The hotly anticipated PlayStation 4 port of Ultra Street Fighter IV has been chastised by the fighting game community ever since its release earlier in the week. This has resulted in the release being pulled from both the Capcom Pro Tour and Evo 2015 – events which Sony is sponsoring. It's an embarrassing state of affairs for both the platform holder and developer Other Ocean Interactive, then – but just how bad is the game for the average person?
As non-competitive players, we've been giving it a whirl in the Push Square office for the past few days, and the menu issue is a very real problem. Digital Foundry's analysis explains that every frame is being rendered at half-rate, which results in the navigation feeling slow and cumbersome. While this doesn't affect gameplay, it's insane that an issue of this kind made it into the final release – and it will surely be fixed as part of next week's patch.
In the ring, things do fare a little better. We're yet to notice any performance drops during bouts, and Digital Foundry reports similar results. The problem is the input lag, which is hard to measure to the naked eye, but sits at around 100ms according to the aforementioned site. This is comparable to the PlayStation 3 version of the game, and, while it's fine for casual consumption, is not suitable for pro-level play. The fact that Sony said it had been erased is the most troubling aspect here.
Visually, the game looks fine, though it doesn't offer many improvements over its previous generation counterpart. Despite running in 1080p, the graphics can look jagged, grainy, or blurry in places, perhaps due to a lack of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. It does "pop" a little more than its predecessor, although Digital Foundry puts this down to a saturation bug, which is artificially boosting some of the colours. Not exactly a positive, then.
Other than that, professional players have picked up on various other glitches and bugs – invisible Sonic Booms among them. Decapre's teleportation move appears to have been inexplicably tampered with, which obviously raises real balance concerns. The online netcode generally seems fine, but an absent patch in the UK means cross-region play is impossible right now. These issues, even though small, should never have made it into the final version.
It's not quite the broken mess that it's been labelled, then – but considering that Sony was selling this as some kind of definitive tournament grade title, its shortcomings have rightfully rewarded the Japanese giant with a black eye. If you're a casual fighting game fan looking for a copy of Ultra Street Fighter IV on your PS4, then this will fulfil your needs – but you need to question whether you want to reward a port that, at present, has fallen seriously short of its goals.
Meanwhile, professional players will want to look elsewhere – after all, the Xbox 360 edition has already been reinstated as the tournament version of choice. An embarrassment all around, then – we'll have a full review soon.
Are you playing Ultra Street Fighter IV on your PS4? Do you think that this version is as bad as is being made out, or are you relatively happy with your purchase thus far? Rant and rave in the comments section below.
Comments 16
I can't imagine the feeling when you sponsor an event after your port botched. I have that feeling the FGC will let them have it.
Scepticism is no doubt being built for SFV.
@DerMeister It shouldn't be. Capcom's making that game. If it's messed up then that'll be down to Capcom.
@get2sammyb Read the foundry report and the menus are a total mess, as for the red I mentioned as soon as I got the game that it looks like the contrast is turned up on another forum or thread on your website.
I'm okay at the game and was in the top 400 in the world on xbox in player score, but the difference in button input is ridiculous, you cant pass the trials. Nailed around 15 of the fighters last time but the lag I so bad I will be lucky to get Bison through (which is the easiest to trial 16imo.) gutted, absolutely gutted. Hopefully they will have a patch next week is there a report of one?
@get2sammyb You're right, it shouldn't. But stuff like this can really cause people get that lingering feeling of "They'll screw it up because they didn't get it right this one time".
I'm not sceptic myself, I'm actually looking forward to SFV. But I'm willing to bet that others will tread lighter.
@themcnoisy There's a patch due out next week, but we'll have to wait and see how much it fixes.
@DerMeister Yeah, that's fair.
Capcom releases inferior port of SFIV.
Anger ensues.
Capcom announces new Monster Hunter X.
All is forgiven.
I bought it but I won't play it till the patch is dropped.
Did they even test it?
The game is like 8 years old I just don't understand how they botched this port so badly.
It's playable. But that patch still needs to happen. For a game this old on new hardware (that is supposedly much easier to optimize) is just unacceptable. Every game this new gen has needs patched. Lol
Not sure how much a patch a week after can fix . Even capcom has trouble ironing out patches for this game. Sometimes fixes lead to other bugs which is expected with a roster of characters this size . I really hope they fix the input lag first especially after saying it had been eliminated (face palm) .
I think I'm fine with the 3DS & Xbox 360. It really shouldn't have turned out this way.
@JaxonH Sony ported it though. Therefore, all will be forgiven when Uncharted 4 drops.
@Vincent294 Other Ocean Interactive ported it, they arent owned by Sony.
@3Above Thanks for the correction. I know it wasn't Capcom; if it was them, it'd have on-disc DLC.
Psh. Everyone knows real competitive gamers play Shaq Fu.
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