Street Fighter IV | PS3 | 9.5

If you are intermediate or elite players and love SF II and good at it, then go for it. You can skip my review.

BUT if you are casual players, like me, and you didn't plan on training hard, please read my review and think carefully before buying this game.

Pros:
- Graphics and animations are top-notch.
- If you like SF II, this one goes back to the old formula and add some new tweaks into the battle system.

Cons:
- If you were forced to stick with only a few characters like Ryu or Ken back in your SF II days, that situation is coming back. Ryu, Ken, Sakura are easy enough to master all the moves. Others are useable (means casual players would be able to do some moves, but not all). But for many of them, most of the special moves are impossible for casual players to pull off effectively in the heat of the battle (ie. Vega). And the Ultimate move of some characters (ie. Akuma, Chun Li) are nightmares.

- If you couldn't use the special moves well enough, then casual players might end up with just a few useable character from 25 of them (or half of them, with some practices and a sore left thumb). And you wouldn't stand a chance even against Medium opponents on Arcade mode with the characters you can't use well. Let alone going online to be a sand-bag for those elite players. And $[...] for a game that you could only having fun with less than half of the character rosters, it's the money not very well spent.

- Controls can be too sensitive for casual players to do even some basic moves. For example, a split-second longer can turn command 'UP' into 'UP UP'. When you hold left and then quickly press right, if your left thumb is not precisely hit the RIGHT directional pad, you'd end up with 'DOWN+RIGHT' or 'UP+RIGHT' instead of 'RIGHT'. All these ridiculous sensitivity issues can really be annoying and ruin your moves.

- Practice mode doesn't help much. You can practice with the dummy, but there's no advice or video to show you the timing or even what the moves should look like. You're on your own. All the moves and combos must be done respectively, no skipping. If you get stuck with any move, you can't advance to the next.


This I'm not sure if I'm right or wrong, and it's not pro or con. But the difficulty level seems to be set higher. Medium level can be tough. Even on Easiest, computer can still put up a fight.


In conclusion:
I give this game 3.5 stars. Casual player might want to think hard before paying a full price.

I'm trying not to be nitpicking here. I like the characters and moves. But as a casual player who likes to enjoy ALL, or at least, most of special and ultimate moves of EVERY characters after some amount of trials, without losing my head and my left thumb, I find this game quite frustrating. For me, Marvel VS Capcom, Capcom VS SNK, or Guilty Gear are a lot more fun.

However, elite players may find this game fun and challenging and give it 5 stars, and they're not wrong either.

Someday it might go down to $[...], when that happens, everybody should pick this game up just for the sake of its phenominal graphics alone. But for now, rent it first, see if you're up to the challenge.