woo woo woo
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this is wack

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Played some SF4 for the first time in a while by accident when Eva(n) challenged me to some 3S and I didn’t bother to read the IM that carefully… whoops!  That went all right, though I need to setup GGPO and 2df soon so I can actually get online competition whenever.

Also, I’m linking a Third Strike blog, http://3rdstrike.wordpress.com/ since it’s dedicated to the game.  I’ve been playing Third Strike since it came out (not to say that I’m any good), so it’s always interesting to get a relative newcomer’s take on a game that’s been out for so long.

So I’m technically on vacation this week, so probably not much posting and not much playing. I did bring my laptop and my stick, so at least twice a day, I’m playing through the single player mode of Third Strike on MAME. Right now, I’m going to try a different, more guided strategy when practicing: make notes of areas I need to work on, and practice those, rather than just combo and setup practice. To make a list:

Controller familiarity:

Dragon punch motions from the left side are harder for me than the right side on a stick.

Canceling into super is hard for me on stick because I tend to not bother buffering in the first quarter circle on a pad.

Technical ability:

Become more consistent with kara throwing.

Links – Chun’s various links into super, Makoto’s links into SA1

First things first, I’m going to make sure stick execution is not my problem, so I’m playing Ken since he has a ton of moves that cancel into super, and lots of dragon punches. I’m already noticeably better, going from about 15-20% to more like 60-70%, but it needs to be at least 90% before I move on.

I’m also playing some KOF, which is more about learning to input moves very cleanly and precisely, because there are a lot of half-circle motions, and the game is a lot more particular than SF4, which has definitely spoiled me with its shortcuts.

I caught a few of the matches from EVO, will get to watching them in earnest once  more are up.  This match caught my eye in particular, Jimmy Tran vs. Daigo.  This one is worth watching, bad quality and all: he just doesn’t give a shit that he’s playing Daigo, and just focuses everything and doesn’t give him room to breathe. Give this man a medal.

Played a really sluggish session with Chris while we were both pretty tired, and did okay.  Played today, and was doing pretty well.  My play was very clean.  No stray pokes to catch, very defensive, but still a lot of footsies to keep the opponent at bay.  I guess in that sense, it’s like boxing– the jab is a defensive move to maintain space.  Went up against someone from my friends list and his Seth in the finals of the Championship Mode tournament, and pulled it out at the bottom of the 3rd round.  His Seth was really solid, but relied on whittling me down via block damage, and I used it to my advantage.

This Sunday is going to be the start of a big push to get back into VF, so I’m looking forward to that.

• Vs. Sagat, the best place to be is just outside his sweep range, but inside mine.  A lot of pokes will just beat his options, and there’s less risk of being psychic Tiger Uppercut into Ultra or something.  But it’s still inside the range that he’ll feel comfortable throwing Tiger Shots.
• Keeping him at full screen is OK– threat of Ultra will keep him from throwing Tiger Shot, but Chun doesn’t have many great options if he plays rushdown.  My best anti-jump-in move, standing MK often gets beat cleanly by the hitbox of his jumping roundhouse.
• It seems like Chun-li’s juggle combo into full Ultra works on some  characters, but not on others.  This would be very, very lame, since I might get left at disadvantage if the final hit whiffs.

Great matches Friday, couldn’t play yesterday, and looking forward to more on Monday.

Took out my M. Bison, which is really rough around the edges.  I sometimes turtle a lot, which doesn’t help things, but at least without XBL lag, I can poke out c. mk and scissor kicks when I have to.  I also need to do a lot more of c. mp into psycho crusher.  c. mp is slower, but has great range.  Like I was saying in the earlier post, I think running to my secondary instead of learning a hard match-up is sort of a cop-out, but it’s nice to have another character in reserve.

Also, I was watching the SBO 09 videos of Virtua Fighter 5 R, and now that I’ve seen an amazing Eileen, I think I’ve seen impressive high level play with every character.

Trying to play Dictator, but changing gears is pretty hard.  I saw a really great match involving Bison that I’ll try to put up.

For the first time, I realized that Street Fighter 4 “worked.”  As in, Capcom’s aim of using it to get people back into 2D fighters was effective, even on people like me who never really considered themselves as having left the flock.  I realized I hadn’t played since the 3rd Strike community died out around here, and now it’s almost trivial to find casual SF4 meets in your area.

Also, Vega’s bad, but I’m hesitant to say he’s as bad as the tier list says.

The main reason I entered this tournament at all is because I tend to get pretty nervous before tournament matches, so I wanted to get myself used to that kind of pressure.  After a week of wasting my time waiting for no-shows, it was off to the semifinals.  My first match was against Yosuke, who Lau walked all over me.  I don’t think anything I expected to work worked, and I had to learn the matchup on the fly.  2 games went by really quick, but he was really cool and played a bunch of casual games afterward.  We played something like 17 or 18 matches, and I won about 5 rounds total.

Semifinals was double elimination, so I went on to play Shag and his Goh.  He took the first match, and I took the second.  I was one round away from taking the third set, and he came back to take it from me.  We also played a bunch of casual matches afterwards, and I did pretty well.  I think I lost as a combination of nerves and a more experienced player adapting to my play style.  I’m hesitant to blame my loss on anything but lacking practice: I needed to capitalize on my momentum, and had to push a little harder to make it.  Great games to Yohsuke and Shag, before the semi-finals, I was convinced this whole WCG thing was a waste of time, but what I learned from them alone was worth it.

At any rate, as a belated introduction, I need to get back into the groove for VF5, and this blog is also going to have posts with the progress on that front as well.  I’m entering every tournament I can make it to both to gauge the progress of my game, and to get over the nervous jitters I get before any big match.  So even though I won by default tonight, I failed on both those counts.

But the real thing I wanted to say in this post was that I played my first Gouken and Seth online, and lost both matches by a small margin.  Vs. Gouken it came down to the last hit of the last round, and he pulled EX Demon Throw, which I completely forgot he had.  Vs. Seth, I really didn’t know the properties of the Ultra, and it owned me both times.  Knowing how the opponent is going to panic when it comes down to the wire is what wins matches, no matter what the game is.

• Against Akuma, make sure to time Ultra against air fireballs, I saw a video where it worked against the low air fireball, too.
• Abuse standing roundhouse, ranged crouch, try to get more trades through his fireballs– I can actually win the damage race for once.
• Be ready for demon throw okizeme, jump straight up maybe, since jump forward could mean eating a fireball?

• Against Blanka, make sure the Ultra hits every time off the missed Blanka ball.
• Use focus attack more against his normals? A lot of that has crazy range and speed.
• Come up with better punisher for blocked moves like the slide and sweep.

All in all, good games.  I learned some, but not enough yet, I think.  Also, those Mad Catz TEs felt pretty good, but $150 is too steep considering I already have an arcade controller.  I think it’s time to buy some Sanwa buttons.  I also wanted to try and mod my spare Hori EX2 into a PS3 controller, so I think I’ll try and see how that goes instead.

[MP4]

If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out.

I had some decent matches on Live today, but I played a solid Guile.  Honestly, that might be my least favorite matchup.  I’ll lose in a fireball war, can’t Ultra through it, hard to instant overhead out of the reach of the flash kick, etc.  I really need to learn how to find the gaps in his offense in order to win, since I doubt I can out zone him.  My only hope is that my pokes are faster.

Oh, and also, it seems like I can punish M. Bison’s scissor kick on block with Chun-li’s Ultra, which is awesome.

[MP4]

Beyond range games, the biggest problem in my game is pokes and footsies. I listened to an ep of the Gootecks show with Combofiend, and he talked about footsies for like, an hour. As Chun, I don’t know a  really solid block string, plus I never do it because I’m trying to keep them ranged outside my jab range.  I have been neglecting jabs, mainly because I try to play keepaway most of the time.

Also, I need to make sure the opponent isn’t baiting EX Spinning Bird Kick, or else I’ll get owned.

After this session with Terrybogus, I played a Boxer and a Sagat online, and wiped the floor with both of them.  I feel like it’s still my strong matchup, and Ryu and Ken are two of my worst.

[MP4]

• Always hit any sort of dash punch with Chun’s Ultra
• Chun-Li’s instant overhead goes in an arc over a forward moving opponent for wakeups or predicted Dash Punches
• If no Ultra, go for EX Spinning Bird Kick
• Baiting headbutts is the way to go

I need a lot more sessions like this in order to get better.

Ken: Still getting beat by scrubs.  If they just abuse jump roundhouse/mk mixup, I need to be able to do something about it, so I started jump roundhouse, but they can just switch from late roundhouse to early, and also air Hurricane Kick.  On the ground seems like the same lose/lose situation: if I go for big punishers, I never hit, if I try footsies, I eat a fierce shoryu that puts the match in his favor.  I can’t turtle, and I can’t rushdown, so I have no idea what to do

Dictator: Seems hard to punish his ground game, scissor kicks and sweeps.  I think I need to keep the fireball pressure on. Ek suggests outpoking him, which is probably the only way.  Trying to counter his air game is a little hard for me, I need to find a good one to play against.

Blanka: I played one who knew I had a hard time punishing Blanka ball, and countered every cross-up attempt with electricity.  I successfully traded the Ultra once, but I want to learn how to hit them out of it.  This matchup is the one I feel the most optimistic about rushing down and poking.  I’ve also been practicing using Chun’s Ultra to punish missed Blanka ball and EX ball, which paid off big time.

I really need help playing against Ken, despite always being in this matchup, I really don’t know how to play against a reasonable one.  Anyone have pointers?

Got randomly matched with a guy on my friends list, played maybe 3-4 matches against his Sagat, all of which came down to the last bit of health in the 3rd round.  I need a better handle on how much chip damage super/ultra will do, it might have helped.  He was pretty sparse with the fireballs, but hit the standing roundhouse into tiger knee/ultra every time.  I have a sneaking suspicion that jump-in roundhouse will beat it, need to double check.  Lost to a decent Claw player mainly because he never did anything especially unsafe, and I had no idea what to do against
those walljump throws.

[MP4]

• EX Spinning Bird against Claw. Not a free pass, still needs to be timed well.
• Abuse long range Chun sweep against Boxer. Works until they start EX Dash Punching/FA
• Predicting Boxer headbutt and Dash Punch with cross-up kick works great, not so much against jab Shoryuken

From what I can tell, Honda is a matchup where Chun has advantage, whereas Guile is a matchup I really don’t know.

The match I watched today I’m posting below. Really solid conservative Dhalsim, not risky or flashy at all (very Japanese, maybe? =) This illustrates what I mean about needing to capitalize on every opportunity, even more than in 3S.

[MP4]

• Ryu does not lack for super and ultra setups, beware footsies that will turn into shoryu->FADC
• Rose’s Ultra SHAM WOW is bulletproof anti-air
• Find frame data for Sakura, a lot of that shit is safe, but not all of it can be
• Gouken having a really simple Ultra setup makes him that much better
• Get into habit of using c.mp instead of shoto c.mk

Great games, learned more in those hours than in days of XBLA play (as expected), and I look forward to playing again.  Might miss it next week, due to birthday and RE5, but need more sessions like this.

• Will Super/Ultra hit him out of Psycho Crusher? I think answer is yes.

Also, timing is the key against Gief.  He did EX charge forward grab move, and I did a Spiral Arrow which broke the first hit.  I think it has to do with when in the animation it hits him, but the grab hit sometimes, and sometimes whiffed and I threw him afterwards.  Need to better investigate against a hard Gief player.  Is the answer lots of weak Cannon Spikes to out-prioritize him?

There was a Claw player called Tru Down South or something who played a real distance game.  He just ran and backflipped all day and did ambiguous cross up dives from across the screen.  Getting the right angle Cannon Spike was hard all the time, and if he was ahead on life, punishing was not narrowing the gap enough.