Street Figher IV is going to be freakin’ sweet like candy.

I’ve been playing the mess out of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Old School Revival (what I think Capcom should have called the game) in preparation for Street Fighter IV.  It drops on Tuesday and it can’t come fast enough.

I’ve grown accustomed to the somewhat inaccurate Xbox 360 analog stick, which is a good thing because I won’t be able to pick up the $80 Figher Stick that I really want.  I’ve always wanted one, and I’m determined to have one, but–yeesh, I wouldn’t spend $100 on the WoW mouse; I can’t justify to myself $80 for a one-trick pony controller.  Plus, the Game Informer review praises the tight, responsive controls that are arcade perfect even with the default analog stick.

Anyway, enough about my personal finances.  I’ve been regressing into my childhood lately, buying monthly issues of comics and picking up action figures at Wal-Mart; Street Fighter IV is just one more trip back into memory lane, a time when life was easier and the bad things about adulthood were not even on the horizon.  I spent many a quarter on the original arcade cabinets of Street Figher II, and many a hour in front of my Sega Genesis (and later Super NES) taking on the likes of Balrog, E. Honda, and Zangief with my favorites Ryu, Ken, Guile, and Blanka.  I still remember the glee I felt when I pulled of my first Fireball, my first Flash Kick, and my first Dragon Punch.  The first time I beat the game, I felt as if I could conquer the universe, and every time I made some poor sap get to the back of the line in the arcade, my chest swelled with pride (it wasn’t often, but it was often enough).

My ties to the series go beyond gameplay though.  Street Fighter II was the first video game I remember that attention to story.  Mostly told through character relations, the story of Street Fighter II is actually pretty cool.  Ryu and Sagat have the greatest rivalry in the history of video games, and my spine always goes a tingle when I take on M. Bison as Guile.  Most of my fourth-grade lunch periods were spent discussin whehter or not Ryu and Chun-Li were boyfriend and girlfriend, or who exactly was Sheng Long (I’m still convinced that some ultimate master called Sheng Long really does exist).  And yes: I and the rest of the boys in class totally bought the Sheng Long Hoax hook, line, and sinker.

I can’t stress how much Street Fighter II captured my imagination, not just with the fighting and action but with the aforementioned personality of the characters.  Ryu was the mysterious, intense karate master.  Ken was the cool, collected, badass.  As a fat geek, I wanted to be both of them, Ken more so because he had a hot girlfriend.  Blanka was cool because he was so sci-fi and scary looking.  Guile reminded me of Iceman from Top Gun, if Iceman was awesome.  Chun-Li was the secret crush of every guy in school, until Cammy came along and everybody was divided into two camps (I was firmly behind Cammy…that didn’t sound right).

It really is a shame to see such story-thin fighting games now, as well as see them rely on boobies and oversized monstrosities as characters (Nightmare?  Really?).  Even more infuriating is artifical difficulty (while I’m convinced that the computer cheats in SF games, it remains beatable) and marketing gimmicks (I’m looking at you, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe!).  To this day, Street Fighter II and all of its expansions are fun, playable, and engaging: I can’t say that for most other fighting games, not even Mortal Komat II (though it did have good narrative elements, and is to be praised for offering stripped-down, fast combat, it was all flash and sizzle with no real meat).

There is something raw and real, something gritty and earnest, about the words “street fighter” and Capcom has never strayed from that in the series.  I’m all kinds of excited to see that nothing will change now and can’t wait to start firing off Hadokens and Dragon Punches yet again.

PS: If you go back to the old post of my linked to, you’ll notice that I praise the Mortal Kombat franchise for having a better story.  Given that since that post, I’ve been thinking about the games I played as a kid a great deal more, I’ll have to drop a cliche and say that upon further reflection, I’ve altered my stance.  The relationships between the characters made Street Fighter II the better narrative experience overall.  Sorry for sounding hypocritical.

Resident Evil 5 demo is awesomely underwhelming

I played Capcom’s demo for the highly anticipated Resident Evil 5.

Hey Capcom, there’s this new thing: it’s called dual analog control.  It lets gamers have their player-characters do really cool things, like move and shoot at the same time.  If you’re going to make a game that focuses on balls-out action, then you might want to set up the game mechanics for such a thing.

I’ve always enjoyed the Resident Evil games.  The first RE was one of the most-played games of my teens.  It captured my imagination and was my first real introduction to the horror genre in that I became interested in the tropes and conventions that inspired the game.  RE2 and RE3 were great games in their own right, but they abandoned the atmosphere and tone that made the first game so intriguing, trading scares for explosions and survival for action-heroism; what’s more, the traditional RE controls are not anywhere near appropriate for twitch combat.

RE4 finally hit a sweet spot of action and horror.  Sure, Leon Kennedy had a few moments composed entirely of implausible awesomenosity, but all-in-all the controls were revamped to accommodate the gun-slinging that Capcom seemed to want to cram down our throats and the game still had some legitimately tense, thrilling moments.  Plus, the spooky village and its crazed inhabitants more than made up for the lack of zombies.

RE5, so far, is a return to the summer-Hollywood-blockbuster goodness that was RE2 and 3–plus Chris Redfield has to stand perfectly still to aim and fire his weapons.  You think that would have been a design flaw of RE4 that was corrected, since it was so freakin’ obvious.  But no: you’ve got to plant your feet to shoot.  You’re a highly-trained police officer with a military background, but you can’t shoot on the run.

I hope the total package makes up for this (which I doubt will be fixed before the release) with the rest of the game, and I hope the tone of the inaugural entry is revisited (though I doubt that: in the demo alone there is enough ammo to stock a small paramilitary force, and illogically long streams of enemies).