Hadouken!!! a trip into Street Fighter nostalgia.

Street Fighter IV is a beautiful game. Does that sound poncey? Who cares, I have no better way to describe it. I'm a gamer who has grown up on a diet of Street Fighter II, courtesy of my local arcade. Actually I think I remember playing it after swimming lessons as a kid (remember when swimming pools / sports centres were the places to check out the latest arcade games?!?! How times change!). Anyway, it was awesome at the time and I think that's one of the most important gaming titles for me, the one that got me hooked on gaming. By the time it came out on SNES I was even more hooked. Whilst living in a student house in Southampton my mate and I would sometimes sit down to play a few games in between bouts of revision, only to be sat in the same spot hours later having played a couple of hundred matches (no joke!). Perhaps that explains my final exam results (hope you're not reading this, Dad!).

Anyway, sorry, back to Street Fighter IV and why I love it so much. It's beautiful because the graphics have been overhauled and are now presented in glorious 1080p. The animation just flows perfectly. In fact the fighting in general is just so perfectly fluid. The timing and execution of moves feels exactly the way it did when playing Street Fighter II as a kid. It's surprising really, hit the exact combinations that you remember for the hadouken, hurricane kick, etc. and you'll find they're all still there only the animations are rendered a lot smoother and in more detail. It all sounds better too. Sure there are some extra combos and moves thrown in since I last played the series. I've found that mastering these is not essential to completing the game though (at least not on the medium difficulty level, but perhaps they are for the hardest).

A word of caution, playing online is a lot of fun but unless you're extremely good at this game, be prepared to get your arse kicked! In the game, when playing through offline, on arcade mode, you can set your status to allow your game to be interrupted by online challengers (and I believe this is the default setting). What this means is that you could be in the middle of an arcade game and all of a sudden, "Here comes a new challenger!" and pow! you're playing somebody online. I wasn't able to complete one match (best of 3 rounds) in arcade mode without being interrupted. The trouble is that when you return to arcade mode after the online challenge then you have to start your arcade match again. I.e. it was impossible for me to complete the arcade more unless I set my status to whatever setting translated to "bugger off online challengers, I'm busy". Goodness knows why I got challenged so much, perhaps people could see my stats somehow to establish that I was a newbie. This would make me a prime target for online challengers keen to build up their online ranking by winning matches.

I won't spoil the surprises - there are some great new characters in the game and the boss character (Seth - pictured) is harder to beat than Chuck Norris.

All in all this was a good purchase. It's come down in price now. I paid 25 quid for it, which is about my limit in these times of credit-crunch; worst financial situation since the waaaarh and all that. [reakt]