Sigh... SFIV>KOFXIII

I remember buying Street Fighter IV a few years back. Heck, that game was one of the reasons why I got an Xbox360. And I fucking hated it. The crude, completely exaggerated 3D characters and their stupid facial expressions, the ridiculous, over the top super combos, which took so long to animate, you could go take a shit or two, have a sandwich and pick up your controller for round two (where the same damn thing was gonna happen again) and it simply didn't feel like Street Fighter to me.

And why the fuck does Ken Masters suddenly cosplay as Angela Merkel?

Back when my brother and I were kids we'd play the shit out of SF II Turbo every day, countless hours, all the goddamn time. Ryu vs Ken, axe kicks, hadouken, beating the shit out of each other till our hands fell off. Then we continued playing with our feet, because that's how dedicated we were.

We also painted each other's toenails.

SF IV still uses the same basic fighting system from SF II, but adds a lot to it, making it incredibly deep and complex. Problem is, the game doesn't exactly go out of its way to explain the new system, so I constantly found myself getting my ass kicked by AI opponents, who just kept on spamming the same shit over and over again. And when I ragequit, I ragequit like a pro. Let's just say that the first one or two hours I've played this game on my Xbox have also been the last.

With tomorrow's beat'em'up challenge coming up, I agreed to install Super Street Fighter IV Arcade on my PC. My buddy is a huge fan of the game, fight stick and everything and he's also sending me some weird messages:

Apparently, shit just got real.

We've agreed to play King of Fighters XIII (my territory) followed by Super Street Fighter (his specialty). You know, keep things fair and all that. So I've practiced a bit, roflstomped the AI on the highest difficulty setting, fought the ultra cheap final boss and the even cheaper real final boss and then defeated 28 out of the 35 characters in survival mode. Which isn't so bad, considering I haven't touched the series since the release of Garou: Mark of the Wolves.

And the game still looks, feels and plays like King of Fighters. Yes, they've added some new cancels and gauges and shit, but nothing to completely throw me off. I wasn't all that bothered by the pixellated 2D sprites, either. Or the incredibly stupid, confusing story mode. And the cheap, shitty bosses, well... in some fucked up way those are KoF tradition. Boss battles on SFIV were just as cheap, as far as I was concerned. Which is wrong, but the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia hid that from me. Until we had our first sparring match and the shitty netcode resulted in half-second input lag. Two people playing a 2D beat'em'up. I download shit at 8,5mb/s and I couldn't host a session that wasn't plagued by severe, nigh-unplayable lag. Not fun. Well okay, I kicked ass, so it was kinda fun, but it's frustrating to fuck up even the simplest combos because your character feels like he's somehow moving through jello.

Oh well. Laggy or not, KoF is a pretty safe bet in my favour. So I had to do something I hate and... sigh... practice some SFIV. I couldn't even make it to the boss without using a bunch of continues on medium difficulty. To be fair, fighting him also made me realize that said boss may be using a combination of every character's single-most annoying special attacks, but he wasn't filling up the entire screen in a non-stop barrage of projectiles like the boss on KoF. There was nothing unfair, cheap or game-breaking going on. I was completely wrong about that guy.

I've also taken the time to read up on the new fighting system. The gauges, revenge meters and all that stuff. Up to that point I had managed to touch the very basics of the system, but there was a lot more beneath the seemingly shallow surface. I also started to understand why just about every fucking AI opponent seemed to have a higher priority on their attacks than I did.

I've been a fucking idiot all along!

I'll never like the cartoony 3D-models. Or the insanely annoying SF II techno remixes. Or the complete lack of a proper survival mode. But now that I understand how this shit works and I finally had the pleasure to fight folks like Akuma (who still isn't KoF-cheap, he's just good), I'm not just having fun. SFIV is the better game in just about every aspect. The way I understand it, online play is usually lag-free and a lot more pleasant than anything seen on KoF. The fights are fast-paced and allow for a huge amount of comebacks and surprises and they simply look a lot more exciting than anything I've seen on KoF. Which hurts to admit, because I'll always love that series, warts and all. And I'll get that 35 survival victories achievement eventually. But right now I think I'm gonna work my way up towards Evil Ryu. Surprising.

"Told ya!"

-Cat