Previews// Street Fighter IV

That's another of the superb aspects of the genre that SF IV has retained. Not the barring people from your games room, but the fact you can play it in visceral “come and get it, slaaaaaag!” or “I see what you are doing and I will use your skills against you” modes. This new version retains the conundrum of quickness of hand over quickness of wits.

It's also got a top character called Rufus. Rufus is fantastic. He represents for me the way that Capcom has taken SF IV into slightly new territory. His frame, clad in what I imagine is some form of custom-tailored Body Glove or Skins garb, is mesmerising. It is animated as a huge, wobbly, hemispherical mound of lard. The gentleman is super-obese. He's enough to confuse Daily Mail readers for months to come.

On the one hand, he obviously eats and drinks what he likes (Mail, Sun and Express (and I assume New York Post readers love that). He is also agile, confident, able to stand his ground, quite athletic and he loves a good punch-up against foreign-looking folk. The readers of those same newspapers love all those attributes. On the other hand, he's a violent video game character. That's going to confuse the mouth-readers for sure.

(I don't read newspapers...much) Rufus sums up the graphical and combat approaches more succinctly for me than French amnesiac, Abel (or un-Abel, when I play him); the sunglasses-wearing Yankchick who is for some reason called 'Crimson Viper'; or the Mexican chef (normally appealing to me) cum-wrestler, 'El Fuerte'.

They're all fascinating in their own ways with different skills to be used as you scrap your way from left to right or right to left of the nicely rendered, slightly cartoony back-drops. But they simply don't have Rufus' all-round graphical, fighting and charismatic edge.

I think Rufus is it. You think Chun-Li is the be-all and end-all. Mark over there thinks that Blanka is the bee's testicles.

SF IV retains this. It's balance is retained. It has some innovations but it is careful not to mess with the formula. This is no 'Batman-like re-invention'. There's no Prince of Persia or (gods forbid) Alone in the Dark messing.

You gain new combat methods, prettier graphics and more characters. In preview at least, it's a win.

Before I go, however, be warned that the in-game graphics bear not one single jot of similarity to the Okamieseque, smokey visuals that introduce the game. Gods know where the hell they came from.