Is Street Fighter 4 the best fighting game of all time?

m_shortpants said:
It basically saved the fighting game genre and is currently elevating the scene to unparalleled levels, so yes I'd say so.
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It didnt save the fighting genre. Didnt it make it more popular in terms of getting more people interested in tournaments? Absolutely.

That said. It's not close to my personal FG of all time but I understand people who could make a case for it. I would name SF2T before SFIV

Edit: Besides its kind of hard to pinpoint one fighter as the GOAT. CVS2, TTT1, T5DR, The Alpha series can make a case in their own right for different reasons
 
This hipster mentality is too funny. Everyone hated 3S during its lifetime calling it crap and dumbed-down from ST.

Now SF4 is the dumbed-down game and 3S is suddenly the GOAT.

I'm sure everyone will shit on SF5 and proclaim SF4 to be the greatest, for its gameplay, for what it did for the competitive scene etc etcetera

I would like to know if SF1 fanboys reacted the same way when SF2 was released. If they called it dumbed-down because the special moves became easier to perform and combos meant free damage.

p.s. hyper fighting is the best ;P
 
I think it's too hard to pin point a greatest fighter ever. It doesn't work like RPG's or Action-adventure games where it seems easier to narrow it down to 3-5 games that stand out among the rest. SF4 gets a lot of hate, and it's easy to hate on it because it's the most recent SF game and has been broken down bit by bit that everybody can come up with their own reasons for why they dislike it. The same can be said about many older fighting games, but people get nostalgic about those older fighters and either forgive or forget their problems because they're not around anymore. People will naturally get nostalgic about SF4 when enough time passes.

But to answer your question, I'm just going to say no because I think it's too hard to proclaim a "greatest fighter ever" or even narrow it down to a top 3. I will say that SF4 is my favorite fighter of all time. I've been playing since World Warrior in 92 and have played almost every SF and tons of other fighting games since then. But my natural bias towards the SF4 series is that it's the first one I ever got very serious with and has led me to meet new people and attend tournaments including EVO. I try other fighting games but I always come back to SF4, it's basically in my blood now even though I have plenty of things to say about why I dislike the game as well. I'm really looking forward to SFV but I hope USF4 sticks around for a good while after SFV is released.
 
Aditya said:
This hipster mentality is too funny. Everyone hated 3S during its lifetime calling it crap and dumbed-down from ST.

Now SF4 is the dumbed-down game and 3S is suddenly the GOAT.

I'm sure everyone will shit on SF5 and proclaim SF4 to be the greatest, for its gameplay, for what it did for the competitive scene etc etcetera

I would like to know if SF1 fanboys reacted the same way when SF2 was released. If they called it dumbed-down because the special moves became easier to perform and combos meant free damage.

p.s. hyper fighting is the best ;P
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I just saw your edit, was going to say true hipsters say Hyper Fighting is the best.

#FuckSupers
 
alstein said:
Vanilla SF4 had a trial that was a remake of SF2.

Personally, SFA2 was my favorite SF, but it's not the best- far from it.

All time best 2d game to me is KOF98UMFE, best 3d is VF5 (felt R and FS weren't big improvements)
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What do you mean by a trail that was a remake of SF2? Like a demo? Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix came out in the year before SF4, but that wasn't in the SF4 engine. Or do you mean a trail like the skill challenges in the game? I don't think any of those changed the animation or speed of the game.
 
I'm not good enough at fighting games to have a particularly nuanced opinion on these things, but taking the whole package into consideration (balance, animation, art style), I prefer Third Strike, VF4, and Last Blade 2 the most in roughly that order. I don't know that I would have SFIV in my top eight, honestly.
 
  • Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R (the GOAT)
  • Darkstalkers 3 (best Capcom fighter of alll time)
  • Samurai Shodown 2 (funnest SNK fighter, not the most balanced but a blast to play)
  • Tekken 2 (for its time it was mind-blowing, replace it with TTT2 if you want)
  • Virtua Fighter 2 (again for its time, replace it with VF5FS if you want)
  • Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 / Mortal Kombat 9 (can't decide, best Western fighters in existence)
  • Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (best modern air-dasher game IMO)
  • Under Night In-Birth EXE:Late (best new IP in many years, the Grind Grid is a thing of genius)
  • BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma 1.10 (most varied roster, in terms of character mechanics, that I've never seen)

And I could go on and on mentioning games that are much better than SF IV IMO. The iterations have made it a better game but the foundation wasn't the greatest. From the OST to the graphics to the netcode to the single player content and the story. A fighting game consisting only of good gameplay can't hold a candle to any of the games listed above in terms of content and presentation. Maybe UNIEL is the weakest entry but French Bread is hella poverty. In my heart SFA2 is still the greatest SF but just because I discovered 3S much later in my life.
 
Aditya said:
This hipster mentality is too funny. Everyone hated 3S during its lifetime calling it crap and dumbed-down from ST.

Now SF4 is the dumbed-down game and 3S is suddenly the GOAT.

I'm sure everyone will shit on SF5 and proclaim SF4 to be the greatest, for its gameplay, for what it did for the competitive scene etc etcetera

I would like to know if SF1 fanboys reacted the same way when SF2 was released. If they called it dumbed-down because the special moves became easier to perform and combos meant free damage.

p.s. hyper fighting is the best ;P
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Everyone but the hardcore didn't know what a 3S was during it's lifetime. Arcades dying really hurt 3S in a way that no other mainstream fighter has ever experienced. It doesn't help that 3D fighters held the hardcore until gamers could start drooling over SFIV's 3D models. The best new 2D fighters in the world didn't mean anything to your average fighting game player before 2008.
 
I would say yes, if only because it's the only reason people still care about traditional fighting games. It even got us MvC3 and got MK to stop being terrible.
 
Virtua Fighter 4 and 5 still have a giant place in my heart. Whatever incarnation of those games we're talking about, they're all aces. They practically soured me on every other fighter for a few years and that includes SF4.

I couldn't even begin to play SF4 when it was first released because the commands were too finicky and I found some of the systems to be functionally stupid like the ultra meter: "so by damaging my opponent it lets them build up an attack that can even up the match at any time? Dumb." It wasn't until much later when I really picked up the game, learned it and came away with an appreciation for it. I still think the game has bullshit every now and then, but when looking at it from an overall standpoint, SF4 and its various incarnations amount to a pretty good technical fighter. It's pretty. It's balanced. Most of the time it's fair and you're rewarded for learning and practicing your craft.

It's a great game and it's lasted for so long. I don't know if it's one of the all-time greats but I would play SF4 before most other fighters. That's a fact.
 
SF3 Third Strike's soundtrack so good, SF4's is so ass.

When it comes to SF4 as a package, the stages, music, and online netcode/matchmaking are the weakest links. Everything else is fantastic.
 
Unlucky said:
This. Top 16 at most majors is a smorgasbord with maybe one or two repeated mains. Almost every character can be and is played competitively at a high level. It's an amazing feat with the size of the character roster.
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For real. Very often, people who think very highly of older fighting games act as if this wasn't important at all. IMO, balance is extremely important, and a meta-game revolving around a handful of characters reflects a huge design flaw.

This is not to say there aren't older balanced fighters, but 3rd Strike is not one of them, and neither are the Alphas.
 
For me, it's a tie between these two:

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Dr. Kaos said:
I've played all Street Fighter games since 1987 and I believe Street Fighter 4 (I'm including the expansions) is indubitably the best fighting game of all time.

I'm not a Capcom fanatic. I've played fighting games from SNK, Midway, Arc Systems, Squaresoft, Sega, Namco, Tecmo, Nintendo and others and they had some great games as we all know. (SS 2/4, FF2, RBFF, MOTW, KOF, Tekken, Soul Edge/Calibur, GG, VF2/3, etc.)

A few of the reasons I think SF4 is king:

- The animation is unparalleled. It's very satisfying.
- Facial expressions and reactions to hits are best in class. This is incredibly important.
- I love taunts and they put an enormous amount of them in.
- Focus mechanic is really cool and adds depth
- Characters play very differently from one another and are well-designed.
- The game mechanics are good. Avoiding long combos is a smart thing to do.

A few of the drawbacks:

- The timing is too tight for some links. especially those using LK/LP. Execution should be easier and require no time in practice mode.
- There are too many characters. Sounds crazy to complain about it but it's true. It prevents people from knowing every matchup and becoming proficient with all characters.


If you disagree, which game do you think is the best of all time and why?

If you agree, mah man!
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Before I dispute, Let me say I do Like SF4, and it was extremely important to the genre.

but;

- The animation is unparalleled. It's very satisfying.

No way! 3rd strike is way better and the 3D games like tekken make SF4 look stiff.

- Facial expressions and reactions to hits are best in class. This is incredibly important.

I agree its important but I think they are too goofy for my taste. KOF does it better.

- I love taunts and they put an enormous amount of them in.

I like that they added many taunts but dislike that you can cancel them at anytime. It takes away from it being a true taunt because it can be used safely.

- Focus mechanic is really cool and adds depth

I agree.

- Characters play very differently from one another and are well-designed.

one thing about some SF games are that most use the same template, so I disagree x100. Ryu, Ken, akuma, Sagat have the same core but they do play differently. GG and BB is an example of unique characters.

- The game mechanics are good. Avoiding long combos is a smart thing to do.

Yeah but outside of focus its pretty much SFII in 3D

- The timing is too tight for some links. especially those using LK/LP. Execution should be easier and require no time in practice mode.

This is actually one of the things I love about the game.

- There are too many characters. Sounds crazy to complain about it but it's true. It prevents people from knowing every matchup and becoming proficient with all characters.

Yeah Im not a fan of a huge cast myself.


My personal favorite Fighter is Alpha 2 Gold.
 
Personally, I prefer Tekken's gameplay. TTT and TTT2 are so, so good. I've never really enjoyed pure 2D fighting games as much as 2.5 ones, except for the Smash Bros. series. Street Fighter's controls feel so strange. I've had good fun with the Guilty Gear and Marvel vs. Capcom series, though.
 
I have not played SF4 so you can consider this moot but I played a lot of other SF, MK, DoA, etc. but for me the best one is Tekken 3. Then I'd place Bloody Roar next to it.
 
It's far too slow and predictable to come anywhere near to being the best SF, let alone the best fighter.

In fact there's a good dozen or so SF titles superior to it. Not to mention the greats from fantastic fighting franchises also vying for the title: VF5FS, TTT2, SCV, KOF'98, Garou, SSII, CvS2, MvC2... it's a long list.

SFIV never had a chance, at least not without the true overhaul it never got. Hopefully SFV is much better.

My favourite fighter? Third Strike.
 
I don't even think SF4 is the best SF. The easiest to access, sure. Plus, fighters are vastly different depending on whether or not they're 2D or 3D. There are games that are way more technical-based, such as Virtua Fighter, and people love getting deep into the pages and pages of combos.

That being said, SF4 is no slouch in terms of technicality. Personally, I think Third Strike is possibly the "best" fighter out there. It's definitely my pick for best SF.
 
I really don't know about SFIV. There are times when I've had fun with it but a lot of other times where it's just been frustrating as hell. I've put a couple hundred hours into it and it just never clicked for me in the same way other FGs have. I even had a more consistently enjoyable time with SFxT (game has way better mechanics than SFIV, IMO).

My favorite Capcom fighter has to be Darkstalkers 3. It feels kinda weird saying that because I actually haven't played it very much (played it for the first time when Darkstalkers Resurrection came out), but that game just fit me like a glove from the moment I started.
 
Given how many hours I've put in to this game, I feel like I can't disagree. There are maybe better games out there but none that I've put in as much time with as SF4.
 
I definitely think it's up there. That game got me into looking games a lot mores different than before. There's others that rival it like Tekken Tag 2, Third Strike, Killer Instinct(2013), Melee and Shaq Fu.
I've made friends and met so many people around the world thanks to SFIV. For personal reasons I rank it high up there too.
BibleThump
 
It's probably done a lot for fighting games, but I find the current incarnation a bit stale.

My personal favourite is umvc3. It's absolute nonsense in ways, but that game just clicked with me and is ridiculous fun. With a bit more tweaking it could have been perfect.

I still have hope for another versus game sometime, even if the marvel side of things falls through.
 
'Best' fighting game comes down to personal preference (also- best by what metric? popularity? strength/size/longevity of competitive scene? sales? etc.)

SF4 certainly pumped a lot of life into the genre. Fighters would still be around if SF4 had never been made or if it had flopped, but I think it really helped bolster things as a whole.

To even decide your opinion on a fighting game (whether or not you find it fun/worth playing), I think you have to spend a good amount of time attempting to seriously play it (probably hundreds of hours? more?). How many people are really even qualified to talk about more than a small handful of games?
 
Mr. X said:
I just saw your edit, was going to say true hipsters say Hyper Fighting is the best.

#FuckSupers
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You know it. My Hf-Guile reflexes anticipated your post.

Pizarro said:
Nah, Ultra will retain a playerbase like every other SF before it, barring the movie and EX?
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This breaks my heart, EX2+ is one of the best and probably my favorite SF game...it deserves more love. :'(
 
Tagyhag said:
Not even the best SF, 3rd Strike is king.

4 was awesome, but that Sagat...
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Didn't 3rd Strike alienate a lot of people while SF4 helped more people give the genre a chance rather than wanting to do nothing with it due to how accessible it was?
 
red720 said:
What do you mean by a trail that was a remake of SF2? Like a demo? Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix came out in the year before SF4, but that wasn't in the SF4 engine. Or do you mean a trail like the skill challenges in the game? I don't think any of those changed the animation or speed of the game.
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There was a challenge where you thought the original SF2 cast, with EX moves supers and ultras disabled.
 
Personally I think Skullgirls is a much better fighting game.

But all the pro scene ever wants to play is SFIV. Dont know why exactly.
 
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