Every time a new fighting game comes out, I get it in my head that this time, I’m going to learn how to play it properly. I dig in to a character, master a few combos and special moves, and once I feel like I’ve got a good feel for it, I challenge someone else.

That’s when I get destroyed by the rankest of amateurs, and quit in disgust again. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the fighting game genre, I just don’t have the patience to develop the skillset that’s required.

The latest game I’ve done this with is, as you may have guessed, Street Fighter IV.

By all accounts, the game is pretty friendly for beginners. “Beginner” is a relative term, though. I’m still at the stage of learning how to press forward-down-down and forward + punch under pressure, a hand motion that’s the Street Fighter equivalent of tying your own shoes.

My intuitive sense of the game is terrible. Stuff like the focus attack dash cancel seems natural and evolutionary to them, but bizarre and arbitrary to me. They’re playing at a level where they’re trying to outthink each other, and I’m mostly swearing at my controller.

I know with enough practice, I could be decent. It’s just that when I look at the work required to catch up to my friends who cut their teeth on this stuff a decade ago, I don’t feel like putting in the work. There’s other stuff I could be doing.

Anyone else have the problem of a game genre being too developed for you to enter as a noob?

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