GamesRelay

Name: Street Fighter IV

Capcom had been teasing us with snippets for weeks… And we've been lapping them up, grown men thrown back to there adolescent years literally (in my case at least) drooling over the details as they came pouring out.

I had to have this game so much I raided my copper jar for all the little gold nuggets I've been throwing in there randomly, fortunately I was able to exchange them all for a brand spanking new copy of the game and I left the shop as I have so many times before, with a copy of a Street Fighter game and a smile on my face.

I went with the PS3 version purely based on my experience with Street Fighter HD on the Xbox 360. That Xbox pad ruined the game for me and I hardly played it for that reason, pretty as it was. From previous experience with the Street Fighter series on the PlayStation I knew the pad worked well for me, especially if tweaked the original configuration of the buttons.

When I got home I eagerly placed the game into my shiny black box and had it loading even before I could take my coat off, I was wasting no time getting to grips with this one.

The first thing that has to be said when the intro kicks in is “Hubba”, the introduction movie is simply gorgeous and will blow you away many, many times, it serves as a perfect introduction to the game, the characters fighting and posing away in the distinctive style Capcom has chosen to give this game, it feels more like you're watching a piece of art animate than a game introduction.

Once the pure eye candy of an intro is over you get to grips with the game, the menu is simple enough all the basic options are the Arcade Mode, Vs Battle and Network Battle and of course your options for settings and viewing the movies you've unlocked in the gallery.

Of course, the anticipation for this game has been so high that most people won't have noticed any of that on first boot and immediately dived straight into the Arcade mode.

It's good to know that most of the favourites from the original Street Fighter 2 are here, I was a little surprised to see those after largely being forgotten about in the original Street Fighter 3, there are a smattering of new characters; Abel, Crimson Viper, Rufus and El Furete. There are 12 characters to choose from initially with an extra 9 to unlock.

Obviously I picked my old favourite Ryu for my first match, selected the medium difficulty level and I was away... Zangeif was my first opponent “no problem” thinks me...

The standard over excited Street Fighter announcer counts you into the fight and were off…

Well, Zangeif was anyways, while my brain was trying to take in more of the pure eye candy laid out before it, Zangeif was busy power moving me relentlessly across the screen with me not so much getting a fireball out in a paltry attempt at defence, suffice to say I lost... Ok... Back on my feet... Round 2... And the same thing happened again… Unfortunately after a couple of continues this was going to become a recurring theme, I couldn't beat him.

With my pride slightly dented I returned to the main menu and picked Chun-Li, again an old favourite whose moves I know inside and out.... Not that, that would do me much good.

I soon learnt that Street Fighter IV was in fact bloody hard.

Fortunately, Capcom saw fit to include more options for us, Easiest, Very Easy, and an Easy option… With my head bowed in shame I moved down to Easy and tried again.

This seemed to do the trick, using Ryu this time I was able to beat my way through to the boss, though it has to be said it's still not what I would have called ‘Easy’ and continues were used, I was glad I was playing at home or this would have been an expensive trip to the arcade.

Then came the end character, a new character called Seth who is a composite character taking his moves from other characters in Street Fighter, and who redefined for me an end of game character in a fighting game, because, man is he a hard chap to beat, special moves just flow from him leaving you with barely a chance to beat him, seriously, this is a mean dude to go up against when fighting against the Computer and that's not because I am a sore loser, but honestly it is one of the hardest and most relentless characters I've fought on any game beforehand.

I eventually beat him, again after using a shed load of continues but the pride that swelled within me was fair reward, till I remembered I had done it on Easy.

It has to be said though, that the difficulty level of the game is the only bad point I have with this game, even as I was getting sucked into Seth, spun round his body and then being spat back out at the camera for umpteenth time I still wanted to play and never once thought about giving up.