Whoa, how did I forget to review this?
Well, being a fightng game fan, it was hard to ignore the latest rendition of Capcom’s Street Fighter 2. Having a solid fighting engine already, a big following, people were hyped for this, and for good reason.

Well, I’m a Street Fighter fan, but I’m in no way a pro. I don’t play at pixel and frame perfect levels,  but I still really enjoy playing SF2.

Now Capcom brings us a visually updated and rebalanced version of Super Street Fighter 2, so let’s check it out.
 
Graphics
Let’s start with a comparison pic for the lulz. It’s Jeremy in all his HD glory VS Jeremy on the Super Nintendo!

 

No one can say the old sprite looks better. The difference is massive. I thought the sprites in Guilty Gear X2 games were great, but this blows them out of the water(not that GGX2 graphics aren’t badass). The colors, the details, everything is incredible. Udon, who draw comics for Capcom’s Street Fighter and Darkstalker series, made some of the best looking sprites ever. The art style is great, just like in their comics.
Not only the character sprites, but all the backgrounds for the stages were redrawn and look just plain awesome.

I might not be doing this game justice since I’m still playing my PS3 on Standard Definition TVs, but even there it looks awesome. No one can really fault the graphics here.

Sound
Did you like the sounds in previous versions of the game? If you did, well you’ll like them just as much here, since they’re the same! From what I’ve seen the sounds come from various versions of SF2, depending on fan input as to what sounds were better. I think Guile’s sonic boom is from Hyper Fighting… but don’t quote me on this. The music tracks are all remastered, and the soundtrack is just as good as before.

Gameplay
Well, SF2 is one of the pioneers of fighting games. With the millions (exageration) of revisions, it eventually became one of the best and most popular fighting games as well. If you’re one of the many who loved SF2 and any incarnation of it, you will love this one.

The fighting system remains pretty much the same despite the major graphic upgrade.You have the same kicks and punches as usual, you to the same motions for your attacks (though some might have been slightly modified), and the timing and such for attacks seem to be the same as before. The combos are the same. 

The fighters are quite varied. There are 2 basic types: Ones that use quarter/half circles and some other motions to pull of special moves, and others that must “charge” in a direction for 2 seconds and then press on another and an attack button to pull off their moves(I suck at that). Within those types come a bunch of other types. Close-range fighters, mid-range fighters, long range-fighters, grapplers, more balanced fighters, etc. Overall there’s lots of varietyn the fighters, none of them really play the same (well, Ken/Ryu/Akuma seem pretty similar to me, but I’m 100% sure you can prove me wrong on that).

Of course, they made a bunch of changes to make the game more balanced. That remains to be seen, but from what I’ve seen, the change should give a good change of pace to high-level players. Here’s a list of changes from one of the makers of the game:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/sf-hd-remix-complete-change-list.html
Though for me those changes didn’t impact me that much(since I’m not that good at the game and all), I did find myself to do a few things differently because of some nerfs and buffs. 

As for modes, there aren’t many. Arcade mode pits you against a series of CPU controlled opponents. What I’ve seen here is that the opponents are stupidly good. They have superhuman timing and always know exactly what to do. And I’ve only been playing on medium…
There’s also multiplayer. You can either play locally or online. The online is actually not that bad from what I’ve seen. There’s some lag here and there and sometimes an opponent pretty much teleported in front of me while attacking because of that, but overall it’s not too bad. Online you have 2 choices: ranked matches and friendly matches. The only difference is that in ranked matches your losses or wins are counted, determining your place on the leaderboard.

Overall
Yeah, this was a short review. It might have been longer if I was a pro SSF2T player, but sadly I am not, so I can’t really comment on some of the changes made to balance out the characters.
But fact remains that this game is incredibly fun, the online community really helps and, well, it’s Street Fighter 2. Well worth the 15$. There is no reason not to get this game, unless you really don’t like fighting games.

jobocan Games, Review