So here it is. I purchased Commando 3 earlier this morning and figured that I'd go ahead and download the beta for Street Fighter HD. It finished and I went on my way, blasting away at multitudes of unnamed soldiers through jungles and prisons both. On my way back the the XBL Arcade, I figured that I'd give the Beta a quick go-around. As a result, I've suffered one of the most soul crushing moments in my gaming life.

I am terrible at Street Fighter.

Don't get me wrong, I've always loved the series, but it wasn't until within the past year or so that I've really started to get in-depth with the games. My friends and I would play Marvel vs. Capcom 2 at school and I'm proud to say two things about that: 1) I hold the record for wins in versus mode at 15 matches (GO MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!) and 2) Ken was the star role of the aptly named Team Bishonen. Maybe it's the character design, maybe it's the sheer retro factor, but these games are always fun to play and even more so when friends are around.

But let's move away from those happy times and into something a little more frightening. By no means to I consider myself a great SF player, but seeing some of the people online earlier today makes me feel like going back and playing one-star arcade mode. For the better part of an hour I played online and was promptly trounced every. single. match. Not a single round went in my favor. While I'm sure that the TrueSkill stuff still hasn't been implemented, and there certainly seems to be a lot of fail floating around, but I can't even attribute my horrible performance to that.

I've never been great with Ryu, and while I am a Ken fan, I think that one of the links above can attest to the fact that Ken is a little wonky right now. Even still, none of it compares to the hurt that was put on me today. I'm just hoping that all of it gets tuned and flattened out. Maybe then things will be a little easier. Of course, I could just be that bad.

Who knows, perhaps desperation could force me to be a better player. I sure hope so since I was really looking forward to this and I'd hate to see such an opportunity wasted on a broken game. Fingers-crossed for something positive to come of it.