City of Heroes

I recently got my second level 50 (ie, max) character. Seems it takes me 2 years a pop, since I have no real focus on leveling, love alts, and Exemplar a lot (ex'ing doesn't earn XP). A buddy of mine and I are actually duo-ing the Freedom Phalanx task forces, and have completed Positron, Synapse and Sister Psyche's TF's. We'll be starting Citadel's tonight or tomorrow. Simple enough - we get some friends to form a team that meets the minimum TF size, start the TF, have them quit, and we work on it as we can. It takes us between one and three days to finish one. Its actually been a lot of fun, and we get together at the end mission to fight the Arch-Villain together, earn the reward, etc. Up until then we actually solo on our own, sometimes duoing if we can. The influence (money) and drops we get all work towards us making enough money to really pimp out our characters.

Street Fighter IV

Got it. Played through on Easy with Ryu to unlock Sakura. Played through on Easiest/1 round with Sakura to unlock Dan. I"m happy now. On another forum someone asked what's so great about joysticks, and I had to reply...

It really depends at your level of play and interest. For me, pretty much the moment you decide to get "serious" and money (ie, money tournaments) enters into the equation, you need to look into sticks. If you're a fighting game gourment, a stick is a very worthwhile investment.

I've personally found some things to be much easier on sticks than pads: 720's, Ivy's Summon Suffering, a good number of SNK supers (Raging Storm!), etc. I find it much easier to press multiple combinations of buttons without having to set up custom settings (more important for Tekken or VF), or to use them with speed and accuracy. I personally find a good stick to be more comfortable for long-term play than a pad where my thumb starts to get sore. The layout on a stick is universal (especially for SF), whereas a pad everyone wants to reconfigure it their way.

...

Standing 720's (ie, you do it and don't require a buffer of any sort) require a stick. I've never heard of them being done on pads (or, for that matter, American sticks). Seth Killian was quite floored when in Japan by their ability to do this, and he directly attributed it to the hardware.

Summon Suffering can be done on a pad, although I needed to take the full length of time (you get up to 5 seconds to do it in SC), and had to use a longer command than the df, ub, f, d, df+??. I think I did df, ub, roll to d, df+??. Been a few years, so I can remember the buttons. I could do it faster and more reliably on a stick.

A Rising Storm motion is db, f, roll to b, df + P. Great for Geese Howard, but also for K9999 in KOF.

Lightly feathering the buttons always made it easier for me to do Honda's 100-hand slap, Blanka's electricity and Chun Li's kicks. Quick, light strokes across the tops - enough to register (obviously, you need responsive buttons for this). No need to mash or slam them. Since you're not holding a pad, it doesn't affect your other hand at all, whereas jamming on buttons with one hand on a pad might make you lose some precision with the other.

For the record, I've got the Hori EX2 for the 360. And am discovering its been so long since I've played any fighting game seriously I now suck. Badly. Oh well. Need to get Fei Long and Cammy unlocked next.

360 and networking

The 360 is the straw that broke the camel's back, and now I'm going to have to network my room properly. I hate wireless and hate switching a single ethernet cable inbetween various machines. So by Monday my PC, Mac, 360 and printer should all be hooked up on a single router/switch/hub-thingie. Next up? Getting a DVI-KVM so I can use the same keyboard and mouse between my PC and Mac without having to switch things around.