Super Street Fighter IV

 Super Street Fighter 4 is a amazing add-on to an already great game. The changes they made from original Street Fighter 4 are really smart. The online has some really fun modes and great net code, new music is astounding, and the fighting has a lot of depth and is so much fun. Super Street Fighter 4 is the definitive fighting game of this generation.

The offline modes, like the arcade mode, seem completely useless. I mean sure, you get to experience the AMAZING street fighter storyline. In Street Fighter 4, there were offline modes like a time trial and a survivor mode, Super doesn't have anything like that. Instead you get two bonus stages, one where you hit falling barrels, and one where you destroy a car, which is a Final Fight reference. There pretty cool I guess... but there's not a lot of options.
 

You can still play some offline versus, which is great. You can still do character trials, and there all still crazy hard, but the way you progress through the trials is much more streamlined compared to Street Fighter 4. The offline is still pretty fun, but it seems pointless. All the characters are unlocked from the start, colors and taunts can be unlocked by playing online, and the trials, versus and the training mode do what it needs to do; get you ready to kick ass online.

The online is what you come for this game for. There are three new online modes. One of them is Endless Match, which is a lobby of 2-8 players. Two players fight, and the rest spectate the match. The winner stays in the match, and the loser goes to the back of the line and the next person fights. It's a great way to watch players who are better then you fight so you can learn ways to make improve your playstyle. It's also a great place to practice against real players, since this mode will not affect your rank or anything like that.

Another one of the modes is Team Battle. You and a couple of bro's can take on another group of bro's, which is great if you have a lot of friends that like street fighter. You can have up to 8 players in this mode, so 4 vs 4 is the max, but you can also have 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, or if you are crazy, 1 vs 7 and everywhere in between. The first player for each team will fight, and the winner fights the next person on the team, the loser is eliminated. This goes on until everyone on a team is eliminated and the other team is the winner. Of course, you can set the order of who goes first and who's on your team and such. Which just leads to me making my teammates go first so I can see what I'm dealing with when they lose, but that's probably just me.  

The last new mode, and most likely the best, is the Replay Channel. Here you and your friends can watch every replay of the past 100 or so match you or your friends have fought. You can also save these matches so you can watch them any time you want. This is a amazing feature. Not being able to see my crazy matches in Street Fighter 4 really bummed me out, but now I can save every close match and rewatch them any time I want. You can view the inputs the players were putting, attack damage, and other awesome things while viewing a replay. Watching a close match with your friends and hearing there crazy reactions is awesome.

Of course, there is a ranked match for when you want to get serious. To make sure a new street fighter player doesn't get matched up with a Street Fighter veteran there are three different kinds of ranks, Battle Points, Player Points, and Battle Class. Battle Points are gained determined by the character your using. So I have about 1500 Bps with Cammy, since she's my main, but I have 0 BP's with characters like Vega and Balrog, since I never play with them during ranked matches.

Player Points are the overall points, which are gained or lose by winning or losing a match. Very much like Street fighter 4 rank system.

Battle class is the section of players your fighting. Right now, I'm in class C, so I will fighter other class C fighters. Your player points determines your battle class, so if your just starting to play online, you will be in class D, and will be matched up with other class D players. If you are some raw dog player thats in class A or something, you will be matched up with other class A raw dog players.

The online is so much fun with all the fun little things you can do. Titles and Icons are back, and a whole bunch of new ones have been added to Super. The netcode is amazing, it's easy to find matches, and there's barley any lag as long as if your fighting someone in the same region as you. I spent hundreds of hours on Street Fighter 4 online, and I plan to spend ever more hundreds of hours on Super Street Fighter 4.

Some of the other changes to Super Street Fighter 4 is ten new characters, 8 of which are from other street fighter games like Alpha or Street fighter 3, and two characters are  completely new. These new  ten new characters are pretty awesome. Some characters, like Hakan and Ibuki, have amazing character designs and play pretty differently then the rest of the Street Fighter 4 cast. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Cody, who is bland looking and isn't very different. Dee Jay and T. Hawk are back from Super Street Fighter 2, and they still both suck. Guy, Cody and Adon represent the Alpha series nicely. Ibuki, Makoto, and Dudley are great additions from Street fighter 3. The new challengers really change the balance up and feel very different.

This raises the character count to 35, which is a healthy number. You can easily find a character that suits your play style. All the old characters are also re-balanced and some of them even have new moves. The new characters fit in well and no one feels completely over powered.

Every one of the new characters have there own story-line, ending, rival battles and music. Even the original Street Fighter 4 cast has a new story-line and ending, but one of the features removed from Street Fighter 4 is Theater Mode. So you have no place where you can watch characters opening and endings, which is a bummer, but nothing game breaking.

The last main add-on to this game compared to Street Fighter 4 is that now every one has two different ultras that you pick before a match. These new ultra's really mix things and what you have to look out for. For example, Cammy's first ultra is a crazy awesome kick move, and her second one is a counter, so it really changes things up depending on what ultra your opponent choses. These new ultra's really focus on things, like faces hitting the camera, and other out of this world moves that are really crazy. Sure, there are some duds, like Ken's second ultra, but it adds another layer of depth to an already amazing fighting system.

 

 
Since Street fighter 4 came out only last year, you shouldn't expect on any crazy graphical enhancements. The new ultras have a great graphical style to them, and the new characters have some great designs. There are a couple of new stages in Super, and they look great. The ink style still looks pretty awesome. Street Fighter 4 looked great, and Super Street Fighter 4 looks great as well.

Fighting games are hard to get into if you aren't already friendly with the genre. A missed opportunity that both Street Fighter 4 and Super has missed is the lack of some place where a new player can learn how to chain combos, how to beat a certain character, or anything that can catch these new players up with the veterans who had to learns these things back in the arcade, and have mastered the art of Street Fighter.

If your new to the fighting games, Super doesn't really help you out a lot. Sure, you got character trials and training mode, but nothing that really helps you in a fight. Even if you are new or just aren't good at fighting games, don't get imitated with Super. Even if you are bad at fighting games, you can still have fun as long as you are playing people in your skill level. Someone can go for months without knowing what a focus attack is and still have fun if your playing the right people.
 
Super Street Fighter 4 is a amazing deal and a amazing game.