Four-sight! …Street Fighter IV

FOUR! Kuru na!

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3165170
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/16819
etc.

I’m still very VERY excited about this in general. But I’m going to keep it tempered by some realism too 😉 Especially now we’ve seen a few things.

As always, We ask the questions: Are these graphics anything like finished? I am still really liking the overall style and art direction.. however.. from the movies out so far, I am really worried about the resolution. It’s simply too low res and looks blocky and awful. 😦 Now, understand that I am a staunch 2d graphics fan, but I have no problem with 3d graphics – as long as they are REALLY good and do something better than what you could’ve done with 2d. About the only points that this has for being 3d so far is the camera rotations and some of the lighting/texturing effects. These are both minimal frills and that is not enough. Bear in mind, that to me, no 3d fighting game was worth being made in 3d until Virtua Fighter 3 came out (arcade!) … until that point, every 3d game I saw I thought was hideous compared to their 2d brethren. To give you another example – I also think every single game with 3d graphics on the PS1 looked putrid and wasn’t worth making in 3d. But it’s not that SF4 looks that bad thankfully, it’s just, well, I’m used to looking at Virtua Fighter 5 these days… and this looks like Playstation graphics in equivalent. I love the fact it really has it’s own style, but this still definitely needs to be fresh & cleaned and nicely spruced up if I am going to be impressed with the final result. The facial animations are looking really good. I’ve not seen as good expressionary reactions since All-Pro Football 2k8

But one huge problem for me with the faces – the eyes. They look completely unreal & lifeless… as has been a common difficulty with CGI eyes for years, but others have managed to solve it now. Time to steal some solutions Capcom.

Can you super-cancel out of a nice relaxing poo? – it sounds like the revenge/super system and ‘saving’ defensive techniques are going to be very interesting… as long as it doesn’t end up as some kind of DOA like weighted rock-paper-scissors… a concern if they get too drastic.

Is the fighting area still walled off? The impression I get from the trailer is that it is free roaming… uh-oh. This is a significant part of the area-control game that Street Fighter is really all about, and I am personally hoping they preserve that dynamic. But with the camera rotating throws… maybe? Maybe not?

No SF3 characters? – well it’s not really in any question now, but it is a shame. No Remy then… ah well, it wasn’t ever really going to happen. But futility is my game anyway 😉

The “newbie vs experienced” balancing system. Well Nathan asked me about this one, and although they have said something about this, but I suspect it is all waffle. It’s really nothing new though, SF home versions since the SNES have usually had usable damage handicap systems, and indeed I used to use them when playing most of my more casual SF playing friends. But of course they make very little difference really unless you are close enough in skill that the other guy had a fighting chance anyway – which if you did.. you arguably would be better off to play without the handicap.What would be nice to see for me would be some kind of online ranked ‘handicapped’ mode, where your relative rating with each individual character actually innately handicapped you vs a lower ranked opponent. Now that would be a much better way to do a ‘matching’ system than most of the stuff on XBL. Of course you’d still want the ‘pure’ mode & I am not sure how popular this one would be. But the sheer amount you can do with this brings a ton of design ideas to my mind… perhaps another time!

I wanna have a pure time, so I hope the right noble minds are working on this one.

Overall though.. still really high hopes for this one. Especially the online aspects. But I’m possibly still more excited about HD Remix!