Last evening, Gamestop @ 14th Union Square had a big-ass line waiting outside the store for the shipment to come in. Shit was like a movie premiere. Luckily they had enough 360 copies that I could go inside and pre-purchase it and then wait in line with my receipt.
When the DHL guy finally showed, everyone cheered and there were even a couple of "Hadoken!" shouts for good measure. Geek City total.
I only got to play for about 2 hours last night and went straight online where my Abel was pummeled by an orgy of Ryu and Ken. Think I had 1 win maybe. It wasn't so much that I didn't know Abel--he's basic enough really--but I had a hell of a time getting used to the almost methodical speed of movement. Everything just felt sluggish compared to classic 2D SF and it totally threw off all my normal timing. A good example is my sad attempts at landing meaty sweeps on opponent wake-up--I kept missing it over and over and would instead eat Shoryukens. Basic shit like that. This isn't really a fault of course but other than that my only "complaints" are:
Way too much shit on the screen. Did they really have to make the Ultra/Revenge gauge shoot out giant, doofy flames?? It wasn't enough to just glow red? This kinda leads into:
Special effects--I mostly love 'em but I'd like to actually see more of what's going on up close and personal. I felt like Capcom's approaching Tekken territory with all the big flashes and pretty lights. It would have been cool if their was an option to tune them down.
Backgrounds--mostly great but some are definitely lacking. Not a big deal really but it's probably a combo of bad art/ugliness (Diner) and sparseness (ship). I also didn't appreciate clipping through the wing of that jet (the one that rolls out and looks great) on what assume is Guile's stage but my annoyance was probably more because I was shoryuken'ed through it to lose a match. ;-)
Hmm. What else to bitch about. English voices suck ass mostly. Back on Japanese with the quickness--I thought there was an option to choose language fighter by fighter which would have been awesome.
That's pretty much it. Abel is the shit. He reminds me a lot of Alex both in stature and because of his command throw. Music is great. Playing single-player Arcade with the option to have peeps challenge you really is the most genius thing I've seen done with an online component. Just an incredibly polished product, really.