Last saturday, I played it for the first time while I was in Vienna, Austria. I played the game versus some friends on a X360. Honestly, the controller is a pain in the a** for Beat'em Up's (it's still the best allround controller you'll find in this generation!) and we nearly crippled our fingers, but we had a lot of fun!
But while beating everyone by using Sagat, I asked myself if the younger gamers, who've been raised with Tekken and Dead or Alive, will truly admire this masterpiece of 2D fighting art. The game looks great for 2D lovers, but will the 3D crowd accept a cell-shaded Beat'em up where they cannot run around the arena and where they have to fight in 2D?
Street Fighter IV
I love Soul Calibur, which is in 3D. It also features weapons, big-breasted babes, 3D-Arenas, a well written storyline and much more. Street Fighter IV doesn't have these features: it's 2D, it has no weapons, the storylines are a joke and the babes ... well, let's just don't go there. The focus in SF4 is the fighting: it's easy to learn but very hard to master. It's not a button mashing smashfest like Tekken or Soul Calibur, which makes it kind of more demanding. You need timing, you need skill, you have to take a lot of time to train an perfect your moves. But do young gamers, who don't know the old Street Fighter games, even have the patience to "learn" a game? Especially when it's in 2D, which is soooooo 1991?
Soul Calibur IV
Honestly: I don't care. Today, there are many "gamers" that are just buying overhyped (mostly bad) games. They are "loving" Halo and Need for Speed Undercover and ignore good games like SFIV, Okami and many others, because they are not "cool". But I know there are still more than enough real gamers, who love quality. Capcom announced that they shipped already more than 2 Mio. SFIV copies worldwide. This gives me the good feeling that there are still enough real gamers out there - despite the success of casual games and overhyped mainstream junk.
My copy of SFIV for X360 should be delivered today. I can't wait. And I'll use my HORI Fighting Stick I bought for Soul Calibur 4 to play this game. And I'll wonder if the younger generation of gamers is even capable of playing with an arcade stick, since there aren't many arcades around anymore ...
