Leveling Down

Super Street Fighter IV sees the return of old favorites, such as Street Fighter III’s Makoto.

Like the original Street Fighter IV, I’ve spent enough time with Super Street Fighter IV that I can already give it a review. After all, it’s a fighting game that doesn’t have much of a single player component to play through right? Super Street Fighter IV is the expansion/sequel to last year’s Street Fighter IV. With Super feeling more like an expansion, I’m only going to cover the new stuff in this review. Check out my writeup for the original if you want to know why Street Fighter IV and Super are so good. The question now is, what does Super Street Fighter IV bring to the table and is it worth it?

10 New Characters
Super Street Fighter IV adds 10 characters to the playable roster, upping the total selectable character count to 35. This is a ridiculous number of playable characters to use for a 1v1 fighting game, and any fighting game fan should be able to find someone they enjoy with the vast selection. Several old favorites return in SSFIV, with Dee Jay and T.Hawk from Super Street Fighter II, Guy, Cody, and Adon from Street Fighter Alpha 3, Ibuki, Makoto, and Dudley from Street Fighter III, and two completely new characters: Juri and Hakan. While it may seem like cheating to call it 10 “new” characters, the Street Fighter universe has so many interesting characters that the inclusion of any ones from older games will make fans of the series quite happy. What’s also more convenient this time around is that all playable characters are unlocked from the start and there are several balance changes for the returning cast (i.e. Sagat is no longer as overpowered as he once was).

2 Ultra Combo Choices for Every Character
In Super Street Fighter IV, every character now has 2 Ultra Combos to select between when choosing your character. Returning characters have kept their original Ultra Combo, but are granted with a new one to choose from while new characters have two new Ultra Combos off the bat. The different Ultra Combos add a welcome strategic benefit to your character, as most of the Ultra combos function differently, are linked into differently, and can be used differently. For example, one character’s first Ultra Combo may be ground based, but his second one is anti-air. If that character had a relatively weak anti-air game or had a playstyle that forced his opponents to be airborne a lot, the player now has the choice to select the Ultra Combo that is more suited for their taste. It’s definitely a positive.

Car & Barrel Bonus Stages
Super Street Fighter IV is a hardcore fighting game wrapped up in a colorful “nostalgic” shell. People that will be playing this game for the long run will be primarily focused on the online play and skip over most of the single player altogether. Then there are the more casual players, who want to pick up Super Street Fighter IV for nostalgia, and the car and barrel bonuses stages are certainly welcome in that domain. Destroying a car and watching a guy come out and say, “Oh, my car” just like in the days of Street Fighter II is sure to put a smile on any Street Fighter II fan’s face. Of course, the amount of benefit these bonus stages bring besides a trip down memory lane is quite little. Fortunately, the bonus stages can be turned off in the Options menu if you grow tired of them.

Endless Battle
The single most requested feature from the original Street Fighter IV does indeed make it successfully in tact to Super Street Fighter IV. Endless Battle allows players to set up a room of up to 8 players where the winner of each match stays and the remaining players in the room rotate through and try to take on the winner. Some call it quarter matches or player rooms, but regardless, it’s here and it works beautifully. Finally, Super Street Fighter IV allows you to play Street Fighter online as a social affair, rather than the 1v1 lonesome battles of the original Street Fighter IV. It’s an excellent mode, but it appears that an online Versus mode is no longer an option in the game. While some would argue that Endless battle for two players makes this mode redundant, I would have liked to see a Versus mode for two players with quick continues, so that both players could keep playing without having to go back to the character select screen, choosing characters, choosing Ultras, choosing the stage, and waiting for loading again just to replay the same matchup.

Team Battle
Super Street Fighter IV also sports a new “Team Battle” mode, which allows players to play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4. In each Team Battle, both sides pick their preferred fight order for their players and the winning player of each match plays the next player of the opponent’s team. It sounded like it was going to be awesome the first time I heard about it, as I assumed there would be team-based matchmaking. Unfortunately, this is not the case. You cannot grab 2 other buddies and search for another team of 3 players to go up against. Instead, you have to create a room, invite your buddies, and then wait as random other players join to fill up the room. The host is the only one that can pick teams, so if you want to actually play against another team of friends, the chances are very slim since any team that has to try to find another room to join doesn’t even know if they’re going to be able to be on the same team. It’s up to the host of that room. In short, you will not be able to play Super Street Fighter IV competitively as a team.

What’s even more annoying though is that there is matchmaking for Team Battle, but only as a solo player. You can request to get put into a Team Battle game and you can specify how big of a team you want. But for some reason or another, you can’t play with a team of your friends. There’s no stat-tracking or anything for teams, and while it may have been a huge undertaking to implement the structure and Leaderboards for teams, it’s only the natural progression of games this generation as we in the West have grown accustomed to Blizzard’s battle.net and various console multiplayer shooters. If it’s one thing the Japanese need to learn from Western developers it’s multiplayer matchmaking design.

Replay Channel
I didn’t think I would be using this feature much, but the Replay Channel is actually enjoyable! It’s debatable whether the replays are even organized in the best way, but from navigating the menus, it appears that there are particular channels for different groups of characters. You can join a channel and watch whatever is on (sort of like TV channels) and other players can also join to watch the same channel and all of you can chat together. Then there are “channels” for you to view all of your past battles, as well as a stream of the most recently uploaded replays from players. It’s all pretty neat but I would have loved if I could have just picked a channel to watch only my character that I wanted to study, and not 5 different character matchups in that same channel.

Tournament Mode
While a Tournament Mode was added as free DLC to the original Street Fighter IV last year, it’s surprising that Super Street Fighter IV did not ship with a Tournament Mode of its own right out of the box. Fortunately, Capcom has announced that a free Tournament Mode will be available for downloade starting June 15th. This Tournament Mode will supposedly allow you to win emblems/icons from winning Tournaments, but you will also have to play in Tournaments to defend them once you acquire these rewards. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun for the more competitive Street Fighter players.

Disrespecting Owners of the Original
One thing that did irk me a bit is how Capcom was telling Street Fighter IV owners that if they held onto their game, they would get a special bonus in Super Street Fighter IV. Instead of selling Street Fighter IV while it was still worth something, we held onto our discs hoping to see what the special bonus was all about. Then we find out that it is a selectable costume color that is available if you have a Street Fighter IV save game on your hard drive. With the weak bonus not even needing the original disc, some fans are rightful peeved. Many of us thought maybe if you inserted your original Street Fighter IV disc into the game, you might be able to download additional special costumes or something for use in Super. No such luck.

Final Thoughts
Super Street Fighter IV is not perfect, but it is a very worthy expansion. It manages to supersede the original Street Fighter IV in every way, making it practically irrelevant.  A new BlazBlue expansion/sequel is being released this summer for $40. I believe all that is significant in it is 3 additional characters. Compare that to everything you’re getting in Super Street Fighter IV, and I can easily see why it’s not only worth its price, but why it deserves its own disc release. I don’t know if Super Street Fighter IV is that much more of an accessible game than the original Street Fighter IV, but one thing is for sure: it’s more enjoyable. More characters, more Ultras, more stages, and the highly requested Endless Battle mode make the game worth buying for any fighting game fan.  Super Street Fighter IV has replaced the original Street Fighter IV as the best fighting game this console generation. If you have any inkling of desire to play a fighting game, Super Street Fighter IV is the one you need to get. If you’ve already spent time with Street Fighter IV and are not excited about this release, then the game is probably not for you.

I found it very difficult to determine whether to give Super Street Fighter IV a perfect A or a “slightly flawed” A-. Without the Team Battle mode, it would have been a game that addressed basically all of the shortcomings of Street Fighter IV, making it a perfect expansion/sequel. But with the original SFIV game already being nearly perfect, how could you mess up the formula? By not delivering on one of the new features advertised for your new product. Capcom did not produce Team Battle mode correctly and I can’t help but feel disappointed since it had so much potential. This was the fighting game that would become THE online Japanese fighting game to rival Western shooters in multiplayer design! But nope, we have to go back to just playing 1v1 if we want to play Super Street Fighter IV competitively. I guess I can’t complain too much, since I’m having a lot of fun still playing it solo.

Final Grade: A-

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