Why oh why has it come to this? Anyone would think that the news of a Capcom fighting game would be music to my ears, but they would be wrong. I've decided my entry for today is going to be about why SF4 is ugly.

There is no valid reason why a game, announced later than SF4, having LESS to do with the SF universe and being a crossover game should look better than the CORE game that Street Fighter 4 should be. Unfortunately though, that seems to be the case in my humble opinion. The game we've been made to drool over is in fact a disservice (viusually) to the franchise we all adore. Street Fighter is in essence a very flexible concept. You can do many things with Street Fighter and it would still be Street Fighter in the eyes of fans. SF4 IS Street Fighter, but it's more on the outskirts of the cloud that I call "Street Fighter" than the recently announced Tatsunoko vs Capcom. I have yet to play SF4, obviously, so any judgement on gameplay will be reserved until that time. So, if all I have to go on are the videos and screenshots, why do I claim SF4 to be less SF than TvC? I'll tell you why, because of the character models.

Huge muscles are fine. Huge muscles on everyone but the girls, not so much. The thighs underneath Ken and Ryu's gi pants are bulging and their arms are more disproprtionate than my old wrestling action figures. Wide shoulders on Bison, right on. Equally wide shoulders on Dhalsim, no thanks. Ryu looks mentally handicapped, and this is not a joke. He looks not so intelligent and this is due to his eyes. They are too clsoe together. He looks VERY VERY little like his counterparts in other games so far. In the short cinematic animation before his fireball super he opens up his mouth and it looks like it's being pulled straight down rather than rotating around a joint. Shoto hurricanes look strange because they look like a mathmatical rotation rather than an effort to swing around a leg or a physical force moving them across the screen. Obviously that is harder to do in 3D, because math is so unforgivingly perfect. Now let's not get into why Crimson Viper is a an SNK character, because they hit us in the back of the head with that Rufus monstrocity. Really now, was that necessary? Do we need such disgustingly ugly creatures in what was up to now a graceful cast of conceivably competent fighters? My words and my tone say "No".

I really respect the designer, but everyone makes mistakes and I believe he made a long series of mistakes in SF4. I can't help but feel like they want to make a game that appeals to the American audience while failing to realise that what most American fans like the Japanese nature of Street Fighter's game design.