In Third Person

"...like the thought of eating a steak topped with ice cream, the recently announced Street Fighter IV iPhone port has made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. I can't imagine this being anything but an absolute nightmare to play." - Me.

Up until the recent release of Street Fighter IV on the iPhone, I expected nothing less than garbage from this mobile port. In my previous post, I provided a bunch of reasons to support my initial feelings towards the final product. But then, the positive word-of-mouth online began to bubble. As a Street Fighter IV junkie, this was enough to push me over the edge and give this $10 app a shot. To my surprise, Street Fighter IV on the iPhone does very well considering the platform its on, providing players with a fun fighting game that controls well enough. This opinion is coming from someone with over 3,000 online wins on the XBOX 360 version. I'm definitely not the Diago or Justin Wong of the scene, and you don't have to trust any of what I say after this, but I've played enough Street Fighter to say that this version of it is really fun and I can't put it down.

Let's the get the obvious out of the way: no, this version does not have the best controls. The on-screen joystick does a good job of moving your fighter around the screen, but the precision to pull off special moves consistently isn't there. I could throw fireballs and hurricane kicks relatively easily, but executing a dragon punch is something I still can't do consistently. Charge moves were a bit easier for me, but I've read that some people have issues with that as well. I think if you really wanted to dedicate yourself to being an iPhone Street Fighter champ the "legit" way, you could practice on that interface and get pretty decent. For everyone else, I recommend enabling the "SP" button.


Speaking of the buttons, Capcom made some concessions to the controls to make the gameplay better suited for an iPhone. Instead of using a six-button layout, users get four buttons: punch, kick, focus and special. The game comes with three different button layouts, but you're free to customize the location of the buttons and joystick, as well as the opacity of the buttons. You can get some variations in punches and kicks depending on your situation and what direction you hold the joystick, but the game basically goes with the best or most likely button you would press in that situation. For instance, as a Ryu player, I appreciated that when you jump in and hit the kick button, the game responds with a forward kick, giving me the ability to cross-up my opponent. If you come into this game knowing how to play each character properly, for the most part the limitations don't matter. When you manually do special moves, you will always do the hard punch or hard kick version of that move. Die hard players will notice and maybe be disappointed by this lack of depth, but I think within the context of this particular version, it's good enough.

The focus attack button works just as you would expect it to. As for the special button, it acts as a simpler way to execute special moves. The closest parallel I can think of to the special button is the way Smash Bros. uses its special button. You will get a different special move depending on the direction you hold the joystick. Street Fighter purists may scoff at "nerfing" the inputs, but those people can go into the options and turn this off. By default, this option is off. For myself, I love using the special button. I don't think it breaks the game, because real Street Fighter players know that the game isn't really about your ability to do special moves, but rather your ability to combine all your moves together into a cohesive offense. The special button will not turn a newbie into a grand master.

Working within the limitations of the platform, I much prefer enabling the special button. I don't feel like I'm cheating using it. I feel like it allows me to play this game more like I would on the 360 or the arcade, because it increases the likelihood of me properly executing my special moves. With some practice, I was even able to consistently hit Ryu's classic shoryuken FADC into ultra on the iPhone; a combo I can't consistently do on the 360 controller.


All things considered, I think the controls work well within this particular version of Street Fighter IV. If you can get over the fact that some concessions were made to streamline the experience, that manually pulling off special moves can be tricky and that activating super or ultra moves will take a bit of practice when in the middle of a combo, it's fairly good for what it is and it's surprisingly, a lot of fun to play.

Enough about the controls. How does the rest of the game stack up? As far as graphics go, it looks great for an iPhone game. To make this experience work, Capcom chose to go with sprites instead of 3D characters, and all the backgrounds are static images. It looks great nonetheless. I don't think the frame-rate is 30 frames per second, it does stay steady. The audio is identical to the arcade and home ports, making this feel like home for any seasoned Street Fighter IV veterans. The only major omission is the song "Indestructible", but that may be for the best. The game engine is 100% Street Fighter. Everything behaves the way it does in the other ports, meaning that all of the move properties and priorities are in place. With the exception of a few missing normal moves, you can still pull off most of the combos and juggles from its counterparts, which is pretty amazing considering the platform it's on.

The game comes with eight characters: Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Blanka, Abel, Dhalsim, Guile and M. Bison. It's a bummer that less than 1/3 of the Street Fighter IV cast is represented here, but I guess Capcom had to make cuts somewhere. Maybe they'll add more characters via DLC. Considering the eight choices they made, they were all pretty safe bets and odds are you already play one of those eight. I main Akuma, but Ryu and Ken are close enough, and my secondary is Abel, who plays just as I would expect him to here.

The game doesn't have the more frivolous options such as time attack or survival modes, but it does have a main single player mode (that lets you save replays of any match), a training mode (with most of the options you would expect), tutorials on how to play the game as well as a challenge mode to strut your combo skills. There is no wi-fi or 3G play in this one, but it does support Bluetooth local multiplayer. No online play is a bummer, but I'm sure that any attempt at online Street Fighter on a phone at this point would be a total mess.

The only other bummers I wanted to mention are the loading times, battery consumption and sound options. The game does feature some loading times, which does hamper the quickness of the experience a bit. This game will also destroy your battery, as it is a processor-heavy game. I love the sounds of Street Fighter IV, but not giving me the option to listen to my own music or podcasts while playing it is a huge letdown. My biggest pet peeve when it comes to applications is when apps don't let me listen to my own music while I use them.

Overall, this version of Street Fighter IV on the iPhone has me eating my words. Capcom brought in the right amount of Street Fighter IV goodness onto a mobile platform, making it a lot of fun to play for lapsed Street Fighter fans or Street Fighter IV enthusiasts like me. At $10, it's a bit pricey as far as apps go. For me personally, it's a great game at $10 and I will definitely get my moneys worth. If you still can't stomach paying $10 for it, wait for the moment it inevitably goes on sale. Street Fighter fans will not be disappointed with this one.

With the year winding down, many gamers have been discussing the best games of 2009, mostly to debate which game should be honoured "Game of the Year". I think it's impossible for any media outlet or any individual person to make a list that will make everyone happy. However, what I can do better than anyone else is speak for myself. With that said, my choice for "Game of the Year" is not the be-all-end-all opinion you have to believe in. Feel free to give me your picks for "Game of the Year" and "Game of the Year" nominees.

So...where to start? I guess so that we're all playing on somewhat common ground, I would cover off a few games that have been consensus "Game of the Year" nominees among many video game media outlets and go from there.

Uncharted 2

I've heard all sorts of wonderful things about the game's cinematic experience and super-fun gameplay. However, I do not own a PS3 as of this time, so I've never played it or the original. In the event I ever get a chance to play it, I will definitely give it a shot.



Assassin's Creed 2

Many critics of the first game had their gripes fixed with Assassin's Creed 2. Because of the criticisms of the first game, I decided to pass on the experience completely. However, with the great word-of-mouth and the "12 Days of Gaming" sale at EB Games (I got it brand new for $30), I thought I would give it a shot. I'm just over half way through the game and it's blowing my mind. The game does a fantastic job of making you buy into the life of Ezio. In terms of plot and setting, I haven't played anything this interesting...possibly ever. It's arguably the prettiest of all the open-world games out there right now. There's also a ton of fun stuff to do outside the great main quest. My only gripe with it is that the controls sometimes leave a bit to be desired when Ezio doesn't make the precision jumps you want him to because of the game's auto-correct jumping mechanics.



Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Up until I won this at my mom's work Christmas party, I had never played a CoD game and thought I never would. Man, was I missing out. So far the game is a ton of fun to play and really feels like an evolution on the Goldeneye/Perfect Dark era of FPS games that I am fond of. The only major sticking point to me is that the game feels kind of hard on normal difficulty, but maybe that's just because I'm a newbie (and not that good). I will definitely put more time into it in the new year.



New Super Mario Bros Wii

I don't think any game this year captures pure fun like New Super Mario Bros Wii. As a single player experience, it feels a lot like Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, arguably the best two games in the series. It's also not a piece of cake like the DS version, so it will provide a great challenge for even the most seasoned Mario veteran. What changes the whole dynamic of the game though is the co-op play for up to 4 players. With 4 people in the screen, it's absolute madness. It's a testament to how universally awesome the game is when I can play it with my cousins together and we all have fun, and they're 11, 7 and 3 years old.



Batman: Arkham Asylum

At the time of release, I bought this only because of the great reviews and the sale price at launch. What I didn't expect was this game to live up to the hype. Batman is the definitive super hero game. It totally captures what it is to be Batman while being enjoyable throughout. I wholeheartedly recommend this game, even at full-price and I eagerly anticipate the recently announced sequel.


I would also like to put in an honourable mention to The Beatles: Rock Band, which was I think the definitive exclusive-to-one-band game. I'm sure that many more will come, but none will be made with the same love and care (and awesome music, but that's a personal taste) as the Beatles game was.

Are any of these my game of the year? No. My game of the year is one that came out very early in the year and I'm sure many people have forgotten to consider it because of that. Even with that against it, 2009 Game of the Year is a pretty easy choice for me to make. No game beat it in terms of the total time invested and total fun I had with it. It inspired me to get back into a genre of game that I felt abandoned me in 1995 and got me so back into it that I now actively follow the professional scene behind this game.

All things considered, my 2009 game of the year is Street Fighter IV.



I'm still an insanely huge fan of the Street Fighter II series. I've poured in countless hours of my life throwing hadokens and giving the business to M. Bison and company. To this day, I still play the original Street Fighter II. I even left a copy of the Super Nintendo version of the game at her house so I could play it when I'm visiting and she's doing something else. However, after Super Street Fighter II, fighting games got way too complicated and I stopped playing them completely. When Street Fighter IV was announced, it was being hyped up as a return to the series Street Fighter II roots, which is all I needed to know before jumping back on the bandwagon.

Did I get what I asked for? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that I got a more accessible fighting game that I can play and enjoy at my skill level. No, I didn't get a carbon copy of Street Fighter II. I got an extremely modernized and fluid fighting game that at it's core brings back feelings of the classic. However, it doesn't come off as a rehash of Street Fighter II. Nostalgia be damned, Street Fighter IV is a better game in every respect.


I've invested over 200 hours into this game, mostly testing my chops against the best (and worst) XBOX Live has to offer. While the online systems weren't great, once you were in a fight, things generally ran as they should. I spent a lot of time trying to get better through training. It got me interested in trying BlazBlue (which is cool, but I'm still not sure I'm willing to invest the time I need to learn it). It also got me regularly following the tournament scene. It's been awesome watching the likes of Daigo and Justin Wong play this game at another level and then trying to implement their styles into how I play the game. It's almost like Street Fighter IV has transcended the world of "gaming" and moved into "sport" for me. Even almost a year after its release, the only thing I see stopping me from playing this is the release of Super Street Fighter IV in the spring.

Will there be enough new magic in SSFIV to make it my 2010 Game of the Year? We'll find out next year. But for now, I'll go back to catching scrubs on XBOX Live with my mean Raging Demon setups. Street Fighter IV is my game of the year.

A few nights ago, after a match of Street Fighter IV, I received a message from the guy I just beat. Usually, when I receive these types of messages, it's either something like "good game" or some form of verbal harassment. This time though was different.

He asked me in a voice message (not in an exact quote, but you'll get the idea), "How do you do moves and combos? I've only had this game for 2 days."

My instinctive response was to refer him to the training mode. He then replies with something like, "I know there's a training mode, but what buttons do I hit? I don't understand this."

Uh oh.

If you know anything about Street Fighter, you know that's a very ambiguous question to ask and an even weirder one to answer. Moves are dependent on your character and button configuration, while combos mostly rely on the "canceling" system, all of which is far too much to explain within the 250 character limit over XBOX Live.

I learned how to play Street Fighter IV primarily because I've been playing Street Fighter II for almost 20 years now. We learned by either playing similar-skilled people in person at the arcade or at home, or played with people better than us that were willing to give us pointers. Even back then, Street Fighter was a complex game to learn and you couldn't really get better unless you dedicated a lot of time and effort into getting good at it.

That environment to go hands-on and learn doesn't really exist anymore.

There is no arcade scene pretty much anywhere outside of Japan. People aren't really getting together to play at other people's houses like they used to. Fighting games, while making a comeback, are still not even close to mainstream. If you strictly play online, odds are you're playing a seasoned veteran who will just beat you up and go without giving you any sort of advice. If you're not able to spot patterns or observe the right things in an online match, you'll just get beat repeatedly without learning anything.

So how do you learn now? Well, unlike my generation, there is more resources on the Internet than ever before. Just Google it and you'll pull up a ton of beginner guides. There are also a ton of beginner and expert videos to watch on YouTube. Those helped me transition into IV a lot, but part of that was because I have a Street Fighter II foundation to build on. Without that, reading the guides and learning from the videos becomes much more difficult.

I hope the guy who messaged me on XBOX Live eventually figures the game out to a point where's he's happy playing it. Sadly, the best ways to learn just don't naturally occur in today's gaming environment.

"I Got Next" is a documentary about the fighting game scene. Filmed during the Sinsation tournament earlier this year, its goal as a movie is to cover the scene and the people behind competitive fighting games. I watched the short version of the film at www.igotnextmovie.com. A longer version of the movie is due out this winter, with footage from Evo 2009.

After seeing "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters", my hopes were high for this one. What made that movie so special wasn't the game, but the people stories behind the games. While the story was fudged a bit for the sake of entertainment, it ultimately became a video game version of Rocky with a clear protagonist and antagonist.

From what I've begun to learn about the fighting game scene, there is definitely enough of a people story there for a film. After watching a few tournaments online, listening to podcasts and playing a ton of Street Fighter IV myself, I was really psyched to learn more about the pros that drive this scene. Did it succeed? From what I saw, I felt the documentary left a lot to be desired.

Before I begin to criticize, I must preface by saying that the two movies are very different productions. The King of Kong was a fairly big venture, while I Got Next is basically a one-man project. Also, unlike King of Kong, which had a clear story and progression that occured over a long period of time, the majority of material for I Got Next was cobbled together mainly during a tournament that spanned only a few days. Considering the limitations holding back I Got Next, Ian Cofino did a pretty good job with what he had.

Maybe it's just me, but I really felt like it could have gone so much further. With the exception of Gootecks and the East vs. West thing, I felt like the film only scratched the surface of the guys they spotlighted for the film and the scene that holds all these guys together. I was watching it, warming up to the film, and then it abruptly ended without really satisfying any quenches I had for what the film was talking about.

If you're a fighting game fan, I still think it's worth a watch to get a glimpse of the pro scene you may be oblivious to. There's a lot more going on to Street Fighter than what happens on XBOX Live or PSN. Here's to hoping though that the next cut of I Got Next goes a little more in-depth.

If you have any sort of interest in pro-Street Fighter IV play, definitely check out the live stream above. A lot of the top Japanese players are there (including Diago and Mago) as well as a few of the top North American players.

It's really interesting to compare and contrast this from how players were playing at EVO a few weeks ago. The styles of play for the same game are very unique to each region.