The average human being might make as much sense of watching two hardcore Street Fighter players talking to each other as they might make of two dolphins telling each other the water’s a bit cold today. Love it or loathe Street Fighter, endless talk of chip damage, focus cancels and the like isn’t going to have gamers queuing around the block for their space in Punishment City. Luckily, this time out things have seen as close to a total redesign as feasible, the overall target being Street Fighter 2’s accessibility rather than Street Fighter III’s noob-mystifying system of parries. In short, if you’ve ever craved for the action of beating up stupid cheap Ken to be just that little more simple, this is a Street Fighter made to your own twisted designs.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that characters from X360’s choice couple of titles are set to make an appearance. In fact, there’s a distinct Alpha 2 feel to proceedings, with the game borrowing not only characters but stages from Capcom’s 1996 classic; some arenas even wrenched from fighters that won’t clench fists in battle. Those who will, however, excite us in weird and profound ways, some of which we’re shamed to admit. Joining this contest anew are generic schoolgirl and obsessed Ryu fan Sakura, demonic Akuma, everyone’s favourite joke character Dan, and thinly veiled Bruce Lee tribute Fei-Long. Sadly, the last of these no longer appears to sport his creepy vibrating victory pose, but we suppose you can’t have everything. In addition to this foursome of newcomers, players will be able to take charge of SF IV’s main boss character, the interestingly named (if we’re generous) Seth. Yes, we know that’s what people who have seen more sheep than men are called, but we don’t control these things. Reliably enough (so far as final bosses are concerned), he possesses the ability to perform almost everyone’s special moves at will, throwing out fireballs, dragon punches and so on like some sort of giant invincible condom. He even has the ability to stretch his limbs like a certain Indian master. Where the two differ, however, is in their upper special move level – here, Seth simply uses the Yin/Yang embedded in his stomach to either swirl his opponent around in mid-air, or simply ingest them before making a little impromptu human cannonball. It’s the kind of thing you might expect a Mortal Kombat character to do as a Fatality, only this time the result is a slightly bloated cheek accompanied by the familiar fluorescent orange background. Well, polygons are pretty tough, after all.

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