Super Street Fighter 4 - The Negative Aspect

What the fuck do we have here? A new game? A new fighter? No! It's just Super Street Fighter 4, with more characters! Yay! But seriously, I'm not going to go on for a couple of paragraphs describing what I like about this shit, but I'm going to talk about what I don't like about this game. It's too often do I get an opportunity to talk about a game, where my thoughts on it are more negative than positive...it always is. There's never been a perfect game; never been a game where I can ultimately decide that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. So let me delve into the aspects of this game which really make my teeth itch ok?

So how about I start with the fact that you have no option to change voice actors before you even beat arcade mode once? Isn't that real special? Listening to the half-assed American voice acting really makes me want to beat the nearest thing so hard that it wouldn't even exist anymore. Seriously, I have never heard a worse group of American voice actors for a video game...although there's a couple exceptions in games that have been released many a year ago, but come on! This is 2010! You'd think the voice actors would've been able to express more FEELING into their voices, making it sound more believable when the character is beating down their opponent. Instead, it sounds like some washed-up-rejected-dubbers got the jobs for all the characters! So now, when I choose a manly character like Ryu, it sounds like he's just trying too hard to sound cool, instead of actually sounding tough.

I am in no way regarding myself as a Japan-ophile, but honestly, Japanese voice actors know how to stress words and emotions, and make the character's actions more believable.

Another thing is that the developers thought it to be a good idea to bring back the bonus stages from Street Fighter 2, into arcade mode. But, why? Why would ANYONE think this to be a good idea? People didn't pay for the game, to see how many barrels they can break, or how fast they can destroy a car, they wanted to fight! Hence the term, "fighting game"! And of course, you can only get the option to turn off the bonus stages after you've beaten arcade mode once.

One thing that bugs me the most is the trial mode. Each character has 20 trials, but unlike the first Street Fighter 4, each trial has only ONE set of moves, or combos, and, after you beat each trial, you don't immediately begin with the next one, you have to choose to continue to the next one, which takes about a couple seconds to load. Also, the input for these combos aren't readily available on-screen, so if you need to know HOW to pull off some special moves, you have to press the select button, to bring up a menu of the commands, pausing the actual trial, so you don't get a chance to see them while you're inputting them - you have to memorize them. Street Fighter 4 allowed you to see the input of these commands on-screen, so I don't know why they removed that convenience.

Speaking of inputting commands, it is one of THE most frustrating things to deal with! Unlike every other fighting game out there, in order to chain a combo, your timing towards the next move has to be 99% accurate, else your character either won't do anything, or they'll use some other move which you didn't intend to use. 

I mean, seriously, why is chaining a combo so fucking difficult?! Even when other people describe how to chain a combo, it's so goddamn complicated, that I think to myself, "why even bother?". Get this - in order to link a light punch into a medium punch, you have to press the light punch button first, but don't press the medium punch right away, otherwise your character won't do anything, and that would make too much sense. Instead, you have to wait until the ACTION of the light punch has FINISHED hitting the opponent, BUT don't press the medium punch too late, else the opponent has a chance to block it. Apparently, there's this thing called a "time window", and within this "time window" you have to press the medium punch button JUST as the light punch's ACTION finishes!

And there you have it! Your very first successful 2-hit combo! That wasn't so hard, was it?!

I mean, I guess it would be too much to ask to want a fighting game, where the fighting, is actually the main focus. Instead, we are presented with "time windows" and all these other terms that don't seem to make sense at all!

I've seen people at my local arcade, getting frustrated, because I would see them input the command for a hadoken, and then a shoryuken to follow-up. Instead, what happens is that, the Ryu character in-game, does a regular punch, jumps, and lands back on the ground. Like, what the fuck?!

God, this game is so fucking slow, the voice-actors are shit, the difficulty is shit, the trial is shit, combos are shit...I don't even know why I continue to play this game...maybe I'll eventually find something I like about it again.