Media Rag

First up is the 3rd promotional trailer. Not quite as forth coming with new info as the last couple of trailers but it still has some really awesome animated scenes that will get your heart pumping. Sweet Scene of Cody coming through the wall too. Screw the Rules indeed.

The next one is the new animation that will be packaged with special edition of SSF4. Looks much better than the movie packaged with SF4 SE. Story is based around Juli and how she became the person she is. The Alpha Dolls as well as Cammy, Guile and Chun Li make appearances also.

Blanka like most returning characters does not seem to have that many changes. His normals and specials are largely the same, their have been reports of his crouching fierce punch being closer to his SF2 version, his vertical Blanka Ball flying closer to the ground and his electricity apparently activates on 4 inputs instead of 5 now, overall not too much of a change to most seasoned Blanka players though the crouching fierce punch might be a good poke depending on how quick it is now.

His New Ultra, Shout of Earth, actually has two variations one ground and one anti-air and both look awesome. The move is activated similar to Guile's Flash Kick and you can change which version of it you want to use by the buttons you are going to press, so people will see you charging it up. One of Capcom's SF4 advisers Seth Killian mentioned that the ground version of the move could be used to hit projectile throwing characters out of their move if you have good reactions and while projectile throwing characters were never a problem for Blanka thanks to his EX Blanka Ball it will also hit them at full screen which the EX ball rarely could hit so Shout of Earth will definitely make your opponent bring the fight to you. The anti-air version of the move seems to activate very quickly so this may help with cross-ups, but again nobody in their right mind crosses up blanka as his electricity and some of his balls give him every opportunity to counter.

At the moment I'm not really sure how this new Ultra will help Blanka's game, it seems to have more practical uses than the original Ultra but it also seems to have a lot of uses that were never Blanka's weaknesses. Many people also like the 50/50 ultra on a fallen opponent, whether this move has enough advantages to give this up has yet to be seen.

T. Hawk is back and has made the transition across to SSF4 very similar to Dee Jay. Everything that he had before is back with a couple of extra's. The first thing that you'll notice about T. Hawk is his huge stature, the man is easily the biggest character in the game. His moves all return just as you remember them as well as a new move the Condor Spire. The Condor Spire is a cross between his Condor Dive and Rising Condor, he starts with a quick hop into the air and then dives horizontally. It has ok start up and you are able to combo into it off of some moves, it is also good to use to tick throws if it's blocked.

His first Ultra is the Raging Typhoon which is an updated version of his original super move as you can see below it's quite devastating. It has huge range right now, but this will be toned down in the final version of the game. Not really a fan of the whole American Indian part at the end but the damage is quite impressive.

His Second Ultra, Raging Slash, is one of my favourites as it hits hard, hits fast and is absolutely brutal. It is an anti-air move which starts off similar to his Rising Condor move and ends with T. Hawk slamming the crap out of his victim. It has invincibility on start up and has great aerial range too because of his huge size.

T. Hawk is a power house and from play tests reports he should be getting toned down a bit, however he seems to have the tools right now to dominate the competition.

Chun Li's Second Ultra is the Kikosho. It's been a series staple since the original alpha and we all expected this Ultra to make a comeback and it's great. Best of all it's not a charge move and it hits off some of her specials and unlike her original ultra it does not require you to be in the corner or have amazing timing. The move is near identical to her Third Strike version, she puts her hands behind her back to charge it up and then a huge ball of energy engulfs everything in its path. It does not come out fast enough to be used as an anti air so she still doesn't have an effective anti-air for jump ins unless you can get it off really early on their jump. On block the move does push back the opponent but not far enough to be safe for any character with a good mid range attack.

Her normals like most characters are the same though her big standing kick is nowhere near as fast as it used to be. I did not notice this but I've heard that the the spinning bird kick now knocks back more and her EX lighting legs apparently hit more depending on how many kicks you press. This means that when you combo into an either Ultra it will most likely do less damage than in SF4. While we are on the topic, her new ultra off of them is easy as pie, anything that can combo into the ex lighting legs can now lead to the Ultra.

Unlike the characters I have written about so far, I can instantly see reasons to counter pick your ultra against certain characters and I look forward to seeing some of her SF4 bad match ups with her new move.

First up Sagat takes more damage now, I heard that it's the same as Ryu's now so it's not that big an issue, on the plus side it just means you get your ultra quicker. While we are talking about his Ultra, Sagat's fireball super from the Alpha series, the Tiger Cannon, is back as his second Ultra. The charging of the fireball animation is exactly what you'd expect from a a fireball ultra, with Sagat drawing his hands together at chest hight and throwing it out. Honestly I'm a little disappointed with the Tiger Cannon as it does very little to change his core fight style. The move hits off of anything the Tiger Destruction (TD) did only it does a lot less damage, even in the corner where his 1st ultra rarely hits for full damage it still does less damage (this is still the same so far in SSF4). While the game is still unfinished, from what I've seen his new ultra does not even fully hit on a juggled opponent, which makes me wonder what practical use it's going to receive as I can not see the pros in using it out side of a slightly stronger fireball game (which he doesn't need anyway).

His Normals are nearly all the same, he has a new animation on his lk which also hits twice when close. His combos that worked in SF4 still work now so double --> RH into his ultra still hits for just as much damage as before. His Tiger Uppercut however has had its damage tweaked a bit as it now hits for slightly less damage, not that using this uppercut was ever central to his play style so this shouldn't affect Sagat players too much. Now to slightly......make up for this he has his Tiger Charge back from the alpha series. In case you never saw this move (like me) what it does is power ups his next Tiger move. He never had much use for it in the alpha series, probably wont have much use now, though I just heard that apparently the move now takes 1 EX bar away and also acts as a dodge like move, sounds interesting now.

Overall Sagat seems like his core game play won't change too much, he's just as strong as ever, though I look forward to seeing what his new moves bring to the table.