It took like 6 tries but finally I got to play Street Fighter IV at the 6th Lok Test (Which is Japanese English for \"Location Test\") in Sugamo this past weekend. All-in-All, SFIV is FANtastic! If you are a SF fan, your gonna love this game for several new and old reasons.More...Well, it SF for one. How are you even gonna talk about fighting games without paying homage to the original flavor dood? SFIV comes back hard with the original 8 of Street Fighter II and the 4 Boss characters. Then there are 4 new characters up for the King of the Block Challenge. C.Viper and Rufus bring Big&Sexy combos to the table. Rufus, who I\'m thinking is the \"Dan\" character for SFIV, uses something similar to a mantis style of fighting technique with an ill mid-air to ground up-down mix up game. I just wish that he would use his belly more to attack. He may look silly but he is very well animated. Then there is C.Viper, who gets my vote for the new sexy lady of SF! I know all y\'all Chun-li fan boys are cursing my existence right now but that\'s where I stand. C.Viper and Rufus are both Rush down offensive type characters. C.Viper offers more aerial finesse and her ground launcher special is a nice surprise attack against any projectile based character. She\'s reminds me of cooler more vixen like Cammy. Where as Rufus, seems to be more of an rush down mix-up silly fighter. He\'s like a fat version of Gen, Yun and Yang. Then, out of Mexico we got El Furte that plays a lot like Ramon from the KOF series with his run command combo and attacks. He\'s the most SNK-esque character in SFIV. Expect to see more from this cat in the future. Then there is Big Frenchy a.k.a. Abel. Abel was the favorite new character of choice during this lok test. Power, Speed, Alpha Chain like Combos to the High-Low mix up grabs. Then supers that go through projectiles at damn near full screen range! Yeah, the choice was easy. You wanna win with new character. It\'s 1-800-Abel FTW! So, new Character use ranking goes: 1.ABEL, 2.C.Viper, 3&4 Rufus and El Furte. The Original 8 and the four Bosses are solid as hell though. There are a couple of new moves such as Guile\'s (Forward+Med.Punch), Sagat\'s (Forward+Short Kick), and E.Honda\'s new one-two combo just to name a few. These 12 characters seem to play with the same familiar priorities and start-ups from the SF2 Turbo. With exception to Chun-Li who still gets to use her Street Fighter 3rd strike stance and that Damn Kick Super.... (If you haven\'t guess it by now. I don\'t like Chun-Li!)Graphically, you really can\'t compare SFIV to anything else out now. The cell-shaded ink splash flares are hot! The color pallete used in SFIV is mad juicy! Capcom went on a nice little acid trip and decided to abuse the Crayola vivid colors crayon set to the max. The ultra bright color scheme really pulls the characters out and puts them in your face when the do their supers and ultras. Or when the do something big like Zangief\'s Spinning Pile Driver. Man, the last frame of it is so sick looking! Also if you look closely, Capcom has put a lot of working into giving the characters facial expression to kinda match the damage inflicted upon them. Which is very important in this game, especially, when playing against characters like Zangief. (I\'ll go into this a bit further later.) The Ultra\'s Combos are brilliant Vega/M.Bison\'s, a.k.a. the last boss, ultra combo finishes so nice and eventhough I don\'t like Chun-Li. The last hit of her ultra combo hits so HARD but finishes as smooth as a frigid Jägermeister shot. The Bitch is Cold blooded Man! Fighting, Games, POPULAR, SCOTT, SFIV, Street, Video