Wahey!! Finally the SSF2T HD Remix beta test is go. And indeed beta it is with lots of little niggles – however that didn’t stop me having an awesome night of gaming on it.
Once I got it to actually start a match without crashing my 360, things started out well. Hmm.. my buttons aren’t responding. Wait.. a punch! Oh dear.. I’m in a ranked match & I had forgotten to config the joystick controls first. But.. I have a Medium Punch! And the guy I am playing doesn’t seem very good.. so, I keep leaping and using the anti-air of the MP to hit him, top-downing him with it, and of course, I have a fireball & dragonpunch anyway.. it’s enough! Round 2 I discover I have a Light Kick! I have been informing my opponent of my button config problems during the match.. but he doesn’t respond at all, and doesn’t even say a word to my excited cry over the mic of “Look I’ve got a kick!!” as I proceed to add Tatsumaki-sempu-kyaku’ing his face off to my reportoire. hahaha. Easy victory with only 2 buttons enabled; surely a good sign already? 😛
And it was. Sorted the buttons out and went on a roll with my, actually incredibly basic, Ryu skills. Then I ran into some REALLY tough opponents all of whom I recognised from forums etc. They kicked my butt – and I checked the rankings and they were all listed in the top 20, no surprise! Made a couple of new very good SF player friends though, excellent. And one of them is uploading matches onto youtube.. so it maybe possible I’ve been video’ed taking a ‘Perfect Loss’ to this guy 😉 We’ll see later.
I tried out a Player Match with a 6 player lobby, and I absolutely “PWNED” the room, as the kids say, winning about 15 matches or something before someone knocked me out. It was really fun chatting with the spectators etc and cheering on the guy who finally beat me – I actually was telling people throughout that this guy was a much better Ryu/Ken player than me, as I could tell right away he was. But I was a far more experienced Street Fighter than him, which was why it took him ages to oust me. But it was nice he was the one to knock me out as I had predicted he would. Great gamer too, no mic on, but had a funky Metal Slug icon. Way to impress me graphically 🙂 Fun line of the night at that point was someone talking in the mic, clearly by accident to someone else in the room, telling that person about his playing of Street Fighter back on the SNES and how he liked Ken the best “but this Ryu kid is kicking all our asses”. Made me laugh anyway, especially being referred to as a ‘kid’. 😉
Tournament mode attempt: I got knocked out in Round 2 but I was pleased I came back from 0-2 down to win 3-2 in the first round, and I was the only one to take a round off the eventual winner. I really enjoyed watching the brackets and other players energy bars and round counts, but it would be nice to be able to fully spectate the other matches as well once I was knocked out.
Anyway been messing about with all the game modes, widescreen view etc. Its all so exciting! I even got accidently into a ranked match with one of friends list at one point (who I’d had some awesome fights on Anniversary Collection with), and we were both “Oh Hello!” in surprise when my housemate was watching me play and said “hey that’s Bloodcore!” when that happened, as the matching is truely blind now until you get into a fight. There’s plenty of bugs and a few things I want to post over at the Capcom beta test forums later, but in general, it’s absolutely awesome.
The net code is interesting too as you get lots of visual distortion when it is badly lagged, but almost no input lag! YAY! This is the preferrable way round to an experienced player I believe – it certainly is to me. I’d much rather guess from the slightly messed up graphics that I need to crouch block, and have it happen, than KNOW I need to be crouch blocking, but get hit anyway thanks to the lag.
I played it on and off all evening, and at the end of day one of the beta (UK time anyway!) I was ranked #40 in the world which I am actually rather proud of, especially since it had to be done with that loathsome scrub Ryu! I know it won’t last as more players get on it. But even so… I feel good to know I’m not too shabby – and that my emergency Ryu practice over the past few weeks has indeed helped. In actual fact, I suspect that the fact I have NEVER played competitively with Ryu at any point in my life on SF2 means that I am actually enjoying the beta version a lot more than most people. Even working on the timing and spacing of fireballs is great fun for me. As always, I know I don’t have the physical skills or the time to ever be a real master at this game, or indeed any game, but I like to think at least I can bring the mind and attitude of a champion & always fight to improve myself. As Ryu would say.. “the fight is everything”, but I’ll always prefer Remy’s take on it: “fighting to prove the futility of fighting”. 😉
Just hearing the intro music blaring from my TV sends me into a agon gaming buzz right now. And it helps that the new guitar kick & ebm’ish beat to the Street Fighter theme is amazingly cool and really gets me in the mood to FIGHT…
HADOUKEN!
although since this is Remix..
HA… *faked you!* 😀
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