Perhaps it was the nostalgia that got me, or maybe the hope that Capcom would address past issues and I might begin to enjoy fighting games again, or it could have been that I just didn't feel like waiting for Tekken 6 - no matter what the reason, I buckled under pressure and bought a copy of Street Fighter 4.

First, I'll say that the imagery and artwork are a large part of the strength to this game. It was a nice blend of 3D styling akin to Street Fighter Plus Alpha with the hand-drawn style of Street Fighter Alpha, but Street Street Fighter isn't the fist game to employ this style. Ubisoft deployed yet another Prince of Persia with the exact same setup as did Namco Bandai with Afro Samurai. Even before those, Monte Cristo published Silverfall, and despite the pitfalls of the game dynamics, the imagery wasn't dissimilar. Be that as it may, Street Fighter does look pretty good all things considered.

Beyond that however, Street Fighter fell short of my expectations.

I'll skip over the disjointed storyline momentarily and jump into game dynamics. For those of you looking for a game to tide you over until Tekken 6 hits the shelf, you've got a (in my opinion) 50-50 chance at being in heaven or hell with this. The way the characters move are definitely more fluid than the previous titles and spin-off games within the Street Fighter franchise, but the fluidity is offset by the necessity to have an ultra-fast button press sequence. If you've ever played Rock Band and notices that you have to strum or hit the drums close to a full second before the color hash hits the bar, then you'll run into the same issue here with timing the combos and button presses. Unlike Rock Band, you can't recalibrate your controller to adjust for your TV. So while some of you might have no timing issues, there appears to be either an issue in the game or in my TV and given that no other game gives me such a timing issue I'm leaning towards the belief that it is th game.

As an example, Street Fighter has a challenge mode in which players can unlock costume colors and various character taunts. Also in this mode, players can unlock new 'titles' and 'icons' which are used to give self applied labels and images during a network battle, much like a forum 'sig' and 'avatar' and is apart from the PlayStation Network Avatar and profile comment. In the challenge mode the player must complete a series of moves given by the computer serving to 'teach' the player the character moves with each level becoming more complex. It isn't so much the complexity of the moves as it is timing the combos perfectly. This wouldn't be so annoying and such a pitfall had there been some reinforcement of the moves implemented to the game. As it is, if you are asked to perform a move once, then apparently you 'know the move' well enough to be asked to repeat it intertwined with 2 other unrelated moves at a speed that sets the player up to be finished with the button sequences two moves ahead of the visual representation of them.

Another really big fault in this game is the loading. Not so much the load times becuase those of us with a PS3 have become accustomed to some pretty severe load times, but if you lose a fight series and have to continue the game takes the player back to the player selection screen. From there the entire level must reload, and if you choose a different character this makes SOME sense, but not when you choose the same character. Older iterations of Street Fighter would sometimes bring up a quick select bar from which a player would choose the icon of what player they wanted and there would be no need to reload the entire level. Perhaps Capcom chose their approach because of the dialog between fighters before and after matches, but I would think that the game play and interface would be more smooth were the set-up without having going back and forth through menus needlessly. If a player chooses to have single round 30 second matches, it takes longer to reload the level and character data than it does to both pick a fighter and fight. The solution Capcom found to be acceptable is "don't lose". While that is a pretty keen concept for this style of game, losses happen and new gamers or gamers unfamiliar with fighting genre will undoubtedly lose.

Finally, and this takes me back to the timeless gripe about 12 year old kids in the coin-op arcade waiting with baited quarters while watching the 'big kids' play the game to the last boss so that they could drop in their 50 cents, kick your ass with a series of 'bitch' moves and then destroy the final boss in the same fashion - all to claim ' they beat the game'. Capcom decided to bring that fun and excitement to the console by implementing network battles. On its face a network battle isn't a bad idea. Getting kicked around by more 12 year olds who have nothing better to do than get good at Street Fighter isn't my bag, but if the whole online experience is what you're going for, then go at it. Where this idea falls kind of short is in how it was implemented. Kudos to the fact we can choose to allow other players to directly challenge us while in the middle of a single player arcade - if you don't like it, turn that feature off (but you have to do it at the main menu), but I raise my middle finger high to the fact that when "A New Challenger Enters The Ring" comes up players are not given the option to opt out of the match and continue their single player game. Instead they are thrown into the character selection screen to choose a character. It completely ruins the groove and lets other players force me to play them or at the very least force me to stop my game to back out after character selection. To make things a little worse, when this has happened to me, there have been times when either my challenger drops out due to poor connection or they simply change their minds. Thanks, for wasting my time.

Street Fighter has always had some kind of story. Some titles have more of a story than others but Street Fighter 4 can be a bit obscure to most players when it comes to the story. Capcom has in every title introduced a few new characters only to have them disappear in the following. Some characters have stuck around like Dan, Rose, Sakura and Cammy; while other characters sort of fell off, like DeeJay, Bruce, Adon, and T.Hawk. So, why then make a huge deal about "new characters" when their storyline runs a good chance of being cut short or totally irrelevant later on. In order for players to understand the story behind Street Fighter 4 they will have had to read the comics, watch the animated series and movies or paid close attention to the developing stories and side stores of each character in previous titles. Okay, well they could also wikipedia the game and read SOME of it, but they'd still ahve to page chase their answers for a few hours. With that, the story becomes a 'feature' more than a function - and I ask again, why have it at all?

Yes, some of us will want the story - I want the story, but I've also kept up with the story. The problem here that I'm having with the SF4 storyline is that the characters have relevant story points at the start, when they fight their rival and at the end when they defeat "Seth". Aside from that the pre and post fight dialog is filler text - it might as well read "Lorem Ipsum" because it adds nothing to the plot points between characters who are not rivals. The exception to this is Rufus, who accuses everyone of being Ken Masters.

Overall the game is highly frustrating because there is no bell curve that favors the player. It's nice to see that a developer finally set a game up to where nothing was outright given - especially in a fighting genre, but at the same time Capcom also built the characters to exploit some of the more 'bitch' things in the game. I refer back to the single 30 second round set-up. Players will after a few fights run into a situation where if they block the opponent immediately throws them or does an unblockable 'focus attack' and stunning the player for a few seconds thus making it very easy for the computer opponent to unleash EX and Ultimate attacks without being blocked. If the player attacks, the computer opponent 'miraculously' evades and counters instantly and then goes apeshit on you. During fights where there are more than one round and the time is more than 30 seconds, then the computer tiers its skill level. the first fight is usually handed to you with no contest. the second fight is on par with the players ability, and the third (if it comes to that) is hell in a handbag. The latter is especially ture for the two new characters "El Fuerte" and "Rufus" who, like Eddie and Law from Tekken, are a "button masher" dream. They're fast, have combos as long as they are powerful and hit numerous times in a very short timespan.

Maybe I suck at fighting games, or maybe I just suck at Street Fighter 4, but no matter what it is, the faults of this game are glaring and its a game to rent before you buy. If you like it, great. if you don't you've saved about $55. On a side note, it has been said that the SF4 arcade fight pad will in fact work on Tekken 6. Why it wouldn't I'm not sure, the coin-op games had the same button layout - stupid. Than again, I am the guy who bought Steel Battalion... twice.