Street Fighter IV is a collection of old fetishes, polished till they give off a twenty-four carat shine. It's fanservice; cheap and manipulative. The game is weighed down by nostalgia, stuck in the swamp of yesterday. They say when dynasties become preoccupied with the past, their cultures shackled by sentimentality, that it signals the end of the empire. If this is so, then Street Fighter IV may be an epitaph for fighting games, as the game's roster and its mechanics are chiseled into the stone of the genre with decade-old tools.Campbell has it. I've been trying to put my finger on this game since I got it last week. Everything about it is both refreshingly and disappointingly familiar, despite all the significant changes to the game play. I boot it up with heavy heart, grateful for it's existence, mournful for the fact that it may indeed signify the "End".
But my god, what a set a knives.
What a clamor this game makes. What an attempt. If Casual Gaming is closing in like the dirty walls of a trash compactor, then at least Street Fighter IV gave us one last fight before the compression crushed us all. Before we all were forced to play games by shaking a Wiimote or balancing on one leg. At least Street Fighter IV left some claw marks.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sentiments on Street Fighter IV
Heather Campbell of Play Magazine, writes:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hey man, thanks! I can't really tell you how I got to your website, but ... well, the more I play Street Fighter IV, the more I go back and forth on it. I love it, I hate it, I love it.
Glad you liked the review. Toodle-pip!
I Google myself on occasion as well.
Does the fact that SF4 is essentially SF2 HD Remix with updated graphics have any weight in this love hate relationship?
I don't feel that way at all, Dono. SSF2THD exists (in the series) right before the game took some serious risks: Alpha Countering, Custom Combos, really unusual characters, tiered supers, -ism's, EX moves and parrying. And that says nothing to the various art styles the game went through.
I think SF4 is a strong mix of SSF2THD and SF3:Third Strike, in that it blends the simplicity of the pre-1996 incarnations with re-visited (and refined) innovations of what came post-1996. The goal is to get people back into SF ten years after the last proper sequel, so even if I'm a little disappointed with it, I'm not gonna not play it. In fact, I'm gonna play the crap out of it.
Anyway, I got my fight pad recently and I'm ready to go online (to get my ass handed to me, probably). Hopefully Capcom gives up some killer DLC, soon. I want more characters at least, some game play refinements at best.
Post a Comment