I think I finally need to just put this in writing as opposed to running around my house yelling to myself.  I recently played Street Fighter IV having never played a Street Fighter game thinking this is finally going to be the game to get into that genre.  Wrong.  So wrong in fact that I'm still irritated by it days later.  This is more an issue of principle than anything so it may seem a little meh to some people but I don't care at this point.

I made a thread asking for a fighting alternative to SFIV if I already played games like MK and SC a lot.  I pretty much concluded that I should try Tekken like I assumed from the beginning.  But I digress.  This may get into the state of fighting games and it probably will because SFIV is a perfect example of what's wrong with the genre.  It's actually not as bad off as people make it out to be, but it's not healthy either.

The one thing that SFIV does that really pisses me off to no end is that focuses on the higher end of the fighting game spectrum and leaves you hanging.  What?  Let me explain.  For years people have praised Street Fighter for elevating the genre beyond it's simple beginnings into something much more substantial.  However because we no longer live in the area of the arcade, the assumption that people coming in to play the game already know what's going on must go.  It's also the issue with the RTS genre which is making much better progress it seems.  I am fully capable of most, if not all the moves in probably any fighting game.  I've played enough Street Fighter IV to know that it's a great game and one I am capable of eventually learning.  I have committed many hours to learning Scorpion in every MK game and Mitsurugi in every SC along with being proficient in a few others.  The issue of capability isn't one at all.

It really comes down to how SFIV doesn't do anything to compliment the fact that the meat of the game is above the basic moves the game provides you.  I got the impression that the game didn't want me to get it, it just wanted those people who already knew how to play.  Now I know the game is different from other Street Fighters so everyone had to learn new moves but it's a much different story if you've never played a SF game before.

If a game takes the complicated approach but doesn't do anything to help that, what am I supposed to think?  Good job let me dive right in?  It's like giving a kid a Calculus 1 textbook who has never taken it before, and telling him to just 'go".  Anyone can probably put the work in, take the time, and learn the subject matter, but that's not how it should be done.  There should be something more than the Challenge Mode to teach people how to play.  It shouldn't spoon feed you everything, but it surely doesn't do anything more than giving you grocery money for the week.

The more and more I think about it, the more I understand where people are coming from when they say they don't play fighting games.  I don't blame them for having that perception of them being too technical, too complicated, or just too much.  It's partly true but when the game itself and the surrounding culture (ie all the players of a game like SFIV) reinforce it to a certain degree, no wonder progress is slow.  Don't get me wrong, I love fighting games, and I bet I could love Street Fighter if I was familiar with it, but it shouldn't be mandatory.  Either what I consider the low end (basic moves and gameplay) needs to be fleshed out, or I need to get to the high end in a fun or meaningful way.  If the game makes no effort to get me where I should be, why would try and meet it halfway when it won't?  At that point, I'll just play another game.

But the usual response to this is, "do your homework and you'll get better".  At what point am I paying money for work?  An article on The Escapist talked about the state of the way video games teach players about mechanics, method, and theory.  It continues to come back in my head as I debate this...in my head.  The burden is on the developer to make the game either engaging to learn, or a diverse range so people of all interest levels can see a good game.  I can't help but think the phrase "fan service" when a game expects you to know how to play if it take the more complex route.  Extreme examples are BlazBlue and Arma II.

In the end I'll get a decent controller for my PC, try again, learn the game just fine, and enjoy it just fine.  But at the back of my mind, it angers me beyond reason the means I need to get to that desired end.  I want to yell at the game, "I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY!" followed my many expletives.  This post may seem like a bunch of hot air to someone who is familiar with the franchise, but as a newcomer to SF, I find it seems to resonate with people in the same boat.