Ultra Street Fighter IV (PlayStation 3) Review

As an entry point into the fighting genre, Street Fighter has always been an ideal candidate. The slower pace of matches lends itself well to newcomers, but defence often finds prominence in the majority of battles, which can mean they can turn into games of wait and bait. Ultra Street Fighter IV tries to mix things up by introducing new mechanics, such as choosing both of a character's Ultra Combos at the cost of less damage, as well as delayed wake-up attacks and the hit-absorbing Red Focus Attack, to provide additional variety in terms of how fights can be played out, on top of being able to choose what version of a combatant is used prior to each bout. When taking into account that this is the largest roster in any Street Fighter game to date, at 44, the choice on offer is rather astounding.

A number of smaller necessary improvements have made their way into Ultra - YouTube uploading, button configuring before fights, online training, and more - but aside from all DLC up to that point being included on the disc, six stages from Street Fighter X Tekken, and five bonus characters, there isn't a great deal more added over the last edition. Disappointing still is that the new fighters - which include Poison, Decapre, Hugo, Elena and Rolento - don't have their own challenges to complete.

Challenges and trials themselves are difficult to nail, especially for newbies, as so many inputs and combos are frame-specific. This isn't anything new for fighting games, but Street Fighter relies on it a lot, and no help is offered as to when to input buttons at the correct moments. CPU demonstrations or indicators at key points would go a long way to helping learn the precise inputs, lest continuous guesswork come into play for so many combo practices.

The ability to watch replays uploaded from around the world for each character is a good one, but it currently seems to be hit and miss in loading up properly. Oftentimes, the game will constantly attempt to find video lists, with nothing ever coming to fruition. On the plus side, the online element is still active with players, although it's really the pros that inhabit it the most, so best to brush up before diving right into random match-ups.