The final member of the SSF IV roster was revealed during GDC. He’s a Turkish Oil Wrestler named Hakan. Appearance wise, he looks like the result of an illicit rendezvous between Final Fight’s Haggar, Hellboy, Zangief, and Akuma. Like Abel, and Zangief his main strength are his up close grapple moves, however, when he douses his body with olive oil (extra virgin olive oil, to be exact) his move set is augmented with distance attacks, projectile counters, and increased grab range with his grapple attacks. His special moves have a zany attribute to them, and his Super move looks downright disturbing–in a good way…Sorta. Gamespot has an excellent video spotlight hands on preview with Capcom’s Seth Killian at GDC.

Now that we have a clear picture of what SSF IV will offer–i.e. character roster and fantastic online components like spectator mode, and tournament, I finally realized what it was about the original Street Fighter IV that left me so dissappointed. The new characters simply weren’t all that interesting to me. Sure jumping online as Ryu, Chun Li or Ken is great, but everyone plays as them. Now, I can’t wait to check out how Dudly, Adon, and Ibuki have changed to adapt to SSF IV’s combat system, and I can’t wait to “oil up” with Hakan. EEEEwwwwwwww…That didn’t sound right, did it?