So I went down to my local arcade and paid my 6 bucks for all day play on their vewlix machine where they have a 360 hooked up to it and of course they already had a copy of SFxT which was my main reason for going today, not that I need a major reason to go to the arcade to play ...

I got almost 4 hours worth of game time and tried a wide variety of characters...

To be honest the game is nowhere near as bad as I had initially made it out to be, it was very fun to play actually and fairly solid as a fighter.

Footsies are going to play a MAJOR role in this game meaning that one poke can lead into a nice combo of at least 15% and I say that because from a poke (regardless of standing or crouching) you can very easily just hit LP, MP, HP, HP. The second HP calls in your partner to continue the combo while your opponent is in the air in the juggle state so ANY attack will cause at least 1 more hit to be added to your combo (I don't know if the juggle combo works with kicks as well or not since I did not try). Of course there are tons of options when it comes to combos and the game really seems to be very open ended... You get that sense of making up your own combos as you go which is actually pretty nice.

Don't be surprised after you have picked up this game and play online to hear "That works?!?!?!" or "I didn't know that combo'd!!!" cause I heard that all night tonight as people watching would constantly say that... and this was from tourney players that have put time into the game but are still finding ish out.

For any of you that were on the fence of buying this game I would say go ahead with the expectation that this is NOT going to replace either Marvel of SF... I think this game is unique enough to stand as a separate entity and doesn't necessarily have to fit either the Marvel, Tekken or SF mold of what you would expect.

Can you play this game JUST like SF??... sure you can and probably be successful but the game really rewards you for adapting to the new play style that it provides..

I know I will probably get this thru gamefly at some point and I think you guys should at the very least rent it as well, I don't think you will be disappointed.

Has my opinion completely changed regarding this game?... No... I still don't quite understand who it was made for but maybe it wasn't meant for either SF or Tekken fans, maybe it was just made for overall fighting game fans and it shows..

I went in very judgmental and ready to tear and critique the game apart but honestly the game is solid, not great by any means but worth checking out.

The top characters are going to be grapplers and from the little I played with him Rufus seems stupid good, his messiah kick is not the big culprit anymore it's his ex. Galactic tornado which always causes a wall bounce which can be easily followed up with a combo.

These are merely my thoughts on this game and thought that maybe you guys would be interested in getting an opinion from someone not getting paid to sugar coat anything...

Hopefully, Capcom will patch Heihachi so he doesn't look like a damned coke addict!

Expectations are low, but then again a 'certain other fighting game I'm really looking forward to' was one I originally had thought would be a complete mess until I got to play it awhile back...