Street Fighter 4 Review (Xbox 360)
Well I received my game on the 20th as promised by Sendit.com. I excitedly opened the case and put it into my xbox. I spent the next 5 hours playing on the various game modes, trying out all my old moves. What can I say about this version of Street Fighter? It’s great! Probably one of the best versions I have played. Graphically of course it is the most pleasing to look at. The characters have a slightly stranger style than I was expecting. They all look very muscular, but some of them just seem a bit odd to me. An example of this is Chun Li. Maybe it’s just me.
The gameplay is solid and similar to EX Plus Alpha from what I remember of it. I’m not too keen on the new characters that have been introduced. There’s a big fat man called Rufus who looks like a morbidly obese version of Bruce Lee. He’s quite funny, but I didn’t find him very playable, truth be told.
With Capcom’s failure to sort out the leaderboard bugs on the Xbox Live version of this game, I was keen to see how they handled the ranking system here. I was not disappointed. Statistics are recorded faithfully, although there are a few thinks that I think they have missed. Firstly, its impossible (as far as I can see) to work out if an opponent you are about to play is at your level or not. There are custom titles that you earn as you progress up the ranks that are intended to give some indication of skill, but all to often you start to play a self proclaimed beginner only to find out it was all a ruse and they are a Street Fighter mater of the higher order. Within 20 seconds you have lost your rank and are vaguely aware of your own shouting at the television screen. I guess its a good game that gets you so involved, it means the game is doing its job and affecting you. Still, it’s rather annoying. Secondly, scores between friends aren’t saved after you leave the session. This is a shame because it’s good to be able to compare your win percentage with people you play often. Other games like Dead or Alive 4 have this.
The online play is great fun. I have only had a few games that are laggy. You really get into the game and I would say it’s much more fun than arcade mode, which is also fun in it’s own way. One criticism of the the online play is the fact that lobbies can only contain 2 people. Even the XBLA version of Street Fighter which I have talked so much about in the past has mutiple players as well as an online tournament match. Still, I guess maybe this reduces the overall lag in the game which is a good thing.
All in all this is a great game. If you enjoy games such as Dead or Alive 4, Soul Calibre 4 and Virtual fighter 5 then you will not be disappointed with this. If you have never played any of the aforementioned games, but are a street Fighter fan and own an Xbox then you would be silly not to pick up a copy.
My Score: 9.5/10
