-Li's pants and knockers in it. As for this game, I'm excited; it looks like a welcome throwback to the glory days. I'll be interested to see more characters (where's Bison?), though, and more than this one stage. My main reservation is the artstyle, which makes everyone look a bit too chunky; I know Ryu, Ken, Guile etc were always fairly thick-set, but isn't Chun-Li meant to be lithe and slender? She looks like she's been on an intense pie and steroid diet, here...then again, I guess she is Chinese, so she's probably prepping for the Olympics. EDIT - Oh, looks like others beat me to mentioning the whole "Chun-Li's jugs" issue. Well, they were pretty damn big, so I guess it's worth mentioning them again.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 21/02/08 @ 15:03
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It's a handsome-looking film with a great artstyle, excellent animation and fight choreography (Chun-Li vs. Vega, Ryu vs. Fei Long, Cammy's assassination attempt) and a pleasing reverence for its source material
But isn't that all you'd ever ask of a Street Fighter movie? It's not as if the source material has much depth outside of the fight mechanics, anyway. You basically want them to kick the shit out of each other, and that film does it beautifully. |
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mcwildcard
21/02/08 @ 15:12
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'Focus Attack' eh?
That part seems lifted from the KOF series, although that's far from being a bad thing. I'm looking forward to this, it'd be great to see a Streetfighter renaissance. |
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Muddtallica
21/02/08 @ 15:27
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JHuxley: That's all I'd ask from a Street Fighter GAME, but I judge films on rather different criteria; I can accept convoluted, incoherent plotting in a game, where story isn't really the point, but not in a film, where it really is. It's a shame, really, because the film was very pleasing as a bit of fanservice (they even used Chun-Li's original stage music at one point in the Japanese dub), and had commendable production values; with a bit more clarity and focus in the plot it would have been a very decent sci-fi actioner.
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I love you Eurogamer for covering this.
MWAH! "The Street Fighter II Animated Movie is the best videogame film ever. Discuss." - Agreed. The MP+MK thing seems VERY interesting as a replacement to Parrying. (I guess this also puts SF3 Overheads out of the question, seeing as they were the same command). I still wish it had parrying. Eurogamer people, next time you get an audience with Capcom, please press this Parrying issue! Also guys, do we know if Throwing is Foward+Fierce like in SF2 or the superior LK+lP like in sf3?
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 21/02/08 @ 15:41
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Madafunkola
21/02/08 @ 15:49
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Your PR friend was Adam Ant!?!? WOW! He's fallen on hard times/on the up.
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I can accept convoluted, incoherent plotting in a game, where story isn't really the point, but not in a film, where it really is.
Well, using that criteria, Ong-Bak is an absolutely appauling mess of a film. Which is true in terms of story and structure...but that would be overlooking other aspects (namely someone willing to set their leg on fire and knee a car door for our entertainment) that impact on your enjoyment of the film. You watch it expecting some good fights, lots of broken bones and a few stunts. Story is a distant last place. But, you know, to each their own and all that :) |
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"The Street Fighter II Animated Movie is the best videogame film ever. Discuss."
No discussion. Fact. It's also the best animated movie ever. Even better than Transformers: The Movie - even though that had TWO Stan Bush songs on the soundtrack! None of this is opinion. And if you disagree, or are not looking forward to this game more than your next sexual encounter (woman, man or inflatable) - then you are some sort of heathen and should be burned atop a mountain of Panasonic 3DO's. This also applies if you own the version of this film without the gratuitous Chun-Li boob shot, which is the best videogame-related 'friction-material' since the conception of Lara Croft. |
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Spinning crotch shot!
If SFII:TAM is the best game to movie tie in ever, Street Fighter The Movie must be the worst. Also, as a Tekken fan you have no idea how gutting it was to watch SFII:TAM and then Tekken:TAM. Jesus imagine if Tekken the Movie (2009) is the same step down. I'll claw out my own eyes. Also, I think this game looks great, wonderful style. Might want to reign those hands in a bit though, esp Chun Li's thumb as someone else said! |
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Muddtallica
21/02/08 @ 18:08
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JHuxley: Don't get me wrong there, I appreciate that story isn't always the most important thing, and in action films in particular, it's pretty damn low down the list. I'm not saying that I demand any film I watch to excel in all departments, but even the "unimportant" aspects of a film should be at least functional. No-one's going to be dishing out Oscars to SFII for its dialogue and acting, for example, but I didn't have a problem with them, because I felt they did their job; the story, on the other hand, left me feeling confused as to who characters were, who I was rooting for, which direction the film was supposed to be going, and which scenes and characters were important, which means, for, me, that it failed at a very basic level. In that kind of film, I would have been happy with the most simplistic of "goodies vs. baddies" cliches; instead, they decided to include about fifty different convoluted plotlines at once, and then only bothered to offer any closure on about three. Even the Van Damme movie offered a more functional plotline than that...
Still, like you said, to each their own! :P And it at least beats out the US Street Fighter cartoon. Oh, yes indeed. :D
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 21/02/08 @ 18:08
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patchbox360
21/02/08 @ 23:35
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"The Street Fighter II Animated Movie is the best videogame film ever. Discuss."
especially the inclusion of Akuma which no one seems to spot - watch the film again CLOSELY |
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Ranger101:
"The MP+MK thing seems VERY interesting as a replacement to Parrying. (I guess this also puts SF3 Overheads out of the question, seeing as they were the same command). I still wish it had parrying. Eurogamer people, next time you get an audience with Capcom, please press this Parrying issue! Also guys, do we know if Throwing is Foward+Fierce like in SF2 or the superior LK+lP like in sf3? " All reports so far are that parrying is out and certainly won't be returning as they felt like it slanted the game too much towards defensive techniques - and at very high levels of play, I'd tend to agree. Again, all reports have said throwing is LP+LK ala SF3. Much better I agree. |
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