Ultra Street Fighter IV

[DC]

I got beaten around the bumhole. It was all in the name of good fun though.

Cheers to all - good games!

[JLM]

GGs new folks! Hope you gents will be sticking around, and do ask away if you want any tips.

GGs to Cale also. Did you like the Gouken reset against your Oni? I picked him especially to show you it.

Yes, I was random selecting, I dabble a bit with every character, though I am still beyond useless with a few of them. That Fuerte vs Sagat match was indeed crazy. Was very pleased to catch Sagat's Ultra with EX guacamole to save myself from round losing chip.

[cale]

How the fuck does that reset work? I was totally blocking s.hp(?) after all the fadc gubbins yet it still tagged me. I was incredulous and excited at the same time. Incrited. Excredulous.

And yay to DC and joeplus. Was fun!

######

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I love gouken resets! tell!

[joeplus]

I really like the idea of getting used to multiple characters, but for now it's enough trying to learn how to play against the cast so I'll keep it to my Fabulous Fightin' Four (two of whom I am horrible with).

Question: what's the idea with focus attacks? As in what you're trying to do with them.

[JLM]

Ha, just had a look at the replay and it shows you block correctly just in time, then go to down back, then hit light kick, but because the standing fierce is done early and stays active for so long you got counter hit. I assume the light kick was accidental? Either way, it's the main reason Gouken's standing fierce is so good for resets, because if they block correctly but then try to hit a button or crouch tech it'll hit them anyway.

Haggar, the sequence was Jumping MK - > standing fierce - > EX palm - > FADC forwards - > Jumping medium kick juggle - > Dash forward to cross under - > Standing fierce - > EX palm. It does ludicrous damage and stun and costs four glorious bars. You can easily alter the spacing very slightly so as to not cross under once the opponent's seen it done.

Joeplus: Focus attacks have a variety of uses, but when someone is using one in mid screen they're usually hoping to charge it up, absorb one of your hits and then hit you with the focus attack to get a crumple, which is when your character goes limp and drops to their knees and is vulnerable to a free combo/set up of the opponent's choice.

You can also use them to absorb projectiles. You don't take the chip damage you would have if you blocked it, and instead get grey life, which replenishes if you don't get hit for a moment. Focusing an attack or projectile also builds up your ultra meter without you having to take hits.

They can be used against jumping attacks as anti-air, either to absorb the jump in and get a crumple (which is risky and takes good timing), or to absorb the jumping attack and then dash backwards to create a bit of space and get the pressure off you.

If you charge a focus attack up to level 3 (where your character will swing even if you're still holding the buttons down), the attack becomes unblockable and will cause a crumple. One use of this is if you've dizzied the opponent and want to land your combo without worrying about them mashing out. You can immediately level 3 focus crumple them and then hit what you like.

Another use is if someone is jumping over you and you're not sure if you need to block left or right. The focus attack will absorb the attack no matter which side it hits, then you can dash out to safety. Again, this is far from fool proof and can be very risky, but against certain tricky mix ups it's a decent way out.

At any point during the focus attack animation you can forward dash or back dash and your character will cancel the focus attack.and dash out of it. So if you just want to absorb something with the charging up part and not actually use the attack, then do a dash and you can get out of it. If your focus attack is blocked, dash to stop yourself getting hit as it recovers.

Get in the habit of doing this, because no matter what the outcome of your focus attack you will want to dash out of it at some stage. If it hits and you get the crumple, you'll still want to dash out of it afterwards because the attacking part of a focus attack takes an age to recover and you'll miss out on your damage if you don't dash.

As well as absorbing hits and getting crumples, you can also focus absorb a hit and then dash forwards before the the attacking bit comes out to advance on the opponent while their move recovers. For example, Zangief can absorb a fireball from Ryu, immedately dash forward and then do a jab spinning pile driver to catch him as he's recovering from throwing the fireball.

To beat focus attacks, you need to hit the opponent more than once very quickly (e.g two jabs, Chun Li's jumping or crouching double hard punch, an EX fireball), use a move that breaks armour (every character has at least one move that can do this, and they're highlighted in the command list) or if you catch them charging it up you can also throw them out of it.

Also, any move done as a reversal (i.e. a special move performed at the very moment you stand up after being knocked down) automatically becomes an armour breaker even if that move doesn't break focus attacks normally. You can tell if something has been done with reversal timing because "reversal" will pop up on screen on the side of the player who did it.

[joeplus]

Dude, science. I love this thread so much, everyone's been so helpful with my noob questions. Glad it's gonna be cold out this weekend, I'm gonna play me plenty of Street Fighter.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I am trying to play, but am having to do so without the use of my left thumb. Kinda hard!

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Ggs tpo all tonight, especially mute, I was pretty impressed considering you've not had the game that long.

Also, also, in my first ever match against must (dan v rose) I finished the final round with cr.mk x fireball x post ko super taunt. Which is the first time I have EVER pulled it off in a match. I was leaping around the room like a madman.

Also I chose guile to spite donut, who managed to out-spite me by picking yun.

Spite fighter.

[carlito]

Thanks to JLM and Jiro I now have just five and a quarter hours of sleep to enjoy before I just up for work.

Onemoreround Fighter.

[JLM]

GGs to Nate and cale earlier. I'm glad you buckled and renewed your gold account cale, we must do more FT10s soon.

Jiro and Delores, that was much fun. My Cammy is still ridiculously sloppy but it was worth it to frame trap Delores' crouch teching self a few times. Also carlito I just need to play you more often generally. We both seem to play the mindgames side of the game on the same wavelength, so you can make me do stupid stuff on wake up but I can get reversals out of you as well.

Building up reads upon reads upon reads is the best thing in fighting games for me, which is why that run of Giiiieeeef was so much fun. Using just enough grabs and mixing things up enough to set up body splash - > close standing MP - > Blizzard, green handing back dashes, meaty sweep, empty jump lariat or landing three medium punch slaps or two standing roundhouse kicks in a row as the opponent tries to jump away are enough reward for spending 70 seconds of each round trying to get in. Also using SPD - > jab green hand - > nothing just to see what option they choose is more fun than it should be. Apologies if it was boring to watch but it was a lot of fun to play, and every time I get a good read and land an air to air blizzard or particularly an instant air blizzard I am so fucking smug I want to punch myself in the face.

[joeplus]

I can hardly ever play up late-ish because I don't want to wake my housemates by mashing Ultra and going "fck sht auggh". They're lovely, one of them cooked a fish pie this evening. Although he did knock on my door to ask "if fish pie sounds good" while I was getting murdered by Sakura, and then he put hard-boiled eggs in the fish pie (?)

[jiroczech]

I was a lobby slut tonight, flitting from one to another. Ggs to all. Fuck Zangief tho'. Jay el Emm is getting far too good at this game. Donut too. Dolores sabbatical doing man-shoots doesn't seem to have dulled his skills. Oh and everyone's mic-less these days. It's the new thing. I took refuge from Zangief in a cosy wee lobby with Kitchen Belt whose 3 mains are all looking good. Ggs.

[JLM]

Streaming stuff from last week that I didn't post.

WinnerStaysOn on Tuesday (31st) was fun. Nothing mindblowing in the tournament but a good standard all round as usual. Some of the stories on commentary were funny. Ryan Hart mentioned that Xian from CC Asia had to be carried into the VIP room for his money matches because he was so drunk, but still managed to win them all. Problem X beat Justin Wong in a money match and Justin called him a scrub. Tee hee.

Also Afii said that Xbox Live Guile Imstilldadaddy claims that Afii has been "stealing his strategies". Guy sounds like quite a dickhead.

On a more positive note, Mad Catz sent a new TE for free when WorstGiefEver told them that one of the WSO guys had theirs stolen the previous week. Aww.

Last week's Wednesday Night Fights was an outstanding show.

They announced that, from now on, WNF will alternate games so that one week will be 100% Marvel and the next will be 100% SF4. I actually liked it when they'd show most of one tournament and just the final stages of the other, but this will work well too. If people's favourite game isn't on that week they can always watch Big 2 on Spooky's channel instead.

The news at the beginning of the show was that WNF has been allocated Evo points. As one of the strongest weekly tournaments in America in an area that has surprisingly few majors I think it's a good decision. THis, combined with the few months' break since the last one, led to a huuuge turn out, with over 100 players for Marvel. For a wednesday evening weekly tournament usually only attended by locals that's ridiculous.

Lots of hype for Soul Calibur 5 at the beginning but I just can't bring myself to care about it. I only ever play SC games at the most rudimentary mashy level and have never felt inclined to explore it further. I can appreciate the skill and why it's good, it just doesn't click for me. Some of the character creation stuff people have done is exceptional though.

Pleased to see that Richard Nguyen finally has sponsorship. That should have happened before last year's Evo and it's very odd that he's only just got it now. He's a great candidate for sponsorship because not only does he place well but he has that incredibly flashy style that people love watching. Team Eternal Rival has also picked up AndyOCR, Warahk and Tatsu after Team Hori quietly fizzled out. Big fan of Tatsu in both SF4 and Marvel so this is good news.

Mike Ross and Marn had an ongoing bit on stream about Mike Ross being a massive fraud. He came on the mic and mentioned that he finished 7th in the qualifiers for the LG international tournament and was still going. He then ran through why Wolfkrone, Floe, Snakeyes, Hugo101, Online Tony and Combofiend, who all placed higher in the tournament, were unable to attend and why he therefore got the spot. He's making a habit of this.

As for the tournament, this was meant to be the last week where both AE and Marvel would run in the same week, but it turned out that the Marvel tournament was so stacked that there was no time for SF4 on stream.

Stuff:

- Lawrence had a breakthrough tournament, knocking out AndyOCR and putting Combofiend into losers on his way to his highest placing to date.

- Richard Nguyen had Spiderman on point, which I was excited to see, but he's clearly not comfortable with him ust yet and ended up relying on his utterly disgusting Dante/Vergil stuff to get him through. You just know his Spiderman will be outstanding in a few weeks' time. He doesn't like that his Nova/Vergil/Dante team is known as "Yipes' team" when they both picked it up at the same time, so I hope he sticks with Spidey on that basis.

- Royal Flush is a highlight every week with his Thor/Modok/Joe team, but this week he also got some big wins over Lawrence and Infrit and made top 8 in the 100+ man tournament. He has so many clever tricks and shenanigans and gets such great team synergy from his team of oddball characters. Little things like getting the Joe assist to throw Bombs on screen and then using the Modok shield to bounce them around and mix the opponent up are just brilliant.

- Upa played the tournament of his life. As well as running the tournament and getting on commentary at various times, he also made it all the way to winners' finals and should really have got to grand finals bar a couple of costly chokes.

- Fanatiq was amazing throughout the tournament as well, and pulled off an amazing comeback with Storm earlier on against Tapebot without X Factor.

However, the star of the show was Combofiend. He started in the early rounds playing Magneto/She Hulk/Sentinel and it didn't work out so well. I haven't seen a She Hulk in tournament on either coast since Ultimate came out, and if even Combofiend can't bring the best out of her when he invented Vanilla MVC3 She Hulk then it seems she truly is done.

He got knocked into losers by Lawrence despite switching to his main team after the first game and looked thoroughly pissed off about it. He then went on to annihilate everyone in losers bracket in spectacular fashion and march all the way to grand finals against Fanatiq. He looked like he wasn't just trying to win, but to win as quickly and violently as possible. One highlight was during his set with Dios X. He absolutely smashed him in the first game, and the camera caught him give a sly little sideways glance at Dios before hitting rematch, just to see if he'd mentally broken him.

His UMVC3 team of Nova/Spencer/Hawkeye is already looking just as beastly and cleverly put together as his old one. His new resets, hard tag combos and DHCs are all amazing to watch and he seems to add more every time he plays. At one point he did a team super with Nova's beam super and the Bionic Arm, and Spencer was able to continue the combo afterwards because he recovers just before the laser runs out. So smart.

Losers final between Upa and Combofiend was extremely hype. It went the distance and Upa came within pixels of winning it on a few occasions. Combofiend had to pull off some of his signature comebacks with both Spencer and Hawkeye and Upa was desperately unlucky to lose.

Grand finals was excellent as well. Combofiend won three straight games to reset the bracket, then the second 3 out of 5 was as close as it gets. Fanatiq won one of the games with Storm as his last character left with invisible life.

Really hype tournament, and I'd recommend catching the archive just to watch Combofiend in beast mode.

[Plopboy]

All this fight talk sounds lovely, but the Internets has had other lesser uses over the past few nights

But to keep my mind in the streets I have updated the spreadsheet to include a Controller column (Qazi's idea) just so you can see what everyone else is using or in my case misusing.

One thing though I have started using Guy a little but every time I think about him my mind always says Cody (even typing this out I got it wrong at first) I wonder what this means?

[joffocakes]

I ended up not watching a film about burgers at all. I watched a documentary about competitive scrabble and another about helvetica. Both were good.

Played a few games against imp and choo and got utterly destroyed. I'm obsessed with imp's obsession with kara tiger knees against Choo. Also, I'm obsessed with Choo never dropping links with Yang. Oh man. Was kinda choppy every now and then but toward the end the lag got wild and unplayable to the point where even the attacks that did connect were unsatisfying; turns out the ladychum was uploading dozens of photos to facebook and flickr. Despair.

[Nate Dogg III]

Profound sadness, Joffo. I'd say it's time to leave her.

Gugs to Jason and cale last night. Could you hear me okay? It's just that I could barely hear a fucking thing and I'd hate to think I've spent £30 on a wireless mic that's genuinely that much worse than the wired one it replaced. So uncomfortable, too, the ear support is a wee strip of plastic that's so thin it's basically cheese wire. It'll have my ear off if I'm not careful.

But yes, good times. There's a definite advantage to being the only one in the room going random select, element of surprise. I think everyone knows my Seth/Ken/ERoo/Blanka tricks by now. I've retired Ibuki though, useless cow.

Specific shout to Jason's lovely Gief, that close MP > jab SPD is so godlike. You've got a whole lot of good stuff with him Jason, you should pick him more. You should ditch Ultra 2 though because I could tell you were trying to get me to jump/SRK/backdash that one time. I think stuff like that is my biggest Street Fighter downfall - I'll be in a good position then get obsessed with landing one particular thing and end up losing horribly.

Think I lost more than I won, but good times, and at least I landed a Demon on someone.

[joffocakes]

Ultra 2 is that one big deadly threat Gief has. I'm sure he can win matches by having and not using ultra 2 that he wouldn't have won by having and not using ultra 1.

[Nate Dogg III]

But, but - could you not use Ultra 1 in the same way you use jab SPD, i.e. crossup body splash > close MP > Ultra? I bet you could.

It's true, though, it keeps you on the ground where Gief needs you to be, and shuts down backdashes which are essential against him. Okay, good point, I'll concede.

[joffocakes]

Yes, but that's the point; you use Ultra 1 in the same way you use a move you already have; the Spinning Piledriver. The opponent's options for escaping remain the same. Ultra 2 gives you another option, one which covers most of an opponents usual tactics for escaping an SPD, which will in turn force them to get nervous and eat more SPDs.

EDIT: Eat more spuds.

[carlito]

Playing against Giefs Ultra 2 gives me that wierd "need a wee" feeling of panic that you would normally only get in exams when you realise you spent two and a half hours on the first two questions and only have half an hour for the third.

I had to threaten Jellum textually to stop him picking the big man.

Such. Long. Rounds.

[Spuck]

Played a few games against imp and choo and got utterly destroyed. I'm obsessed with imp's obsession with kara tiger knees against Choo. Also, I'm obsessed with Choo never dropping links with Yang. Oh man. Was kinda choppy every now and then but toward the end the lag got wild and unplayable to the point where even the attacks that did connect were unsatisfying; turns out the ladychum was uploading dozens of photos to facebook and flickr. Despair.

Choo just doesn't miss links. Just seeing his name pop up gives me horrible Blazblue flashbacks.

I'll be venturing onto th'xbox tonight, finally have some spare time and control of the big telly, so no more slumming it up on the PC version. How long till STrekken comes out?

[joffocakes]

A month today*!

*My birthday, fact fans.

[imp]

I ended up not watching a film about burgers at all. I watched a documentary about competitive scrabble and another about helvetica. Both were good.

Played a few games against imp and choo and got utterly destroyed. I'm obsessed with imp's obsession with kara tiger knees against Choo. Also, I'm obsessed with Choo never dropping links with Yang. Oh man. Was kinda choppy every now and then but toward the end the lag got wild and unplayable to the point where even the attacks that did connect were unsatisfying; turns out the ladychum was uploading dozens of photos to facebook and flickr. Despair.

We'd actually just come off a rather longish Marvel session where I lost a rather abusive 2-14 or something similar, so I was in 'safe mode' where I was absolutely in fear for my life every time I pressed a button, and it took wildly guessing and karaing stuff with Sagat to finally break me out of my safety dance and bring back the giggling troll. Geegs!

[Goemon]

Yes, but that's the point; you use Ultra 1 in the same way you use a move you already have; the Spinning Piledriver. The opponent's options for escaping remain the same. Ultra 2 gives you another option, one which covers most of an opponents usual tactics for escaping an SPD, which will in turn force them to get nervous and eat more SPDs.

EDIT: Eat more spuds.

Yea, ultra 2 as a threat is excellent. Makes you think twice about jumping, wake ups and anti airs, which all allow gief more potential for getting in.

Once VF5 lands it will be eating 'SPoDs' all the way!

[carlito]

When is VF5?

My Brad is so sick it's untrue.

[Plopboy]

A month today*!

*My birthday, fact fans.

Most blatant 'It's my birthday' post ever.

Anyway whilst playing Guy the other night I had an epiphany of sorts, I managed to get all of his target combos off at one point or another.

Now this might sound silly but my only proper tactic before was with Dan (blocked Dan Kick -> throw) but since I tried and succeed with Guy's combos has left me with a new dawn feeling. This may well be a false dawn as my execution still fails me when I try normal into specials combo but still it made me feel good anyway. Perhaps it is Guy and the fact that his target combos are quite easy to pull off.

More science research need me thinks.

[Wintermute]

GGs for last night, chaps. Mr Haggar's introductory Dan super taunt was indeed excellent, set the tone for the evening that did. Me mashing buttons and throwing myself into hadokens and punishes willy nilly basically. I'm getting less thrashed though I think so that's something. Another ace late night lobby with Jiroczech too, some painfully nice E.Ryu skills with a smashing game of Rose Ball to finish off the evening. I feel I should learn a burly man to complement the girls that I always seem to pick for what are probably deep-seated psychological reasons but can't decide who. I did try Cody a few times in Ranked but was put off after a sound battering from a 13-yr old Yun who messaged me after to say 'not bein funny but i dont think cody is ur guy'.

Also, I learnt a smart trick on SRK yesterday afternoon so I rushed home eager to try it, training mode SUCCESS! Didn't work even once in a match so I kept trying it repeatedly just in case. I keep trying Spiral xx Super as well and that never works either. There's a lesson there somewhere.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Imagine guy and ryu sat at a bar together, both with a glass of room temperature water, ryu eating a bowl of plain boiled rice, just sat there in abject silence, kind of eyeballing each other. After nothing happens guy suddenly sprints outside and kicks the everloving shit out of an oil barrel, before breaking down into lusty sobs over his repressed guilt about what happened to Cody. Ryu remains inside eating his rice. He briefly considers adding soy sauce to the bowl, but then scolds himself for even considering such luxury. Moments later, Ken Masters wilds past outside in his new red Ferrari, Eliza in the passenger seat, magical sound shower on the stereo, utterly oblivious.

[Goemon]

When is VF5?

My Brad is so sick it's untrue.

Summer is all I know.

Glad to hear you're bringing it.