Being a obsessive compulsive completist, i've been gritting my teeth through the experience of sucking at Street fighter 4, to the point where i now feel like i genuinely suck less. And that is pretty awesome in itself.

I guess i've become used to being cuddled by games. SF4 does not at any moment make you feel cool unless you make an effort to that end; This is as far from a button masher as you can get. Spending hours trying to perfect guile's low light kick-light punch-medium punch-flash kick combo is an exercise i wouldn't normally call fun. And it really isn't. What is fun is landing it in a fight.

This balance between ardous, painful practise of systems that sometimes feel difficult just to spite you, and the glorious sensation of actually learning a new skill and successfully applying it, is what i guess is what keeps people coming back again and again. But it's also, i expect, a huge detractor for beginners; I at least knew how to play Guile alright beforehand. Coming into this not even really knowing how a charge move works and how you can charge midair or mid-move, and meeting this brick wall of a game that assumes you DO know, it has got to be a profoundly painful experience.

I'm having a lot of fun mastering Guile. Even learning to enjoy pulling off his super after i realized cancelling out of a flash kick into it is actually easier than pulling it off clean.
I had an awesome match against an E.Honda player who would consistently try to jump in to start combos, who i would simply airthrow the hell back down again and again. It put the fear in him so obviously it totally broke his style, and it was awesome to watch him try to revert back to moves he hadn't practised. That's what SF is about really; competition and fucked up psychology. I'm loving it. Though i really need a fightpad.