No gameplay changes at all to note however his new Ultra opens up all new strategies to use.
El Fuerte Ultra Spark is quick slide into a grab, it has decent range and comes out in 3 frames. While not as fast as Zangief's Ultra it has the added bonus of being ranged, quick start up and can go under many moves and fireballs. His 1st ultra is not that bad and in my opinion is actually highly underrated as it works wonders for any fighters who are jumping in and out, I look forward to see how this Ultra changes the El Fuerte match, especially against his current bad match ups.Zangief like the rest of the original cast seems to have negligible changes from Street Fighter 4. His Lariat reportedly does less damage....and that's about it as far as the bad things concerning Gief are concerned, so expect the Red Cyclone to be just as powerful as you remember him, even more so when you see what his new ultra can do.
The Siberian Blizzard is his new air Ultra and as you can see in the video below it looks just as crazy as his original did. Now unlike the Ultimate Atomic Buster this move is a total game changer. Now longer will Blanka Balls and Tiger Knees keep you at bay as the SB can grab any move that even put your character slightly airborne. Timing it right can totally change the game in your favour as the move does incredible damage just like the UAB.
Now apparently this move can also be landed if a lariat is FADC'ed or trade hits against, I have not seen this but if this is true, expect Gief to be even more hated this time around!
From the limited information that I've been able to take in and from chatting with a few people who played him, Bison has not undergone that many changes at all.
His new Ultra, Psycho Punisher, is absolutely brutal though. It seems to land similar to El Fuerte's Ultra 1, Bison does a low head stomp and lands right in front of them, grabs their face, picks them up and plunges his fist right into his victims stomach then blasts them full of psycho power. Even with all of his short falls and always having the feeling of fighting an uphill battle, Bison was my main in the original SF4 mainly because I loved the (limited as I could hit it) ending a round with his Ultra, the grin on his face and hit boots in my victims chest, so good. As you can see in the below video, Bison is going to stay my main again.
I'm looking forward to any additional changes they do make to Bison in the final version, though if I can hit this Ultra similar to the way I hit El Fuerte's on jump ins this my be enough to get me out of all of the corner traps I always seem to end up in.
Two new trailers were released today by Capcom
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.