Street Fighter 4: Champion Edition review - A fighter that lacks any punch

Look, let's not beat around the bush here. Street Fighter is a game that demands precision. It's a game about complex joystick movements, movements that you need to execute with split-second accuracy.

It loses something when you're playing it on a joypad rather than an arcade stick. In other words, it's not the sort of game that is going to translate well to the indefinite poking of a touchscreen device.

And that's a fact proven by Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition. It's a flappy, indistinct copy of a game that is considered by many to be one of the finest fighters that ever graced arcade or console.

Button mashing

The game follows the usual form of a Street Fighter game. You pick a character, then take on other brawlers in one on one scraps. Knock down your opponent's health bar and you'll win a round. Win two rounds and you'll win the fight.

Each character has their own set of moves. There are fireballs, spinning kicks, flaming punches, and more. Then there are super moves and Ultras. And focus attacks. Essentially CE has everything you'd expect from a version of SF4.

There are less buttons here than usual. You've got a punch, a kick, a special button, and a focus button. You can perform your ultras and supers with button inputs, or if you'd prefer you can tap the bars at the top of the screen when they're full.

And you're going to be doing that, because quite frankly the controls just aren't good enough. Matches quickly descend into bouts of jump kick, low kick, repeat.

I've yet to manage to pull off a dragon punch on purpose. Hadoukens are patchy at best, and good luck getting anywhere near to pulling off Zangief's throws that require you to input a full circle.

There are single player and multiplayer modes, but they're blighted by the same problems. You just can't play the game to any sort of standard with the control options you've got.

It's not a surprise, but it is a bit of a shame. There are ways around the problems of Champion Edition, but as it stands the game just isn't that much fun.

Kick him in the hip

Street Fighter 4: Champion Edition was always destined to be a poor imitation, and in its current form that's exactly what it is.

Even if you're a huge fan of the series, I can't really recommend this one. It's sluggish, sloppy, and its controls mean it's a good distance from being anywhere close to a real Street Fighter experience.

Street Fighter 4: Champion Edition review - A fighter that lacks any punch

Street Fighter 4: Champion Edition doesn't really work on mobile. One to give a miss for now
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.