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Unless Capcom sneaks out a few more character announcements for Super Street Fighter 4, this wraps up our Super Street Fighter 4 Profiles series. We finish with Hakan, an oily grappler who's bound to stain a few of his competition's outfits during their scuffles.
Capcom's in-house Street Fighter expert Seth Killian tells what he likes about the newest member of the SSF4 cast and who he'll have trouble matching up against.
On what he likes about Hakan (which I pronounced "Hah – can," not knowing any better):
Seth Killian: Well, I say, "Huh – kahn"…but there's no official pronunciation at Capcom [laughs]. Hakan is one of the craziest characters in Street Fighter history, for sure. He's a Turkish oil wrestler, and one of the keys to effectively playing him is using his oil.
So Turkish oil wrestlers use olive oil to oil themselves up and make themselves difficult to grab. For Hakan, that's actually part of his gameplay. So you have a move, literally, where you grab a couple of bottles of oil and pour them over your head. That allows some additional range on some moves, and your dash changes speed.
His basic technique is, of course, grappling. He's got an interesting move — we call it his spinning piledriver, but it's sort of…a lunging grab but…. OK, for instance, Zangief can grab you from far away, and when that happens, you're sort of instantly grabbed. With Hakan, he actually physically lunges forward. It's really a fast lunge — super fast. It's sort of like a rush in MMA [mixed martial arts] — I think they call it a "shoot," when they shoot right at you and try to take out your legs. Hakan has something similar where it's almost a Zangief grab, but it's not actually. So he can be hit out of it in a way that Zangief usually isn't.
He's got more of a mix of strikes and grappling. And adding to his flavor…all his normal moves have sort of a command version. So instead of just hitting medium punch, you can hit toward and medium punch and get a totally different move out of it. Each one can have a different effect.
So Hakan's got one of the broadest repertoires of normal moves in the game. That's critical for setting up his two Ultras — he's got very tricky Ultras, some of the funniest looking moves in the game. He has a very unique play style.
On the troubles Hakan might face:
SK: Hakan would face trouble from any sort of traditional keep-away characters…so someone like a Guile — basically characters that can throw a lot of projectiles and keep you far away.
Hakan has some options to deal with that. He can slide along the ground and counter some fireballs. But characters that focus most of their attacks around fireballs are going to be tough for him. He doesn't have a move that just dodges those. Like, Dudley has some moves that will dodge around those — so do a variety of characters in the game. But Hakan doesn't really have that, so he's going to be forced to do more jumping or sliding, which isn't safe.
Also see: T. Hawk, DeeJay, Juri, Cody, Guy, Adon, Ibuki, Makoto, Dudley, Hakan
Note: Killian's comments are based on Super Street Fighter 4 as it stands today in its development cycle. Keep in mind the game may go through balancing tweaks leading up to its April 27, 2010 release, so his opinions are subject to change.