The nice part about Street Fighter IV is that if I want a human opponent, I can just go online and find a human opponent. The not so great part is finding out that my Street Fighter game has degraded since I was putting quarters up on the lip of the screen at the Yellow Brick Road arcade in University Town Center.
I’m a poor player. My crossups are non existent. My distance awareness is poor. Execution is not so great. Bread and butter combos feel difficult to pull off. And the timing, well, don’t get me started on my timing.
That said, I’m having a really good time playing online. Even if, after the consecutive losses people start selecting their second and third (and sometimes fourth) tier characters. At least I haven’t lost to Dan yet, but I’m feeling like someone’s going to pull that on me at some point.
I’m sticking with Ryu, since at least I can feel like I’m somewhat competent. At least the move list is familiar.
Through the losses I’m getting a better feel for the styles of play. By the third match online I was reading the throw setups and escaping them at least some of the time. There were a couple of opponents that were well matched with my skill level, but since I wasn’t playing in ranked matches, I was getting a wide variance of players and styles. I’ll head in to ranked matches at some point.
It’s kind of embarrassing, I put my quarter up and I’m not even there for three rounds.
But then I put my quarter up at the end of the line anyway, compelled to see if I can just get a little bit better next time.
And this time it doesn’t cost me money.
Well, after purchasing the 360, and the Street Fighter IV, the Tournament stick, and the Xbox Live Gold Membership.
Man. I’ve got a lot of quarters to catch up with.