Street Fighter IV: Why Our Thumbs Hurt

After several days of playing SFIV, we've got some quick notes for you all:

-This game will punish you if you're not paying attention. This is just as technical as Virtua Fighter. Austin spent most of his arcade time with Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter - Street Fighter has a learning curve and it reminds you every second about it. Reversals, counters, cancels, EX, Super, Ultra - there is a serious lexicon attached to this game that requires you to study it and learn it.

-The new characters are cool, though we bought this for Ryu, Blanka, Zangief and the rest of the returning cast. Unlocking other characters is sometimes difficult but overall the roster feels right from the moment you pop the disc in; you have lots of options out of the gate.

-Difficulty: as we mentioned earlier if you're not of the 'Street Fighter Generation' that grew up with arcade and console versions of the title, you're going to be punished for a while until you start to learn tricks. There are people online that have been playing SF2 literally forever, and will make no mistake in reminding you that you've had your copy of SFIV for 10 minutes and were only being born while they were still dodging Hadouken fireballs in 1992. The CPU is equally unforgiving, and the game has a training mode that will more or less show you each characters special moves, yet it doesn't explain all the mechanics in detail (cancelling, counters etc)

-Online is slick, though you still see latency issues like most fighting games. Make sure you're picking players you ping well with!

-Animated cutscenes? Hell yes.

-We haven't played the PS3 version, but we can say for sure that the 360 Controller doesn't do the control scheme justice. Hopefully you have an arcade stick.

-Lasting Power? If you're a fan of fighting games, this is one you should own. SFIV pushes the series into the current generation, the animation is fresh (yet rehashed to 3d from 2d sprites) the sounds are solid and the experience so far has been a good one.

We give Street Fighter IV a 5 out of 5.