Painful thumbs. That's the holdover from the heady days of Street Fighter 2 and its many sequels in the early 90s. It was the game where you didn't have to remember a telephone directory of button combos to get to the key attacks, but instead you had to factor in timing, some element of rhythm and a delicate soupçon of button mashing.

You could do quicker or slower moves, with a sliding scale of ferocity to match. Match the right attack to the right amount of time you have available before your opponent whacks you back, and generally you'd find yourself doing rather well. There were special moves, of course, but again, these required some planning to execute properly. And likewise, to make the most of the combos, you'd need to be thinking three steps ahead at the least.

Since Street Fighter 2 spawned numerous spin-offs and eventually Street Fighter 3 trundled along, many pretenders to the throne have come along. Street Fighter stayed in two dimensions while rivals such as Tekken and Virtua Fighter opted for three. Street Fighter, in spite of its gameplay genius, was simply looking dated and struggling to get much of a look-in. Criminal, but that's the way it was.

And now Street Fighter IV comes along. Here Capcom reaffirms its genius in this genre, not least by offering up what's still at heart a 2D fighter, albeit in an ostensibly 3D world. Visually it makes for quite an effect, and it quickly seizes the initiative back from the rivals that tried to take its place.

But it's the gameplay itself that's the real peach here. It gently leads you, with a solid and considered learning curve, into the ways of the Street Fighter, and it's a fair bet that you simply won't want to leave for a long, long time.

You'll need to put that kind of commitment in to really get the hang of the moves and to work out how to execute them properly. Then there's the small matter of the new introductions that Capcom has brought in. Now you also have to contend with a focus attack, and there are also ultra moves, which you execute by building up a special meter. Ultra attacks can turn a bout around even when things are looking particularly grim, and it's just part of the subtle, strategic make-up of the game.

Not that you'll be worrying too much about it. For all the nuances and subtleties to Street Fighter IV, it's still an action-packed fighter and a compulsive one at that. It can, in the early stages, be a bit of a daunting beast, given that there's so much under the bonnet that you need to master, but it's always extremely entertaining and you never have to wait long to make a bit more progress.

Add in a roster of characters that make you positively weep with joy, and the kind of deep gameplay that makes you realise you'll be playing for weeks and possibly months, and Street Fighter IV can justly lay claim to being the best game of 2009 to date. It's also the best thing to happen in the fighting genre in a long time, and the developers of Tekken 6 must just have started sweating a little. Excellent stuff.

The thumbs still hurt, though...

Verdict
A superb fighting game that mixes in classic gameplay with some mod cons and instantly regains its place at the top of the pile.

Company: Capcom

Tags: capcom street fighter iv street fighter x tekken tekken virtua fighter tekken 6 namco fighting game