What do you get when you thrust a controller into the hands of an FPS veteran and push him into the ring to square off against some of the world’s deadliest fighters, both real and virtual?

A palpitating heart?

Cold sweat?

Numb fingers?

I would say all of these and much more, for that is exactly how I ended up once our Editor-in-Chief thrust the latest addition to the Street Fighter franchise into my hands and barked out an order to review it. Now saying I am a newbie to the genre would be putting it very mildly. Having been a PC gamer for the better part of my life, I have always given fighting games a wide pass. So when Street Fighter IV was announced a while back, I wasn’t one among the hordes of fans cheering, fainting or singing hallelujah in the streets, accompanied by frenzied high-pitched screams of “Shoryuken!”, “Tiger Fist” and other guttural noises. Which kinda neatly explains how I’ve remained untouched by all the hype surrounding the game, until the review copy landed in my lap one fine morning.

I can hear the Street Fighter veterans in you sniggering at me already; something quite understandable. With the cult following the series has had over the past twenty years, it comes as no surprise that the fans would rabidly defend the game much like a religious zealot asked to throw himself into the searing flames so he can be rewarded in Paradise. Thankfully, after spending quite a considerable chunk of my waking hours with the game, I can safely say that the fans can put their burning torches and their pitchforks down – this iteration of Street Fighter doesn’t need anyone defending it.

My biggest worry with the game was how easy it would be for me to dive headlong into the cut-throat world of beat-‘em-up’s and emerge with, hopefully, at least some shred my dignity left. Not much, just a tiny sliver, mind you. But phew, kudos to Capcom for having created a Street Fighter game that is probably the easiest to pick-up-and-play by someone like me while appeasing even an ardent, I-live-and-breathe-Street-Fighter fan like Vijay. It did not take me long from mindlessly pounding on the buttons in totally random order – hoping to hit my opponent with a fluke punch or a once-in-a-pink-moon round house kick – to pulling off the entire gamut of standard moves, focus moves, the supers and the incredibly flashy ultra combos and completely demolish the fool that dared to take me on.

The standard Street Fighter packs in quite a healthy variety of punch and kicks in his repertoire, ranging from the light jabs and kicks to medium punch and kicks, graduating all the way up to the more damaging strong combos. All of these can be pulled off with a simple press of the face buttons or the right bumper and the right triggers; nothing flashy here until you start using them in tandem with every other button and stick on the controller, keeping in mind your relative position to your opponent. Pushing A and B together while close to the enemy will result in a beautifully animated over-the-shoulder throw or a end disastrously with a vicious kick to your back. Twirling the analog stick in the trademark half-moon / quarter-moon motions while pressing a preset combo on the face buttons would unleash the special powers of the character – whether it’s Ryu using the powers of the Metsu Hadouken to send a destructive ball of spirit hurtling towards his opponent, or Sagat riddling his with a barrage of conventional fireballs – two examples from an overdose of combos to discover with each character. Using Focus Moves to cancel an oncoming attack or breaking through one’s defenses, or dash cancelling a move to take your enemies by surprise or even cancelling an Ultra Combo into a Focus Move are some of the tricks of trades that you will learn after having tasted dust repeatedly.

In this way, Street Fighter IV provides a tactical fighter with a better control over the fighter then descending down to random button mashing until one of the hits connect.
One of the coolest looking combos are the Focus Attacks, which also happen to be the newest addition to the series. Keeping the X and Y buttons depressed for a while will result in a Focus Attack which floors the enemy. The longer you keep the buttons pressed, the more vicious the attack. Inky black colors swirl around as your attacks connect with the opponent while diminishing his / her / its health bar. You can even unleash a series of focus attacks by being ready with the next one even before your opponent can get back on his feet; needless to say, this attack has some serious potential for misuse, whether you’re at the giving or at the receiving end. But that’s not all! Focus Moves can be used to cancel an incoming strike and dish out some pain of your own. The damage that you take while cancelling the incoming attack will replenish over time.

Ratcheting up the coolness factors are the EX version of special moves, Super Combos and the Ultra Combos. The EX Moves and Super Combo can be performed once your Super Meter fills up. You do not have to worry about the Super Meter as it fills up on its own over the course of the battle with each successful attack. Once full, a flashy EX or a Super Combo attack can be launched. On the other hand, the second meter, Revenge Meter will fill up as you take more and more damage. Once topped up, you can unleash the Ultra Combo, one of the most over-the-top moves in the game. Even the damage inflicted by this move is way over-the-top, so much so that one such move can turn the entire tide of the battle.

All these combos and super-combos can get a bit overwhelming for a new-comer to the series. Thankfully, you can always jump into the Trial mode and have the game guide you through the combos and how to pull them off, both at Normal and Hard difficulty, although poor Dan gets to be at the receiving end during these sessions. If you want more variety, you can try out the Time Attack mode where you will be taking on opponents as the clock ticks down. Or there is the Survival Mode where you have to conserve your vitality meter and take on multiple fighters one after the other if you have to best the round. Each of these comes in Normal and Hard flavours and will earn you some nice little achievement points on the way, besides unlocking personal actions, colors and icons.

Speaking about unlockables, there’s quite a number of them in Street Fighter IV for you to unlock – starting from the predictable character unlocks, all the way to titles and banners that you can flaunt in your online matches. Some of the unlockable characters can be quite an effort, especially for those new to the series as these mostly involve besting a series of fights that are challenging, to say the least. Or you else you can simply be happy with the unlockable titles to sport when you’re online, declaring either that you’re just learning the ropes or the new king of the ring. There are a lot, and I do mean a lot, of titles and icons to unlock here.

If you happen to be hooked on to Xbox LIVE while playing Street Fighter IV, it adds more fun to your single player experience as well. Trying to recreate the Arcade experience, you can be challenged at any point in your single player campaign by a human opponent, either sitting beside you, or on the other side of the globe. Once done, you can go back to taking on Seth for the 20th time in what can be best described as the worst boss-fight ever; horribly unbalanced and very frustrating, like any good boss fight should be. When the urge to throw a controller at the television screen gets a bit too much, it is always advisable to find a friend to go head to head. Just when I thought I was getting better in the game, my friend, who has not even seen a Street Fighter game in his life, takes the controllers and calmly proceeds to kick my ass all over the arena. This time, I had to stop myself from throwing the controller on his ugly mug instead.

Good thing I have Xbox LIVE because that is the only thing that can stop me from outright manslaughter after a string of losses. You get to choose whether you want to step into the brutal world of Ranked matches or more easy-going social ones. Setting up a match can be a breeze with you just needing to set the time limit and number of rounds. In case you are looking for a piece of someone, you can either use the quick search option or go for a more thorough search by defining all the parameters upon which the fight should be based. For every win, you get some “Battle Points” that are deducted from your opponent’s score. Obviously, you stand to lose the same points in case you go down in the next match. Inexplicably Quite predictably, this drove me to fight harder, for those damned virtual points. Maybe I just wanted to have a number larger than zero at the end of the day when I unhooked the Box from internet. Thankfully, finding an opponent to spar with is never a problem. Even though the network strength indicator showed red all the time, I hardly faced any lag at all which is quite surprising for a 256 Kbps connection, that too when I had to go up against someone sitting in the US of A, considering only a handful of Indians had a review copy.

Graphically, the game is quite at par with the PS3 version of the game, reviewed a while back our Associate Editor, Vijay Sinha, which is to say, in a niche of its own. Street Fighter IV in screenshots and Street Fighter IV in motion are two different beasts all together. If you love the way the game looks in the screens, be prepared to be blown away by the real stuff. Retaining a 2D plane while going for fully rendered 3D models and levels was a brilliant decision on Capcom’s part. It doesn’t feel like a bastardised version of a timeless classic, making it seem more like this is the propah remake of the cult classic – Street Fighter II Turbo – rather than the recently released arcade version. A wide variety of levels add to the fun, ranging from a slow moving ship to the back alleys of an Asian street, all adding to the one-of-a-kind visual experience that is Street Fighter IV. Beautifully cel-shaded and richly colored, it is indeed an orgasm for the eyes. Throw in the superb character animation, the fluid kicks and punches and oh-my-god moments that define Ultra Combos and your eyes are bound to have multiple orgasms. If only they would have reduced Chun-Li’s thighs a little bit more, I would have had an orgasm of different kind. Maybe I will settle for Crimson Viper for the time being.

Street Fighter IV has proved to be the loving embrace of a long lost lover for those returning to the series. But does it hold enough charm to entice a newcomer? Will he be willing to learn all those “quarter circle forward with a medium punch” combos? The answer is a yes for that is how I started off, unsure if I would even want to review the game. Before long, I was shouting “Hadouken“ in tandem with Ryu while wasting precious office hours Googling for Street Fighter terms. If you are right now where I was a week back, maybe you should give it a try. You definitely won’t regret it one bit.

9 / 10

Review Copy Courtesy:

Price: INR 3,499
Distributor: Milestone Interactive

Contest Details / Terms & Conditions / End-dates

After complaining for months about not getting any love down south in Bangalore from Milestone, we finally got ourselves a nice little launch party for Street Fighter IV this Friday at The Living Room, where fans of the game could just sit back and kick their friends’ butt every which way with punches, kicks and focus moves. In fact, the party was so awesome that we completely didn’t manage to attend it! Don’t ask us why, because it mostly involves our associate editor busy rowing the slave boat and getting whipped good at work. As for me, well, I originally wanted to say I couldn’t make it because I had a brain tumor and had to get it checked out, but if I do, I’ve been promised that I’ll get my neck snapped by Milestone’s friendly neighborhood PR liaise, Payal, who loves nothing more than keeping us on track and, err, “mothering us” to make sure we do what we’re supposed to and don’t go around doing naughty things, like eating sand, spilling cooking oil all over the floor and breaking embargoes. (Ooh, look, Jill Valentine’s dead!)

Although we couldn’t make it ourselves, it looks like folks had quite a lotta fun, including a bunch of nice European guys that’ve been SF fans for ages showing us how the real pros play. Aman, from GI, was kind enough to click a couple of snaps for us, showing, umm… some girl from some TV show interviewing a guy who looked as if his existence had merged completely with the game and couldn’t care less about who was sitting next to him, a mini-fridge with Red Bull cans (oh-kay?), a bunch of dudes (is that Arun?) playing Halo 3 (what the f…..!!) and Daddy Cool getting his wiiings with a Red Bull while standing next to a brunette with mirror-shine hair, an expensive-looking manicure, clenched fists (uh-oh!) and a Nokia! Probably wondering, “What’s this campy looking game that these dorks are playing? Why does everyone keep screaming “Master Chief”? I’m bored, I wonder what’s for dinner.”

So, yeah, there you have it, the Street Fighter IV launch party in a nutshell, along with a whole bunch of photgarps (another proprietary invention by Payal) of Street Fighter IV playing peek-a-boo with the camera lens! (And Red Bull, lots of Red Bull!) And if you’re getting all excited thinking about Street Fighter IV and how you’re gonna trade in your organs to buy it, remember, there’s always our awesome-possum launch center and our soon-to-be-announced contest, where we’ll be giving out some great swag over the coming days.

* Photos by Aman. Thanks, buddy, V-O-U-1! If anyone has any more photos of the event and you want them shown off here, drop us a line with your pics of the party and we’ll feature ‘em here.

CRIME SCENE PHOTOS

UPDATE: OK, looks like the original plan’s scrapped. Milestone’s just called us up to let us know that if you’ve got the time and want to take a look at Street Fighter IV, you’re more than welcome to drop in and kick our ass at the launch party. Yes, you heard us – it’s open to all gamers now. So if you’ve got nothing better to do on the 20th, head on over to The Living Room on Residency Cross Road (next to Dena Bank) between 5 PM and 8 PM and get your SF4 groove on!

‘Tis that season again – we’ve all got Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” set to repeat infinitely on our iPods; we’ve dressed up like Ryu, Ken and Rufus – ready to play mock-fights with the unsuspecting passer-by on a crowded street; we’ve used up the spare “Free Karate Lesson” coupon, and soon after, the “Free Plaster Cast” coupon that we had lying around the house for the last three years; we’ve done nothing but watch martial arts movies (and not the wire-fu crapitos) every spare minute we get and dug up and played through every Street Fighter game ever made till date. But wait, what about Street Fighter IV? Unless you’re a game journalist with a cool site like ours (plug away, my good man) and gotten a orgasmic press kit and a review copy, you’re gonna have wait until the game is officially available in stores.

Dejected? Awww, don’t be! Because we’re giving away five special invites to the Street Fighter IV launch party in Bangalore this Friday! You will find yourself mingling with the most devout gamers in the country, where you can pick on our resident associate editor Street Fighter ignoramus, Abhinav, and use your extensive knowledge of all things Street Fighter to subdue him into giving him your lunch money giving you his lunch money. So, what are you waiting for? Send a nice little email to streetfighter4 {at} theangrypixel(.)com and tell us why we should include you in the inner circle of awesomeness. If you’ve got time on your hands, we’ll even take frenzied cellphone recordings of you screaming “Shoryuken-Shoryuken! Hadoken-Hadoken!”, followed by a couple of death gurgles. Preferably in a library or a hospital or any other environment where you’re supposed to keep your trap shut! So yeah, chop-chop, we’re waiting!

So, you’re one of those new-fangled gamers that’s just itching to get his hands dirty with Street Fighter IV after everyone that’s cool around you has been talking about nothing but the game the last couple of months. But wait, what happens when you get the game and find your posterior handed to you on a bloody silver plate because you don’t have a friggin’ clue about how exactly you’re supposed to pull off those fancy-schmancy moves that will net you your win? Fear no more, we’re here to the rescue of all those people that want to get ready for Street Fighter IV with a handy character moves guide that you can keep referring to. At least, until you get good enough to score a 100% on a pop quiz if we were to wake you at 3 in the morning and grill you on them. We got this little handy guide along with our little press kit earlier and scanned them because, oh, let’s say an associate editor that’s spent way too much time playing shooters suddenly threw us a curveball by asking which button he should be mashing to block incoming attacks! Yeah, Bruce, fancy that!

Hit the jump for your download!

Download the Street Fighter IV Character Moves Guide (PDF / 10.4 MB)
(Right click link, select “Save Target As“)

Well, what more can we say? We’ve confirmed with local distributor e-Xpress Interactive a couple of days back that Soulcalibur IV will indeed not make it to Indian shores, thanks to the fact that it’s an Ubisoft game. Since Ubisoft doesn’t believe in offering any sort of sales concession when it comes to Indian markets, and e-Xpress, like anyone else, wouldn’t want non-existent profit margins, Indian gamers eager for Soulcalibur IV will now have to look at Play-Asia (as usual) for their imports.

Speaking to us about the situation, e-Xpress has clarified that rather than haggle with Ubi and import the games for “an obscenely high price”, they’ve elected to not import the game in all likelihood. But the real terrifying part of the conversation came when Fallout 3 came into the picture. In a press release issued last month, Ubisoft had claimed that it would be distributing Fallout 3 in some PAL territory countries in Europe including Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Which indirectly means that if India’s import were to happen via Ubi, there’s no chance of Fallout 3 ever being officially released for the consoles here.

However, after Bethesda’s Pete Hines clarified that Bethesda / 2K would still continue to be the worldwide publisher for Fallout 3 on all platforms and would be in-charge of marketing and distributing them across North America, Europe (except for some countries) and Asia, some of us have dared to heave a little sigh of relief. But we’re not going to sleep tight until we have official, final confirmation that the Indian release will definitely not be handled by Ubi for the biggest RPG this year. PC owners, as usual, have nothing to fear, considering that the game would definitely be available for their platform, no matter which company handles the distribution.

Now all we have to do is pray that Bethesda would grow a heart and release the Survival Edition to countries outside the US and we’d hopefully get our greedy hands on either the Collector’s Edition, or better yet, this one. After all, hope springs eternal.

Ever since Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki decided to resurrect the Ninja Gaiden franchise, Ryu Hayabusa has risen to fame as the greatest action hero in gaming. Making the transition from the calm seas of 2-D to the vicious 3-D waters was never going to be easy, but Itagaki’s sunglass powered foresight made it happen. It is still a mystery why Itagaki-san bet his chips on Ninja Gaiden instead of making some sort of X-Men game…he is the Japanese cyclops after all (never wondered what was behind those glasses?)

Two remakes later (Black and Sigma), we will finally witness a new chapter in Ryu’s saga until Ninja Gaiden 2 hits the Xbox 360 sometime next year. And who would have thought that the graphically intense, action-heavy, extremely mature Ninja Gaiden will see its next chapter unfold on the Nintendo DS? Doubts fogged my mind as a Ninja Gaiden on the DS seemed almost next to impossible (unless it was another cheap 2-D rendition, that’s what all the other devs do, don’t they…the lazy bastards). But here I am, with an early build of Ninja Gaiden DS tucked neatly in my DSLite. So lets take this Ninja Dog out for a stroll and find out if it only barks or bites as well?

First things first, we all know that the Ninja Gaiden stories suck. The usual mish-mash of revenge with some top-heavy babes thrown into the fray, and some chap trying to take over the world with some kick-ass magical hoopla. So just for the record, even though no one is really going to care, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is not a remake (thank god for that, I never thought Itagaki will stop… and what’s with those lousy subtitles? Black? Sigma?). Dragon Sword will take place after the events of Ninja Gaiden 1 and build up a link to Ninja Gaiden 2, due for release in 2008. While the build I have been slashing through is painfully short, it sure does give a pretty good picture of what the final game is going to play like.

The first thing that you will notice while playing Ninja Gaiden is the amazing visuals; the backgrounds are just images, but what really makes a difference are the character models and the effects. All this is complimented by the best animation I’ve ever seen in a DS game; this is the DS owner’s Assassin’s Creed when it comes to animation. I’ll elaborate on this more when I speak about the controls in a bit. The sound effects are mostly re-used bits of the past Ninja Gaiden games, and I’m not complaining. The *chink* of the shurikens, the weird, constipated battle cries that Ryu frequently mouths, the feudal Japanese music and the wind whooshing sound when you power up your attacks…its all in here, maybe down sampled a bit, but comparing it to the console versions would be foolishness. And tell you what, I’m a complete foolish twit, because that’s what I am going to do.

It’s simply mind-numbing that Ninja Gaiden DS can actually stand up to its console brethren. While the audio-visual department is nowhere near the console versions (c’mon lets cut the DS some slack), it’s still a very stellar looking DS title. But what really closes the gap between the console and DS version, is the animation and gameplay. No compromises were made by Team Ninja in the jump to the DS. Almost all the well-known moves that Ryu pulls off are packed into the cartridge. Slash your way through enemies, hurl shurikens, unleash your power attacks, fly in the air and rain death from above, use powerful Ninpo and my personal favorite…smash the enemy with the fucking, sweet-looking Izuna drop. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Trust me, it will even look amazing once you actually see it in action. But didn’t any of you wonder why the weird title for this article? It will make perfect sense once I talk about the controls.

Controls are easily the part of the game that will make or break Dragon Sword. For starters, if you even have a slightly scratched DS touchscreen, don’t bother wasting time on Ninja Gaiden DS…you will be in for a frustratingly unpredictable experience. So, clean up your DS screens and order those Hori screen-guards (no, we haven’t been paid for advertising). Those of you lucky enough to have a squeaky-clean, unscathed DS… you are in for a fairly fun time… though the inevitable touch screen issues will rear it’s ugly head. You basically control Hayabusa by touching anywhere on the screen, Ryu will immediately run towards that spot; its a delight to watch the super-ninja run fluidly with his ninja bandana (what are they called?) waving in the wind. Tapping anywhere on the screen fires shurikens to that particular place. Jumping is pretty easy; you just have to slide the stylus upwards to perform a jump, and repeat that in the middle of a jump to perform a double jump. Attacks basically consist of slashing the stylus horizontally from left to right, and vertically. The interactivity almost feels natural and the moves that are translated from your stylus into the game make perfect sense.All this is helped by the fact that the player is expected to hold the DS in a book style (read Brain Age); the result of which is more vertical space for Ryu to jump around. This really comes into play while using the jump attack (slash the stylus downwards when in a jump), or the Izuna drop (did I mention how cool this looks?).

Team Ninja has succeeded in nailing the controls right for a DS game, but things start going haywire when there are more than 2 enemies on screen. Often, the game confuses the jump with the vertical slash, which leads to some infuriation. Also sometimes while trying to throw shurikens at enemies while mid-air, Ryu tends to perform a slash from above. While it is frustrating that the game tends to read your moves all wrong many-a-time, I’m not saying that Dragon Sword is a bad game. No sir, it is truly a great experience… but in a game that is notorious for its difficulty and punishes you for the slightest of mistakes, messy controls can stab you in the back. Lets hope that Team Ninja has enough time to do something about those control issues… I suggest giving the player more space to move around so that he can run into free space and perform his moves without enemies attacking him every 2 seconds.

What balances this issue out a bit are the powered-up attacks and the Ninpo. Remember how you used to throw off enemies and hold a button long enough to charge up your attack and then wreak havoc? Things haven’t changed much, except the fact that your wrists will get a thorough workout if you lean more on these attacks. You can slide the stylus repeatedly across Ryu to charge up his attack to two levels, and then remove your stylus from the screen to send Ryu in a fit of rage that usually cleans up the screen of any enemies. On the other hand, the Ninpo, which is capable of disintegrating waves of enemies, is kicked off by tapping on the Ninpo icon and then writing down a Sanskrit letter in a fairly sparing time limit, to unleash a furious and marvelous looking attack. In the version I played, I had access only to the fireball Ninpo, and I could control the path of the fireball, hence resulting in the aforementioned house-cleaning. Many fans will cry foul that I haven’t yet mentioned about blocking, which is the backbone of any Ninja Gaiden fight. Well, do not fear… it’s all in here. Blocking can be done by pressing ANY button on the DS, which is fine by me, as its easy to alternate between defense and offense with this control scheme.

At the end of that day, nothing I mention here will truly make sense unless you play the game for yourself. I fear that Dragon Sword will be the victim of drastically diverse review scores, because the experience may differ from person to person, depending on a lot of factors. So do not lean much on reviews, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is game that you should experience first-hand and decide if it hits the right chord with you, or not. Our verdict is that this is going to be one of the biggest DS releases since The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Dragon Sword surpasses every other DS game in technical aspects and also brings a lot of new things to the plate with its whole new take on the level of interactivity in an action game. If you happen to own a DS, be sure to pick up Dragon Sword when it releases… if you don’t, then Itagaki’s sunglasses come off… and that means Armageddon!

There’s no denying Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden: Black were just awesome (if not ruthlessly unforgiving) on the Xbox, so it pissed quite a lot of people off when Ninja Gaiden Sigma became a PS3 exclusive. However, if GameSpot Korea is right, all that might change with Ninja Gaiden 2, which is rumored to be back for the Xbox 360 and will be showcased at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show. Now our Oriental mumbo-jumbo translations aren’t what they used to be, but it looks like Team Ninja has said that they will demoing the game on the Xbox 360 because of their “strong relationship with Microsoft”. Now the real deal here is that, apparently, there is no news on a PS3 release yet, which means the Redmond boys might be up to their old tricks again, shoving tons of cash into developers’ G-strings to get an exclusive, or at best, a timed exlusive. We’ll have more info for you as this “rumor” takes root in the coming days.

[via Xbox360Fanboy]