I wrote in a previous post (you can read the entire entry here) that I’d reserve judgment on the latest entry in the long-running Street Fighter video game franchise until I at least got a chance to see some actual in-game footage.
Well, ign.com has posted gameplay footage of the newest Street Fighter game, Street Fighter IV. The clip below features SF newcomer Abel squaring off against Ryu.
The other 3 clips can be found here.
The graphics are pretty slick, and the animations are top notch, but otherwise, I’m unimpressed. Aside from the obvious visual upgrade to fully rendered 3D characters and backgrounds, the game still plays exactly the same. It’s Street Fighter EX all over again, and that came out way back in 1996!
I understand that, as they did before with Street Fighter III, the game’s designers have probably included all sorts of new twists on established gameplay mechanics, new additions to the pre-existing fighting game engine that will add depth to the experience, but as a casual gamer and long time fan of the series, I was expecting a lot more. Flashy new meters and ways of powering up combos don’t thrill me the way they used to.
Admittedly, the character models are beginning to grow on me. They don’t look nearly as odd to me as they did when I first saw them. Seeing them in action helps.
Only two new characters have been announced so far (a female fighter named Crimson Viper, or C. Viper on the Player Select screen, and the aforementioned Abel).
The rest of the lineup of playable characters should be very familiar to most gamers and includes old favorites Guile, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim, and E. Honda. And of course, Ryu, Ken, and Chun Li, the series’ most popular characters, return as well.
Almost a Street Fighter II, Part II, if you will. (Apparently, story-wise, the game takes place between SF II and III, thus explaining the return to prominence of so many of SFII‘s memorable cast of fighters.)
(Good ol’ Dhalsim – still stretchy after all this time…)
While many of the characters introduced in SFIII were more than a little off-the-wall, I have to give Capcom credit for trying to freshen things up a bit at the very least. Capcom’s never had a problem designing cool-looking characters or coming up with interesting back stories. My biggest gripe, and one shared by a great many Street Fighter fans around the world, is the lack of variety when it comes to the way characters are controlled.
Sure, they may look different, but when it comes down to it, new characters in Street Fighter games are, moves-wise, almost always identical to pre-established fighters. Sean from SFIII is more or less a Ryu/Ken clone, and a character like Remy plays just like Guile from SFII.
We’ve been told repeatedly by game and system developers around the world that the next generation of gaming is upon us, and while it may be a bit unfair of me, I was expecting a lot more from the company responsible not only for the originator and undisputed champ of the 2D fighting game genre but also for the whole fighting game craze in the first place.
Beyond the graphics upgrades that we’ve come to expect with each new iteration in the franchise, many gamers, myself included, are ready and eager for radical new gameplay innovations that are only now possible thanks to the recent leap forward in console technology.
It’s been more than 10 years since the last one!
Time for something new, perhaps?
On that note, I always sort of hoped fighting game designers would one day incorporate context-sensitive blocking and attacking animations in an attempt to ratchet up the level of realism in games like these.
Rather than have characters simply perform the same blocking animation over and over again, characters would perform different blocks depending on the attack. To block a quick jab to the head, an attack without a lot of power behind it, a character with his guard up might simply deflect the opponent’s attack with his hand or simply bob to the side slightly to get out of the way of the punch. A more powerful attack would trigger a more dramatic response from the one blocking.
I’d love to see characters act and react to moves differently depending on the positioning of the character and his opponent, the distance between them, etc. When characters are very far apart, and their attacks are obviously out of range, certain moves would be altered or disabled altogether. A strong punch with a lot of power behind it when fighting in close might come out as a quick, lunging attack when just slightly out of range and a long-range projectile when characters are all the way across the screen from each other. Similarly, in close, button presses that usually result in a punching attack might trigger a throw or trip instead.
I know that the SF series has never been about realism, but it would be interesting if designers took into account the amount of energy or stamina a fighter has, similar to, but a step further than, last year’s Def Jam: Icon, developed by EA, in which a character’s in-game appearance reflected their overall health throughout matches.
In SFII, characters become dizzy, i.e. momentarily incapable of moving, blocking, attacking, etc., if they find themselves on the receiving end of several closely strung together blows. A possible refinement to that system might include having a weakened fighter’s jabs register less damage should they connect, or a badly beaten character might no longer be able to pull off the more powerful and energy-intensive moves. Tired fighters might even react less quickly the more energy they expend.
An aggressive, highly skilled player might be able to take advantage of the momentum in such fights, but an equally skilled opponent would have a decent chance of pulling off a well-timed, precisely executed counter that could rapidly shift things in the other player’s favor.
Of course, I’m sort of out-of-touch nowadays when it comes to newer games, so maybe these sort of innovations have already been implemented, and I’m just not aware of them. Regardless, it seems to me that the Street Fighter franchise, and fighting games in general, haven’t really progressed much at all in the last decade.
I guess what I’m hoping for, and still waiting for, is a true next-gen fighter that’ll lead the charge into as yet undiscovered realms of fighting game goodness.
Tags: Street Fighter 4, Street Fighter 4 Gameplay Footage, Street Fighter IV
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