Super Street Fighter 4, worth it’s weight in gold?

I’m writing this article with the idea that you own SF4 and cannot decide if SSF4 is for you, but before getting down to business I’ll introduce myself.
The name is Johnny and I have been playing SF since SF2:world warrior. I love the thrill of battle and meeting my match ^_^ Played Turbo, Alpha 3 and SF3:3rd Strike and once SF4 was announced I couldn’t wait to insert it into my PS3. It was a major improvement over 3rd strike and even though I missed the hand drawn charm I got over it very quickly.

After about a year later SSF4 was announced… hmm… few new characters… 40 bucks? I wasn’t liking it.
Read a few interviews with long time veteran Yoshinori Ono from Capcom and some teasing videos showing a few added features… Still I was not feeling it. Then I got my hands on a review copy here at nisute.com and played through arcade with all the new(old) characters and briefly tried the trials. But I’m getting ahead off myself, let’s get over the little things first.
The main menu has received a visual overhaul with some extra animations to get your blood pumping. Then the best surprise I could wish for, one of my biggest griefs with SF4: All characters were unlocked from the start! Ono really did listen to the fans on forums and social networks.
The world map, like like the main menu the character select and loading screens, received a nice visual upgrade. The same can also be said for the levels and in-game notifications. Another great improvement is that in the trial mode you can load the next challenge without going to the trial menu, making the entire game experience much smoother as many of this kind of tweaks and adjustments have been made all over the game.

Now for the good part, characters characters and game-play. After a few matches with my ‘master’ Supahfly (PSN-tag) I noticed that game-play was smoother and I was loving playing with my favourite ninja Ibuki which has been finally been powered up to match the rest of the very balanced cast. And playing with Juri, the Korean Teakwondo fighter,  was also a very nice experience, although I believe she is the “Eddie Gordo” from the Tekken series: Easy to pressure with but with little meta-game, time will tell.
Another 3rd strike character is Makoto that is still a power house  and a tom boy. Dudley the distinguished gentleman boxer still has his rose and proves to be a faster Balrog. Cody and Guy have also joined the fray and to be honest I haven’t really played with them before SSF4 but Cody seemed to have a good distance game and nice priority if played right and Guy is super fast with enough confusing moves to build a nice meta-game. Then some golden oldies: DeeJay and T-Hawk both dangerous opponents and just seeing their faces made me smile from nostalgia.
Hakan was a little strange and all I can say is that he is a flexible Zangief as a Turkish oil wrestler.

After a looong night of playing SSF4 with several veteran players I can safely say that all the characters are very well balanced and some characters even got upgrades like Ryu’s Dragon Punch has become a two hitter breaking those focus-spamming newbies. Another nice addition are the old school bonus stages: breaking a car and hitting barrels! But what really got me excited was the addition or improvements of the online aspect of the game. Team Battle has been added where 2 teams of up to 4 players each can see who is the best, and the addition of Endless battle is also very nice simulating the arcade experience where you may keep playing as long as you win. And last but not least a tournament mode allowing for a lot of customizing and control for the host and all these features have chat enabled between fighters and spectators. All online features allow for replay recordings even for entire tournaments and you can view recordings from other players all over the globe.

To conclude for all you SF4 players that have been sitting on the fence. It is worth the 40,- every penny, just go to your local retailer on the 27th of Arpil and try it for yourself. As a SF4 player you also get a few extra’s as a thank you, 2 exclusive graphic filters for each character. The game feels smoother and is a real improvement over SF4, just like SF2 Capcom just needed another iteration to get things right…