REVIEW – As it’s the trend nowadays, Capcom has also managed to port one of their games to the current generation… but I wish they didn’t do it. Street Fighter IV’s – hopefully – definitive edition was released in almost an unplayable state. This is absolutely a disgrace to see it happening…

Street Figher has always been a franchise for Capcom, that always got released in several formats, bringing in multiple cash bags in the end. This already began with II in the age of SNES/MegaDrive, and back then, there were no DLCs whatsoever! (Now that would have been an interesting thing…) So in the case of SF IV, it’s not really a problem to see them releasing the Ultra version, but the PlayStation 4 edition might be a very bad move in the long run.

“Let me repeat that: there’s INPUT LAG, WHILE PLAYING OFFLINE.”

Just think about it, Street Fighter V will be out on PlayStation 4 and PC in about a year, so Capcom might push Sony forward a bit more with the fifth episode. Theoretically, Capcom and Sony wanted the definitive version of IV to make us hooked onto the franchise in order to buy V next year. However, a bad port might backfire drastically. And let’s face it: this port is bad.

Bugs, bugs, bugs

I’m not going to exaggarate, but I’m going to write down a few things that I have experienced in the vanilla Ultra Street Fighter IV. For example, Decapre had absolutely no victory soundbyte. (And not just once, but every, single, time!) Then there’s input lag. Offline. Let me repeat that: there’s INPUT LAG, WHILE PLAYING OFFLINE. If it was something like one or two frames, it wouldn’t be that recognizable, but let me tell you, it’s more. It’s no less than eight frames, which in a 60 FPS game results in roughly a one tenth of a second of delay. The Sonic Booms and other projectiles disappear in midair, or bug out graphically, yet they hit the opponent. Lacking sound effects, or even more at a few battling locations.

And that’s not all folks. What would you say, dear reader, if I told you that the menu lags. The menu. THE MENU. What the hell was Other Ocean Interactive doing? Because it wasn’t Capcom that made the port. I didn’t even hear a lot about these guys, and now, I’m sure I don’t want to ever again. But let me continue: Decapre has a buggy teleporting animation, the anisotropic filter was too high resulting in a bit too much of blur… so while I say that the game doesn’t really have that many instantily spottable errors, but the input delay affects all players. In an offline match, it shouldn’t even exist whatsoever. I have no words, I really don’t…

Patch it!

There’s a need for several of them. On June 3, roughly a week after the street date of USFIV, the first patch was published in an emergecy fashion. It fixes several things, mainly the graphical and audio errors. But the most important problem was left intact. Yes, the patch notes don’t mention the fixing of input lag whatsoever, so you will still have to think ahead because of this. I’d rather not comment it, because it’d be censored and I’d have to get my virtual soap to wash my virtual… hands and mouth out.

“Everyone deserves better than this.”

But the game… COULD be good, because there’s a reason why there are several championships featuring this game. A big roster of chracters, some updated moves (it includes the Omega DLC, released in late 2014), and overall, it is really a fun game to play. But not on the PlayStation 4. Even though there are the new characters, like the aforementioned Decapre, Elena, Rolento, Poison of Hugo all being included in the PS4 port, despite having the Double Ultra Combo to allow you to use both moves for smaller damage, this castle crashes down to the ground on its own and it might stay that way for a while.

Not yet

I can not recommend Ultra Street Fighter IV in its current format – even with the first patch -, because if you end up spending money on this, then later on you will see even more – mainly released for money – ports and remasters like this. It’s really a better idea to get ANY OTHER versions of Ultra Street Fighter IV. Until the input lag is fixed, this version will be garbage, destroying the ambience and the gameplay in the process. Let this be a prime example of bad ports. Everyone deserves better than this. Let’s hope Street Fighter V will be much better than this…

-V-

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Genre: fighting

Publication: June 3, 2015