The brutal challenge of Seth is only worsened by Street Fighter IV’s inability to convey meaningful information about the combat system. The lack of available direction and explanation for newcomers shatters any sense of accessibility. Though it tries to pick up the pieces with multiple modes, novice players will still be left flabbergasted and frustrated by their initial failure.

Training Mode slaps you in a clinical white room with grid-painted floors for assessing spatial distances. If you’re looking to practice a specific character’s combos or special abilities, this is a great spot for it. The most effective means of learning how to execute Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick or Zangief’s spinning piledriver is to dip in to the Challenge mode’s Trial section. Far more useful than the actual training hub, on-screen indicators in the trials task you with pulling off each attack for your preferred fighter in a specific order. If you’re looking to improve as a player, you’ll find few things more gratifying than learning how each of the classic and new characters work.

Challenge mode is also useful for changing up the pace of the standard story mode. On top of the helpful trials, Time Attack and Survival offer alternative means of throwing down. Time Attack puts you against a series of challengers as you pummel faces as fast as possible, while Survival forces you to fight as far along as possible before dying. Succeeding in these modes unlocks new colors for characters’ costumes and art, and there’s an online ladder climbing option for those who are hardcore in to leader boards.

Unless you’re truly skilled, costumes will be one of the few things you’re able to unlock. Earning the ten hidden characters, including familiar faces like Fei Long and Cammy and newcomers like Gouken and Gen, requires you to reach very specific goals. Opening up the first few is as simple as finishing the game with a specific set of characters (start with C. Viper, Ryu and Bison), but earning all of the fighters requires flawless fighting and photo finishes to many matches. To have to unlock these characters at all seems archaic and unnecessary, but it adds a goal to strive for, I suppose.

That Street Fighter is fairly inaccessible is its most glaring flaw. Seth is an unreasonable and totally unfair fighter that deserves to be ignored altogether unless you’re stressing over earning the full roster of fighters. Online opponents are surely the most difficult that you’ll encounter, and they’ll turn most of us in to a milkshake in just a few seconds. But it’s nice to be able to hop online and set friends ablaze with fiery uppercuts. Couch competition is a riot as well, especially when the players are of similar skill, or when hosting a living room-tournament.

I complain about these things because they’re easy to pick out in a game that’s so brazenly fantastic. On a glimmering gold brick, they’re but a few specs of dirt that can be overlooked for the rest of its worth. There’s so much to take in on the surface, and a seemingly limitless amount to learn below it. If you just want to jump in and beat up your friends, it doesn’t get any more fun than Street Fighter IV. Its difficulty issues will impede a select crowd of newcomers, but the progression of learning new abilities for the dozens of characters is fulfilling beyond belief. Some will struggle, but when they conquer the uphill battle, they’ll realize that they’ve got their hands wrapped around one of the finest fighting games ever made.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .