Ultra Street Fighter IV marks the fourth version of Street Fighter IV and the third version available on the Steam platform. This final iteration adds five new characters, six new stages, a YouTube upload option, and a host of gameplay tweaks. It's Street Fighter IV's best and meatiest update, though some balance and DLC issues prove a bit irritating. Still, Ultra Street Fighter IV is an excellent competitive fighting game that you can play until Street Fighter V's($19.99 at GameStop) arrival—and well beyond.
Step Into the Dojo
Ultra Street Fighter IV's price depends on whether or not you own a previous version of the fighting game. If you're upgrading from Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, you pay just $14.99; if you're upgrading from another version, or don't own any iteration of Ultra Street Fighter IV, you pay $29.99. Either way, those are great prices for diving into the one-on-one fisticuffs action.
This PC game has more than 40 characters, each with his or her own different moves, strengths, and weaknesses. Four of the new characters—Hugo, Poison, Rolento, and Elena—feel recycled. That's not surprising, since they're actually transfers from the poorly received Street Fighter X Tekken. The fifth new character, Decapre, resembles Cammy (a long-time Street Fighter character) in a mask.
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Why You Should Game on a PC
The characters' play styles are unique and agile—Decapre's fast, tricky charge moves are a special joy to use. The slowest, the screen-filling Hugo, makes up for his lack of speed with a massive reach and powerful grapples. The newcomers are fun additions to an already-diverse roster.
Fighting Street
The older characters receive some changes, but they may not be ones you favor. After all, there's a fine line between a great character and one that should be nerfed. You can alleviate the new changes somewhat by choosing previous versions of the characters with Edition Select. For example, you can play as the insanely overpowered Ken or Sagat from the vanilla Street Fighter IV. The option offers a cornucopia of new matchup possibilities, but it isn't available in the online multiplayer mode. That's a good thing, as the limitation helps maintain some semblance of balance in a competitive environment.
Another new addition, Ultra Combo Double, lets you take both of a character's Ultra Combos into a fight. Your attacks do less damage, but you have more anti-air and reversal options at your disposal. It gives skilled a fighter even more tools to keep an opponent off guard.
The new Red Focus grants attack-absorbing armor so long as it's activated, but at the cost of three levels of your Super Gauge (the blue meter at the bottom of the screen that allows you to perform extra-damaging special moves and super combos). Red Focus is designed to be a more simplistic version of Street Fighter III's parry. Due to its reliance on your Super Gauge, the move isn't available for use at all times.
Red Focus also offers other strategic possibilities, such as breaking combos and complementing your own combo barrage with extra power. And the new delayed wakeup, activated by pushing two buttons at once when your character is lying on the ground, further improves the game by throwing off the timing of opponents' wakeup attacks.
The Combat Zone
When Ultra Street Fighter IV first stepped onto the PC platform, it was a buggy, lag-filled mess. Thankfully, developer Capcom patched up its golden goose and made the game a highly replayable and enjoyable fighter.
Ultra Street Fighter IV now runs well on our modern gaming PC housing an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card; it runs well on older machines, too. Capcom offers a wealth of shading, anti-aliasing, and other graphics options for those who like to tinker with visuals. There are several resolution options that span 640 by 480 to 1920 by 1080. Even with all the visual settings bumped up to Ultra, the game maintains a smooth 60 frames per second.
Likewise, online matches are improved. Here at PCMag, we've exchanged fists, feet, and fireballs for hours, experiencing only the occasional online hiccup. It's incredibly easy to set up public and private lobbies, participate in ranked or unranked matches, and create tournaments, too. Ultra Street Fighter IV also supports Steam Cloud Saves (so you can carry over your data to a new PC) and numerous Steam Achievements.
DLC Blues
Unfortunately, fighters' alternate costumes are still locked behind a paywall, a practice that has become standard. The new duds come in two packs for $3.99, but you can pay $19.99 for all of them, which is more than it costs to upgrade Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition to Ultra.
There is also a costume pack for Arcade Edition that's compatible with Ultra for $14.99, the same cost as the digital upgrade. These aren't exactly bargains. It's a shame, really, because these extras would've been in-game unlockables just a few years ago.
The Road to Victory
There's a reason Ultra Street Fighter IV is the face of the fighting game community and such tournaments as Evolution Championship Series. The game is relatively easy to pick up (not more so than the comical Divekick, but it's more accessible than the dense The King of Fighters XIII($19.99 at Humble Bundle)), boasts a deep roster, and is outright fun to play. Despite a few issues, Ultra Street Fighter IV deserves a spot in every fighting game fan's library.
Patched into playable form, the formerly broken Ultra Street Fighter IV is now one of the PC's premier fighting games.
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