Hmm…I never realized that about the depth in SSFIITHDR, but I think you may be right. Still haven’t played it, but it does seem to look rather flat.

BUT! I simply don’t understand the bashing of SF4’s visuals, from you or anyone else. I think the game has one of the most amazing visual styles of anything I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen overblown cartoony-ness done so well in 3D. And kudos to Capcom for keeping 2D gameplay.

I’m with Nick here. SF4 looks quite amazing. If anything, they need more poses with more natural, intermediary changes between those poses for the background characters, but everything else is top-notch.

I’ll second (third?) the comments about the graphics in SFIV - I just recently saw it in motion and it looks absolutely amazing.

I can’t say I agree, Evan. I just downloaded this last night and am loving the newly redone graphics. Udon did a superb job.

Yes, SSFIITHDR makes my eyes hurt as an animator. But to say IV looks even worse is a travesty. It moves smooth like butter, and the 3d affords greater expressions and details in the animation than the sprites ever had. Some of the camera movements look ridiculous, but overall they are doing something more than just boring old 3d. From the textures used on the models to the ink splotches as motion blurs, it looks phenomenal.

I’ll agree with the poster of the article, Street Fighter IV looks like they didn’t had any budget for the game. They chose the cheapest way out, using polygons with different camera-angles for dynamics. Visually it has nothing on King of Fighters XII.

Gotta agree w/ Mike - I’m just elated to see something that doesn’t immediately resemble Virtua Fighter or Tekken or Soul Calibur. That’s not to knock those games - they’re all great games - but the uber-realistic 3D look ain’t really doing it for me anymore. With SF IV, they’re going for 3D, yes, but it’s 3D that evokes the SF II look. As for SSFIITHDR, I agree that *something* just doesn’t mesh well on an aesthetic level. It’s a neat experiment, to be sure, and I can’t argue with the gameplay balancing but… I dunno. I can’t say I hate the look - I’ve got nothing but love for UDON - but, as mentioned, something just doesn’t mesh right about it.

I have played Street Fighter 4 and it both looks, feels, and plays amazingly. On the topic of HD Remix, however, I agree the graphics are goofy. They look pretty, but the characters have no consistency; weird bulges that are supposed to be muscles appear and disappear in different frames with no regard for what that actual muscle might actually do.

And that’s within the SAME character. The designs are all over the place. Dhalsim looks horrible, as does Blanka. The characters in the background look more like paper cut-outs than the fighters and what’s with the girl in Guile’s stage who looks to be servicing one of the men? Characters in Blanka’s stage are oftentimes bigger than the fighters despite them being in the background!

Capcom should not have gotten a comic book company to do motion art in a video game, and I don’t care how pretty their still art is or if they’re “just” tracing over pre-existing sprites. Contemporary comic artists tend to lack an understanding of how panels fit together, opting instead for big bulky characters that fill panels with smaller characters Photoshopped in the background (while each character is actually drawn separately in their own frame thus with no reference or context to fit into a scene - like actors in recent Star Wars movies). And this is much like the problem HD Remix has. With classic sprite graphics, there is a lot of room for one’s imagination to compensate for what the characters look like and subleties like gazes and background elements do not factor in as strongly. With these updated HD graphics, we see every little detail, and design flaws that existed in the original pixel art just become more apparent.

I think SFIV looks great, particularly in motion. I’m not sure what some have against it, but anyone I know of that is a huge fan of the series who has gotten to play it has said it’s very good.

We’ll see, I guess. Personally I already blew 800 points on the last XBLA Street Fighter so I’m not in a rush for this one.

SSFIITHDR

Damn, that didn’t work. It was supposed to be a mathematical equation:

SSFIITHDR “is less than” KoFXII “is less than” SFIV

:)

Street Fighter IV looks like fucking ass! (Stills and Motion/In person) The downloadable Street Fighter game also looks like fucking ass! Capcom FUCKED UP big time IMO.

King of Fighters XII and BlazBlue are both beautiful looking games. Play those instead.

That was a very enlightening mega-comment, Shaun!

Oh and yeah, KOFXII looks amazing.

I think the look Capcom went for in SF4 looks amazing. I’ve been a fan of it from day one. Sure it’s a bit of a bummer that they don’t look close to what the intro video shows, but it still looks awesome.

That said, KoF 12 looks SICK. I can’t believe how pretty it looks. I’m pretty stoked about it, and I don’t really care for the series all that much. Now if only we could convince SNK to dump that kind of money, effort, and look into a new SamSho, I’d hit that like a prom date.

The only thing I wished they would have done.. is add just a bit of SLIGHT depth of field in the HD Remix. It would be really nice if during the fight perhaps the camera would occasionally shift focus too.. like say the fighters come into crystal clear focus but the background blurs a bit depending on how far back sprites are. That would have been a nice little touch.

@SHAUN HATTON: “and what’s with the girl in Guile’s stage who looks to be servicing one of the men?”

Actually, she looks a lot LESS like she’s servicing the guy than she did in the original. In the original it just looked like he had a giant bulge in his pants. In the new version it’s clearly her elbow.

Anyway, I like the new art, but I haven’t played it much yet.

That car in the background of the second shot is just weird, makes all the characters look dwarfish (the guy standing there is barely bigger than the wheel)?

The old graphics had a bit better foreground / background readability - more pleasant to my eyes.

I never was a fan of the redrawn graphics since it was announced. I agree though, with the gameplay tweaks, and I think that what counts the most.