Preview: Street Fighter IV (360)

Speaking to IGN, Capcom general manager Yoshi Ono mentioned the old parry system, "That was a really cool system and it was fun as hell if you actually know how to do it and you actually are able to use it properly. Unfortunately the amount of players that really know how to use it and can do it every time on purpose, and can go from the neutral stick position to tapping forward in that literally a fraction of a second timeframe, it's really fun but there's not so many people that can do it. So we wanted something that would be a little more accessible to more people." His answer to this is the new focus system. Basically with this you have to press two buttons simultaneously to absorb the incoming attack and then press another to hit back. It’s said to be easier than the parries, but still requires some timing to get it right.

Street Fighter IV will not only have the depth for those looking for it, but like Street Fighter 2 it also has a very pick up and play nature. One of the criticisms with Third Strike was the amount of old characters that were ditched in favour of new, quite frankly, bland ones with seemingly no personality or redeeming features. Trying to think back we can’t really remember one character we spent much time with, instead opting for the usual Ryu and Ken combination.

So now we have all the old World Warriors as they are known along with new characters Crimson Viper, Abel, El Fuerte and Rufus. Also big news for longstanding Street Fighter fans is finally the appearance of Ken and Ryu’s master, Gouken. And for an old man he certainly has some ridiculously large muscles. Everything though is overemphasised because of the new graphical style being used. A gorgeous visual reimagining of the series. It still plays along a 2D plain, but now everything is 3D. A good thing they didn’t go all the way because the last time they did is it ended up with the rather underwhelming Street Fighter EX series.

For those who downloaded Street Fighter 2 HD Remix from the XBLA then they’d know that online fighting games can be playable. The lag was almost completely eviscerated with only the worst of the worst connections proving problematic. Though an online mode hasn’t officially been confirmed at the time of writing it’s fairly obvious it’ll make an appearance and all it really needs to do is copy and paste what HD Remix did and they’re onto a winner. It’s never that simple though, so we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed.

With February now not so far away Street Fighter IV can be considered one of the first big releases of the year. If it manages to recapture just half the brilliance of Street Fighter 2 then we’re in for a treat.

Words by Adam Gulliver