Super Street Fighter IV Announced and Thoughts

Yep, Super Street Fighter IV.  The game is announced for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360, with mixed messages about the possibility of an arcade release.  Along with balance tweaks at least eight new characters will be added, starting off with Dee Jay, T. Hawk and Juri.  Read more about them here.

Dee Jay shouldn’t have too much trouble adapting to Street Fighter IV by virtue of his moveset.  Having Up Kicks into Ultra (like Barlog’s Buffalo Headbutt into Ultra) would be great but he should still be good so long as his specials hold up.  Focus Attacks would help his distance game as well since he won’t need something like the Machine Gun Uppercut from HD Remix to help against other projectile users.

T. Hawk is a different story.  Zangief is very good in SF4 aside from the two matches against Seth and Sagat – in fact, it’s arguable that this is the best version of Zangief ever.  One could assume that if Zangief could do good, then so could T. Hawk, maybe even better.  However, Zangief’s strengths are due to his ability to get through projectiles using both Lariet and EX Green Glove.  In contrast, T. Hawk plays more like E. Honda does in SF4: He has no mix-ups to avoid projectiles so he has to wait until he can find an opening.  Honda’s still a strong character in the right hands tough, and if the EX Tomahawk Buster has invincibility he’ll at least have something to use against Seth.

Finally there’s new character Juri, who has went on a Naruto bender and realized that if you decide to implant anything into your body, it should be broken eye hax.  It’s stupid to wonder about how she will play since the game is still being tweaked, and nobody will know how to play as her even after the game is released.  Hell, it took several months for people to figure out C.Viper period, much less develop her to the point of being considered one of the best in the game.  Capcom did a good job making SF4’s new characters unique from the rest of the cast, so Juri will hopefully follow suit.

As for the new Ultras they seem like a cop out.  The trend in SF4 is that the upper-tiered characters usually have more ways of comboing into Ultras than those who can’t.  Akuma and Zangief are the only highly regarded characters who can’t rely on this tactic.  In SSF4 the characters will probably get one Ultra that’s weak but easy to combo into (like Ryu’s) and another that’s powerful but harder to connect (like Ken’s).  Some Ultras might be better against certain characters but at high-level play most people will still go for the easy-to-combo one.

Then there’s the question of whether some of these Ultras will be Custom Combos, where multiple images follow the character and mimic their attacks.  This is suppose to encourage people to create unique combos, but it usually devolves into repeating the same attack over and over.  Unless the Ultra bar is tweaked in SSF4, players could get two shots at Custom Combos every round, though the CC’s effectiveness could be reduced by SF4’s strict combo scaling system. This might work with Rose, who relies on pressure, has few high-damage combos and has no overhead attack, but I’d rather have more improvements to Rose overall than make her rely on something like this.

However, the new system will help Chun Li since her super fireball has always been a QCF motion, so this lets her bypass the problem of capitalizing on Focus Attacks that really screw charge characters over.  Honda would get a boost if his second Ultra is his 720 throw too. But this is speculation for now – we’ll know more soon enough.