Dramatic Cammy Cosplay. Feel free to applaud the lack of fan service in the Cammy shot I chose for this post.
Super Street Fighter IV landed on shelves this week and made its way into my apartment. I haven’t given it quite as much time as I’ve given PYS 2010 this week, but I’ve thrown down a few times this week and realized, “Yeah, it’s Street Fighter IV, but Super.”
The most obvious addition to vanilla SFIV are the ten new fighters. My time with them has mostly been limited to the Training modes, but they are a good mix of characters from Street Fighter III and Street Fighter Alpha with two new characters, Juri and Hakan.
Since I haven’t given the game more than a few hours, most of my time has been spent playing as my usual main, Cammy. Most of the changes to the main cast from vanilla revolve around damage nerfs or buffs, but they’ve also all received new Ultra Combos. Cammy’s new move is a counter called CQC (for Cammy Quarters Combat, or something like that) and it’s…difficult, to say the least, to land because you have to predict that an attack is coming. It also doesn’t block everything, but I’ve yet to fully explore exactly what isn’t covered by the counter. I can tell you this, it’s mega-satisfying to predict a hit and properly counter it with the move. It almost makes me wish that Ultra selection were blind so that opponents wouldn’t know I selected the counter as my ultra, but that’s probably too much to ask at this point.
The other thing I got a feel for was Endless Battle. I haven’t participated in any yet, but I watched Giant Bomb’s livestream of their new Thursday Night Throwdown feature and they were using that system to set up all the matches. Endless Battle mode is a pretty common mode in online fighting games that allows the winner to stay in while the rest of the lobby watches the match in spectator mode. It’s a lot like being in the arcade and putting your quarter on the machine to mark your place in line. I came this close to facing off against Jeff, but a selection snafu caused him to have to reselect and he accidentally skipped over me the second time he was picking.
Is SSFIV good? Without a doubt. I’m loving it so far and I plan to get more time in this weekend.
