My Rating: 9.8 / 10

The Good:
1. Same controls from older Street Fighter games
2. Looks Great in 3D but better because game play is in 2D
3. New Characters are useful.
4. Good Amount of the Old Characters
5. Ultra Finish System adds a new field of game play
6. Online Play
7. Good Story

The Bad:
1. The difficulty of arcade mode. Instead Hard to Easy it goes from Hard to Cheap CPU
2 Seth: The final boss of arcade mode. On any difficulty he'll make you say "WTF"
3. Zangief: Top Tier Character but the CUP on any difficulty can beat you in three moves.
4. Some Ultra Moves are hard to pull off.
5. Not enough story. For the collectors edition it comes with a DVD "kinda" explaining the story. The story has a nice plot for a fighting game that is somewhat complex in the eyes of some characters. I just wanted them to explain it a little better because of all the stuff that going on in the story.

The Wants:
1. DLC Characters. Even though the collectors edition DVD explains what happened to most of the fighters of the older games. It would be nice to have more people to play as.
2. Patch the damn arcade mode, Seth, and Zangief.
3. A Patch to make finding online games easier.

My Rating: 4 / 10

Street Fighter IV - Developed by SNK...now working at Capcom

Remember when Capcom made some of the best fighting games on the block and had enough leeway to insult their imitators by making joke characters (Dan Hibiki)?

Well, times sure have changed; enter Street Fighter IV.

After a decade-long hiatus, a company calling itself Capcom produced a 3D-modeled/animated 2D fighter with none of the charm of its predecessors. I wonder what happened to all the developers that made the previous titles?  It's like everyone was fired and replaced with SNK employees.

I really wish the hype for this game was warranted.  I've read dozens of glowing reviews that praise the game's low-fidelity textures and inflatable-looking character models and yet I dove for the TV's mute-button when I heard the game's obnoxiously Japscat theme ("Indestructable - The Next Door" by Exile).  It sounded like an old 1990s Bobby Brown single and some boy band's radio edit had a gay love-child and the musical afterbirth that oozed out onto the recording studio was what Capcom thought sounded cool enough to repeat ad nausem throughout the game menus.

Enough about the lame music, let's get to the game itself!

For starters, the fluid animations may be a nice aesthetic but make the game's controls feel like they have the responsiveness of playing a match on dial-up across a continent....and this is while playing offline!!! I played the game on the Mad Catz Tournament Edition Fightstick because I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to trying to play this game with a 360 Controller.

Secondly, the new characters play like some SNK dreck and look absolutely ridiculous!  Obese American sterotype? check.... racially insensitive Mexican "Speedy Gonzalez" luchidore? check.  C.Viper looks like a generic female cross-dresser with a giant twizzler sodomized so far up her backside that it became a hair-extention. 

Visual nigglings aside, the game mechanics leave a LOT to be desired of as well.

Who thought it would be a good idea to REWARD players for getting their ass kicked?  I suppose it was the same company that thought licensing a movie called "The Legend of Chun-Li."

Ultra Combos are nice but the way Cpacom arrived at implementing them comes off as ass-backwards and downright illogical.   Nothing feels worse than pommeling an opponent within an inch of his life only to have him/her/it magically turn the tables with a single move.

Focus Attacks could have been an excellent addition but they only work against non-combo attacks and, let's be honest here, the only people that master Focus Attacks tend to be in a fighting tier that uses a liberal amount of combos.  WTF happened to Street Fighter III: Third Strike's "Parry" system?  Why would this horrible system be instated over such an amazing precursor?

Speaking of combos, when combos enter the double-digits, there really needs to be a C-c-c-c-c-combo Breaker!  Otherwise, players on the receiving end of the initial strikes of a lengthy combo are forced to endure an infiuruating non-interactive cut-scene that inolves their character being relieved of portions of his/her Health Bar while they idly watch.  Yeah, that's fun.

Well, since we're on the subject of infuriating non-interactive cut-scenes, let's talk about Seth.   Seth is the embodiment of Capcom's failure to reclaim its former glory.  He represents everything that is bad in SNK games: horrible character designs, AI that ignores the rules and game mechanics that are the opposite of fun.

• Horrible Character Designs:  Really? Some naked bloke with painful-looking swells all over his mishapen body and a billiard ball for a belly?  Yeah, that's much cooler than the demonic Gouki (Akuma) and Fascist Dictator Vega (M.Bison). ...And here I thought some of the Japtastic zaniness of Gill, Urien and Necro was as bad as it gets.  Fail.
• Cheating AI:  The developers just got sloppy with this mess of AI programming.  We're all well aware that fighting games are about the multiplayer facets but coding AI to ignore the limitations imposed on human players is downright asinine!      Rather than creating a "boss" character with a repertoire of complex-to-pull-off-yet-devastating moves, players are treated to a frustrating series of those non-interactive cut-scenes involving AI Seth performing moves in ways human players controlling him couldn't execute.  There's nothing quite like watching rapid-teleportations that culminate into 10+ hit combos from an opponent that hasn't even materialized from his previous teleportation.  His grabs will trump everything (including those lovely punching-bag saviours, the Ultras).  The best part: his Ultra move, that can't be dodged...or avoided in any way, does not require his "Revenge Meter" (the meter used to limit Ultra moves) to be filled at all.   That's right: an instant hit, ultra-devastating move that can be used whenever.   I haven't seen AI riding the shortbus like this since the 8-bit days!   Seriously, the degree of difficulty for this boss actually goes down when set on a higher difficulty setting!  Epic Fail.

The online experience was also one big mess:  Lobbies are limited to two (2) players and Ranked Matches instantly send combatants back to the game's main menu...meaning that rematches are nearly impossible unless you bothered to memorize your opponent's name. 

I often found myself with a horribly low connection indicator (1 bar) ...even when I played neighbours!

Finally, Hey Capcom!  Not all white people have blue/green eyes!   The artistic consistency is laughable in this installement.  Ken's brown eyes (as seen in both all the previous Street Fighters and the cut-scene Anime cartoon within the game itself) magically turn Aqua when he is encountered as a game model.  I know this is trivial but it further illustrates how much of a departure from all things previously good Capcom has strayed.

I find it hilarious that a company that once prided itself on its artistic skills still can't make Asian people look Asian!  I think they actually believe that brown eyes makes people Asian.  Newflash: Ryu looks more caucazoid than me!

Before succumbing to the hype, you may want to save yourself some rapidly dwindling cash and give it a rent.  In a sea of other fighting games that have arisen since Street Fighter's heyday, this latest offering can barely tread water.  Hopefully, Capcom will hear that pop (the sound of one's head being removed from one's ass) and release a patch to remedy their myriad mistakes.   If not, I'm sure Gamestop will have quite the bevy of used verisions returned by annoyed customers fed-up with this flatulating faded glory.