So Steam had SFIV on sale last weekend, I wanted it, it was a good price, so I got it. Well, they call it IV, in truth there have been dozens of unique Street Fighter titles, but Capcom are going with IV so we will too.
I have a couple of Xbox 360 control pads I use on my PC with games that tend to play better with a control pad.
The 360 pad is pretty decent for most genres of game, however for the 2D fighting genre it sucks donkey ass. The main reason for this is the D-pad, a) it’s in the wrong place and b) it’s actually just a piece of shit D-pad in the first place.
A decent directional control is essential for games like SFIV, to stand any chance of winning even on medium difficulty it’s essential that you have a good grasp of your characters moves and combos and that you’re able to pull them off flawlessly precisely when you need to. After about 5 minutes of attempting Hadoken fireballs and producing uppercuts or crouching punches more often than the actual Hadoken I realised the 360 pad was sadly not going to cut it.
I was aware that there were SFIV peripherals on the market for 360 (and thus PC) so I checked out the reviews and the prices. Interestingly Capcom went with peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz for their licensed SFIV gear – a company I’ve had a poor opinion of basically since forever. The general consensus was that the Tournament edition FightStick was the best piece of kit, however at £150 slightly out of my target price range. That left the standard edition FightStick and the Fightpad.
The idea of a FightStick really appealed to me – proper arcade action at my desk – awesome! And at £70 more affordable than the Tournament edition. Still pretty expensive, and there were wide reports that a high proportion of the sticks malfunction in fairly short order. So a risky purchase, and £70 still quite a lot to spend on a peripheral limited in application essentially to the few 2D games I have and maybe for emulation of older consoles.
But Mad Catz are not the only peripheral manufacturer and I discovered a brand called Hori also had a range of fight sticks and I could get one of these for £50. Unfortunately I read a few accounts of Hori owners who couldn’t get their stick to work on PC, and since I need it for PC it’d be pretty useless if I got one and it didn’t work.
So, last possibility before my SFIV purchase becomes a complete waste – the FightPad. Opinions were split in the reviews, but in general fairly positive, so I bit the bullet and went for it.
That’s right, I got a Ryu one 
(£31.96 incl delivery from http://gameseek.co.uk)
The pad works on the standard Microsoft Xbox 360 pad drivers, so you pretty much just plug’n’play. I instantly felt my precision was improved when I got this in-game. hitting Ryu’s ultra-combo which had been almost impossible with the standard 360 pad was now possible (although I must say not a 100% success rate, I will put this down to needing more practice for now). The 6 button face + 2 shoulder is also slightly preferable over the 4 face/4 shoulder for this genre of game. The buttons on here are good and chunky on the face too.
It’s not all peas and carrots though. The pad does feel a bit flimsy, like you really wouldn’t want to drop this or stand on it, it feels like it would crack like an egg. Secondly the start/select and shoulder buttons are of a really dated ‘clicky’ nature, they make an annoying click when pressed – buttons shouldn’t really do that, yes all controllers make a certain amount of noise, but this is extreme, and in the case of the shoulder button means you need to apply a bit more pressure than your standard 360 pad shoulder buttons to illicit a response.
They’ve also elected to cover the back and sides of the controller with a rubbery material – not a bad idea on paper, however, in practice when your hands have sweated up a bit the rubber ceases to have its non slip property and starts rubbing your fingers which can become quite uncomfortable and sore after not too much actual play.
The pad features a switch on the back that alters the D-pads designation between emulating either the Left or Right Analogue sticks from a standard Xbox 360 pad or the D-pad itself. Before I started playing I made sure it was on D-pad and started playing. I was doing fairly well and into about the 3rd or 4th match I noticed my accuracy with moves had dropped considerably. I was getting a bit pissed and happened to tilt the pad one-handed in a gesture of disgust at my latest hammering when I noticed the switch had altered to Left Analogue Stick – I switched it back to D-pad and instantly my form was back and I won. The switch is a 3-way slider, when it’s either on the left or the right it is quite difficult to move, however in the middle position – the D-pad position – it moves very easily, so it is possible to accidentally knock the slider over and fuck yourself over. It’s a bad design, the slider sticks out of its recess so it’s really easy for it to switch without you realising if it brushes against something. I think it’ll be ok if I’m careful, but I really shouldn’t have to worry about that when I’m playing.
The key feature of the pad is the D-pad, they’re really banking on people needing an upgrade from the abysmal 360 D-pad so they’re using it as a selling point. It is better, but it’s not amazing. it really doesn’t feel as good as the old Sega Megadrive/Saturn 6-button face controllers, the D-pad is slightly too small for its housing whereas ideally it should be quite snug in there, because of the looseness it feels pretty breakable. Now that I’ve mentioned the old Sega controllers I should probably mention that this pad feels too big. I was like 12 when the Saturn came out and the pad fit quite nicely in my hand, now I’m about to hit 24 and this thing feels like a beast. It’s actually about the same size as a standard 360 pad, but it doesn’t have the hand contours that the 360 pad has, so it just feels ungainly.
It is a useful FightPad, but it’s far from perfect.
Finally, the game!
I haven’t really owned a Street Fighter game since SFII Turbo on the SNES, and as it happens the SF series has gone through quite a lot of changes in that time. The basic SF gameplay is there, hell even most of the moves have the same controls, but there are now extras, EX versions of certain moves that power them up, Super combos, Ultra Combos and something that’s apparently brand new to SFIV called the Focus Attack. As a result the game is a lot harder than it was back in my SNES days where I could battle thorough the game with every character and only really face any real difficulties against M. Bison. Combos seem to be more important than they ever were before and the whole game seems to depend on a good knowledge of your characters moves list and having the good judgement to know when to do what when, and to have nimble enough fingers to make sure it happens at that when.
I have managed to beat the Arcade mode (on easy 
) with Ryu, so I’m making progress. I will persevere, the great thing about this genre is that you can dip in and out and a quick bit of practice soon brings you back up to speed with the timings and the controls.
The gamer in me keeps telling me that Easy is for pussies and children, which is why I spent the week until yesterday getting spanked on medium, but in this case I need Easy to build some chops – then I’ll move up.
freedoms_stain, contemplating his next character choice, out.
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