In Your Face Bitches: Super Street Fighter IV

This is fucking bullshit. This was my first thought to the announcement of Super Street Fighter IV. All I could think was that Capcom was getting the breast pumps out to start milking there consumers even more in a money stricken economy. I know why they would do it, because who doesn’t like money, but as a consumer you can’t help but feel like you are getting raped in the process. Then I began to think why it wouldn’t just get released as a game add-on or expansion pack made available through DLC. So many questions came about without any answers. Then the next day came the official announcement and the releasing of some of the details of the new game. From that my demeanor started to turn from anger to anticipation.

One thing that made the official announcement of SSFIV even better was the statement made about the price. It has been said that we are not going to see a “new release” price tag on SSFIV but it will be listed at an upgrade price. Thank god because all I kept trying to figure out was, how do I explain to my wife, who hates video games by the way, that I am spending $60 on a game that I technically already have. Trust me it would be a tough sell, and with having 2 kids I don’t always have $60 at my disposal. What I would like to see is what was done with the expansion packs for Rockstar’s GTAIV. The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony were both released with a $20 price tag. To me that was a great move on their part because it allowed them to generate even more revenue off of the same game without making people second guess whether or not they should buy it. Unfortunately I do not see that happening with SSFIV, because they are not simply creating an expansion or another game based on the same workings as the original, but they are adding and changing things to hopefully make SFIV an even better game.

So how do you make a game even better? One way to start is by adding new characters. Who doesn’t fucking like new characters? It has been said that there will be up to 8 new characters added to SSFIV but the rumor mill on the internet is saying that there may be up to 10. As far as new characters announced go, they have officially announced 3, and 2 of them aren’t even new, new characters. So far there is T. Hawk and Deejay. Hooray for that considering I never even played as them before. T. Hawk to me just looks like another Zangief. Slow, huge, and strong. The videos of Deejay that I have seen look pretty awesome. He looks like he has some nice special moves along with the ability to link in some nice combos. Then there is the new, new character Juri. I haven’t seen much video showing some real game play but what I have seen is her ultra combo, and it looked fucking awesome. But I could have been blinded because her opponent was M. Bison, I love seeing M. Bison get his ass handed to him. Fuck that stupid head stomp move. Anyhow I hope to see some new characters and some old favorites added to the already large list of fighters. But who am I kidding. I know that even if there were 100 characters I would still pick Ryu every time. What can I say; he is fucking awesome and easily the best Street Fighter character of all time.

Other features and game tweaks are also expected to help change the overall appearance and feel of Street Fighter. We are going to see a balancing and reworking of every original character in Street Fighter IV. This too is awesome. Why, because I am sick and fucking tired of all those douche bags who play with Sagat and think they did something amazing when they win a match. I am sick of getting a standing strong kick to the head and half of my life being taken away. That one is for you Tats008. There is also going to be some other added features like bonus stages, new background stages updated online play, and new intros for all characters. On a final note I have also read that there is talk about how the video replay might get changed also. That was a huge letdown when they released the Championship Mode update for SF4. I was pissed when I found out they only let the top 5,000 ranked players upload videos, which basically meant almost everyone lost that option after a couple of days.

So why wouldn’t you want to buy this. It looks fucking amazing. New characters, game tweaks, video uploads, all at the low price of hopefully $30. But wait there is still one more thing, GAME LOBBIES. Now we can take the nostalgia that we all had when we were kids playing Street Fighter 2’: Champion Edition on our Sega Genesis’s with all of our friends, and now do the same from our own homes. Winner stays and loser goes, bitches.

Brian R.