I would first like to say that I love the Street Fighter franchise. I have the utmost respect for it, because of it's ability to time and time again produce a fun and, compared to Mortal Kombat, clean game. I only regret that I was a little late to the Street Fighter party. I wasn't around to spend nights on end playing tournaments with all my friends, and I wasn't able to experience Street Fighter until I got the Wii. I bought what I think was the World Championship Edition (there are seriously too many to count) of Street Fighter II on Virtual Console and immediately started playing because to me, Street Fighter was this perfect fighting game that ate up hours of people's time and was a hell of a lot of fun to play. As a newcomer, I'll admit I had considerable trouble adapting to the controls and such, but by playing through the tournament for about an hour (as Chun-Li, those that guessed correctly get my respect and admiration) I was able to perform combos when I wanted. Trying to recruit others to play with me, however, was unsuccessful. Nobody wanted to play an outdated game with confusing controls. They'd rather play Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Mario Kart Wii since I already had those and they knew how to play them. I figured, okay, it's not for everybody, maybe if there was a new one it could work.
Enter Street Fighter IV. By now, I already had a 360 (I bought the Wii about 6 months after launch, in July 2007. I got my 360 as a gift a year and a half later in December 2008) and a reverence of the Street Fighter franchise. I thought, "Alright! A new Street Fighter game for the 360 that I can play with my friends and siblings! Tight!" My friends and I had already played Super Smash Bros. forever and my siblings and I used to play Soul Caliber 2 and Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 and Revolution forever (my sister was a big fan of Naruto, so of course she had to buy the game too. What I didn't expect was that it would be fun) so I knew they'd be open to a competitive fighting game.
I never actually bought the game until GameStop had a buy-2-get-1-free used sale, so my brother got Forza 3 and Call of Duty 4 while I got Street Fighter IV. I was instantly excited and started playing through the tournament right away. Holy hell, was I in for a surprise. The visuals and characters were all excellent (as I had known, because I like to spend time on Gametrailers.com to hear reviews and watch gameplay footage), but my god were the controls difficult. I don't know if it was my inexperience or if it was the controller or if it was just plain hard, but I got my ass handed to me in nearly every fight after the first one (I was Abel, those who guessed correctly get more respect and admiration than the first ones). I spent nearly an hour on E Honda, and he was only the fourth fight. And mind you, I was on the easiest difficulty. I'd be able to perform Super Combos, but I'd die before I could use them because he'd always use his throws and regular combos.
I was getting pretty pissed by this point because the AI was a cheating bitch who spammed the same move over and over (Sidenote: In any fighting game, it's really cheap to use the same move over and over. I don't care who you are; learn more moves. Seriously.). I felt as crappy as I did whenever people would use the C-stick in Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube (for those of you unfamiliar with SSB Melee, the C-stick on a GameCube controller would allow the player to use a powerful combo with a direction on the C-stick instead of pushing and holding the buttons for the combo. Those that did this, I like to call them "C-Stick Bandits", and they are shunned).
Eventually, I made it to the Rival Battle with Guile, which surprisingly was easier than E Honda. There weren't many problems here, except he used his Super Combo a lot more. And then, I reached Seth. Pardon my French, but holy fucking shit. By this time I was used to the controls and I was, in my opinion, decent. But my god, Seth was impossible. Seth was an incredibly overpowered character who had several characteristics of other characters. Dhalsim's arm-stretching, Zangief's pile-driver, and Chun-Li's spinning upside-down kick. His Super Combo meter filled faster than any other character, and several times I was defeated by his Super Combo. He'd spam every powerful move he had over and over without even a second for me to counter or attack. I tried blocking the entire time, but he'd teleport behind me (he could do that, too), pile-drive me, attack me with the stretchy arm attack to separate some distance, then throw a Hadouken (yeah those too) at me and use Ken's throw to finish me off, all in about 15 seconds.
After an hour of getting my ass kicked, I fought fire with fire. I spammed Abel's throw move right away, and whenever he'd get up I'd do it again. I FINALLY won my first round with him, and guess what. He gets harder. His attacks come faster, his Super Combos earlier, and he does not stop. After two hours of being unable to make it past one win, I did the sensible thing. I quit. I was the angriest that I've ever been at a video game. I cursed more than a drunken sailor in a cursing contest. It was the worst experience I've ever had playing a video game, and I have never been more angry at an AI, which I usually never do, mostly at players online who mod controllers or activate lag switches in order to win. I was downright furious, and it was the first coming of the Mad Gamer. After that incident, I put on my Facebook status:
Seth (n): A character in Street Fighter IV, known for his extreme douche-baggery, his ability to excessively cheat and use all the good moves of all the good characters, and his disregard to be an original and actually fun to play agianst final boss.
*Shameless Plug*: I regularly watch The Angry Video Game Nerd on Gametrailers.com, and I even considered telling him he should review this game. I understood what he goes through during most of his reviews of bad video games. It's an entertaining series, and anyone who tolerates profanity and humor (everyone) should definitely check it out.
One week later, I returned to GameStop, expecting to get at least half of my money back. I explained to them that I had bought it a week before and that I had played it once, but, alas, two other people had returned it before me, so the demand had seriously diminished. I returned my $19.99 copy for $4.99, but I really didn't care. I was just glad I didn't have to play that abomination ever again.
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