My Name is Called Disturbance!

Street Fighter IV is hard.

I've been playing the game on Easy difficulty and sometimes struggling.  (For those who don't know, there are 8 difficulty levels and 2 are easier that Easy, so I'm completely chickening out.)

I have mostly played as Chun-Li up to now and even some of her basic special moves I find hard to execute.  The one which involves kicking repeatedly is easy and Kikoken which involves charging away from the opponent then moving towards followed by a punch I've pretty much got down, too.

Hazanshu, which in pushing the stick towards the opponent then rolling underneath until it is pointing away then kicking, and results in Chun-Li doing an extravagant flip through the air and kicking down on her enemy, took a lot of practise in the training room but I get it most times now.  It took me ages to work out that the kick comes after the stick movement.

The Spinning bird kick looks like an easy move but I tried for ages to do it yesterday and it only happened about one time in a hundred so I'm obviously doing something wrong.

Unfortunately, the moves I have about got right are not very damaging and Chun-Li is constantly being the victim of outrageous Super and Ultra Combos and I have no reply.  Often I can be winning a fight comfortably and suddenly the opponent will launch into something spectacular and the fight is turned around.  This has happened so many times in Arcade mode when fighting Chun-Li's rival Crimson Viper that it makes me depressed to think about it.  Ms Viper's favourite is Burst Time - her ultra combo.  I can be winning a bout and fancying my chances when suddenly I hear "now watch this" and it's curtains for Chun-Li again.  I have got out of this combo on a couple of occasions but I've no idea how.

Despite my disasters I have enjoyed this introduction to fighting games (I don't really count a couple of hours of WWE Wrestlemania X8 on the GBA SP) and I'm looking forwarding to learning more and improving.

However, I've started Alice: Madness Returns and I think that will be occupying me for now.