Ultra Street Fighter IV Review - Respect Your Elders

I wasn’t playing Street Fighter in the 80s and 90s, but if I had, the Street Fighter IV saga would make me feel like a proud parent. Since 2009 Capcom has propelled the series back to not just relevance but reverence, and in a rare move for the company (especially when you consider the sad state of Mega Man), has garnered an abundance of fan support and community approval. The game has earned itself a sizable and dependable EVO following in the years since its release, and much like fighting genre cohort and relative newcomer Dead or Alive (which went from 2005 to 2012 without a new major version), Street Fighter IV has opted to slowly but steadily tweak, refine, and improve. Ultra Street Fighter IV is no exception, and it is quite possible that with this release, SFIV has reached its final form. It won’t change your mind if you don’t enjoy the game already, but if you do, it’s difficult to fathom something more balanced and well thought out.

The most obvious addition for both hardcore and casual players are the five new fighters joining the fray. Well, they’re almost new; each SFIV newcomer appeared in Capcom’s Street Fighter X Tekken back in 2012. Still, that title plays a whole lot differently than Street Fighter, and you can rest assured that Rolento, Hugo, Poison, and Elena have all been slowed and tempered to match Street Fighter IV’s house style. That’s a relief, but little else is different — fighter models and on-paper movesets remain strikingly similar to what appeared in SFXT.

The exception is Decapre, an entirely new fighter, though even she retains a familiar appearance thanks to her status as a genetic clone of Cammy. Luckily, looks are all that has been carbon-copied. Decapre offers a fighting style that is entirely unique, and is one of few Street Fighter characters to fuse a charge moveset with respectable rushdown capability. She’s an undeniably interesting hybrid, and is just the sort of thing you’d expect to surface once a fighter has reached Street Fighter IV’s advanced age and maturity.

Outside of new fighters, Capcom has made substantial balancing tweaks to SFIV’s engine, and from here on out your mileage is going to vary massively depending on how meticulous a street fighter you actually are. Various moves and attacks have been subtly adjusted in the name of fairness, be it boosting a particular punch or kick’s power by a near-imperceptible amount, adding or removing frames to attacks to adjust their timing, or even revising the pace at which a player can stand up from a devastating body blow or ultra attack to the jaw. The delayed wake-up is no joke either; used correctly, it should save you from aggravating death spirals executed by highly skilled players, or as I like to call them, bullies.

There’s a middle ground to the game’s tweaks, and it comes in the form of double ultra combos and red focus. With the former, a fighter can choose to bring two ultras to battle, at the cost of losing a bit of each’s power. Still, the tradeoff is well worth it, as the added variation can completely transform your strategy if you have one. It forces the opponent to consider possibilities that were simply not possible previously, and if used the right way, can completely change the outlook of a match.

Red focus, on the other hand, drastically alters your defense game, letting you absorb attacks for longer and even cancel moves that were extremely tough to handle with a mere standard focus attack. Advanced players will have their pros and cons of both red focus and double ultras, and I’m sure the drawbacks are valid in certain scenarios, but as a relatively casual SFIV player, I’ll be taking full advantage for the foreseeable future.

The remaining changes are fun little flourishes that will delight some and be inconsequential for others. Online training rooms are now a thing, which means you can hop on the web and practice, coach a friend, or simply goof off with the folks you regularly game with. Save states have been added so you can revisit tough scenarios to practice them, and a 3-on-3 team battle mode has been tossed in for good and highly-hectic measure. There’s also “network simulation,” which lets you practice with phony online lag so you can pummel those jerks with terrible internet, but much like Dead or Alive 5’s similar implementation, the feature feels gimmicky at best. I’d rather rage-quit on those DSL fools anyway.

Ultra Street Fighter IV clearly puts evolution over reinvention, but that’s far from a negative. Outside of a still-lackluster Trials mode (Capcom says updates to include newer characters are coming soon), the five year old fighter has been refined to a degree that is equal parts subtle and delightful. This year’s edition does little to blow minds, but as a definitive collection that includes all previous DLC and half a decade’s worth of balancing and tweaks, I’d say merely appeasing minds is enough.