Last year in September I drove an hour out of Seattle to play Street Fighter 4; it kicked off 3 months of playing the game an average of 3 nights a week. It felt like words couldn't express how amazing the experience of playing it was that first night. I only picked Ryu because I am generally very comfortable with shoto mechanics. Game sort of felt like Alpha/CvS games mixed with 3rd Strike, but with no overbearing system mechanics so SF2 traditional matchups were pretty similar. Just like Alpha 2, Ryu could link a lot of his crouching moves. I won a few games vs the scrubbier players that first night before watching a dude who I'd later find out is one of the best local players getting a 30+ win streak with Ken, in fact after losing to him 2-3 times I went and grabbed a spicy chicken sandwich at Wendy's and came back and it was about a half hour until the bowling alley closed so I just drove home, it would be one of the few times I ever left an SF4 session before the establishment closed down.

Fast forward 5 months, 2 local tournaments, hundreds(maybe a thousand?) of matches played, hundreds of dollars spent on credits and a 2 month break and SF4 finally came to console. It came out just a week after my employment was put in question and 9 people in my company, several of them my friends were laid off. This didn't really deter my excitement; I was calling a few shops every day to see if i could get the game even 24 hours early. I called the Game Crazy I worked at nearly 10 years ago and happen to now live 10 minutes from and the dude on the phone said they had one copy left. I left work immediately not caring if anyone noticed me cutting out early, picked it up and despite being really tired at 4pm played for about 8 hours that night. By night 2 I was pushing dangerously close to the top 100 ranked players.

Then something happened.. The game got frustrating. I will blame most things on playing online and alone. But with lag anything that is normally frustrating becomes a mental earthquake..

Jump back from Zangief doing an empty jump into ultra? Nope not with a quarter second delay you wont.

Jump or counter hit on reaction any charge type character move(Blanka ball, Honda headbutt, Balrog dash punch, etc), nah sorry that will hit you half the time for free.

Trying to play footsies with a sagat? Hm good luck because anytime you buffer a move and put yourself out of holding back/down back you are basically letting the game know that you can't block on reaction to anything.

I suppose I started to feel so cheated in my losses that I couldn't take it, but screaming "Faggot" at the LCD screen became an every day occurrence. I'm sure my neighbors think there is something wrong with me. There probably is. I think shit got more serious to me once I had my first disconnector. It was probably 200 games into playing. A few weeks later I found out that he was at the tournaments in my area that I went to. I lost to him twice and upon beating him in the 3rd match he disconnected and after a message to him he responded with "Those throws were bullshit."

The lack of personal connection makes something like that really hard to take. In general the game feels really different without other people around. At the arcade a streak becomes a king of the hill type moment, every match is another chance to hold your ground. Everyone viewing your matches, trying to analyze your play for when their turn comes up. On ranking I might start winning a few in a row and I don't really feel any rush from it, it's just playing. Every match resets the momentum. Gain some points, lose some points. It is cool to see your skill put in a context but with the system being so flawed it doesn't really mean anything. Maybe it doesn't mean much to end a huge streak in the arcade and get applause from the crowd, or have people who don't play the game in awe and ask you questions about the game. But those things are a novelty and break up the practicing. They keep things interesting and add standout moments. A great match is interesting but I tend to forget the close matches i've had a few days later. I happen to remember when someone taps me on the shoulder and says "Are you the one winning?"

The other day I logged on and created a player match. No one challenged me. At any given time I have around 5-10 people on my friend list online playing SF4. I invited 2 people and there was no response but I imagine they were playing or busy. I sat for a minute and just thought "SF4 online is lonely. This is lonely."

I don't really buy new games too often because I'm broke, but the demo for this was dope as heck so I ended up picking it up on Friday. I always feel pretty good about the RE series even though I haven't played any of them since RE2, but that's cool because I can't imagine any of them were better than RE2 anyway. I'm kind of gay about games and shit so when I didn't play RE3, I never played any of the others either because I kept thinking, "Gotta play RE3 first." I know I'm never gonna go back and play all that shit, though, so I figured I may as well just pick up RE5.

What I liked about RE1 and RE2 was that the games were kind of unforgiving, and you could potentially get into situations where you were fucked on ammo and had to start the game over or at least go back a few saves if you had multiple files. Also, even saving the game was something that kind of required you to weigh the pros and cons. I guess the RE games to me were kind of about resource management, and the fact that the controls were kind of awkward for aiming and stuff made shit pretty tense.

Using those aspects as criteria, I guess you'd say RE5 isn't a Resident Evil game at all. I'm pretty sure it was the same way with 4, but I never played that either. RE5 has really easy controls (though I know people who play Gears of War and shit probably hate standing still while shooting) and all of the dudes drop ammo pretty regularly. In fact, I'm pretty sure they only drop ammo for whatever guns your dudes have equipped, so it kind of streamlines inventory management as well. The bosses are cool but even if you die you start right there again, so there's not really a lot of pressure. I guess it's kind of been a trend that games get easier and more forgiving as it becomes possible for game developers to make games bigger and longer. I think even if you played through RE5 as fast as you could it'd probably still be over 10 hours long. The old RE games would probably take 10 hours your first time through, but then as you learned the game you could get through them pretty quickly, which made them pretty dope for playing through in an afternoon or something.

That's another difference between the new RE games and the originals. Everything's divided into levels now, instead of having one big Metroid style area to explore. I mean, I never really compared the RE games to Metroid in my mind, but I guess it's basically the same concept. I guess what I'm saying is that RE5 is fun as hell, and thematically it still kind of feels like an RE game to me, but all of the things that made RE games kind of unique have been removed from the equation.

Street Fighter 4 is the gaming event of the century for everyone who can remember this commercial, and what it meant:



Capcom games fill a void in my soul that no other games can. They've always been there for me. I want to give everyone who has ever worked for Capcom a big hug. Thanks, guys.

Man this looks sick. Its like X-Men vs Street Fighter, this is exactly what I need in my life. Bring back the fun times, playing XvSF on Saturn with the ram cart.

I seriously cant get over it. I hope all these new fighters do well.

So Capcom announced Rocku Man 9 like a few weeks ago and it looked pretty cool, the first footage was aight. Some people felt like they were limiting themselves to the Nintendo feel too much and apparently hear the music cutting out when sound effects were happening(I couldn't hear it over the Dragon Force playlist I have cranked to 11 at all times) and aside from the block effect that probably wasnt possible on the NES it looked very NES

Now we get the following video



Shit looks pretty hype to me but my original thoughts were that they would really push the envelope on the NES style of games. And it still seems true, but something about it just isn't blowing me away quite enough. I see some gimmicky new shit like a little dude carrying Megaman across the ground really fast, a weird spin block like in Top Mans stage except it spins you vertically instead of horizontally.. I mean the backgrounds generally look fresh. And the black or solid color backgrounds are always classic, even the music sounds good.. I am just hoping that the gameplay stays really true.

Part of me wants them to use Megaman 1 as the primary inspiration. Just make it super hard, no continuing via passwords. No sliding, no charging. Limited amount of Misc equipment. Get rid of Rush and most of the gay ass fan service cast. Make it really light on story.

I guess Rush and Roll are in that trailer actually, and I think I read there will be a shop system like in Megaman 7-8. So I can assume this game will pretty much suck compared to Megaman 1 and 2. Hopefully it still manages to impress

So Capcom finally is making another vs game and it looks sweet, only problem is no one knows what Tatsunooko is. Some anime?? Gay shows!! I'll be pickin Ryu and Akuma as always who cares!!

Do u think it will be as dope as Marvel 2? Or a button mashing scrub fest like 3rd Strike?

Will u be pickin Ryu or Ken? And what will you're 2nd character be.. Akuma or maybe Sean? Will it have yet another limited edition joystick? Will Capcom finally put in some net play that doesn't suck? Will they finally consult the GGPO krew? I cant wait to find out!