It's not because I've been playing my Wii too much, it's not because I have a porcupine as a pet, and it's certainly not because of whatever perverted sexual reason you might think. Rather, my hand hurts because I have embraced a fighter, BlazBlue. I know there have been a glut of BlazBlue blogs lately, but most of those have emanated from a similar perspective. "I have played fighting games since the dawn of time, and have been closely following this game and awaiting its release since the inception of the universe. I have an arcade stick, and I'm not afraid to use it." That kind of perspective. And it's cool, great that you enjoy the game so much, just not particularly surprising. I'm coming from the opposite direction.



Despite having my fondest memories of gaming spring from the magical well of the nineties I never played fighting games. Even though I ended up with 5 younger siblings whom I game with nearly every day, when home we never considered a fighter to solve our squabbles. Street Fighter II was a game that never locked it's silicon teeth with my SNES. In fact, I would go so far as to say that through the nineties the only fighting game I ever played was Killer Instinct, which my uncle left at my grandparent's house once. Arcades were never an option, as far as I understand it they were a dying breed before I was born, and once I had the desire and cash to play they had all but been wiped out. I've probably played under 10 arcade machines in my life.

By the time the 21st century rolled around I was cementing my place as lord of games within our household. having grown up with Nintendo, we remained Nintendo through the Gamecube. There was one fighter for me in this time, and it was Soul Calibur II which I purchased solely because of the inclusion of Link. I had no interest in competitive play, and although all of my friends had it we would only play a few quick matches if we were bored of our other games.

By the time this generation rolled around it looked as if most fighting games had left outside of Soul Calibur. I picked up a Wii on launch day, and in December of 2007 bought a PS3. The first game I bought from the PSN was Mortal Kombat II. A game I had never played in a series I had completely neglected, but one that was a part of the gaming world, one that everyone knew. If there was anywhere that I was going to get in on the ground floor of fighters this was it. I went online and was promptly crushed, and again, and again. I once lost somewhere between eighty and ninety matches, without a single round victory, in one sitting. To say that I was disillusioned would be a huge understatement. MKII became the game that sits in the bowels of my downloaded titles list, only to see the light of day when some unsuspecting fool stumbles across it. There was no way I could crack into such an established player base, so I looked to the future.

I had never played Street Fighter, but I did know how to Hadouken, plus SSFIITHDR was looking gorgeous, so I resolved to make it my second attempt to enter the realm of fighters. While I did enjoy playing and looking at it I discovered that it harbored an even older more practiced set of players than MKII. I might have won a single match, but it was probably against someone as failure-prone as myself in the genre. SF IV wasn't even a consideration for me. I didn't care about the franchise, and I didn't care to get my ass kicked in the same manner as SSFIITHDR.

Jump ahead to the beginning of this summer. I've seen a few trailers for BlazBlue while I was browsing the web but have zero intentions of purchasing it ever, much less as a day one. As the release date approaches I found myself reading more and more about the game, mostly within the CBlogs. People are excited for it, and though I'm not sure why I begin to become excited as well. This excitement culminated in a spur of the moment purchase yesterday.

So. . .

Now that you know where I'm coming from let me tell you this; BlazBlue is bloody brilliant. I feel like I have a chance even though I'm terrible at the genre. It's beautiful and feels fresh. I sense that I have the power to become semi-decent at a fighter, so I'm going to. I have fun playing it for hours on my own, trying to work out little things. I play fighters and RTS games in a similarly idiotic fashion. Instead of learning build orders or button combinations I play and mash until I can do it instinctively. If something works I do it again and again over and over until my hands can do it without me having to think, in fact I try to skip the thinking step entirely. Normally this prevents me from learning the nuances of a game, but this time I'm slowing down and working my way through things with the help of tutorials. It took around 15 years of gaming, but I found a fighter that I enjoy and want to be good at.

Recently I made another spur of the moment purchase in Cross Edge, and I hated it, despised it, unloaded it on Goozex as quickly as possible. I used to love an RPG no matter what the flaws, but maybe my tastes are changing, maybe I crave the 1v1, the satisfaction of mastering an instant response system rather than wading through a marsh of statistics. Only time will tell if my personal tastes have truly morphed, but either way BlazBlue will be in my PS3 for quite a while to come.

That is why my hands hurt, because I've been playing BlazBlue so much, and they've never really been contorted in this manner before for any length of time. These days I mostly game on my PC, but now I have something to pull me back into my consoles and keep me there for a good long while.

Quick Checklist, BlazBlue is:
♦Fun
♦Awesome
♦Beautiful
♦Great
♦Fantastic
♦A Fighter
♦HD
♦Quirky
♦Japanese

If any of you want to beat down on an underwhelming opponent, I'm your man: CWal37 (PS3) However, I must warn you that my home internet is nothing short of abysmal. I'll be fine in August once I go back to school, but if I play you now be prepared to grapple with lag. I'll also work on finding one of my headsets. Also, everyone should check out the "Tips" section in the Main "Story" screen. I was not expecting "Miss Boobie Lady".

This is sort of a kneejerk un-spellchecked post I pulled out of my head quickly, since I wanted to get it down before I get my wisdom teeth pulled. Sorry for any glaring errors.