Street Fighter IV – old school fighter made new – $20

Street Fighter IV / PS3, Xbox (93 on Metacritic) brings together the old-school fighter with all of the characters made famous from the franchise with lots of great newness: online match-making, high definition 3D, moves, and a bunch of characters. It’s a full-on button-mashing party, and everyone’s invited.

Here’s what HardcoreGamer said in their 4.75 / 5 review:

Street Fighter is back with a vengeance, and it wants you back. If this were 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have to write 2,000 words explaining why Street Fighter is awesome, but since we’re here, stop reading this review and, for God’s sake, go out and buy this thing. Buy it now. I need more competition.

And that was a balanced review. Eurogamer gushed in a way that made me blush a little:

The result is the very best re-imagining of classic videogaming yet seen, no less than the definitive Street Fighter, a game which makes the previous entries in the series seem like mere echoes. The character designs, popped into polygons for the first time since the mediocre EX spin-offs, at last feel at home in 3D. In the animation and the detailed and dynamic facial expressions, Capcom captures Chun-Li’s fluid grace, Ken’s ballsy American disposition, Ryu’s hard-hitting but dour demeanour and Dan’s hopeless fanboyism with a new clarity. These are the characters as they were always meant to be seen – at an unerring 60 frames per second, the camera tilting and shifting to provide dramatic angles, time slowing to fully capture every eye-popping combo and Ultra finishing move.

Props for using the phrase “hopeless fanboyism” in your Street Fighter IV review, Eurogamer.

Anyway — everybody says its awesome, and now it’s $20. Check it out.