As a kid, I loved Street Fighter II. I had the SNES version of the first release if I’m not mistaken. I even had a Tiger Handheld version which was pretty bad. It’s been 20 years since SFII mastered a gaming genre, but how does the newest Street Fighter hold up?

Well for one, it has all the new fancy features you can expect from this console generation. HD graphics, fantastic audio, downloadable content, and online play. Plus some pretty nifty cel-shaded graphics which combine the best of both worlds between 2D sprites vs. 3D polygons.

Most of what you can expect from Street Fighter is here, like’s it’s been in every game. You have the basic arcade, versus, and a few bonus modes to kill your time. You also have plenty of new characters to choose from but there’s also many of your classic fighters to play as well.

Sadly Street Fighter IV’s greatest strength is it’s biggest weakness as well. It’s really not that big of a jump from Street Fighter III. Sure it looks nice, plays well, has fancy features, but it just feels like the same old game. Maybe the genre can’t be mastered any further but when Street Fighter V eventually comes out, I’m not exactly going to rush out to the store to buy it. However to people rather new to the genre, this is one of the best titles you could buy.

Score: 8 out of 10