Super Street Fighter IV is the latest evolution in the Street Fighter series, and is the follow-up to Street Fighter IV. There is a lot of “new” to be found in Super Street Fighter IV with 10 new characters, new stages, and brand new fighting possibilities - that’s not to mention the return of 2 of Street Fighter’s fan-favorite bonus stages.

Game starts with a cut-scene which is unfortunately not subtitled, which is odd since subtitles are turned on by default in the options menu. It seems to be the explanation to a few of the character’s back-stories.

Maybe.

After pressing “START”, which the game seems to constantly want you to “PRESS” - often with no result, players will be sent to a really clean main menu with all sub-menus looking equally as readable.

Once a tab on the main menu or sub-menu is highlighted, a description of the mode will appear toward the bottom of the screen.

The options menu has two real positives going for it. Subtitles during cut-scenes are turned on by default, and button remapping in both controllers and fight sticks is present. The subtitles in cut-scenes don’t look too bad - they are fairly large and done in white font with a thin black outline. At times, the black outline looks like it could be more than what it is, as the subtitles are sometimes harder to read than others.

Game-play is the same whether you find yourself battling the CPU, the person sitting on the couch beside you, or that person online who might as well be a million miles away - a veritable frenzy of button mashing chaos, controlled or uncontrolled as it may be.

Should you want to turn your button mashing frenzy into more controlled chaos than not, there are two ways of doing it. You can go train in ideal conditions in the training center that can be accessed by way of the main menu or you can take advantage of the pause menu’s “COMMAND LIST.” “COMMAND LIST” available either way.

The “COMMAND LIST” is really the only area of Super Street Fighter IV where the game falls apart visually, though this is a common problem among fighting games. It handles the direction in which the fighter is to move, the problem is in what buttons to push thereafter. Fists equal punches while feet equal kicks. This is a problem because each punch and kick has a weight associated with it (Heavy, Medium, and Light). This makes it difficult to hit certain moves the first time as players only have a 33% chance of choosing the right strike in combinations with likelihood dropping the longer the attack takes to perform.

Super Street Fighter IV is a very vocal game. None of the in-fight vocalization is captioned, so hearing impaired gamers will miss a lot of the characters’ speech, and thus miss out on the confusion that is “what did he just say?”

It does get better (depending on the players vantage point) once a fight is won or lost. Speech is taken out of the equation, leaving only a character-to-character dialogue in the best looking captioning in the game which is done in a nicely sized white font with a black outline, but to make it even better, it’s done in a red box which takes the readability up a notch or two.

At A Glance
Mobility

Remappable controls. Lots and lots of button mashing. Not one-handed gamer accessible.

Recommended score: 5/10

Hearing

Game is very audio-centric in that the characters call out techniques, taunt each other, and there is just a lot of sound that comes with Super Street Fighter IV. Subtitles are turned on by default in the options menu. Post-match dialogue is accompanied by no sound though the subtitles always are very readable. The cut-scene subtitles are a little hit-and-miss depending on the backdrop.

Recommended score: 7/10

Visual

Cut-scene subtitles are a little hard to read depending on the backdrop. Fighters are easy to follow. Menus are clean enough and large enough to be easily navigated. The move list in pause menu could be a lot easier to read.

Recommended score:8/10