Super Street Fighter 4 — Great Value Package, Poor Game Design

Despite the title of this article, it really isn’t any indication that we dislike Super Street Fighter 4 and that it isn’t worth your money — in fact it is a great steal at 39 bucks (cheaper if you get the PS3 version from Amazon and stop paying those suckers for monthly fees at Microsoft… the PS3 version actually has better load times this time around), kudos to Capcom who actually has a heart to not release this great update to the mediocre fighter at full price — I probably wouldn’t buy it at full retail price, but I would be tempted to, and that’s saying something. With the lack of other quality 2D fighters in this age of decline, even being a hardcore SNK fan I have to admit that KOF XII sucked balls big ass time (excuse my language), if you aren’t a Guilty Gear player you would have little choices other than SF4. Every problem I had with SF4, as stated in this article written last year, persists, and perhaps even more so, by a 10 fold.

The biggest problem with SF4 was unbalance, and that problem is magnified 10 fold in SSF4, by the introduction of the plethora of the new challengers, who are of course mostly old timers like from 3rd Strike, SSF2 turbo, or the alpha series, but just not as ancient as those characters from classic SF2. The problem with the SF2 characters are their godly priority and how effective their simple move-sets are. Sure back in the SF2 days the game felt somewhat balanced in a limited sense because 2D fighting was still at its infancy, and we have not invented the word Balance. Now the genre has evolved — but the simplicity of SF4 is that throwing fireballs and dragon punches blindly is ultimately effective; the blanka’s roll and Vega’s flight in the air takes down almost everything else; and the range of Zangieff’s grab and how it comes out even after he misses something; that simply pushing 3 punch buttons together makes him a anti-air god; and how Cammy recovers from her uppercut is sick…the list doesn’t stop here — we have been playing these characters 2 decades ago and they haven’t changed; everyone knows how to play them; they are godly and they shouldn’t be, for they are not interesting at all. What makes SSF4 fun are really the new challengers — Abel, Jury, Harkan, Guy, Cody, Makato, Ibuki,  and Dudley — they are the cast that makes SSF4 infinitely more fun than its predecessor — but the problem is that we don’t think there’s any QA engineer at Capcom who has ever heard of balancing the game. I don’t know how a tournament-level match would play out for an expert Akuma (if one even exists) fighting against an expert Guy — but if you were a competent Guy player who are actively playing Rank matches, you would be having a hard time with scrubs who uses the SF2 characters and spam the same moves over and over again. In fact, the game definitely constantly pushes your button and challenges your patience to not throw your controller at your expensive TV.

The 2nd problem with this game is that the Ultra system is simply badly designed. It rewards Turtling for you could gain 2 ultras even within a round without doing anything but getting hit. Of course this sometimes play in your favor — like for an example, I once beat a Blanka with my Abel with nothing but two of his awesome moving grapple ultras. Sure the Blanka was a scrub/jerk/moron  but it didn’t make me feel any better about winning either. Sometimes the game gives you the illusion of balancing out its unbalanced system, by throwing out a badly designed system at the first hoping to masquerade its problem — it is like throwing 2 bad things together, praying to God that they will somehow magically cancel each other out (the sick thing is that this sometimes actually happen — and people decide to go to Church).

And the last, but probably not least, of my complain is — why do we have to pick ultras at all? Did designers at Capcom forget to grow their brains when they couldn’t figure out that we want to have both ultras available to us, so we can use one over the other at any appropriate situation? At least that is what I thought my brain is for — choices — and the legions of morons who play SF do not need to use their brain to pick; they can still stick with their trusted most efficient ultra move. Why didn’t anyone think of this at the design round table session they have in Capcom headquarters? It isn’t rocket science.

The problem with SSF4 and all those who review it, is that they are either dishonest journalists or people who aren’t qualified to review fighting game. Sure it is a very good package for the price — but did everyone else forget or not care to criticize things that make such a popular series having such a wide spectrum of design decision that simply reeks of retardedness (we invented this word for retardation)? Oh and why the heck did they take out the theater mode so now not only can you not repeatedly view the really cheesy Anime endings without beating the characters again or resorting to Youtube, nor can you tell which character you have actually finished in the arcade mode (nor should you care unless you are a Trophy/Achievement whore). SSF4 is fun, and its a good package, and it shouldn’t be missed by any fans of the genre — who should not neglect to voice their complains regardless — in a world when choices are limited, they should not be victims to the whim of the money-sucking corporations that pump out crap without addressing the issues of their products — Capcom should look at what Namco did with their Tekken series successfully pleasing their fans and newcomers alike, and what SNK tries to do with KOF and fails miserably; and wonder what lesson can be learned and why they should bother? Perhaps if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — but that kind of attitude is the antithesis of progress and probably the sole reason of the genre’s downfall. And why does Capcom have to design-retarded looking characters who vaguely resemble human beings?

Note: the gameplay of SSF4 can be summed up in 1 line: Trading blows with your opponent regardless of skill until you gain your Ultra move, that which you use and trade for hit points you have lost, hopefully which will kill your opponent so he doesn’t have a chance to use his.

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