Today is my senior recital! I've practiced a lot so I think everything will go well.

This coming week is finals week. I have 4 finals plus my recital. Hopefully everything will go well.

The semester is almost over. This week I'll hae two concerts, two more concerts on the week after, plus finals. I'll be pretty busy, but the good thing is I'll have plenty of time to play games after the semester is over.

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I got my copy of TSFP this past Friday. I played it for about 2 hrs on Friday night and four about three hrs last night. So far it seems better than TS2. The rubber-band aiming is gone, now we have a crosshair that is much easier to deal with (therefore I'm getting more headshots now).
I've finished 9 of the story levesl so far; the story mode seems a little easier than TS2 (I'm playing on normal difficulty), maybe it's because now with the crosshair I know exactly where I'm shooting at. Now, instead of a bunch of random missions there is a real story, which helps making the game more interesting.
I haven't tried any of the challenges or arcade league levels yet. I'm planning on finishing story mode then doing the challenges and arcade league levels. I've played a few arcade matches against CPU bots and I got say the bots are considerably more difficulty than TS2 (this time around we don't get to choose difficulty before starting arcade mode but we can still set star levels for indivindual bots). They seem to get headshots all the time and unless I get a headshot it takes me a good number of shots to kill them.
I haven't played online or against my friends yet but I'm planning on doing so very soon. There are more weapons and characters than in TS2 so multiplayer should be a lot of fun. A few of TS2 maps are back but there are new maps as well.
I'm going to try the MapMaker sometime today and see how it is. I'm planning on reviewing TSFP but that will take a while. Before writing a review I want to finish story mode and most if not all of the challenges and arcade league levels as well as playing the game online and messing with the mapmaker.

I haven't posted anything in here in the past week or so. I've been so busy with schoolwork lately I haven't spent much time in the GS forums. This past Tuesday I turned in a paper and next Thursday I have another paper due, plus I have two tests today, a recital hearing tomorrow, and two more tests next week. I can't wait for the end of the semester so I won't have to worry about all of that school crap. I'm planning on writing reviews for some games but I won't have time to do it until school is over.

This morning I took the piano proficiency exam. That was a experience I'll never forget. I'm horrible at the paino I got admit but today was just incredible the way things happen.

OK, lets go from the beginning. Last night I went to bed late because I had to go to another town for a rehearsal and I got back really late, and since I had a take home test to turn in today at 9:00 (which I didn't start until today morning) I ended up not getting enough sleep. To make things worse, I wake up not feeling well; something I ate yesterday messed up my bowels really bad. I went to the restroom several times before and after my 9:00 class, and the piano exam was at 10:30. That made me really worried; bad piano skills, bad night of sleep and bowels messed up; things weren't looking good for me (I must had lost 5-6 lbs this morning just by "dropping stuff").

Finally I go take the exam. The first thing is the repertoire piece, "A Little Joke" by Kabalevsky (yeah, I know, the whole exam with me at the piano was a joke but I decided to play that piece anyways since it was quite easy). It goes well, my scales and accompaniment piece go well too. Next they asked me to play a tune by ear and harmonize it. I start it well but in the middle of the thing I completely forget the melody. That was the only problem I had in the harmonization part, all of the other harmonization stuff went well. Lastly, the 4-part hymn. Yesterday I practiced for a while for today's test. I wasn't really in the mood to spend much time on the piano so instead of practing all of the hymns on the I just practiced a couple of hymns (one of the hymns I practiced was "When I Survey the Wondorus Cross"). Guess what? They ask me to play "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross". I was like: "how do they know?" I just couldn't believe they asked me to play one of the few hymns I had practiced.

At the end, I passed everything except the tune harmonization (forgeting the thing was nothing but bad luck). I think that can be considered a good result since I didn't practice that much for the exam, I had a bad night and my bowels were messed up. Well, I'll that the part I failed again in two weks and this time I'll finish it.

I've spent quite some time in the past few months working in my parrying skills. I started it out in Capcom vs SNK 2 then when I got Street Fighter AC I started to spend more time with Third Strike and later I tried parrying in Capcom Fighting Evolution. I still need a lot more practice but I've got better. Single attacks are becoming easier to parry even at close range. I've even managed to full parry multi-hit specials and supers, things that at first were impossible for me. There are many attcaks I still have to work on in order to parry properly but I think I've had some improvement.

The difference in timing for parrying in SF3S, CvS2 and CFE is quite noticeable. After you get used to the timing in SF3S is really weird to try to parry in CvS2 or CFE. This really sucks because basically you have to learn three different timings if you want to be good with parrying in all three games.

In CvS2, it seems like the timing is more strict than in SF3S. From what I've noticed, you have to wait a split second longer than in SF3S before parrying the first hit of an attack and after that, you have to be a little more precise than in SF3S while parrying the remaining hits. In SF3S, the only thing I worry is to parry the first hit correctly; if I can do that, parrying the remaining hits isn't a problem but that isn't the case in CvS2.

In CFE, the interval between hits is noticeably longer than in SF3S or CvS2, which can mess things up really bad. Making the intervals between hits longer thus making the whole proccess of parrying slower might make things easier for beginners, however veterans of SF3S will probably hate it (even though I'm not a veteran in SF3S I hate the timing in CFE anyways). 99% of the time I miss in CFE is because I tapped forward too early, a result of the game's slower parrying input time.

Timing differences apart, I will need a lot more practice if I want to get good at parrying. At first, parrying might seem to be something silly and useless but after you learn it and use it during real matches you start to realize how useful it is, not just because you don't take damage but because of the openings your opponents leave after you parry their attacks.

Well, that being said, remember that parrying starts with a P, like in practice.

I got a new banner for my journal and as you guys can guess, I'm a big fan of fighting games in general especially Street Fighter. So, what do you guys think of my new banner?

Even though the PS2 is the only system I have, I was surprised when I read on the web that SC3 is gonna be a PS2 exclusive. I was expecting SC3 to be on next-gen systems as they'll be more powerful in terms of hardware. There is no word yet about online play but even if it doesn't have online I'll probably buy. If Namco does a great job with SC3 like they did with Tekken 5 gamers will be happy.