The game moves beautifully, it's new style with an excellent amount of detail brought to the fighters facial expressions, every blow that connects can be seen to hurt you're opponent, especially as time is slowed down when the final blow connects. However, it's been said that the Xbox 360 version has better graphics due to the anti aliasing technique that it uses instead of being scaled up with the software. But when you look at the screen shots of this you're going to notice very little difference, it's not something I've had a problem with when playing the game on the PlayStation 3 and wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been brought to my attention.
There is a story to the arcade mode, but it's basic at best, you get an opening movie at the beginning of the game which is done in a proper cartoon Anime style (much the same as the animated Street Fighter 2 movie), then when you finish the game you get the conclusion to the story. These either make sense to you or they don't, in game they make sense, and you may have to unlock more than one ending if you don't do it in the correct order for everyone's ending to come together, if you're a Street Fighter fan then you'll be able to put the bit's and pieces together. Even I was a little “huh?” at some of the endings, but story has never been a strong focus with the Street Fighter series, and let's face it, it changes to favour the characters that win anyway. Another nice touch is that before you meet Seth you have a “Fight your Rival” fight which gives you a brief bit of banter between the two characters both before and during the match, this adds a little more to the story if nothing else.
The music is also well suited to the game, both exciting and subtly bringing back the old Street Fighter 2 theme from time to time just to remind you of what you're playing.
The EX mode returns in Street Fighter IV giving you slightly more powerful than normal special moves, this is executed by doing the same button press combination as the normal move but by pressing more than one punch or kick button depending on the action, to make this easier it can be assigned to a key press if you so desire. There is also an ‘Ultra’ meter which fills as you get hit allowing you to take revenge with an Ultra move, a super version of one of your special moves, these are mostly a joy to watch, when you've pulled one off you're rewarded with the camera spinning round to focus on your character as the move charges and the then back round again as the move connects and if used as a finishing move you're rewarded with a flashing background.
The game play is just how you remember Street Fighter to be, fast (but not turbo speed), brutal and so much fun. I'm not really sure what someone new to the franchise is going to make of it, I've been playing Street Fighter for 20 years or so now so I was familiar with the special moves system for most of the characters. The “special moves” all seem familiar to me, I've grown up with them, I wouldn't imagine they would be hard to learn in comparison with other games, especially as so many other fighting games have borrowed from the Street Fighter series in the past, new players should be able to pick it up easily enough, even if they have to knock the difficulty level down a few notches, which, believe me isn't something to be ashamed of.
As already mentioned there are your basic game modes, Arcade, Vs Battle and Network Battle and then as an extra you get Challenge Modes. There are three modes each with twenty challenges, in Time Attack mode you're challenged to beat a set number of characters before the time runs out, this starts off generously and then gets progressively harder. Then there is a survival mode, which again you have to beat a set number of challengers but this time before your health runs out, it replenishes 50% to start with but then moves down as you progress. Finally there is the Trial mode which is probably going to be most useful to newcomers, it teaches you the moves of the selected character, well, I say teach, what I actually mean to say is that it tells you which move to perform and you have to execute it to go progress. Not to worry though, the moves are all available by pressing the pause button and going to the move list page, quite a handy feature!
Online game play is good, you've the option of ranked games or just playing for fun, I've only experienced lag once with the game, but for the most part it seems to run smoothly. Should you create or search for a ranked game you can only fight the same opponent once before having to go through the process again, but if you're just playing for fun you can just play the same person again and again, handy if you've got mates you want to play online with.
For newcomers to the franchise, then, it's a jumping on point, the instructions you get with the game are second to none, every special move is detailed and there for you to learn. However, the learning curve will be high if you've never experienced the game before, especially if you want to play in ranked online matches – You can however set this as a search parameter when seeking online games, you can play people at the same level as you, this doesn't seem to be an option when creating a game though which is a shame.
I'd highly recommend playing this game to anyone whose come across Street Fighter before, and I think that number is far higher than most other fighters so I anticipate this game to do well – Capcom have done an excellent job updating the franchise, far better than they did with the EX series on the PlayStation 2 at least, it feels like a Street Fighter game, looks like a Street Fighter game and could potentially take the crown away from Street Fighter 2 as the most fondly remembered fighter, and it deserves it in my opinion. Of course, if you're a Street Fighter veteran you're going to fall in love all over again.
