THE BOYS' BRIGADE

Ultra Street Fighter: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Capcom/ Sony

Street Fighter is back and doing what it does best - delivering smackdowns for grotesquely oversized cartoony people and combos that seem difficult to initially master.

Five new characters and six new stages have been brought into the game, but to be honest, it's very similar to everything you have seen before with the re-release of the game which originally came to the PS3 a little while back. Ported over and slightly spruced up for the next gen console, this is about plugging a gap as we wait for the release of Street Fighter V which was showcased at E3 this year.

If you're a complete novice to the genre, this is how it breaks down - you take on one of a myriad of 44 characters and compete in beat downs until a disembodied voice shouts KO when your opponent is out for the count. An array of combos is available to each character and how those are used is upto you to work out, thanks to a combination of buttons pushing, move making and the moon being in the right lunar ascension at the right moment.

The PS4 version collects together all of the DLC, giving this very much a feel of a definitive collection, aimed at bringing together everything which has already passed, ready for the next iteration. So that means you get Arcade, Online, Practice and Challenge modes to play with - plenty to keep you amused.

Graphically the game looks slick, but is very cartoon-like in feel, meaning that any real brush up for the next gen console is more about making it look polished rather than adding to it. A couple of times during my play the game momentarily froze mid-air, giving it an ultra slow-mo feel but ultimately, it was nothing that fully disrupted play.

Ultra Street Fighter IV is a solid beat-em-up, a throwback to the old arcade games of the past, which relied on button mashing, reflexes and endurance mixed up with some skill. It'll do for now as we patiently wait the unveiling of Street Fighter V, but with Mortal Kombat X bringing the gore and the polish, this latest does feel somewhat retro in its gameplay and outlook. Not exactly a KO, but still fighting for another few rounds.

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