Game: Street Fighter IV, Capcom, 2009, PCBeer: Negra Modelo, 12 fl. oz., 5.4% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 4
Level Reached: End Credits
Level of Intoxication:Woozy
Game
To be honest, if you would have asked me straight out back in the day, I would have never thought Capcom would have made a Street Fighter four. Hell, the way Street Fighter II was going, I would have bet good money against a number three. Fortunately for the civilized world though, Capcom not only made a "Three" (and a Three-2, and a Three-3), they managed to get to the number four. And thankfully, Street Fighter IV has "For the Fans" stamped all over it. The entire game is literally an homage to fans and the culture they've created around the Street Fighter universe. As an old arcade rat from the early/mid nineties, when I play SFIV, I can't help but smile, because I know exactly where it's grown from. It's the feeling I imagine Fedor Emelianenko's parents get, seeing their little boy grow into a man, and then the man growing into a cold-blooded killing machine. Oh, and if you've never heard the name Fedor Emelianenko...go ahead and Google that shit right now...I'll wait.
Gameplay
Gotten your testosterone quota for the decade? Did you see the fight between Fedor and Hong Man Choi? Good, let's dive right in. Street Fighter IV (hereafter referred to as IV since I hate needless typing) has basically gone right back to the good old days of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The controls are tighter than the homecoming queen's skirt, and the emphasis is on action over animation. This means you had better pay attention, because single frames can link deadly combos together, spelling your immediate subjugation if you aren't on point. This Street Fighter is strictly old-school, and relentlessly hardcore. The day this game dropped, sites all over the internet exploded with the hardest of the hardcore picking the game apart and exploring the greatest ways to exploit the game engine and annihilate your opponent. IV is the game that many people say Three should have been. Just bear all that in mind when you take this game online and play over the internet with someone you've never seen. Don't be surprised when they dominate you like a digital Fedor Emelianenko in a leather bodysuit.
...Right, anyway...
The game comes with a smorgasbord of modes and options. You can play story mode, which includes some superb anime cut scenes and, well, storyline. There's versus mode, pitting you against either a human, against the computer, or, for reasons I've still not figured out, you can watch two CPU opponents duke it out. If that's not your cup o' tea, you can always engage in the challenges, which force you to dig deep for the old magic that will allow you to pass. Seriously, some of these challenges border on the superhuman, including the time attack where you have to finish with more time than you started with, the survival mode that faces you up against Team Satan-Bot, and the training routines that force you to slow down time itself in order to link two moves in a cancel-combo. On top of that you have unlockable characters, items, modes, titles, icons, and a whole other buffet table of goodies that, when obtained, will tell everyone that you selflessly sacrificed life and dignity to master this behemoth of a game.
Like I mentioned above, the game is built atop an entire foundation of fanservice. Everything from the win-quotes to the stages to the interactions between the characters screams fan-love. If you spent any significant amount of time with the Street Fighter franchise, this game will cater to you in ways that will make you think you just walked into one of those Asian massage parlors. The roster is also unforgivingly old-school, featuring all eight of the original World Warriors, the four original bosses, and a handful of favorites from throughout the history of Street Fighter, including the much awaited official appearance of a character that was dreamed about by hardcore fans for decades. That's right, Gouken, AKA Sheng Long has finally become a reality. If that doesn't butter your bread, then you must be allergic to awesome. The vaccination line is over there. The new characters don't really blow my skirt up, but they're there. Most of the hardcore community has apparently fallen in love with Rufus who is, in my humble opinion, so cheap and gaudy he should be his own hotel on the Vegas Strip. The new boss Seth rounds out the full unlocked roster and he is basically a case study in SNK Boss Syndrome. Perhaps not as cheap and frustrating as the king of them all, Rugal from the KOF series, but really, he holds his own. All in all, there's definitely a niche for everyone in this game, particularly if your niche happens to be "Street Fighter Addict."
Graphics/Sound
Well, given that this is a current-gen game, I really can't fault the fidelity of the eye and ear candy. The graphics are great, instead of the icky flat polygons that hearken back to the days of Street Fighter EX (lord how I try to forget that game) the characters in IV all look smooth and beefy. The textures are top notch, even going so far as to have a sketched look to them, and the backgrounds are gorgeous, with beautiful colors, and tons of action from all the varied props. I would have liked to have seen some updated remakes of some of the old, original levels, Ryu's rooftop stage being a top contender, but perhaps we'll get that in the way of overpriced, undervalued, downloadable content. The stages that are on tap are pretty awesome, and some longevity is offered in certain stages by offering day and night versions, with different things happening in the background in each setting. The effects are smooth and eye-popping, especially flames, smoke and the warping effect that goes with very powerful hits. These effects are highly prominent during the ultra combos, which use fancy camera work to really make them feel extra punishing, even more so when you've been drinking and screwed up on an easy move in the middle of a clutch-round.
The sound effects are quite nice, the impact sounds are loud and punchy, and the voice samples are clear and well acted. During rival matches, the two contenders even talk trash as they mix it up, and the announcer is always ready to give color commentary. The music is so-so, sometimes it hits a high note, so to speak...but most of the time it's barely noticeable, or in the case of the main theme song, is downright annoying. They must award theme songs nowadays to the lowest bidder. First Three and now this...Give me the World Warrior theme eight days a week, I can hear that from across a crowded arcade and recognize it instantly, even to this day. It's a form of echo-location for arcade rats in unfamiliar territory. One of my favorite pieces of music in IV though is the Credits Theme, it is about nine tablespoons of awesome mixed into a pitcher of money and served over ice-cubes made out of children's dreams. If only they could have made all the songs in the game that rich and creamy.
Story
For me, fighting games have always been less about story, and more about beating the snot out of someone else and bragging about it. Of course, every game has to have a reason for being, and nowadays, it's more and more difficult for that reason to be "there's a fighting tournament that only eight people are invited to." Case in point: now, everyone who gets invited to a fighting tournament has ulterior motives for attending, which usually revolve around the other fighters in the tournament somehow. No one ever said this stuff was Shakespeare. As far as I was ever able to deduce in the Street Fighter canon, M. Bison was head of a worldwide terrorist organization that was already so rich and influential, that any attempts to take over the world really just seem like masturbation by that point, and most of the other warriors were either after Bison for personal reasons, or just wanted to, y'know, fight in a tournament and stuff.
IV is really no different in this regard. Bison is evil, and the other fighters in the tournament are after him, either because it's their job, or because M. Bison is so evil, he can't help but piss off random people who possess innate fighting ability. The rest of the characters just want to fight, or make soup, or...something. The story as a whole is more robust than past iterations, and swings wildly from character to character as either high action/drama, or silly situational comedy. In the latter category, one such story is affected for one of the new characters, named El Fuerte who is a Lucha Libre wrestler who harbors dreams of being a world-class chef. Problem is, he can't cook to save his life. He embarks to find the bestest food the world over, he gets in fights, laffs ensue, etc. Like I said: not exactly high literature. Still, the convergent storylines serve the game well and at least offer an excuse to spend money on talented anime studios.
Beer
Negra Modelo...I couldn't divine much about the beer myself other than it's one of the very few dark Mexican beers around, and it tastes pretty damn good. It has a fairly earthy scent, which is actually pretty cool, although I smelled a bit of metal underneath it all. I thought it was just because they use stupid-ass foil wraps for the top, like they think they're some sort of wine, but as I found out with my first taste, it isn't entirely the foil topper.
Before I continue, please allow me some license to bitch about the foil some more.
Okay, foil, fine...you want to class your beer up some, make it appear to be a limited, special brew or imitate champagne or something. I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is when your foil sticks to everything. I go to peel the foil off so I can access the beer within the bottle, and portions of the foil are glued directly to the cap. This means that as I peel the metallic foil back, I start to tear it into teeny-weeny little tiny pieces.
These pieces get all over the floor, the bottle, my fingers, and, if I don't clean everything with a damp rag, in my mouth as I drink. I've partaken of a great many beverages that have seen fit to have their tops wrapped in decorative foil, and none that I can recall have ever been so stubborn as to stick to the cap. If I don't clean the rim, I taste foil, and since I'm drinking the better portion of a six pack, the last thing I want to do as I descend into the throes of an alcoholic stupor is stop to wipe little bits of metal off the brim of my bottle. Okay, metal sucks, moving on.
The beer itself is pretty fizzy, making chugging a bit more complicated, and causing me to get the burps. It also gives me a feeling of being more full than I really am and slows my beer consumption. The carbonation isn't that bad, not as bad as some of these American brews that seem to be made entirely out of condensed foam, but still, it has a higher bubbly-factor than most beers I've tried. Again, it seems to be trying to imitate champagne. Odd.
The taste is actually rather good. A burnt-sweet taste makes it easy to like, with a dry aftertaste that unfortunately makes me think I've been sucking on a fork. Yeah, the metal is back, although my Spidey-senses tell me this isn't from the foil this time. The metallic taste, although faint, is deeply ingrained into the taste of the beer, leaving me to wonder if the foil was actually added to act as a scapegoat for the steely aftertaste. Oh well, I found after the second one, I neglected to wipe the foil remnants off the brim entirely, and just started sucking them down. The 5.4% alcohol by volume has that effect, particularly when I chug a fifth of a bottle in between matches in Street Fighter. Pretty soon, that burnt-coffee-metallic taste just slides right by me as I'm trying to keep Akuma from stomping me into the concrete. Damn that Demon Rage...Damn it straight to Hell.
The Matchup
I've always considered Street Fighter to be a "beer and buddies" type of game, particularly once it started coming home in the form of console conversions. Swigging barley-pops and passing the controllers around, all while whooping and hollering has always been a given in my mind. That given has always ensured that Street Fighter would go good with any beer, no matter how cheap since the core of the experience has always been a social endeavor. When you're with good friends having a good time, the labels on the bottles really don't mean that much, although good beer usually eases the transition into the next morning. In this case, I managed to get a fairly good beer to go with the game, and while the beer and the game shared very few aesthetic similarities, both were elevated by the others' presence.
Cheers/Game on.