Battle of Destiny

A Saturday morning hanging out with a bunch of sweaty beat 'em up fans is something even I would avoid doing if I had the choice, except that this year's BOD promised a treat for guests so compelling that I just had to get there for 10am, and pay a tenner to just get in (entering actual tournaments is another ten quid a pop). I won't bother describing the competitive parts of the day since a) I didn't really follow any of it and b) you can follow the link for more details.

BOD's casual zone had tons of stuff to keep us busy. The most played game for me and my friend by far was a pre-release version of SSF2HD Remix on the 360 - five characters in total were available to play with, including Ryu, Ken and Akuma and I didn't seem to have become too upset at the retuning the game had gone through; in fact I seemed to fare worse while playing the unaltered mode.

The game looked great but not "1080p wow!!", if you get what I mean. It was also slightly unfinished - I'm pretty sure Ken had a few moves missing. I also got in some serious time on a Hori Fighting Stick, enough to almost convince me to shell out fifty quid or whatever it is to own one.

Soul Calibur 4 was also on show on both the 360 and PS3. I stuck to the 360 version, only to play as Yoda. I'm not really a fan of SC, so after one game we kinda left it alone for the rest of the day.

No, the real reason I had attended this morning was to play Street Fighter 4 - and be one of the first to play it on UK soil. And I wasn't at all disappointed. Thankfully the rush to play wasn't too bad and we managed to get in a fair number of goes each (winning streaks were capped to three - I managed to hit that magic number once). I'm really looking forward to the game now! But more of the game itself later.

So yes, it was all more worthwhile than I had imagined - I got some good time trying out Hori sticks, SF2HD and SF4, greasing up my old Streetfighting skills: I have to say I was on fire this morning; almost as good as I was in my prime, and from the little I saw of the tournament entrants I may have gotten further than I thought I would have. Maybe next year, eh?