IN-DE-STRUCT-ABLE!

Capcom just released the Street Fighter IV POWER UP PACK free download on Xbox Live and PSN a few days ago. The main update of this download is the new "Championship Mode", which adds more metrics that I am too dim-witted to figure out to online play. Maybe somebody can explain this to me, as I only spent a little time with it last night and it hasn't come together for me yet.

So now in addition to "Battle Points (BP)" there are "Championship Points (CP)" and "Grade Points (GP)" as well as some rank (I believe mine was G3-E or something, whatever you start with). You seem to get CP when you beat somebody, which seems to be based on their GP, which is added based on whether you win or lose. But then if you lose, you lose all your CP! So I think if you actually win a tournament, your CP is converted to GP! I have no idea! That would require winning, which I could not seem to do, since I haven't played for a week or two and have apparently forgotten how to play. My rank also increased somehow to G3-D despite losing most of my matches, so I have no idea how that is determined.

You're also always at some kind of "stage" in the tournament, but you don't fight them all at once, you just fight people who are also at your stage and move up from there. This is kind of a neat idea, as it seems to make one giant tournament, though I figured it would be some kind of 8 person lobby or something that makes a mini-tournament. I guess this way lets you have points and ranking systems to stretch it farther.

There is also a "double-blind" character select feature, not that it really matters, since everybody you fight is just going to use Ryu, Ken, Sagat, or Akuma anyway. Still, it does add a somewhat nice element of surprise, since you don't know which of these four you are going to fight.

All in all, it seems like a nice update! It's free, so there's no complaint there, and it adds to their already great online experience. I look forward to spending more time with it and hopefully actually winning some tournaments and getting some more GPs and CPs and BPs and HPs with Cammy, because I'm such a rebel like that.