I'm no good at fighting games. I mean, I can obviously beat the arcade mode of one if I'm just given enough time and limitless virtual quarters for when I inevitably hit a wall, but put me in an online context and I'll be destroyed by my opponent nine times out of ten.

Despite this, I was strangely hyped for Street Fighter 6, so I thought I'd play Ultra Street Fighter IV before its release, just to sort of get a bit more used to the language of Street Fighter, if you will. Still didn't play online since I'm pretty sure the only ones active there these days are super pros who've been playing the game since Street Fighter IV released almost 15 years ago. I did, however, give myself the goal to at least be able to beat arcade mode (normal difficulty) without using a single continue.

And I eventually did! Playing as Juri (usually a Ken main, but I love her theme in 6, so had to try her out), I was terrible at the beginning, taking almost 90 minutes just to beat arcade mode my first time, basically knowing two of her special moves and not much else (didn't even know about focus attacks until later.) It felt like I had a mountain to climb at that point, but then I discovered the game's trial mode where I basically got to learn every move possible for any given character, and even a few pretty advanced combos. It wasn't easy and some trials drove me quite mad, but I did eventually get to trial 22 out of 24 where I felt a) "22-24 are going to take me the rest of the year to beat and kill my hands", and b) "I think I'm actually pretty okayish now?" So I returned to arcade mode, did a lot better than before though not without having to use some continues. Tried it once again, had a perfect run until I completely choked against Seth's second form and just lost three rounds in a row without putting in much of a fight. Didn't choke as hard the next time, but still came up short against Seth despite thinking I'd found a way to cheese his AI. Fourth time was the charm, though, and a combination of heavy sweep kicks and focus attacks did the trick well enough on good ol' Seth. What seemed like a mountain quickly turned out to be a hill, and I climbed it a lot quicker than I had expected to. I have no idea if this is seen as a much easier arcade mode than ones in other games, but either way it felt really good to finally have performed on an okay level in a fighting game. And fighting AI is obviously extremely different from fighting real people, but at least it's a start.

Is the game good, you might ask? Definitely, at least from where I'm standing. Maybe it's grossly unbalanced and the controls aren't frame perfect enough for the pros, but there wasn't really anything for an amateur like me to complain about. It felt good to play, looked good and had really good animations for a 2008 game, sounded good with strong sound effects and a memorable soundtrack, so I guess it's a good game! Maybe not on the level of Street Fighter III 3rd Strike, but still a lot more enjoyable than most fighting games I've played over these last few years.