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Street Fighter 4 Championship Pack Hits Today
And only a month+ after it was originally scheduled! Huzzah!
I’m sure we’ll have some impressions once we get some time played in it. More than one player per lobby? Color me STOKED.
Edit: It has come to my attention that there are no multiple person lobbies. Just the tournament shit. Which is totally random. That’s two months of anticipation for nothing. Thanks Capcom, thanks. I am literally wowed.
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Enoch’s weekend ramble: Getting better at losing in SF4, revisiting Quake 3, and falling asleep on Phantasy Star Portable
I wanted to finish writing my review of Persona 4 while it’s still fresh in my mind but for some reason, my motivation to to do so is very low. Most people knows that it’s a great game, so I feel like I’m beating a dead horse by reaffirming that sentiment. Honestly, I’d rather talk about what I did over the last couple of weekends. Granted, there’s only so much I can talk about but it’s a lot easier to write up and hopefully, a lot shorter.
The weekend before last, a lot of my good buddies gathered at my house to play some videogames. It’s nothing out of the ordinary and I don’t mind it most of the time since I don’t have to go out of my way to drive to their houses (which usually takes at least half an hour). The main game of the night was Street Fighter 4 with a little bit of four player Phantasy Star Portable and some Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. I particpated in all of the multiplayer games except for TvC. I have never played TvC and hold no interest in playing it as long as I don’t own a Wii that can read region 2 dvds and games. Nothing really exciting happens in PSP and unfortunately, it’ll probably stay that way forever. In Street Fighter 4, my Abel loses to most people. It’s one thing to play against friends who only play fighters casually. You can usually go in there and exploit every mistakes they make and breathe a sigh of relief every time they miss their opportunity to go for a killing blow. It’s another thing when you’re playing against people who understand the concept of minimizing their risks, the art of zoning and how to take advantage of every opportunity that opens up. My frustration about this game is that unless I can perform complex moves, links and combos consistently, I won’t be able to access the real game where better tactics and mind games will dominate the matches. Instead, I get killed by a fireball because my EX anti-air throw came out instead of my ultra. I did manage win one match against a really good Ryu, so at least I know that I’m getting better. But even with all the losing, it was still fun and that’s all I care about.
Once we done with Street Fighter 4 and the majority of my friends left my house, I decided to play a little bit of Quake Live. Quake Live is pretty much Quake 3 Arena except you play it on your web browser of choice. There are some small notable changes to the game in order to make it more balanced (railgun no longer does 100 damage and has been toned down to 80 damage) but overall, the fundamental gameplay remains the same. It’s a no-holds-barred first person shooter where the winner is determined by the amount of kills he/she gets. I know that sounds like a “no shit, sherlock” kind of statement but believe it or not, there’s a lot of first persons shooters out nowadays that don’t have the same “kill the most dudes” objective like Quake Live does. The game itself is very fast paced and aside from the shotgun, there are no random shots at all. The game is still currently in beta, so obviously there’s going to be few bumps here and there. As far I know, there are no significant technical bugs or issues that I have a problem with.
The matchmaking system on the other hand is absolutely terrible. It’s Warcraft 3 matchmaking all over again except it’s three times worse. When Warcraft 3 was first released, there was a lot of time where you’d be matched up with somebody who is significantly skilled enough to destroy you in a matter of 5-8 minutes. And the worst part of the system? WC3 didn’t even hide it from you. Before you enter the actual game, you can just look at your opponent’s name on the loading screen for one second and you will know if you actually stand a chance. A level 7 player versus a level 28 player isn’t exactly a fair matchup. Quake Live is like that where you can play a couple of games and depending on how you play, you’ll be placed in the appropriate tiers that matches your playstyle. You have a choice of servers and depending on what type of people are playing in there, the server will automatically adjust the server tier. Unfortunately, every server has at least one or two people with 10 years of Quake 3 experience under their belt and the rest will just be above average. It took me a good 5 or so games for me to adjust but it’s still frustrating. And that’s just Free for All mode. Team Deathmatch is even worse with one side always dominating the other side. And you can forget about dueling mode unless you’re really really good. Dueling is pretty much an exclusive mode reserved for only the toughest elitist and if you go in unprepared, don’t be surprised if you end the match with negative frags.
Despite the matchmaking system, Quake 3 Arena was a very solid game when it came out over ten years ago and remains that way today. I remember when I was still in high school, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament came out at the same time. There was a lot of debate on which game was better. Being the Quake fanboy that I am, I really wanted to believe that Quake 3 was better than Unreal Tournament but UT just had a lot more variety and fun weapons. Believe me, it was very hard to ignore. On the surface, Unreal Tournament seemed like it was the better game. UT had more interesting weapons and each of them had an alternate fire. Q3A only had generic FPS weapons with no alternate fire. UT had more modes to play with like CTF, Assault, Domination, Last Man Standing, Team Deathmatch. Q3A only had Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and a CTF with only 4 maps to play on. The graphics looked slightly better on UT than Q3A. The only thing Q3A had going for it was that it had more variety in its models. It’s pretty obvious which game was better and every gaming website except Gamespy agreed that UT was the better game. Ten years later, nobody is playing UT anymore but Q3A still has a very active competitive scene. Like I said, on the surface, UT is the better game but when you finally go deep into it, Q3A wins no contest. It’s the same reason why people still play Starcraft and stopped playing Dawn of War. Like it or not, Starcraft is a much much better game than the Dawn of War series will ever aspire to be. I love Dawn of War but it will never be able to stand the test of time like Starcraft does. It’s because the design of the game focused on balancing these two points: Depth and Balance.
I’m not going to go into depth and balance since you can read up a better explanation than what I would have given on David Sirlin’s blog. Now, I’m not saying UT isn’t deep enough. I’m just saying that Q3A did it better. The weapons in UT were really great but what made Q3A’s weapons better was that they were all pretty well balanced. As long as you’re in the right position and have the skills to use them, there is always a chance for you to take down your opponent with any weapon other than the gauntlet. Even better, being able to juggle and use each weapons at the right time in the right situation will allow you to dominate. In UT, it felt like there was always that one weapon that slightly beats out every other weapon. Kind of like a tier list people put up for fighters. There’s nothing wrong with this in my opinion since it’s pretty normal for first person shooters to do this but like I said, Q3A did it better. The design and layouts of the maps in Q3A were a lot better than the ones you’ll find in UT. I can count a large amount of memorable maps that I had fun playing on in Q3A while I can only name one map from UT that stands out to me (Morpheus). Also, it probably didn’t help that UT was running off of an improved Unreal engine, which meant that a lot of people with nVidia cards would need a special patch in order to run it (Glide heh).
Of course, if you have a stupid enough and large enough fanbase, I suppose it really doesn’t matter if the game is terrible (i.e. Super Smash Brother series). I don’t think I’ll even bother commenting on that. That’s pretty much about it. By the way, it took me a couple of weeks to write this article up and I think because of that, I’m pretty much done with writing articles that contain more than 800 words. My articles tend to fall apart the more words I type anyways. It’s sort of like playing Jenga except replace the blocks with words.
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Street Fighter IV: Streets Don’t Make Good Fighters
First thing’s first: I was really hoping combos wouldn’t lean so heavily on links. Links are when you chain two moves together, giving the opponent no chance to block. The timing on links opposed to normal moves (usually jab -> something) is the stuff of nightmares. The window is usually less than a dozen frames, a frame being 1/60th of a second. Hit it too late, and your opponent can block it. Too early and nothing happens; that’s when you get a flaming bone sandwich shoved into your skull. I like to stand my Street Fighter 4 box next to my TV and, whenever this happens, give it a big fuckin’ thumbs up. YOU’RE THE MAN CAPCOM, YOU ARE THE MAN.
(That was a very clever reference to the Samuel L. Jackson/Eugene Levy comedy. I am basking in your silent applause)
As for the online…well, the netcode is fantastic. That’s really the most important part, and they nailed it. Of course, they took that excellent netcode and encased it in a capsule of shit, but you can’t win ’em all. No multi-person lobby? Matchmaking searches which take forever? No recordable video? I know these problems will supposedly be addressed by a patch in March, but goddamn, Dead or Alive 4 had this features at launch. Over three years ago.
As far as character balance goes…I can’t really say. Sure people have been playing the arcade for months (and the newly updated arcade version for a little while too), but the console-specific characters? Total mystery. Well, I suppose they’re not a total mystery, since so many people have come forward to inform us that yes, these console characters are actually quite lame. You know what, I shouldn’t make terrible generalizations like that. Some are decent, some are worse. You know, I often hear that Capcom games are well-balanced. That’s a rant for another time; all I’ll say is I wish I was attracted to tall muscular cycloptic Thais so I could have spent the last fifteen years laughing instead of crying and having boiling coffee poured into my eyes.
And then there’s everything else. SF4 has a ton of bonus shit. Time Trial, Survival and a move/combo execution mode, all yielding more character colors, titles, icons, and gallery artwork. The graphics are great; everyone knows this. The animation is as slick as the grease build up on my face which glistens with the reflected glow of my television in the darkness as I destroy scrubs online. “Fall on your knees, salvation has fled; your doom is approaching. Its name is Dan.” That’s a line from a song I’m writing, about Street Fighter 4, but you can use it if you give me credit. I sing it over Live all the time anyway.
So far yes I like SF4, I’m just not sure if I’ll be able to stick with it and gain any real proficiency. Linking sucks and the more elaborate combos seem like more work than I’m willing to put into a game I don’t flat-out love. I truly believe Capcom’s goal was to make the game really easy to pick up for any moron, but make serious play insanely difficult. For no real reason. I don’t like when something is overcomplicated just for the sake of it. In fact, you could say it is one of my least favorite occurrences. At least I got the anime movie that came with the game. Man I love anime, I’m gonna watch some right now.
SOME ANIME
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Street Fighter IV: The Not so New Generation
There’s this new game that came out a week ago. It’s been getting some pretty good reviews. Like 10 out of 10 good. With all the hype surrounding the game, I bought it and played for about two to three hours each day since release. So, is it a 10 out of 10? Not really. 10 out of 10 would imply that there’s nothing wrong with the game or at least nothing major that would leave a sour experience with certain key areas. Anyways, let me break it down:
Visual Effects/Design:
I really like the graphics. The animation is smooth and flawless. The facial expressions of each of the characters are hilariously exaggerated. The stages are very vivid and eventful. The art style is refreshing and, for lack of a better term, stylish. Unfortunately, while Capcom was too busy trying to get everything I just mentioned above right, they forgot to don their creativity and originality hat while designing the characters themselves. El Fuerte? It’s like they kidnapped El Blaze from Virtual Fighter 5, put him in a sauna for 72 hours and hypnotized him so he’s convinced that he’s El Fuerte, the wacky cook. Hey, you know who else was a wacky cook? That’s right, Chef Brian! Bet you didn’t see that one coming did you? I don’t think I need to get into Rufus much. Honestly, I would be fine if he was just a joke character, despite the fact that the only joke character Street Fighter 4 needs is Dan (well, two if you count Vega ho ho ho), but he’s not a joke character. He’s a fast moving motherfucker who apparently is worthy of fighting alongside top tier characters such as Bison and Balrog. That is fucking depressing is all I have to say.
So, moving right along, next up, we have Crimson Viper. I hate to sound like a giant homo but I love picking the female characters most of the time. I’m not going to write a huge article on why I like picking female characters and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does so. I’ll just say that I pick them because they’re either hot or cute. C. Viper is neither of these. Of course, that’s only 35% of the reason why I don’t play as her; the other 65% is her character mechanics and playstyle. That’s all I have to say about her. Abel on the other hand is alright. Alright if you ignore the fact that he’s French and generic. The only reason why he gets off easy is because he’s my main right now and I don’t want to feel depressed every time I play as him. Then there’s the rest of the cast. They’re all characters that have appeared in the past Street Fighter games and really, what’s there to say? Nothing has really changed my opinions on the standard Street Fighter cast. There are certain character that I do like (e.g. Guile, Zangief, Bison, Chun-Li) and then there’s are certain characters that I don’t like (e.g. Dhalism, Honda, Akuma, Vega). Of course, I can’t play any of the characters that I like because I really hate charge characters. Now, it may seem rather noobish not play a perfectly good character just because that character design doesn’t suit my taste but let me just say this: if I’m going to practice hours and hours to get good at a game, what’s even the point if I really hate playing as that character? It’s like driving a super fast car on the race track except the car is made out of cardboard boxes and the word “faggot” is spray painted on both sides of the vehicle. Sure, you may win some races but at what cost?
Audio:
There’s nothing really noteworthy to say about the audio track. A hadoken sounds like a hadoken and a shoryuken sounds like a shoryuken. The soundtrack is pretty much the standard music we hear in most fighters. It gets the job done and doesn’t distract from the actual gameplay. If I have to compare it to other fighters, I would put it right above Soul Calibur 4’s soundtrack but below 3rd Strike.
Single Player Mode:
The single player mode is pretty mediocre. The AI can either be an extreme pussy or an absolutely unfair asshole. I expected this though since most, if not all, fighters uses the same god damn single player setup. Come on guys, can you at least put in some damn effort? For the uninformed, the setup usually starts out with your first fight all the way to your second to last fight (where you fight your rival/destined encounter) being incredibly easy. When you get to your rival, the difficulty usually varies between fighting games. Sometimes the difficulty doesn’t change at all and you fight your rival like normal (e.g. Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 4, etc). And sometimes, the difficulty shoots straight up through the ceiling and if you’re using the Xbox 360 or Dreamcast controller, then you’re all kinds of fucked up (e.g. Guilty Gear X, KoF series, etc). Now we’re on the final boss. His difficulty is usually pretty high because he is, after all, the final boss. I understand the boss fights have to be more challenging but seriously, this is a fighting game. Isn’t giving him an arsenal of cheapass moves too much? Couldn’t you just raise the difficulty bar by 2 points or something and just be done with it? Not only does it require little effort but now you have another character that you can actually use in a versus match without feeling guilty. How can you argue against that? But nope, gotta give these bosses instant teleports, life regeneration/resurrection (fuck you, Gill), instant and safe projectiles, unblockable attacks that cover the entire screen, etc. So, yeah, that’s pretty much Street Fighter 4’s single player mode in a nutshell. As for the actual story and cut scenes, it’s at least better than Soul Calibur 4. I know that doesn’t say much since Soul Calibur 4’s single player mode is god awful but oh well. Also, you have to unlock characters in single player mode, which is bullshit but not surprising since we all saw it coming.
Multiplayer Mode
Other than character designs, everything else that I’ve said about the game just now is pretty insignificant when compared to the most important aspect of the game, the multiplayer mode. Fighting games generally aren’t very good when you play them alone. But I’ve been buying them for years despite the fact that there was practically zero competition for me to play against, which doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I just loved the potential fun each fighting games held and hoped that one day, I’ll find somebody competent to play against. Fortunately, I’m now living in a era of fast online games and good local competition. So, after playing the game for about a week with friends online and offline, is the game good enough to redeem its failing qualities in character designs and single player play? The answer is a resounding yes. Now, the multiplayer is far from perfect. The lobby and match making system is complete and utter trash. Come on Capcom, how is it possible for a game like Dead or Alive 4, which was released within a month of the 360 launch, has a better lobby and match making system then Street Fighter 4? Hell, Soul Calibur 4 has a better lobby system even though the game is lagged to all hell online. I mean, I know Street Fighter 4 will be getting a “Championship” downloadable pack which will address all these issues but still. For the uninformed, Street Fighter 4 can only put you and one other person in a lobby at a time. So, you can’t invite your other bros and homies to spectate and queue up for the next battle. Despite all this, there’s one thing Capcom got right in multiplayer and that’s the latency. Moves come out as if you’re fighting the person offline. Although there may be some occasional hiccups and slowdowns, it doesn’t happen nearly enough for it to affect the outcome of the game much. And if it does happens, it’s only there for 2 seconds or so.
Gameplay
Okay, so we got the multiplayer component down but what about the actual gameplay/combat mechanics? Obviously, Street Fighter 4 needs more than great netcode in order to considered “good”. For those who are new to the fighting genre, the game is very easy to get into. There are three ways to punch and three ways to kick. You can also throw by pushing both jab and short, focus attack by pushing both straight and forward, and taunt by pushing both fierce and roundhouse. And then there are special moves (which is usually limited to 4-6 per character), super moves, and ultra moves. Now, remember when I said that this game was easy to get into? Well, by easy, I really meant that anybody can just pick up a controller and start duking it out with their friends in less than a minute. I didn’t say that this game was easy to play because deep down, this game is highly complex. Some may even argue that the game is way to complicated for its own good. I can understand why to some extent, too. Like for instance, making ultras take three punches/kicks is a very poor design decision in my opinion. A friend of mine was complaining how the focus attack system is a good mechanic but falls short of greatness due to how awkward it is to focus attack dash cancel out of special moves into another combo. Minor griping aside, this is a fantastic competitive game to play against live opponents. Every battle, you learn something new and gradually become better. And as you get better, the matches become more intense which in turn makes the game better. It’s a little hard to explain what is it that makes this game good to most newcomers but if you have ever tried playing a fighting game seriously against other like-minded folks who wants to win at all costs, then I’m sure it’ll be easy to understand. Having six different types of normal attacks instead of the usual four buttons other fighting games utilize definitely opens up a wider variety of tactics you can use to defeat your opponents. And then there’s focus attacks, which I covered a little bit of. A move that can be utilized both offensively and defensively, it can absorb one hit and one hit only. Depending on the level of focus attack you used and what your opponent used, if you release the focus attack, it can send your opponent into a crumple state. You can then use this opportunity to unleash a punishing combo/ultra as long as you correctly time your moves. Not only that, but you can dash cancel out of a move that would have been otherwise unsafe if the move had been blocked. Not surprisingly, this opens up a giant floodgate on the types of mind games you can play with your opponent.
What attacks are can be canceled into a special move? What’s a good move you can use to jump in and get close to your opponent? What’s a good ground anti-air move that you can use to punish an opponent foolishly jumping in without warning? What EX moves can you use that has armor properties and when is it a good idea to use them? These were all questions that was going through my head as I played online. Now, when I played online, I usually only played with Bob since playing with my other friend, who is a beast when it comes to Capcom fighters, would only be suicide. Still, my win:lose ratio was about 1:9 when I first started but by the end of the week, it started looking more like 2:3. Bob started out by spamming dragon punch whenever possible, whether it was halfway across or on wake up, and by the end of the week, it was probably one of the moves he used the least unless he was sure that he’d be able to hit me with it or he was trying to play mind games. There was one game where we both were at 10% health on the final round. One mistake would cost us the game and for the next ten seconds in the round, we both did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m sure Bob was waiting for me roll so that he can throw me out of it and I was waiting for Bob to jump in so that I can tornado throw him as soon as he landed. Or if he threw in a fireball, I could just jump in over it and land a kick on him. So, we just stood there, staring at each other. Finally, I got impatient and jumped towards him in order to land the final kick on him. He blocked and I ate his dragon punch shortly after and lost the match. I lost the battle but I was having fun. And really, if you’re having fun, who cares about everything else (excluding character designs god damn it Capcom).
Verdict
I didn’t expect this “first impression” to be so long but hey, it happens. If you managed to read the entire article, then you already know what I think of the game. If you’ve just skipped the entire article and you’re only reading this section, then let me bottom line it for you. The game probably has some of the worst character designs since Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter: The Movie, and the single player mode is nothing worth writing home about. But if you can get past the lackluster multiplayer lobby and matchmaking system, then you’ll find a game with a lot of depth and replay value. If you don’t like fighters, then this game will not change your mind. If you do like fighters but will only play a fighter “casually” (and I use the term loosely as it’s very possible to play a game seriously and still be casual like me) and will only play by whatever fucked up rules you have, then go back to Super Smash Brothers Brawl and stay there. If you’re like me, then this game is for you and it’ll keep you hooked until the next big fighting game comes out. With all that in mind, I give this game my stamp of approval.
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Street Fighter IV Released This Week
Actually it was released two weeks ago. But PUPPYRUSH.NET is releasing our Street Fighter IV First Impressions this week, which is probably even better. After two weeks a lot of people would figure they’ve played enough, and write a whole review, replete with actual number demonstrating game quality. We here at PUPPYRUSH.NET are serious casual fighting fans though, and wouldn’t presume to pass total judgement on a game until we got some extensive quality time with it. One impression will be posted a day in order to best extend the pleasure. All three at once would possibly (definitely) be way too awesome for the human brain to safely consider.