The Mog Blog

The next continuation of the Super Street Fighter 4 Multi-Part Review! This time, we will look into the “new” characters from the Street Fighter Alpha series: Cody, Guy and Adon. Sure, they’re not “new” but every single one of these guys will feel pretty new.

Note that these character impressions and reviews are going to be based on what is known now. Because of this, there might be some things that have not been discovered about that would increase a character’s true potential. As such, don’t take this info as a be-all-end-all statement but rather how the character gauges up right now and how they are under first impression.

Cody:

Cody is a character that was originally from an older Capcom title: Final Fight. He would make his first appearance as a playable Street Fighter character in Street Fighter Alpha 3. Cody’s fighting style can be described as purely what the title of the game is: Street Fighting. But, I’m not here to talk about the origins or minute details like this, I’m here to talk about what you will expect when you play this character.

First and foremost, if you have played Cody in Street Fighter Alpha 3, he does have most of his moves and details intact, namely criminal uppers, wake-up dirt throwing, rock throwing, and his slide kicks. In SSF4, Cody will seem to be a very basic character but might end up being one of the better characters. His combos are generally simple, usually involves a good series of crouching jabs, a crouching medium punch and a criminal upper. His Zonk Knuckle, which is done by holding down a punch button and then letting go after a few second, is very potent as it has upper body invincibility for a few frames. He can use this to go through fireballs and even punish mid-range fireballs. This punch is affectionately known as the “bingo punch.” He has a good cross up with his jumping medium kick and going into his bread and butter combo is really easy off of that.

His rocks do offer some good range attacking though it wouldn’t stand too much of a chance in a fireball war. Instead, the rocks are great in that they do give pressure towards the opponent that would try to advance on you, especially on wake up. His knife, on the other hand, is good to have on IF you can grab it with no problem. The knife changes the property of all of his punches and they will now do chip damage and even setup for his second ultra. You can also throw the knife but you also drop the knife if you get hit, focus attack, super, or ultra, I think even throw as well. Unlike Street Fighter Alpha 3 though, the knife pick up animation isn’t as quick so trying to grab it and quickly shank the opponent with it might not be a great idea.

His first Ultra is probably the most preferred one since it properly combos off of fierce sliding kick, FADC, into ultra. His second ultra can be done after a crouching fierce punch IF you have the knife equipped. Trying to do the whole FADC setup for his second ultra though will end up with a whiff for the second major part of the ultra.

As far as flaws go, Cody does not have a decent wake-up reversal. Which means that he can be jumped up after knock down and would have very little offensive options to deal with it. He can also be zoned quite easily with projectiles, despite the fact that his Zonk Knuckle can go through fireballs, it can only go so far. His Bad Spray move, which is done by hitting Up+Punch in replacement of a quick recover off the ground, is not as great as his Street Fighter Alpha 3 version, especially when he gets crossed up.

Overall, Cody is a very good solid character that can be picked up quite easily. I expect to him quite a bit online… among all the Kens and such.

Guy:

Like Cody, Guy was originally from Final Fight and also started off in Street Fighter Alpha. Many people might remember guy as being very agile, very fast and very tricky. Unfortunately, he was slowed down significantly but does that make him a terrible character?

Guy keeps all of his attacks from SFA from his iconic hurricane kick from Final Fight to his quick dashes. Much like Alpha, players using Guy will be relying on mind tricks and being one step ahead of the other. Because of this, Guy is great for players that think fast on their feet and like setting up mind game situations by rushing the opponent down.

His Bushin chain will be something that is familiar to Guy fans as it is a target combo (basically a dial-a-combo) that can easily be comboed into with a jump in and comboed out of with a potential ultra. He also has a large jump arc but he is very floaty during the jump. This can cause some problems trying to setup a cross up especially if you’re too used to other characters and their jump arcs. His EX Hurricane Kick can be used to get out of holes in a combo and also as an anti air at certain positions. Guy’s favorite position is going to be the corner, especially since there are some ground cross ups that he can do out of his Bushin chain. His slide does not go under fireballs but his jump into the throw is a pretty good way to get across.

His Ultra 1 is his preferred super, especially since it combos in the corner right after a shoulder charge. His Ultra 2 is a grab and you can actually jump right after the Ultra flash, which makes it not so much desirable to throw out randomly and expect to catch people in it.

Guy isn’t fast but the player that is playing him will need to be.

Adon:

Adon is actually originally from Street Fighter 1 and made a reappearance in Street Fighter Alpha. This Thai Guy is crazy but he isn’t Sagat crazy either.

Adon was a simple character, he was simple back in Street Fighter Alpha and he’s simple here. He has his wall dive, his dragon-punch like knee and his forward attacking Jaguar Kick. Despite the limited move set, Adon is a prime example of a strong rush down character in its purist form. Having that much mobility around the screen is very nice and his normals are very strong. His standing roundhouse kick is just… well… deadly as it comes out really fast and has good “priority.”

Beyond that though, Adon does seem to have a problem with turtlers or players that maintain a defensive position while trying to find a hole in your swing. In the other end though, careless mistakes will be what Adon will exploit and that is a very good answer to those that like to spam Shoryukens all day. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Adon vs other players but something tells me that even though he has these nice tools for rush down, he might have a hard time getting in and that might end up being a problem for him.

So overall, how do these Alpha characters mesh with the current cast? Well, these characters would not be the first time we see Alpha characters being pulled into SF4. However, as most hardcore players will find out, the characters introduced into SF4 as console exclusive tend to be on the weaker and there were 4 Alpha characters added: Rose/Dan/Sakura/Gen. Gen ended up being the best of the 4, though only through learning a difficult string of attacks. Dan was a joke character to begin with and Rose didn’t have much of anything to write home about. Sakura was probably second decent but she just died too fast. Hopefully with the changes in SSF4, these characters will do better (which will be for another post). However, as it stands right now, Cody/Guy are very solid while Adon might be lacking a few tools. We’ll see how this goes in the later months.

Next time on this Multi-Part Review, we’ll look into the three Street Fighter 3: Third Strike characters: Ibuki, Makoto and the perfect gentlemen Dudley.

Super Street Fighter 4 was released on April 27th 2010 in NA and JP regions with an April 30th 2010 release date for European regions. Current MSRP is at $40 USD and is Rated T for Teens by the ESRB.