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STREET FIGHTER IV

Started by Spiteface, October 18, 2007, 07:18:40 PM

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wheatgod


I think 8-10 new characters plus a rebalanced tier plus improved online set-up will be worth my money again. It's already given me greater money's worth than any game I've played in the last five years in terms of time, learning curve and pure instinctive fun. You can easily argue that they could have tested it for longer to ensure a more even character balance but the gameplay is so deep that you just can't figure that out until it's been out there in the public domain being played to death. People are still only just figuring out how to use certain characters properly. The first console version was an awesome job, anyway, with loads more characters and training options/modes than the arcade. I'll buy another step up on that scale, no worries.

vx

I dont have a console out here so Im glad this will be out just in time for Xmas holiday - I very much look forward to trying this on the ps3 back home.
since I never was big on PC games I never kept up with the later additions of the sf series. and then soul caliber became my go-to game  (I cant bring myself to hate on dreamcast... too many good games that I still cant find for other consoles) so I know its going to take me awhile to get used to, but this looks like it should be good.

although I agree the release date is waaaaay too close to the first. unless they plan on franchising the fuck out of it to push out a new sf game every year, who knows.... ?

madhair60

Haha!  I knew holding out would be worth it.

Now, bundle Third Strike on there and I'm in.

samadriel

Quote from: The Boston Crab on September 30, 2009, 02:29:04 AM
LOL scrub etc.

I'm really looking fwd to SSF4. It's a fucking brilliant game already but there are a few things that could really do with a tweak to improve overall gameplay. For example:

The online is quite shit. I'm happy to say samadriel and I got a game in (he won, comfortably) but it's been really tough to actually organise any games. The search lobby brings up 3 results at a time, worldwide. Useless. The connection bar is completely meaningless, just random trial and error in the end. There has to be a better way.

The tier system is silly to whinge about but I'm tired of fighting Akuma, Sagat and Ryu online. 90% of fights are against these guys - pretty weak whining from a Ken player? I don't think so. Ken seems like a nicely balanced character now, great if you get in and punish, weak options outside. You need to be good to be good with Ken in SF4. I'm not. Few people are, it seems. Why? They were sick and tired of getting reamed by overpowered Shotos. They switched. I'm going to say it...Some characters are broken. They need to reel a few things back in, juggle shit to balance things out. Obviously, certain characters need serious skills to master and get the best from but when you've got a high number of players using only three top-tier characters, there's an obvious imbalance.

I'm not that bothered about anything else, really. Selectable Ultras would be nice but not necessary.

Any others?

It looks like selectable Ultras are in -- various screenshots show "I"s and "II"s on Ultra bars.  And Juri's video seems to show more than one Ultra. (design's not too bad, I'm amazed that she looks decent, after shit like Rufus and Seth).

Happy to see Dee Jay back.  There are some relatively credible rumours about Dudley, Makoto and Ibuki from SF3 coming back (the same rumour-monger was right about Juri, the new chick).  Colour me tentatively pleased.

As a Dictator player, I want to see the Psycho Crusher beefed up -- it's far too vulnerable, and its startup is obscenely slow, it's pretty much a junk move outside of the EX version.

I don't tend to fear Sagat, but I do think he rewards his players a little too much for too little effort; there were some rueful remarks about him from one of the programmers in an interview awhile back, so I'm sure he's in for some changes.  There are a lot of complaints about the uselessness of Claw (I understand he gets his own basement slot in some tier lists), I hope they beef him up a bit, although I don't use him.

You're damned right about the online play, the meter is completely meaningless; what I do is count to five, and if a meter (with, inevitably, one or two bars) shows up next to someone's name within that time, I can be relatively sure they'll have a decent ping.  Whatever it's meant to be doing, it's doing it wrong.  Meanwhile, I haven't used the "GGPO" online fighting program everyone praises, but whatever it does, it -has- to be better than the input lag you get with SF4's present online play.

Here's the T.Hawk/Dee Jay/Juri trailer: Super Street Fighter IV 'Deejay, T.Hawk & Juri Trailer' TRUE-HD QUALITY

Spiteface

More new characters have been revealed, in addition to DeeJay, T Hawk and new character Juri, Super Street Fighter IV is going to see the return of Guy, Cody and Adon:

Super Street Fighter IV: Character Trailer

Nice to see them back and all, but I'm hoping for some new blood, so to speak.  There may be a couple more additions announced yet, so fingers crossed.

Artemis

My copy (not super) arrives soon - hopefully tomorrow. Can't wait. I will be unmentionably awful until I practice a bit but can't wait to get stuck in :)

VegaLA

Hmm, I think i'll trade in my SFIV towards MW2 tonight and grab the Super version on release.
Yes, that EXACTLY what I shall do!

VegaLA


Spiteface

New SSF IV trailer:

Exclusive Features Trailer HD - Super Street Fighter IV

Digging some of the new costumes, disappointed Chun Li didn't get her Alpha costume back though.

samadriel

#130
Love Balrog's new threads, shame he's boring as fuck to fight (maybe that'll change with the character tweaks, but I doubt it, they'll still be stonewalling all day...)  Mecha Zangief's a bloody odd choice, but they seem to be going 'wackier' this time.  Chun Li's new duds are kinda gross.  Rufus the Chinese ghost is a bit left-field, but I like it.  Cammy's mini-Bison outfit looks even tackier than her "forgot my pants" alt from SF4, but as a Bison mainer, I'm amused.

One-inch punch ultra, slick!  Makes me want to learn Fei Long.

...Wish this'd been a reveal of the 3S-ers and Hakan, but I guess that's one for next time.

Most of the new Ultras look awesome - especially one-inch punch and Ryu's Gouken rip-off, looking forward to giving Ken's Hurricane kick extravaganza a thorough work-out, I so so rarely land an Ultra off anything but a focus attack now.

Something else I've noticed by the way, all my months of getting murdered online/in arcade by Japs and Chineys really paid off because the general standard in Europe is much lower. I've been playing a bit online the past few days and only lost two fights, built my BP right back up to (a PB of) 1250, which I didn't get close to over in China. I beat plenty of players around 1000 which rarely happened before and finally won a championship.

I'm not claiming I'm shit hot now - far from it, just an observation about regional standards. If anybody wants a game (on PC), I'm 'grrraymond'. I'll be the guy spamming F+MK, EX Tatsu & Kara Throw and getting trapped in your charge loops (Sumo Splash, Head Stomp, Blanka Ball - take your pick).

samadriel

Actually Gouken's was a Ryu ripoff -- see Ryu's Shin Shoryuken from SF3.

1250, you've shot up!  Saw you online earlier, but I was headed out.  Hopefully we'll have a decent ping and can have a match; Europe can be somewhat variable for me.

Hehe, shows what I know, as a filthy 09er ;)

And yeah, was always hovering between 600-800 before and really struggling to maintain even that if I didn't have a decent session. I've taken a few beatings today, in fact, but still got up to 1500 before a few games with some shit-hot hitherto-zero-pointer (I hate these guys) brought me right back down. Gonna get back into it now.

I still find it so frustrating getting in on Sagat and Balrog is a boring turtle cunt.

Borboski

I picked this up for £12 just before Xmas, having spent a load of money on other people (in fact I saw David Moyes in the Ugg boots shop in Manchester) I thought fuck this and in gamestation found this, Eternal Sonata (also £12) and some Warhammer wargame (£20 it looks crap).

But... I'm really impressed with this so far, it's strength is definately that it starts quite simple.  It's refreshing not to have 100s of special moves; I got Virtual Fighter 5 when that came out, toyed with it a bit, then concluded that I would never have the time to learn a character.

Enjoying Abel so far, and just starting to get the grips with some of the tactics of the focus attacks.  For whatever reason I struggle to get off the super special moves (e.g. 2 x quarter circles and all 3 punches), and I can't do many of the combos, I think it's because for some you just have to know when duringthe animation to activate the last one - rather than do them as quick as you can.

I did read that there was a shortcut for some of the moves - when you hold a diagonal the game doesn't take t as either the vertical and horizontal next to it - so you can do th edragon punch simply by pressing diagonally forward and down, then down, then back to diagonally forward and down.



Anyway, gamertag is borboski if anyone fancies some online games, will be on tonight.

You're spot on about the shortcut stuff, though I can't quite pull things off as easily as has been described to me, e.g. DF, DF = shoryuken. Not sure about that but DF, D, DF = shorykuen, for sure.

As for combos, your best bet is to get into training mode and to learn the difference between links and chains. Long story short, you can chain certain moves together by pressing buttons as fast as you can, e.g. crouch close and mash light kick as fast as you can. You'll get a three-hit combo, with most characters.

To extend that to show how this works with specials, if you play as Ryu/Ken and jump in with fierce punch and keep doing QCF (quarter-circle forward) and mashing heavy punch, you'll likely go air heavy punch > dragon punch > super combo because each move cancels straight into the next after a frame or two. The interesting thing is that although this looks kind of cool and feels good, you're usually not maximising the damage you could inflict because of 'combo scaling' - which basically means that the more hits you inflict, the less each subsequent hit hurts. Little combo clusters are where it's at. I'll come back to this...

Links are quite different and very tough to do on-demand until you've got them locked into muscle memory, effectively. They require incredibly precise timing - beyond 'timing', effectively. If you button-mash, they won't come out. So what's the point of them if you can chain normal moves into special moves anyway? They basically expand your combo options and range since you can only chain a special after one normal move. So, instead of crouching heavy punch > hadouken, you can go crouching light kick > crouching light kick, crouching heavy punch > hadouken. The advantage here being that it's faster/easier to get that first LK in than it is to get the heavy punch. If you do light kick > hadouken instead, well, you're missing out on two extra hits. Ugh, what a horrible explanation - hope you get something from that, anyway.

Back to combos and what you said about relative simplicity brings me to what I think is the absolute beauty of the game. I was talking to my bro about it recently and as a Tekken fan, he said the sheer number of moves available makes that game deeper (my fault for bringing up that word). I couldn't disagree more. Where Tekken seems to be about learning strings of button presses to trap your opponent into unending combo loops/juggles and traps, SF is all about spacing, timing and mind games. The fanciest shit often does little more damage than a simple two-move standing heavy kick > dragon punch, for example. The difference is: you have to earn your punisher opportunities by baiting and restricting your opponent's movement with footwork, reactions and by learning to read play styles. one key area where I've improved enormously in the past six months or so is my 'clutch' game. Instead of playing desperately for the win when we're both on low health, I'll now stick to my game, keep them guessing and try to tempt the opponent into making a mistake - the players who then get the better of me are the ones I really need to learn from, not the scissors-paper-stone winners. Likewise, I learn nothing and improve none by fluking a frenetic wake-up dragon punch at the death.

Uh, I gotta go the shop.

Oh, and as for the super/ultra combo moves, are you sure your Super/Ultra bar is available? If it is and you still can't get it, go to training mode and turn on input data in the training options menu. Maybe you're not quite pushing down twice, fairly common explanation as you can't shortcut those motions in the same way. One thing I have managed to get going though, on a related note, is 'negative edge'. This is basically holding the attack button, completing the required motion and then releasing the attack button to activate the move.  This helped me enormously to buffer motions (especially when in the air) and launch my special at the exact moment I want it, instead of trying to force the motion. Know what I mean?

As for focus attacks, I must admit I'm still not good enough to use them in any mix-up play, i.e. dash-cancel them to extend combos or to pull out of a blocked special move and save yourself a beating. I kind of know how I should be using them but I just never think of it or manage to do it.

Borboski

Cheers, that's really useful.  Yeah - re the short cuts I just read on that shuryken site that DF DF doesn't work.  Oh and I was just about to mention what you describe in the 2nd post - negative edge, going to try that tonight.


Spiteface


I hadn't played for a month, left my pad at the folks' place but got back on it yesterday, albeit a little briefly. Got beat by samadriel - again - but was still great to have it back. I only play championship mode now and it's much more enjoyable - and 'meaningful' - than ranked play because you don't get any BP fiends quitting or any funcrushing turtles. I've got a way to go before G2 - and I'll no doubt get absolutely reamed when I do get there - but I'm really enjoying it.

One thing I love about the game is that there aren't really any big 'tips' to improve your game. It's a learning process. The more people you play, the more different styles you encounter, you gradually figure out ways to try to counter them, you train yourself to do certain things almost automatically. I've got a long way to go before I can say I'm a decent player, I've got an enormous amount to learn, my spacing/footsies are virtually non-existent and I still find my 'links' never happen outside of training mode, there's loads to be honest even without getting into start-up frames etc. It's an endlessly deep gameplay mechanic and on top of that, a large part of it is mental, simply staying cool, knowing when to risk things or keep it tight, not fluffing punishers. Can't wait for the new one but I think this has got years left in it, for me.

samadriel

Quote from: Spiteface on February 18, 2010, 07:06:30 PM
Just a quick update.

3 characters from SF3 are in: Dudley, Ibkui and Makoto.

http://iplaywinner.com/news/2010/2/18/new-super-street-fighter-4-screenshots-and-artwork-of-dudley.html

Man, the English voices are sooo bad... and Dudley's Japanese one didn't save him.  ...And it's bad enough that SF4 exchanged the great mini-intros from SF3 with treacle-slow cinematics that absolutely everyone skips to get to the fight, but how do you not make "Let's fight like gentlemen!" Dudley's starting bit?  And how do you replace it with "Well, let's begin"?  That's the dullest thing I've ever heard!  Well, someone'll probably make a mod on the day the PC version comes out (I'm not buying a console for one game) to give Dudley his 3rd Strike audio, so that'll make him less irritating to hear... which is good, 'cos I loooove Dudley, gotta play me some o' that.

Yeah, links are a complete bastard online, partly because the latency in even the best-pinged matches usually breaks the timing, especially with fucking one-frame links like Bison's lk lk lk SK (I've gotta stop trying to do that one, his punches link much more easily...)

I tend to wander in Player Matches these days, as it gets the most results and the ability to easily fight multiple matches makes them tend to last longer and provide more practice.  I'm inching up in the ole championship mode too though, early G2 atm, from memory.

Seems there's a load of footage from SSFIV now, can't wait to get going with that but in the meantime, I just depressed and delighted myself with this frankly amazing collection of combos from the original SFIV:



Won't embed so follow the link.



Well, since I finished all my important stuff, I've ended my self-imposed gaming exile (aside from a quick session a month ago). A few days solid play and a good few G3 championships behind me and I'm finally in G2. Already enjoying it so much more. I think that my style has become more and more compact over the past few days, I've just forced myself to play more patiently after talks with my bro who plays a similar aggressive Ken. Really useful to see what openings that style gifts to opponents and also to borrow some smart techniques off him. I've made loads of comebacks I never would have gotten close to before and nailed those clutch moments much much better than when I play my usual frantic bullshit. I've also started to rid myself of the f+MK default after getting far too many of them FA'd/DP'd.

Anyway, as I say, G2 is already so much more fun. Not picked up many points yet but I've been winning first-round fights against 5/10k players, which is satisfying. I think the general style of play at that level suits me better, a mixture of patience and pressure, trying to poke/bait each other out and earn your opportunities, fewer psychic DP/Tiger Knee etc. I'm still totally crap against certain characters and I've taken some definitive beatings even at my best but I've probably learned more in an hour than I did in three months in G3. Anyone else there on PC? Just me and samdriel at the mo, I think!