Best of the Decade: Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV 

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Windows

Release Date: February 17, 2009 (PS3 and 360)

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Dimps/Capcom

For a great many years, my heart belonged only to Soulcalibur. I dabbled with other fighting games from time to time, but I could never gather up the motivation to stick with any of them long enough to get past that initial awkward button-mashing phase that’s inherent to trying any new series in this genre.

Most of all I was mystified by the Street Fighter phenomenon. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Mortal Kombat, which is to say I hate the fighting but love the cheesy characters and world they inhabit, but the appeal of the series is clear enough: cheesy B-movie aesthetic and plenty of gore. Dead or Alive isn’t my thing, but it has lots of anime-inspired girls with giant floppy breasts in it so its success is easy to understand. 

But when I looked at Street Fighter I was never able to grasp the appeal. Everything looked too simple and too repetitive. And, as fighting games aren’t exactly known for their ability to ease in newcomers, every time I’d try to pick it up I’d get stomped on and write it off. I had no street fighting friends to convince me to stick with it. 

When Street Fighter IV came out, something clicked.

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Best of the Decade - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Platforms: Windows, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

Release Date: March 20, 2006 (Windows and 360 versions)

Publisher: 2K Games; Bethesda Softworks

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

Most of the games on this list were carefully chosen as modern experiences that still hold up as such. I have previously discussed my modernist mindset when it comes to gaming, a mindset that makes it difficult to enjoy certain older titles. In the fast-moving gaming industry, a game doesn’t actually have to be that old to feel aged. A glance at many PS2-era titles is proof enough of this. Even in just 10 years, games have come a long way indeed.

Oblivion is a good example of this. It wasn’t the first of its kind, as one need only look at its predecessor, Morrowind, to see where it came from. But Oblivion did represent a huge leap forward from anything that had come before. When it was released, it was definitively a “next-gen” open-world RPG. It was gorgeous, stunningly large, and complex. Perhaps it feels dated in some respects now, but Oblivion raised the bar when it was released and it’s telling that, even after all this time, few games attempt the sheer scale and depth it delivered. 

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The Painful Truth Behind the Veil of Sonic Nostalgia

It is time that we, as a unified gaming community, tell Sonic to go the hell away. It is time we realized the madness and false assumptions and clouds of delicious nostalgia that have been screwing with our judgement for far too long. It’s time we came to our damn senses and admitted the truth.

The Sonic formula kind of sucks.

I know. It’s hard. But you have to let go. You know this to be the truth.

So many of us have deeply cherished memories of the Sonic games on the Genesis. So many of us have been clamoring for a return to those golden days ever since the blue hedgehog went 3D and multiplatform and started hanging out with that colorful group of annoying animal friends that just wouldn’t leave us alone no matter how many times we insulted their stupid spiky gloves or told them no one wanted to fish in a goddamned Sonic game you stupid fucking purple cat.

Look, before you go throwing things at the screen in blind rage, I’m not saying the Sonic games weren’t good… for their time. That’s the key isn’t it? What was once brilliant simply no longer works in a modern context.

The Sonic franchise represents a bygone era of design concepts that have become annoying, passe, outdated, and generally shunned by game developers with even the slightest bit of sense. It would be one thing if the Sonic games just made us deal with a few outdated concepts here and there. I think we could probably forgive that in the name of nostalgia and a good time. It’s not that simple, sadly. 

See, the Sonic formula is made up almost entirely of game design ideas that have no place on a modern console. The entire design process of these games is pretty much a bunch of developers sitting in a room coming up with as many ways to be complete fucking dicks as they possibly can.

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Street Fighter IV iPhone Review

Street Fighter on the iPhone is something that by all rights should not even exist, much less in any form that actually resembles what a normal human being would consider a playable game. It should be a cheap cash in. It should be an abomination. It should have no redeeming value whatsoever.

I mean, come on. It's Street Fighter! On the iPhone! We are talking about a fighting game that represents the ultimate in precision controls, precise timing, and skillful input. Slapping a game like that onto a portable device with no physical buttons should be nothing short of blasphemous.

But yet, here we are. Street Fighter has been released for Apple's touchscreen device, and it doesn't suck. Color me surprised.

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