Ultra Street Fighter IV

 PC
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 117 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 72 out of 117
  2. Mixed: 26 out of 117
  3. Negative: 19 out of 117

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  1. TwoEars
    Jul 20, 2015
    7
    As a long term Street Fighter fan I have to say that this is a very childish and shallow game. SF2 is a pretty simple game by today's standard, but it was state of the art at the time and had a cool and tense martial arts feel to it. SF3A and SF3 Third Strike were more "cartoony", but both those games had incredibly deep fighting mechanics which you could spend years honing, exploring andAs a long term Street Fighter fan I have to say that this is a very childish and shallow game. SF2 is a pretty simple game by today's standard, but it was state of the art at the time and had a cool and tense martial arts feel to it. SF3A and SF3 Third Strike were more "cartoony", but both those games had incredibly deep fighting mechanics which you could spend years honing, exploring and perfecting.

    In comparison to these previous games USF4 is a shallow game with nerfed chains, slow animations, cheap grappling moves, stupid "revenge" mechanics and very badly balanced characters.

    In Street Fighter Alpha 3 each character had 2-3 super moves, and each super move had 3 different power levels which you charged up as the fight went on. This led to an incredibly deep experience with lots of room for tactical play. Now in SF4 each character only has one super available at any one time and you charge it by getting hit, that's right.. you earn the ability to unleash this single special move by playing badly and getting hit.

    It leads to a very stupid experience which doesn't reward skilled players. I recommend playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 or Virtual Fighter 5 instead.    … Expand
  2. sinadoom
    Oct 29, 2014
    4
    I have played and followed this game for a long time, but I cannot recommend it for several reasons. First of all, the PC version is unplayable at current. This is not a single-player game. Unless you want to do the trials (which I spent most of my time doing), you won't have fun offline. To really experience this game, you need to play against human opponents. The online on PC isI have played and followed this game for a long time, but I cannot recommend it for several reasons. First of all, the PC version is unplayable at current. This is not a single-player game. Unless you want to do the trials (which I spent most of my time doing), you won't have fun offline. To really experience this game, you need to play against human opponents. The online on PC is extremely laggy and inconsistent and slow in terms of the matchmaking process. But the other reasons I wouldn't recommend it are as follows:

    Too dependent on match-up knowledge. You can't counter-pick, which forces you to learn ONE character and learn them well. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. After having cleared all trials and experimenting with every character I still haven't found one that works for me. Whether I win or lose seems to be decided mostly at the character select screen. My performance is not representative of my skill level due to the character I have chosen vs the character my opponent has chosen.

    No opportunity to use combos. This might sound like a noob thing to say but despite having excellent execution when in training mode I can never combo anything online not because I can't make the links, but because the opportunity to use it is rarely there. The risk vs reward makes it difficult to justify at times. This combined with the non-existent juggling mechanics mean you have to rely on bread-and-butter combos. This makes the game far too "flow-charty".

    Too much poking. Everything in this game feels safe and hard to punish.

    And finally, the most important one: NO TUTORIAL. This game is about as accessible as twister is for wheelchair users. There's nothing in the game to help you. Altthough the strategy and fundamentals might be intuitive, the controls and mechanics take a lot of practice and aren't actually all that satisfying. The game requires frame-perfect timing and is infuriating if you don't have the patience.

    Don't get me wrong, this is by far my most played game and I've had some great moments on it, but to me it's more fun to watch others play it (e.g. Excellent Adventures). As a spectator game, it's often more exciting. But to play? It's more frustrating than rewarding.    … Expand
  3. mothgog
    Oct 28, 2014
    0
    The game itself is very good when played offline, new characters are nice, solid mechanics and everything you know about SF4 series is there. The nightmare comes when you play online however, lag, freezes, lag and again freezes as they failed to integrate their netcode with the Steam networking services. It will get easily on your nerves. They also released a patch after 2 and a halfThe game itself is very good when played offline, new characters are nice, solid mechanics and everything you know about SF4 series is there. The nightmare comes when you play online however, lag, freezes, lag and again freezes as they failed to integrate their netcode with the Steam networking services. It will get easily on your nerves. They also released a patch after 2 and a half months which solved almost nothing... the support for this game is just very poor, they just release more costumes to get more money. And no, it's not my connection if you are wondering.… Expand
  4. Valleymsx
    Aug 13, 2014
    9
    The last and definitive edition of Street Fighter IV is here and the classic mechanic of the series are intact.
    In my opinion this is the best fighting game ever made. This is the most complete Street Fighter game. without the GFWL and full steamworks are good... Ok, there are some bugs but it's Capcom and this developers read the forums and listen the people. I think all bugs will be    The last and definitive edition of Street Fighter IV is here and the classic mechanic of the series are intact.
    In my opinion this is the best fighting game ever made. This is the most complete Street Fighter game. without the GFWL and full steamworks are good... Ok, there are some bugs but it's Capcom and this developers read the forums and listen the people. I think all bugs will be solved, AAA+++    … Expand
  5. CharcoalBurst
    Aug 9, 2014
    5
    Well, this is the ultimate version of Street Fighter IV.
    This game features five more characters and stages, most of them copy-pasted from Street Fighter X Tekken as well as some balance updates too.
    You know what Street Fighter IV is all about, granted you've not been living in a cave with Gollum for the past 5 years. This is simply the most played versus fighting game online (ever ?).    Well, this is the ultimate version of Street Fighter IV.
    This game features five more characters and stages, most of them copy-pasted from Street Fighter X Tekken as well as some balance updates too.
    You know what Street Fighter IV is all about, granted you've not been living in a cave with Gollum for the past 5 years. This is simply the most played versus fighting game online (ever ?).

    The community is really active, so you always find an opponent online which is a cool thing with games that mostly rely on the multiplayer modes (Too bad King Of Fighters XIII Steam Edition is only haunted by a few ghosts by the way).

    There are several "problems" with this game/dlc as of now:
    - You have to pay about 15$ to update a 5 years old game. "Next-gen" consoles have been out for about a year now. Couldn't they just develop Street Fighter V with updated graphics, new mechanics and REALLY new characters ?
    - There are some balance problems with some overpowered characters like T. Hawk who is the perfect example right now. Guess it will be fixed with a forthcoming update.
    People who bought all the costumes DLC on GWFL were screwed with the Steamworks transition. They're pricy as hell !
    - The netcode is a disaster since the Steamworks transition. Don't try to improve your ranking right now, you could be crushed by a beginner because of the lag. This is a shame since SSFIVAE had been on Steam for about 4 months, they could have fixed the netcode during that period and even more pathetic since the multiplayer modes at the core of this game. Capcom are working on it. Let's hope it works.
    - The OST is disgusting to me. As a SNK fan, that music just feels bland, random. Not catchy at all.

    I'd have given this game a 8/10 if it weren't for the crappy netcode issues. With a good netcode only the crappy music, the cash cow DLC thing and the 5 year old graphics engine would help this game from becoming the perfect Street Fighter game.    … Expand
  6. kureashion
    Aug 19, 2014
    8
    The mechanics are great, the characters are great too but the netcode on the PC version is pathetic so far. Since the transaction from GFWL to steamworks we had this problem but when the game updated to USFIV it intensified.
  7. ticroo
    Sep 8, 2014
    9
    The final iteration (allegedly) of Street Fighter 4 is here! Ultra has certain issues with online play, but that will undoubtedly be addressed by Capcom in no-time. Other than that, everything that makes this franchise great is here plus the new chars & stages (although copy-pasted from SFxT), new mechanics and new tweaks. Played it for a few weeks now and the overall impression is mostThe final iteration (allegedly) of Street Fighter 4 is here! Ultra has certain issues with online play, but that will undoubtedly be addressed by Capcom in no-time. Other than that, everything that makes this franchise great is here plus the new chars & stages (although copy-pasted from SFxT), new mechanics and new tweaks. Played it for a few weeks now and the overall impression is most positive. Still the best fighting game out there by far!… Expand
  8. Ninja-Puffs
    Sep 10, 2014
    9
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I gotta say. Every characters all are epically awesome. Its great that they even added some more of the classic characters to this IV ultra. I truly enjoyed playing this ultra edition of the game. I will still give this a fairly high rating even though it has some bugs.… Expand
  9. Charlemagne
    Feb 11, 2016
    0
    It is with a heavy heart that I must slag USF4, because I adored SF2, but the SF4 series (and now SF5) is clearly just here to make a quick buck on people like me's nostalgia.

    They clearly don't care much about this game, because since USF4's release there have been bugs that they've never bothered to fix (e.g. the setting to mute all opponent voice chat hasn't worked since SSF4AE).    It is with a heavy heart that I must slag USF4, because I adored SF2, but the SF4 series (and now SF5) is clearly just here to make a quick buck on people like me's nostalgia.

    They clearly don't care much about this game, because since USF4's release there have been bugs that they've never bothered to fix (e.g. the setting to mute all opponent voice chat hasn't worked since SSF4AE).

    The game has no soul, no magic, nothing about it entrances me like SF2 did - all it has going for it as art is some recycled music and characters (which are still good, but only because SF2 was such genius). The SF3 characters are all terrible btw. And the new characters are all embarrassing cliches. Half the voice acting is cringe inducing, and the new music with maybe 2 exceptions is nauseating (interestingly those exceptions are both from SFxT - a game that surprisingly had some soul).

    One thing I'd like to point out: the bread and butter of competitive SF4 play are combos and cross-ups ... both of which were BUGS in the original SF2! So the game is basically competitive bug abuse! The genre should be like the mental part of a real life sword fight, and while that does exist, it is buried under a mountain of mechanical bot like play and obscure knowledge. Hit boxes were a technical limitation from the platforms earlier incarnations of the genre ran on, but now they are a vast invisible but required knowledge. And should "option selects" even exists - basically 'secret' (and unintended) button combinations that give the advantage of having to guess less because they handle multiple possibilities - defeating the entire purpose of the game! And so again the genre evolves from bug abuse, with option selects added to cross ups and combos and hit box 'hacks' (I can really only call them that because that is what they would be called in any other genre).

    And 'plinking', which thankfully is gone, was some total absurdity where the select button had some weird accidental effect on combos and had people rewiring their joysticks. Validating my rant about the competitive game being basically about bug abuse. No doubt if plinking had been more popular it would be an intended feature in future incarnations, and joysticks would have come out already wired for it.

    Speaking of combos, making me watch ultra combo animations is absurd, combos are only 'cool' if you did them yourself. And they made some of the newer ones even longer! Who thought this was a good idea. Who could be impressed with such an empty concept.

    And taunts: Capcom do you really think it is a good idea to have a feature entirely for griefing noobs especially in a game with such a harsh learning curve? I wonder how many players you've lost because being taunted made the game not fun for them.

    And how uninspired to name characters after the game's designers - Seth and Ono.

    And the online match making (i.e. the total lack of it) is both terrible and tedious.

    And the AI is terrible, it is both too easy _AND_ it cheats... at the same time! What a tragic combination! You can steamroll it with trivial rote strategies (it can't defend command throws, focus attacks, or turtling, and no doubt many other things) but you can't play it anything like you play a human, giving it no value to play against either as fun or practice.

    I looked at some videos of SF5, and it looks even more uninspired - why make everything shiny and sound like metal? and it's filled with gimmicky looking stuff. *sigh* I won't be buying that.    … Expand
  10. supergaz02
    Nov 22, 2014
    0
    this game is the worst piece of crap i have ever played there is no instructions as to the rules and combos are almost impossible it lag and i have an intel core i5 processor
  11. mykka
    Jun 2, 2017
    10
    By far the best iteration of Street Fighter 4, Ultra comes with several extra characters that add a new dynamic to the game, as well as a few extra features. If you're undecided of which version to pick, this is the one!
  12. aking
    Jan 20, 2018
    8
    Whilst not as good as Super Street Fighter IV, Ultra is not a bad game at all. Could have done without the street fighter x tekken characters being shoehorned in.. feels like a forced afterthought.. like a 13 year old got hold of a hex editor and hacked in the 4 characters from sfxt. Other than that, its light years ahead of Smash Fighter V and almost 10 years older. Recommended.
  13. Tomle1202
    Jan 22, 2016
    8
    Although Ultra Street Fighter IV offers nothing significantly new or revolutionary to the series, or even the original title, it does not have any flaws either. An imperfect perfection.
  14. cylian3
    Dec 16, 2014
    0
    A whopping SIX YEARS now after the release on PC and Capcom STILL haven't had the common sense to even consider introducing any kind of match-making. Looking past the moronic decision for them to use Windows Live, the integration onto Steam has been even more of a bumpy ride and nowhere does this get more apparent than the FPS slow-downs after every patch along with the plummeting networkA whopping SIX YEARS now after the release on PC and Capcom STILL haven't had the common sense to even consider introducing any kind of match-making. Looking past the moronic decision for them to use Windows Live, the integration onto Steam has been even more of a bumpy ride and nowhere does this get more apparent than the FPS slow-downs after every patch along with the plummeting network stability bars in lobbies. Even if you got fiber-optic internet. Even if you're playing against a neighbor. It's simply just a gross display of neglect that this game (which used to have so much potential) will never be able to recover from, as can be seen from the amount of players plummeting to only maybe 1-2k users per day.

    Mind you, I had a really slow internet before so I'm used to lag but when I see this game that is extremely sensitive to command delays (as can be seen by the PC and console communities buying 150€ game-pads like they're basic input devices) be rushed out of the doors and thrown into the faces on the fans that is already at their height of being critical towards Capcom for their unethical business practices, it's more than enough to make me seriously depressed.

    The street fighter franchise is notorious for being hard to get into (as can still be witnessed today by looking at this latest release which comes with ZERO TUTORIALS) so when I see Capcom giving the F'ck you to the fans with their left hand by ignoring to fix massive glaring issues and instead focus their attention on pounding out more DLC while also giving another F'ck you with their right hand to new-comers in form of no match-making & tutorials, I can with an easy heart give my full recommendation to everyone reading this to throw away any hopes of this game having any redeemable aspects of it while also heavily advising people that are currently on this current train-wreck of a game to get off before their shoes will get wet from all the sinking.    … Expand
  15. smilzoboboz
    Oct 16, 2014
    7
    I waited a lot before writing this review because this awesome game is cursed by a really bad netcode implementation, I thought the issues could be fixed but since after 2 months the situation is almost the same I think things are going to remain like that forever. Anyway, let's start with everything else, we will get there eventually.

    The game is, as was SSFIV AE, one of the best    I waited a lot before writing this review because this awesome game is cursed by a really bad netcode implementation, I thought the issues could be fixed but since after 2 months the situation is almost the same I think things are going to remain like that forever. Anyway, let's start with everything else, we will get there eventually.

    The game is, as was SSFIV AE, one of the best fighting games ever made. The roster is huge and the gameplay of each character is unique (shotos share similarities ofc). Usually with a huge roster tier list gets crazy but in Ultra Street Fighter IV there are almost no impossible match-ups.

    Graphics are really nice and on PC you can customize even more game's graphic settings, music is really good (character bgm are better than stage bgm IMHO, but that's just for me) and SFX/announcer are part of what makes the game street fighter.

    Now let's talk about the netcode implementation. When you buy a fighting game you're not supposed to play alone by design.
    In 2000 you wouldn't expect the game to have any online mode implementation and you'd have struggled to search players at your level (it involved moving around your country a lot) to learn the game and eventually enjoy yourself.
    In 2014 you expect your game to be fully playable online since 30~40 ms ping values are totally bearable (it's more or less 2 game frames that should even be mitigated by the netcode). Sadly this is not the case.
    The netcode is bad and so the "mitigation" is completely missing (at least it feels like that) meaning that if you play with low ping values (let's say 40ms) outside ranked, the game plays fine, otherwise you will experience totally unplayable games.

    To recap, gameplay 10 (wouldn't make major changes), graphic 9 (it's old but on PC you can enhance it), music/SFX 9 (totally enjoyable), netcode 2 (well, read above)    … Expand
  16. GamerJesus
    Sep 13, 2014
    2
    Should have been a free patch.
    I already own SFxT and multiple copies of SSF4AE - I'm upset that I had to buy this game again to access these characters.
    New characters are from SFxT (or use the Cammy model with some tweaks).
    Hold out for Mega-Super-Duper-Streetfighter IV Turbo Hyper Fighting Champions Edition.
    Capcom hates its loyal customers.
  17. VagueShape
    Feb 25, 2016
    8
    Ultra SF4 offers a good cast, all the necessary features, adequate servers, and pretty good art design.
    I understand some people hate the focus system, personally I don't mind it.

    If you need a fighting game to get your fix, this one deserves a look.
  18. MNO__ONM
    Jul 8, 2016
    8
    Contentwise this is one of the best Street Fighter version ever. Has Arcade Mode, Bonus Stage, Trials and so on. Online modes are varied too and that's good to see.
  19. JessTurner
    Sep 21, 2017
    1
    SF2 recycled with very little of the beauty of SF2. Bugs never fixed (opponent mic volume in settings doesn't work, so you have to mute them every time or listen to various screeching). Why is Americans voicing over Japanese things always so bad? Other players are generally cretins.
  20. HIKO14TH
    Mar 11, 2019
    10
    The BEST Street Fighter ever built..and get away and do not buy or spend any money/time on the WORST Street Fighter 5/Arcade Edition crap by CrapCom
  21. Shimmeywill
    Feb 19, 2020
    10
    The fighting game that cemented by love of the genre and that taught me the fundamental of fighting games. Many hours into this game.
  22. BenzoSt
    Jul 12, 2022
    7
    A fun 2-dimensional brawling game with about 40 different playable characters. The game's technical structure and character balance is excellent. I had lots of fun playing this game with friends in the early 2010’s. And this game is indeed at its best when played with real people; arcade mode is fine, but whatever. My grievances with this game are that the graphics are quite cartoony, theA fun 2-dimensional brawling game with about 40 different playable characters. The game's technical structure and character balance is excellent. I had lots of fun playing this game with friends in the early 2010’s. And this game is indeed at its best when played with real people; arcade mode is fine, but whatever. My grievances with this game are that the graphics are quite cartoony, the characters are excessively 'roided up, and the music is rather mediocre.… Expand
  23. Emerald3ME
    Apr 4, 2023
    7
    Easily one of the best Street Fighter Games ever released. The only issues that are prevalent are regulated mostly to a lack of single player content that most fighting games struggle with anyways.

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
82

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. CD-Action
    Oct 24, 2014
    70
    6 new stages and 5 new characters – sounds great until you realize that ‘new’ means ‘borrowed from Street Fighter X Tekken’ (with the exception of Decapre, which is a Cammy clone with an interesting move set). [Nov 2014, p.61]
  2. Hyper Magazine
    Sep 14, 2014
    80
    The two-player training mode and 3v3 team battles function exactly as advertised. [Issue#253, p.75]
    Read full review
  3. Ragequit.gr
    Sep 4, 2014
    90
    Ultra Street Fighter IV is a great experience and should not be missed from the collection of any fan of fighting games.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »