Some Positives About Street Fighter 4
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 3:05AM Yeah there's a lot of problems in SF4, but there are some good things too.
I don't know how effective Gouken is, but his design is interesting. No dragon punch, but a super and ultra dragon punch. A high counter and low counter that act somewhat like a dragon punch, but worse because he has to guess high or low and it loses to the "breaking glass" moves, like Cammy's cannon spike. The ex counter doesn't require you to guess high or low though. I beat Cammy's ultra once with an ex counter, but got hit the second time I tried. Not sure what's up with that. Also, using the counter drains your life and slowly refills it, like using a focus attack. This is an advantage for the most part, because it means your ultra guage is even more full than usual. Because his ultra is guaranteed off a normal throw (and easy), it's basically a throw super...that doubles as the occasional dragon punch super if you really need it. Ironic that landing it is so easy that it's a better "throw super" than Zangief's, at least for me.
It's painful dealing with Zangief's bad-feeling jump, as if he is a flea of some sort, and not having his hop move. And not having his low fierce from Alpha 2 and 3. But his SPD is good, with jab having ridiculously long range (great!) but low damage. SPD startup time is 2 frames, which is bad for any other Street Fighter but buff in SF4 because other throws are so slow. Opponent trying link combos on you? Mash out a jab SPD and force them to have perfect timing. Lariat is also amazing, as it always is in just about every version of Street Fighter. I could be completely wrong about this, but Zangief seems strong against Rufus and Crimson Viper (see below), but against most characters, I feel like I only win when they make mistakes. I hear he is considered very strong, but I'm not sure how you'd beat a good Ryu or Sagat. There must be a million videos on that though.
My friend plays Crimson Viper, who seems like Crimson Eddie from Guilty Gear. Eddie can invite hell (the ground spike thing), frc (cancel), instant air dash slash. The effect is you get hit from below, then a split second later, hit from above. C.Viper can do the same thing with that ground punch thing that makes dust fly up from across the screen, cancelled into a super jump then into her air flame kick thing. If you do it right, this stuff hits very fast, indeed. She can also do a bunch of bullshit crossups with that air flame kick that beat out even dragon punches if she does it right (goes behind the dragon punch and hits it usually). Not to mention her slidey punch, short, slidey punch frame trap. If you do almost anything, you get hit by short into slidey punch. I think that's how it goes, I don't know exactly. I found that picking Zangief and doing lariat negates her entire bullshit crossup game, which is fine with me.
After the initial shock of how amazingly terrible Vega is, I kind of like him in a Dan sort of way. Winning with him seems like some kind of joke to humiliate the opponent. His roll is absurdly slow ("hey guys, I'm going to duck down and start rolling, what do you think of that?"). His wall dive is also an april fools joke, moving so slow and being so vulnerable as to as to inspire actual laughter from my opponents. A terrible flip kick and seemingly bad ultra round out his moves. That said, at least he has a decent slide, good pokes, and his good jump fierce and jump strong. On the one hand, it's sad to see him in this pathetic state, but on the other, I have to admit I had fun trying to scrape out wins with him against an onslaught of focus cancel combos and links and so forth. I don't even know a combo with Vega.
Bison's safe scissor kick seems dirty somehow. I'm always up for abusing a safe attack though so doing it all day is great. You do have to low jab, low jab, low jab, low short, scissor kick to play him though (or stick a low forward in there). I can do it somewhat ok. His slide is good, his scissor kick is good, his headstomp is pretty good. Too bad his psycho crusher is worse than even the greatly toned down version in Super Turbo. Also too bad that I can't seem to do his ultra without accidentally teleporting half the time. What's up with that? His ex scissor kick going through fireballs seems like overkill. It's not like fireballs are as powerful as in SF2 series, and he didn't need it there. His stand medium kick is a decent poke and his stand roundhouse is a great poke even though it's angled up (boo). Luckily, it has a totally wonky hitbox that allows hit to hit as if the graphics for it were straight out, instead of angled up.
I don't know what's up with Rose's links. Either I can't do them or her combos from Alpha 2 don't work anymore, I don't know. She seems ok. Her low strong is no longer the terror it used to be in Alpha 2, but her new semi-broken abuse is her Ultra. It slices, it dices, it makes toast. It hits jumping opponents, attacking opponents, throwing opponents, ultraing opponents. It's everything you could ever ask for in a move. Too bad I get qcf x 2 + PP instead of PPP half the time, which wastes my super meter and gets me killed because the super doesn't have a practically half screen hitbox like the Ultra. Remember kids, you always have an ultra in Street Fighter 4, so you might as well have one that hits anything on the screen, cleanly.
Some characters I'm pretty unhappy with, but at least some are fun. I really wish I could play a version without wonky jumps, way too floaty air recoveries, way too long knock downs, and the general "stuck in jello" feel that runs through the game. That would let the good parts shine more...
Reader Comments (102)
hey sirlin,
i stumbled upon your site while looking for info about sf iv, it's been a great read.
i agree with most of your criticisms/suggestions, but as you said, there is definitely "fun to be had".
my question is, it certainly seems (given your background/experience and credentials) that you might have the ability to voice your suggestions and have them heard. do you think there is any possibility of this happening?
i understand the gameplay is already on disc, so things like having the focus automatically cancel instead of hitting dash are pipe dreams, but how about the things related to the multiplayer? it seems like a lot of that would be tweakable... particularly the horrible match making scheme...
I'm surprised you didn't post more positives on Bison. He's got a good anti-air in standing roundhouse, a teleport that gets him out of random binds, EX Psycho Crusher as an okay wakeup, and a ridiculous EX Head Stomp. Or are you of the opinion that these are things that he shouldn't be having? (This is a question with a genuinely inquisitive tone.) Otherwise, I've had a lot of fun with him because he still has that dirty feel to him, but can defend himself even better, so it's like we have a well-rounded Dictator.
If you're teleporting randomly after Ultra, it might be because you don't have enough of a charge. This happened to me a lot when I tried to juggle after j.strongx2. I found that if I delayed just a split second longer, the Ultra comes out perfectly every time.
Response by Sirlin: definitely nothing to do with charge time. An earlier poster explained that it's because db, rolling to f means that if you hit any down commands the rest of the way, you have also entered a dragon punch command. As far as Bison overall, he's really effective at winning, if that's what you mean. Is he fun? As fun as linking jabs into low forward all the time can be, I guess. I'm better at him than most SF4 characters though.
I definitely would take issue with the "you can't make good jumping in 2.5d" comment. Keep in mind King of Fighters 2006/MI2. That felt relatively normal.
"You missed my point. You feel like the jumps are 'in jello', and you don't like that, fine, but not everyone feels the same. I think any fighting game fanatic's opinion on the subject is valid. . ."
The opinion of people who play the game or series in question should outweigh the opinion of people who play unrelated games in the genre. Floaty jumping in games hurts the mind-game aspect of jumping, because the more time you spend in the air, the more time your opponent has to pick an appropriate counter to a move you've committed yourself to.
This is one exorbitantly overrated game. It is shocking. Again, I am not saying it is horrible, but very overrated and reviewers should be ashamed of themselves.
''The opinion of people who play the game or series in question ''
Fighting game fanatic and street fighter fanatic are interchangeable in my world, but I suppose you couldn't have known that..
although I don't agree with all your criticisms, I feel that the development team of SFIV would really benefited from having you work with them.for example, I happen to like the two button press throw, but kara-throwing is an issue that shouldn't exist. the thing is, your criticisms are valid, and not just hate-mongering. your Ideas would really help fighting games be open to a larger audience.
for real, take a plane to japan, and smack Ono-san with these Ideas for street fighter 4 championship edition or something.
I kind of enjoy playing Vega too, from a just screwing around perspective. That roll really is shamefully slow, and the fact that they gave him a "throw off claw / mask" move just kind of speaks to the weird joke nature his character has taken on. "Hey, let me just throw this claw away! Now I'm even worse!"
Actually, I liked this post. You're trying to figure out the game and adapt to it. We're all doing the same thing, so it's nice to see the mighty Sirlin struggling with the same issues that us mere mortals have to deal with as well.
I'm maining Bison, so I took particular interest in this post. I agree that PC blows, but EX PC is quite nice, it even juggles after j mp x2. And the teleport was happening to me too, i was used to doing db, df, db, df K, from ST, but obviously with the shoryu shortcuts in SFIV that doesn't work anymore, but its easy enough to finish on f to make sure the ultra comes out everytime. I think EX scissors is only reasonable. If you read someone was going to hadoken from half screen you should be able to punish that. Ryu shouldn't be throwing random fireballs when Bison is sitting on charge. You don't like RH angled up? I found Bison's lack of a viable AA normal very frustrating in ST. I had to be perfect with spacing just to prevent blocked jump-ins from pushing Bison into the corner where he is garbage. With this RH, people can't assume "Bison can't punish a jump-in" and at least I can at worst trade on a jump in.
Random side notes. I like focus, but I haven't played GG, so I can't say I know what something similar feels like in comparision. Focus is very friendly with timing, though, so I don't think it requires much dexterity. I guess I'm not understanding the alternative you are talking about. Focus is overloaded depending on when the dash is done. Dash early to cancel focus, dash late to hit and dash up. Adding another command to perform a hit seem like extra overhead (focus cancel, hit, dash, combo) instead of the current (let focus hit, dash, combo).
Also don't let idiots stop you from opining, they are like cockroaches, they'll outlive us all.
Response by Sirlin: Good post, though I don't think you need to play Guilty Gear to imagine what I was saying there. Instead of attack, cancel, dash cancel, attack it would be attack, cancel, attack. I have done the focus cancel, dash cancel into ken's ultra 0 times ever in a real match. Meanwhile I combo into Ryu's ultra every other round easily (you can do it without a cancel of a cancel).
Thank you Sirlin
I thought it was just me, but you confirmed everything I had a problem with in this game. But somehow, something compels me to play it. I'm annoyed that Ken sucks so much now, and the general speed of the game. I'm hoping we get a Super Street Fighter 4 Turbo somewhere along the line to fix these issues. Yeah, it seems like they took the good characters and intentionally made them bad.
Dictator(my alt char) ult gives me the same teleport problem but I think its more to do with me getting to excited while playing and having bad execution as i'm using the TE Fightstick(my 1st ever arcade stick) so it must be my fault.
If a focus attack hits and crumples there shouldn't be any need to dash in to get a hit its annoying but i'm giving it the benifit of the doubt that somehow there must be some character/s that don't need to dashcancel to get a hit? Would be nice if that was changed but maybe its just a method to add complexitiy to reach higher levels of play.
In your previous post I was at a party and we had the exact problem of the controller assignments, it should be as you say completely. But spare custom settings that are saved would be even better(maybe even per character autoassigning of certain button assignments) option would be great.
What is really annoying me is that I can't turn the music off!!!! I ser BGM to no stars and the terrible soundtrack still plays albeit a bit less loud. This is very terrible as I have my 360 sound going through my pc and would prefer not having to rip music to the 360 and play it off there and just use winamp on my pc instead.
I still love the game its the 1st streetfighter i've been able to start understanding the system with as its quite uniform(ultra =PPP ex=pp) which a newb like me needs. I played Capcom V Snk but was never able to become as good as I am now that the combo challenges are there to teach me some combos even though bringing them into my game is hard. I still think they are missing some bread and butter combos and attack styles that I see in videos but i've only been able to finish Akuma's on normal(just).
Imo the 'tournament patch' is what will make or break the game for me, I mean I want to play my m8's but I have more then 1 m8 so I want to do a simple round robin of my friends and to watch there games in as close to real time as possible.I mean my connection has plenty of spare bandwidth surely I can play & send my game like in Soul Calibur in a round robin. Ofc actual tournament setups of every variation is just a matter of a little programming why it wasn't with the game already is a terrible shame as well as the fact that Soul Calibur comes out with an insane number of costumes but I have to pay for Streetfighter ones after paying double the price in the UK for a TE fightstick then in the US for no reason.
I still want to keep playing mainly cos it feels fun & exciting by many times compared to soul calibur. Just fingers crossed on the tournament patch.
I think the real question is:
How much longer are you all gonna make me wait before you come back to HDR?
end.
Sirlin,
I know you are an expert at such games, but are you maybe a tinge jealous you didn't get to work on this game?
Personally the game is really good. Sure there are sone exploits you mentioned, but it sounds like you should be playing Guilty Gears and not SF IV.
Your complaints are more like nit-picks than actual issues and you really haven't said anything positive.
Sorry, I am just calling it like I see it man.
Response by Sirlin: When I say something like "the button config screen should work a different way", and you say "you are jealous of SF4" (uh, what...) that's called an ad hominem attack. It doesn't address the point actually made. You also imply that I am not able to make any points at all about SF4 because no matter what they are, you will reply "you are jealous of SF4" (again...what?). Next, you say that my list of negative things about the game is only a list of negative things. Um, that's right. And? Were you expecting a review? This isn't a review, it's a list of negative things. Finally, by calling things that are wrong "nit picks" (that I am not allowed to post?) you are hurting the field of game design. I think it's valid and good for a game design website to point out problems like unlockable characters in a competitive game, or input delay, etc, so that future games don't have these problems.
I'm not quite sure what my final thoughts on SFIV are as of now, part of me hates it and the other part of me just wants to keep playing it.
I can't say at this time whether I'm going to stick to it or not, since there are many things I really don't like about SFIV (I don't have to list them because your articles on SFIV list almost all of them). Input lag is probably the biggest issue I have with the game right now. I remember I was in a match against some random ken player, he tried to ultra me but I blocked it. I was just going to throw him as soon as he landed but I ended up eating a shoryuken instead because my throw didn't come out immediately after I did the input to throw. I am also suprised that the online was so poorly implemented.
HDR did online so well, despite its current issues. Hopefully Capcom will implement a system just like HDR into SFIV sometime in the near future, the game certainly feels empty when its just 2 people max per room.
I guess we'll see where this game goes. I don't think it would bother me too much if I decide to stop playing SFIV, because I already have a very superb game to fall back on. HD Remix.
Oh and Sirlin, I heard that Tokyo Overpass level in SFIV was your favorite stage in that game. Is this true? :)
- Blicen
Response by Sirlin: Damn you for picking that stage over and over. I still don't understand why the overpass stage has music from "Portal: Still Alive", ha.
"Other little things like the outdated backwards control inputs and names showing in ranked matches only proves to show Capcom has learned nothing from Sirlin and HD Remix."
Maybe if they'd gotten HD Remix out in time Capcom Japan (and DIMPS) could have had time to react to it.
To RandomScrub:
I have the same problem with the music; what I did was turned the in game voice and sound effects to max and minimized the music. Then I turned down the volume on my line-in on my PC to lower it to a reasonable volume. Doing this improves the ratio of sound to music, allowing you to make the music even quieter.
Ive been loving Sirlin's blogs since he bloged all the changes in SSF2hdr and i completely agree with this article.
SF4 has pissed me off for two weeks, what i hate is that I decided to learn Vega (claw) in Hdremix and I did a pretty good job in mastering him. What I cant understand is why they have made him so terribliy bad in SF4, there must be some reasoning behind it.
Sirlin already stated whats wrong but he also dazes quicker than most and im sure his claw falls off before 14 blocks.
I did learn a trick that seems pretty usefull in combat ( i fluked in training mode!) which is to land a 'cosmic heel', then excute an EX Izuna Drop towards the opponent (while the opponent is still in the air from the cosmic heel).
The as long its towards the opponent, the EX Izuna makes Vega knee the oppenent, shooting them up in the air. This gives you perfect timing to execute the grab in the air and the opponent can't do a thing.
The EX Izuna (towards the opponent) is one off is his most usefull moves i've noticed.
Along with the roll, the light punch version is very quick and alot more effective than the medium and hard versions.
I did notice that rolls can go underneath a fireballs, but im not sure about the timing just yet...
WHY IS VEGA SO RUBBISH IN THIS???
And I why cant i do his super/ultra's in this game? WTF???? Using a ps3 pad, hell i could do them all the time on a 360 pad on SSF4HDR, on a bloody 360 pad!!!
I play Rose a good amount, and I feel like her ultra is bad, or at best only decent; it could be just for my play style. Just my experiences here- Jump ins can cleanly hit her out of it, I've seen it work only on empty jump ins, which it seems you should almost never do in this game. It seems to have a fairly large start up, so if the opponent isn't in the middle of something, it is easily blocked for no chip. I feel like there is enough recovery to punsh her after a block, but I'm not positive about this. I've been hit out of it when doing it as a reversal/counter, as it doesn't have full invincibility until the 'hit' (I'm not saying that it should, just that it doesn't). Jumps are so fast in this game that I think on reaction someone could jump the ultra from close to mid screen, like many other ultras. It does have a large hit range, but that's most useful when countering moves that leave people vulnerable but far, and again many ultras have that property. I can't think of any situation where her ultra would hit where her super would not hit - (in response to your comment on the super coming out instead of ultra; maybe a throw counter?) and the super if blocked does leave you safe as far as I know. If the super was jumped then the ultra would have been jumped also.
About your other Rose comments, I did not play A2 competitively so I don't really know which links you're talking about, unfortunately. Her cr strong seems to work well for me as a poke, but I usually just cancel into her spiral, which I like much less now since it's not always safe. Her air throw seems to work better now than in other games, which is fun, and her spark is so incredibly slow to come out and travel its amazing, though I've found now it does make it easy to follow in. All of this is just my experiences against cpu and xbl randoms, so I could be missing a great deal of experience. Please excuse me if that is the case.
Regarding the previous you made: I agree generally about your opinions, but not completely. Just in general, when talking about the command inputs (throws/focus/PP vs PPP), I think a great deal of positives/negatives will depend on the audience and situation. The difficulty in execution depends greatly on who is playing. Is the game designed for arcade, on stick, with a 6 button layout? Or is it designed for some other controller with possibly more than 6 buttons which can be mapped to other things? Also, are you more concerned with the casual player being able to play and compete with higher level competition, or the tournament situation where all players are assumed to be able to do complex combos? For example, you said the game is not casual friendly because of the complex inputs for ultras, focus cancels, and links. But the option to map 3p is in by default, and if you are worried about focus cancel and link combos you're probably not a casual player anymore.
Sorry for the long reply- I enjoy your articles and opinions as always. I'm no expert at sf4 at all, so again please pardon me if some of my points are based on lack of obvious information. Time to go look up the difference between ken and ryu's focus cancel into ultra (I thought they were basically the same?)...
It's good to hear you're liking SF4 to some extent, but I wish you would write some positive things about the game design choices. Some things were smart, I like to believe.
Some things I personally like:
-Easy to execute special moves (for obvious Sirlinesque reasons)
-Frame disadvantage on block for most moves makes the game less like Super Turbo (especially for experts who want to play both games)
-Fireballs are good enough to be thrown around but don't dominate
-Characters have distinct fighting personalities. I.E., they fight using different strategies. This even counts for the new characters.
-Focus attacks are viable and balanced. Capcom clearly thought them well out.
Response by Sirlin: I agree there are good things in SF4, but I don't know about your list. Easier specials is great of course. Frame disadvantage on block? So like, cannon drill is unsafe, can't do 3 rekka series safely, ryu's low roundhouse unsafe (what is this, 3s?). Seems boo all around on that issue. Your comment on fireballs should maybe read like this "in a genre entirely about controlling space...controlling space is less important." ;) Finally, focus attack system still seems clunky. If you saw the same system in a C quality random fighting game, would you say "that is amazing, we need that to be the main new mechanic in the new SF?" I'd actually be interested in your answer to that (it's not sarcastic).