Let me preface this post by saying that I’m an old school video game junkie. During the golden age of arcades and stand alone machines, I couldn’t get enough of them. My friends and I would ride our bikes up to the airport in Norfolk, VA, and hang out there to play all the cool video games. They even had Dragon’s Lair AND Space Ace!

Fast forward to today. I’ve been playing Street Fighter IV for the Sony Playstation 3 for the past week or so.  As someone who only plays video games every once in a blue moon because a) being an old adult means your priorities have radically changed and b) being an old adult means your reflexes for fighting games are similar to a sloth wrestling a tortoise, I ‘ve marvelled at how pretty the game is. However, here are a few gripes:

  • Seriously? I have to UNLOCK Cammy? What the Hell is up with that? She’s like one of the only characters that I like to ogle and now I have to unlock her to play with…uh…to play her?
  • Remember how I said my reflexes suck? Yeah, well, that means that in order to unlock every character I have to play the game not on "Easy", not on "Very Easy" but on "Easiest" mode. How demeaning. However, after playing the game I kept looking at the difficulty settings and looked for "Biggest Pussy" mode after "Easiest"
  • I hear the XBox 360 has minimal load times. Guess what? The PS3′s load times are pretty irritating.
  • The controls are a real bitch. I really haven’t played Street Fighter since, well, Street Fighter. I might have played Street Fighter II back in the day. Reading through the move commands made me lament the fact that I had to memorize all these arcane stick and button combinations.
  • I can see the need to buy one of the arcade style controls from companies such as Madcat. However, do I want to shell out around another $100 for it?

Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy the game regardless of these shortcomings. However, playing the final boss, Seth, with a character like Vega or Viper really is an exercise in patience and self-control. For instance, I had to practice tremendous control NOT to throw my controller at my 55" flatscreen.

Keep in mind, being this inept at a fighting game still won’t stop me from buying the new King of Fighters, Tekken 6 or the next Virtua Fighter.