I spent a lot of time in the arcades as a kid. There were these Sunday sessions where you’d pay a whopping $12 and got about 4 hours of free play on all the machines in the building. It was an institution for my brother and friends. I toyed with the fancy light gun games of the time but I spent a large majority of my time on the two most crowded machines. Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat.
Fifteen or so years later and I’ve got Street Fighter IV to chew on. I went into it saying to myself “hey, you know SF, you’re not bad at it at all. Those hours in the arcades and the weekends of hiring Super Nintendos just to play it have given you a pretty damn good idea of what you’re doing”. Turns out I was so so wrong.
After watching this video, I discovered there’s a whole other level to SF that I’ve missed completely. Apparently most of this stuff is somewhat applicable to SFIV as well. Cross ups, meaty attacks, two in ones, reversals; all in the list of this secretive underground level of play. I understand now what defines a “good” player more so than I did before.
So diving back into SFIV, demoralised and downtrodden over my discovery of this new higher level of ability, I expected to get my arse handed to me on many occassions and I did. I play Ryu a lot and it helps in that you spend 90% of your time holding the opponent off but I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent with my neck bent at an odd angle, spread eagle with a large Russian wrestler’s sweaty mits wrapped around my midsection.
Seems practice might be the only way I’m going to get there, but for the moment online play is just a wash for this aged warrior. Any tips?
When I heard Zack Snyder (300, Dawn of the Dead) was taking on the Watchmen and everyone was clicking their heels about how exciting that was, I was excited for different reasons. I’d not read the graphic novel, but am a big fan of Zack’s work on the afforementioned films. Got myself a copy a week ago and just finished up the final chapter last night.
I’m still putting the whole thing together in my mind, it’s a strange thing because for the first 10 chapters you’re dragged along being thrown somewhat random collections of information that just don’t make sense. Juxtapositions of information flying left right and centre that most of the time just left me in a spin wondering what any of it meant. The social commentary throughout on the other hand is quite relevant at the moment and I can understand why the film has garnered interest, given the current state of the world.
Anyway, looking forward to the film now. All misconceptions that it’s another “superhero” movie are destroyed, thank god. (Edit- with the exception of Iron Man & Dark Knight they’ve mostly been ass)
“You are now famous enough to use the kiss my arse expression”
- Fable 2
Heard just now for the first time (yes, I’m late to the party). Any favourites out there?
Apart from the brilliant writing, just got to say how much I’m enjoying the game. It’s a really nice mix of casual hack and slash with some reasonably deep social systems in place, a nicely thought out and interesting economy system. I’m actually finding myself more worried about the house I’ve just bought getting a new tenant after evicting someone I don’t like rather than fussing over silly things like…equipment.
The lack of defensive items in terms of clothing etc though has thrown me a little, not sure what the design decision was based in giving all clothing a purely aesthetic purpose. Guess it comes with the period setting.
Anyway, back to talking to my digital dog friend and killing bandits. Had to share.
Edit: Finished the main quest line. Great experience overall, will be diving straight into second play through and some co-op sooner rather than later.
The Flash Gaming Summit for 2009 is coming up and with it the Mochis, awards for Flash games presented by Mochimedia. Two of my games have been nominated for awards in different categories:
Best Strategy Game – Warfare 1917
Best Shooter - Last Stand 2
Great to see both of those in there, looking forward to seeing how they rate in a few weeks time. Not sure how Warfare will fare in the strategy stakes but stranger things have happened. Some tough competition in all categories looking at the full list of nominees.
- Con
