Last night, the wife and I spent over an hour (we didn’t keep track of when exactly we began, but I saw it pass the 70 minute mark) trying to beat Seth with Zangief… with it set to one-round fights on “Easiest”.
Andrew alerted me via Twitter that there may be some type of glitch with the difficulty setting. A little bit of Googling around confirms that there may indeed be some type of conflict with the PS3 version (which, by extension, may only happen if you do the optional partial-install). Of course, we didn’t know about this last night, though the thought did indeed cross my mind. I seem to remember a version of NBA Jam had an issue where the difficulties were swapped based on what you chose (for example, picking “Very Easy” gave you “Very Hard” while picking “Very Hard” gave you “Very Easy”, and so on and so forth), so I was indeed curious about what may have been happening.
I mean, let’s be honest… I’m not a terrible Street Fighter player. I’m by no means anything beyond whatever is above “scrub”, but I can hold my own. The lolz thrown back by the internet with suggestions to “just keep sweeping him” were not working; Seth was grabbing me out of ultras, throwing me out of throws, crossing-up into EX specials, and giving me flashbacks to Goenitz (do your homework on that, kids).
I had played through the game plenty of times with different characters, and this was just ridiculous.
It’s somewhat comforting to know that there may actually have been something happening behind the scenes to cause such a problem. It was also frustrating to be doing everything I thought I should be doing to “play well”, and it making so little of a difference. I have years upon years upon years of experience with this franchise and these characters, and I haven’t stopped since I began. For those returning to Street Fighter after missing the entire Alpha and III series, I can’t even begin to imagine the frustration with going through and just trying to unlock the hidden characters. It wasn’t fun for me anymore (especially after an hour), and I can’t see it being “fun” for anyone else. Between the horrible problems with difficulty scaling and the antiquated and senseless unlocking system for bonus characters, there is quite a lot to be discussed (and that’s totally tossing aside any thoughts on Seth’s actual character design).
Before we get to all that, though (whether it is presented in podcast or text form), I still owe that “Collector’s Edition” closer look that I promised last time around. I finished up the scans last night, so look forward to that in the relative near future. I’ll wear my headband while I write it. Promise.