Ultra Street Fighter IV

[hegg]

Also how many times, hegg, did I come close to beating your sodding ryu only to fluff it. Once, maybe, is how many times. Also your bipson is quite wild and pyschotic, which I think suits him nicely. The 'rog matchup can be lame, but somehow it wasn't.

Haha, very true. I lamed it up pretty hard with Ryu.

Your Balrog defense is rock solid, had so much trouble getting in, had to sit back and try and get you to come to me for the most part.

And I approve of banning 'tricks'.

This is going to be one hell of a tournament.

[Lyrical Donut]

Oh, we definitely need to ban Blanka. No question.

I think the best work around for everyone is to get someone else to set your buttons nice and randomly before the match starts. That or we all just play blindfolded.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Hegg I think you meant Zhi on commentary. The one with the glasses and slightly nasal voice and just obscene knowledge drops everywhere.

I also agree with S-Kill being not the best on commentary. There are now much more experienced and consistent commentators than him, not to mention knowledgeable. Maybe he's good at hype finals commentary or something, but his clichés like 'completion' and 'challenge' instead of combo or anti-air or whatever really bugged me. Also he just clearly doesn't play the game at the top level, there were quite a few times when he referred to option-selects as 'reads', when even I could spot they were OSes. Then again maybe he's a better commentator for people who aren't as obsessive, and just tune into EVOV grand finals or something. Also James Chen was nearly dead, which certainly didn't help. Why didn't ultradavid do it?

[joeplus]

Can we ban crossups? I hosted a "beginners welcome" lobby last night, a guy came in who didn't have much PP but was dead good. I decided to man up and keep plugging away at him so I could improve, but after half a dozen matches of either eating his crossup plus a combo, or blocking it and then getting tick throw'd, rinse and repeat, I turned my console off in a complete salty mess. It didn't help that I'm trying not to drink in the week at the moment.

The lobby with Alistarr plus one random earlier on was much more fun, though. 3-slot lobbies are the best.

[imp]

If you're a pro and want to punish jump ins you need to use cr.MK to lower your hitbox and cancel that into a demon.

NEW TECH ACQUIRED FOR SERIAL DOWN BACKERS.

hold db and press LP and MK together twice when the opponent is at the peak of their jump arc. Then hold back and hit LK + HP. The demon should come out just as their attack comes out, and you'll go clean through it. The super version of the demon won't work though, that always gets beaten.

[Lyrical Donut]

I actually got bollocked by a grown man for crossing up his son constantly in an arcade once. He ran off and told his dad I was cheating. I told the little scamp how to block them and gave him his 50p back for his troubles, cos I'm nice like that. Sometimes.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Oh, I used to get right annoyed by that. Especially with vega who is free to jump ins. There are a few answers to people who do crossup>blockstring>Crossup>repeat.

1) If you can reliably predict that they'll crossup after a blockstring, then try to jump back pre-emptively and stick out a good air-to-air normal. With vega this might be jb.hp or mp. Or with vega another good option was to neutral jump and air throw them. Basically, when someone is in a range where they can cross you up, the best anti-air is typically another jumping normal, since most ground attacks won't work. Though some characters have amazing anti-airs like rose cr.hp, which can work.

2) Focus-absorb the jump in attack and either dash back or dash under, depending on whether or not they'll cross up.

3) Try to back dash after their blockstring.

4) If they're doing an unsafe blockstring all the time (lots of ryus do cr.mp, cr.mp. cr.mkx fireball which is FULL of gaps) then you can do an invincible reversal in the middle to stuff them out.

5) reversal after a blocked crossup. Typically most people will go straight into a blockstring after a crossup, but there usually won't be enough blockstun on the crossup to make it a tight blockstring, so something like a dp would beat their attempt at a normal.

It can be frustrating, especially with characters with poor wakeup options, but there are ways to counter it!

[joeplus]

I shall give those a go. 1) and 2) sound very useful. 4) I can do, when I'm playing shotos I straight up do not respect sloppy blockstrings. This of course gets me in trouble once people learn that and go jab, jab, block, punish the wild SRK, but it's a start.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Focus absorb-backdash can be useful if you don't have time to anti-air anyway but don't want to deal with someone in your face after a blocked jmp-in , or if people jump in on your wakeup to apply pressure, or just against wakeup meaty pressure in general. It's also nice because people can't option select focus-backdash and, hey, free ultra.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Back on topic, does anyone have a recipie for stuffed peppers they'd like to share with me? I'm thinking of doing them with onion, tomato, chilli, rice and then topping that with some cheese, but am open to suggestions.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I really want cheese on top though.

[joffocakes]

I bet alistarr's your man for stuffed peppers recipes. I love them too, but I generally just bite into them as if they were apples.

I played the lovely imp for a bit earlier. He's very good at Street Fighter.

[ah]

I almost answered that, but I didn't want to recommend halloumi because it's not food.

But yeah, I'd part-microwave me some frozen vegetables (or just use fresh vegetables if you have them), maybe broccoli, peas, sweetcorn, then oil 'em and mix 'em with couscous, harissa (or just whatever chilli and garlic type thing you like in your couscous) and diced onion, get that in my pepper and cook it and then top it with grilled halloumi when it's done.

[ah]

Oh and I have these left to say since I couldn't say them at the appropriate time, avoiding the thread as I was for fear of evo spoilers: thanks Joe for the games, sorry Wretcherd and Joffo for ignoring invites (not on purpose - I was playing with sound off while watching Marvel pools), and if anyone wants to play something this evening then send me an invite. My girlfriend is away and I am therefore mildly depressed.

[wretcherd]

My girlfriend is away and I am therefore going to game my balls off

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Ah haloumi. The vulcanised rubber of the cheese world.

[ah]

Oh and lemon juice, obvs.

[Lyrical Donut]

I was having a bit of a think on the way home and I reckon we should ban fighting games from Heggfest in favour of eighties text adventures. Who's down?

[joeplus]

Do they have to be 80s? I made one once, I could dig it out. You could climb a tree and get on a bus.

[Plopboy]

Whilst doing my ranked fit fighter tonight I accidentally picked Rufus and ending up winning due to over use of lk and sweep . I think I will leave him at 100% win rate though

Had a look at my usage rate and Elf is now top, poor Dan.

Guy 22

Dudley 55

Chun 60

Yang 97

Dan 377

Elf 382

Every body else are single figures apart from Gouken and Ibuki == 0

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I went with harissa and goats cheese, lads.

And balsamic atop.

[Plopboy]

You exotic devil you.

[ah]

Harissa explains it all.

[Jonster]

I watched the UMvC3 stream recording tonight, that was some fun. Although if I hear "Don't touch the hair" again I may scream.

Watched the AE stream on Monday night, and both were extremely entertaining

Next up KoF stream (not necessarily now, just at some point!)

[Plopboy]

How about a pointless video of some synchronised Saikyo

[Qazimod]

I've been spending some time in the lab with Gief, just trying to refamiliarise myself with SPD inputs. As a pad player I supposedly have it easy, and by the end of my training I was rolling out standing SPDs with a 225 motion (forward to up-back) fairly easily, buffering the motion with a walk or dash rather than normal moves. I'm not sure that I'm being held back by my execution though; I think I just can't be bothered to rewire my brain at the moment and so I just stick to wildly mashed 360s buffered through green hands.

[Jonster]

I always found SPDs easier with the stick than the pad, so much so I changed character when I switched to using a FightPad

[Jonster]

How about a pointless video of some synchronised Saikyo

Mind. Blown.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

We need a 10 hour version of that set to pounding euro-synth stat.

[joffocakes]

I actually bought three other games yesterday and got home with them, intending to play for a fair bit as it was my day off, but I ended up just playing Street Fighter for hours and hours instead. Blah. Switching to a new character does make the game really fun and fresh, though. I'm currently obsessing over Sakura.

The games I got were KoF XIII (rebought, despite already chastising Camel for thinking about trading his in), Assassasin's Creed 2, and because it was buy 2 get 1 free I tried to decide for aaaaages between Final Fantasy XIII, Dragon Age and Oblivion, because I haven't played any of them and thought maybe I wanted a decent RPG. I ended up getting Viva Pinata: Party Animals instead.

I did have a wee go on Assassin's Creed 2, because I love Florence and wanted to jump around on the Duomo (I bought PGR 2 for the same reason). The first half hour or whatever is absolutely awful though; almost a deliberate parody of how bad storytelling in modern videogames is. First you walk about a shady complex as Dynamo, but with Zoolander's catwalk swagger, then you have the clumsiest car park brawl, all punctuated (read: repeatedly halted) by terrible cutscenes. Including one when you're born as a slimy baby and, to prove you're a fighter, are prompted to "Press 'X' to punch". Urgh. Then it goes on to show what a cock-sure man-about-town you are through some unconvincingly bawdy conversation with your brother before you Benny Hill away from some Shapespeare in the Park fellas and jump into the window of some buxom dame, complete with Shaking Fist Dad chasing you back out as a punchline.

I'm sure it gets better. It has to, right? (I'll never play it again).