Review: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix (360)

So while we all wait impatiently for Street Fighter IV, a new version of SF2 has been released on the Xbox Live Arcade. It’s already been out on XBLA once (as a rather disappointing port), but will a new HD paintjob be enough to make you part with 1200 points? In short, yes. 

For a start the first Street Fighter 2 version was frustrating online. Unless you have access to a friend 24/7 then this would’ve been where the longevity came from. Crippling lag was the perpetrator and back then they could’ve at least said that no fighting game managed to work online, but then this was before Virtua Fighter 5 proved that theory wrong. With this HD Remix the online play has been tweaked and while lag can be still be found with players thanks to a bad connection, the chances of getting a good game are far higher.

With an open beta released earlier you’d think they’d take the feedback onboard and for most parts they have. However, while it’s improved since release it can still take an awful long time to actually find a game. Once it does get going nine times out of ten you’ll be in for a pleasantly smooth experience. Moves actually feel and look like they’re performing at the press of a button rather than a two second delay and the framerate is as smooth as it is offline. When it does go bad though it goes very bad. Play can jump from one spot to the other and animations will actually be missing making it near impossible to hit the host before they hit you. Still, it’s far better than most (if not all) online fighters out there and definitely a step forward for the genre as a whole.

With a name like HD Remix you get a revamp as you’d expect. The whole game has been given a lick of paint and it does look stunning, far better than we ever expected. Characters are smooth, animations are spot-on and backgrounds look wonderfully vibrant. Music too has been given the remix treatment with old favourites all returning and (mostly) sounding better than ever. As far as cosmetic improvements go this is up their with the likes of Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

There’s little really to find fault with in SF2: HD Remix. It’s virtually identical to what came before, so if you were never a Street Fighter fan then there’s nothing here that’ll make you see the light. Also, we consider ourselves to be much like the average gamer, but even we found the arcade mode difficult and this was even on the lowest difficulty. It definitely affected our morale as we succumb to the constant tiger knee assault of Sagat. And just as you’d expect the game really comes into its own when you own a hori stick. They can be quite expensive (unless you shop around a bit), but the stick is far superior to the 360’s d-pad, making your moves much more precise.

SSF2THDR is not only the worlds largest acronym, but also one of the showcases of the Xbox Live Arcade. This is definitely up there as one of the best versions of Street Fighter 2 available and will most certainly keep you occupied until the true sequel is unleashed next year.

Rating: 9 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver