Holy analog stick, Batman! I was right! I am absolutely horrible! Welp, onto the next game, right?

Yeah, screw that, I’m sticking with this. I am really, really determined to actually git gud at this game. I want to be able to look at myself and say “Yeah, I can play that game alright.”

To recap what actually happened: I did a whole bucket load of training mode, survival mode and the combo challenges. I think that training mode, where you just wail on a dummy, was the least useful to me. I don’t know what to practice, and when I have practiced enough. What is a “good execution?” What situations would I see myself in?

Often I was just jumping around, struggling and failing to get 2 or 3 hit links, and achieving nothing. Survival mode was similar, I just used Zangief or Birde, a pair of slow-but-powerful fighters, and spammed simple moves to win.

The real “progress” I found was in the combo challenges.

Here, the game gives you a simple combo to do, with the prompts on the side. It really helped me to actually practice these under the guiding hand of a list.

Learning a simple combo of Jumping HPunch into Crouching MKick into Special Move taught me more about my character than the hours I spent in training mode. And, with every dropped combo, I learned what I need to practice, and how long I need to practice it.

But, as I said above the jump, I am absolutely horrible. So, what do I mean by that? It’s honestly kind of hard to say. In Street Fighter V, like many other games, there are four primary areas of skill you can measure yourself: technical, psychological, information recall, and reaction times. Let’s go over them one by one and see how I’m doing.

Technical

I was having a lot of problems with many of the combos. Sometimes, I could not get the timing down. Other times, I would mistime my button press and the stick movement (pressing the button then moving the stick does not help).

Other times, I would perform the incorrect stick movement (instead of down-downforward-forward, I would somehow just input downforward).

In-game, I found actually performing the special moves was one of my biggest stumbling blocks. Instead of throwing my chain as Birdie, I would do a normal.

Overall, I would give myself a D- leaning towards an F for my technical skills. They are seriously bad.

Psychological

This one is my strongest suit, and I think it is holding me back.

I am a big fan of the flashy hard reads, where you predict an opponent’s actions before they even do anything, and that is actually going against me.

I would always think “Oh, instead of going right after me, he is going to jump here, so I will do this and that” and it… just doesn’t work. Either they don’t actually do that (remember, I’m either facing very low level players like myself, or easy mode computers, and they tend to go for the obvious), or I fail to do what I wanted to do.

In the words of Gene Hackman “Focus on the fundamentals.” I give myself a D+ for my psychological skills. Ok, but really working against me.

Information Recall

Oh my God, this is so annoying. I try to memorize so many combos that they get all mixed up in my head. Trying to remember what leads into what, when I can use certain moves, and even recalling what special moves I have can be daunting. And don’t get me started on learning the other characters, I can barely keep track of one!

For this, I give myself a D.

Reaction Times

I seem to have really, really, really slow reaction times. I don’t know whether it is computer lag, internet lag, input lag, or me lagging,

I seem to always be a few inputs behind. They throw a fireball, so I try to block, but its too late. They jump, so I try to hit them out of the air, but I’m already being combo’d. Try to wait and see if my hit connected so I can continue the combo, well too bad, the window has passed. D-.

Overall, I am doing horrible. My worst part is definitely my technical skills.