The time has come again, a time for Hadoukens and hairbuns, a time for pile-drivers and final boss punishment. This time however, things seem a little familiar. Welcome to Super Street Fighter 4. Super is an expansion to the original Street Fighter 4 from a few years back, but has enough changed in order to justify another purchase, even at budget price? We've got ten minutes to find out!
Upon booting the game from the Xbox dashboard, the colorful Capcom logo displays, along with the ESRB rating. Immediately after, we're treated to a grand opening cinematic in the bold, inky art style of the original Street fighter 4. The trailer is well-made and features some of the new characters including Cody, Ibuki, and Juri, and best of all, no Indestructible in sight. The title screen appears and is both fairly similar to, but less static than the original's title screen, thanks to some smoke moving stylistically across the screen. Let's get this game started.
Unfortunately, like many games of late, we're first scanned to see if we own any DLC, upon leaving the title screen. Why this can't be done under-the-hood, I just don't know. Fortunately, a few seconds later greets the player with a fantastic set of art-heavy menus, with animated transitions even! wow! Much more impressive than the original's generic setup.
After investigating the multiplayer menu, it's clear that not a great deal has changed in this section. There are now endless battles that function as a never ending arcade-line match. There's a new team-battle, which seems silly in design, for whichever team has the better single player will most likely win regardless of any of the other team's players...The omission of a player match option is a little sad, as I would appreciate the ability to get my crank kicked without scaring up my record.
Jumping into Arcade mode, we can see that there are a bounty of new characters, and everyone is unlocked from the get-go this time. A very welcome feature, though I wonder if this will come at the expense of good unlockables when I finally do defeat Seth. I'll select Juri, since she seems to be the poster-child of this new title. Players can now choose between one of two ultra moves as well--a nice strategic touch. After the familiar pre-match intro and a predictably craptastic anime slideshow intro, along with a bit more loading than was in the original game, we're into the match. Juri is apparently an evil, flaunting Korean woman, based on her intro animation--a quality animation in line with the rest of the street fighter cast from the original. Unfortunately, my opponent Abel is sporting the same intro animation he had from the first game, a very disappointing prospect, for we can now assume that all other animations will also be the same for all the original characters.
Now into the match, it seems that the solid fighting engine from the original has remained almost completely unchanged. It is obvious that this update was all about the content and not about reshaping an excellent fighting foundation. Juri is a very fun character to use, with a flying kick much akin to Cammy's cannon spike, which can also be made into a several-hit combo just by mashing the kick button. She also has a nice crowd-breaker attack that could only be described as a cartwheel of death. I wish I could power through arcade mode, but time's running out and there's a bit more to see.
Five Minutes Remaining
Back on the main menu lies a few more options, like challenge, which leads to several mini-games like car crusher and barrel breaker, along with a trial mode which runs you through each of a characters combos. I've never been a fan of the latter mode, and the mini-games are only good as a joke--And like a joke, they're only funny once.
Besides training mode, there is very little else here. You've got a standard Arcade mode, standard training mode, standard online mode, and an underwhelming challenge mode. Did I miss something?
Final Minute MarkUp
Are you thinking of purchasing Super Street Fighter 4? If you are, it is actually a very simple decision. Let's break it down a little. The modes are still bare-boned, standard affairs. The mini-games were a waste of development time, the online isn't even up to the early-generation Dead or Alive 4, and...there's little else to speak of, but hey! The menus are awesome! The decision to purchase Super Street Fighter 4 comes solely down to whether you want to pay a budget price to receive ten new characters...and get rid of indestructible. The characters are of fairly good quality as far as I can tell--Juri being one of the highlights. Unfortunately, eight of the characters exist in other Capcom fighting games, and only two are completely new, but hey, this is budget priced. In the end, it comes down to your appreciation of the fighting engine the game is built on, and the gaming mileage you'll get out of new characters. If you already own the original, and If you're dying for more Street Fighter content, there are far worse purchases you could make. If you never owned the original, drop a thirty, tape your knuckles, and hit the streets--You won't regret it.
Recommended: For the fans and newcomers.
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Austin Yarger
http://www.GamesOpinion.com
Austin is a Senior attending Clarkston High School located within Michigan's Oakland county.
He currently focuses on Computer Sciences and the Literary Arts.
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