Ultra Street Fighter IV

[JLM]

More that I get the impression that his version of IV would have just been HD Remix with time rewind which would mean 3 hit combo *rewind* 3 hit combo *sadness*

I just found the whole experience of online HD remix to be no fun at all (and Sirlin always comes off as a dick so I'm probably prejudiced to start with)

Oh I agree that Sirlin is a dick and has lots of very stupid ideas (to create "Chess 2" without a hint of irony makes me think he might actually be a little bit unwell mentally), but getting killed in two combos is the nature of Super Turbo and has nothing to do with him, so it seemed odd to take a shot at him for that of all things. It seems more like ST isn't for you rather than just HD Remix as they're really not that different.

If you like Super Turbo then you'll like HD Remix, particularly as it has the option to play without any of Sirlin's balance changes included. I didn't find any of them particularly objectionable anyway, but I understand that the horribly broken nature of the original is a big part of its charm and taking it upon himself to "fix" things like T. Hawk's option selects was at best misguided and at worst very arrogant. Marvel 2 is a wreck in terms of balance and fairness, but I wouldn't expect or want anyone to fix that either. However, his claim that you could make Marvel 2, ST or 3S "better" games by making them more balanced isn't unreasonable (I agree with almost every criticism he has of Third Strike in particular, and I love the game regardless), it's just that fighting gamers are stubborn and there's a culture of embracing/finding solutions to the broken shit you find in the games over months and years of competitive play, most likely caused by the long mainstream release drought that ended with SFIV.

If it is broke, but broke in a way that we've come to know and love, then don't fix it. I'd like some middle ground between leaving a game a mess and forcing the players to adapt and the current patch-obsessed state we're in now, but I can't imagine how difficult it must be to find it.

I'm just rambling on now, and am conscious of the fact that this post stopped being relevant to the post I'd quoted some time ago. I probably should start that blog people keep telling me to start.

Coleslaw.

[ah]

The point of all of which is that I bought HD Remix last night, thereby rendering the three years I've spent agonising over whether or not to spend some fake money on it a complete waste of time.

I'll probably not bother playing it and get VF5:FS tonight as well, then not play that either. But if anyone fancies a few games with a novice, I'm your man.

Cale, I will play 3rd Strike with you, or indeed anyone else too. I played recently and realised how different it is to SF4 and how little I understood it, so it would be cool to get some games against someone else who hasn't been playing for a decade.

[Lyrical Donut]

Isn't this chap going to Canada Cup? Tsk tsk.

I don't think this guy is though, but still. I am so good* at this game.

*

Fucking flukey

Stay free motherfuckers. Yeah!

[JLM]

Ha, nice work sir. Hayate cancels into karakusa are almost impossible to react to, particularly against decent players who aren't going to be mashing every single time.

Weird that the Akuma missed the uppercut twice after hitting everything else so precisely. It's funny how fast Makoto makes you crack as well, possibly the most momentum-based character in the game. I bet in 99% of cases he wouldn't have done anything as silly as that wake up demon, but Makoto's damage and stun off one mistake (He missed an uppercut and you took 70% of his life for it!) and the sheer speed at which it happens just flips the panic switch in an instant.

[Lyrical Donut]

Ha, nice work sir. Hayate cancels into karakusa are almost impossible to react to, particularly against decent players who aren't going to be mashing every single time.

Weird that the Akuma missed the uppercut twice after hitting everything else so precisely. It's funny how fast Makoto makes you crack as well, possibly the most momentum-based character in the game. I bet in 99% of cases he wouldn't have done anything as silly as that wake up demon, but Makoto's damage and stun off one mistake and the sheer speed at which it happens just flips the panic switch in an instant.

99% of the time I would've been pressin' buttons and I would've almost certainly eaten that there Raging Demon.

[Qazimod]

Amazing scenes - my Kickstart Support Squad tee for DiveKick arrived in the post today and it's just lovely. Looks awesome, feels comfortable and I actually managed to get the size right. So that's another gaming tee to conceal under a jacket in shame flaunt...

[cale]

Cale, I will play 3rd Strike with you, or indeed anyone else too. I played recently and realised how different it is to SF4 and how little I understood it, so it would be cool to get some games against someone else who hasn't been playing for a decade.

Yeah, given that it's on offer for 600 moon bucks I might take the plunge, play it once or twice then drop it in a foaming rage of self-loathing.

[Plopboy]

I'm probably the worst Sean on the internet so I'd be up for some 3rd Strike beatings.

[ah]

Let's do it, dudes! 3S:OE Resurrrection!

For this and other fighting games, I will be around this evening and most of tomorrow afternoon, and then most of the weekend also.

And then probably most of the rest of my life as well.

[ah]

Oh, and for anyone still wanting to watch Season's Beatings: Ascension, it looks like the top 16 playlists are pretty much ready over here for the main games:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ConsoleCombat/videos?flow=grid&view=1

Don't go to Cross Counter's channel, though, as they have a video interview with the AE winner.

[joffocakes]

Let's do it, dudes! 3S:OE Resurrrection!

For this and other fighting games, I will be around this evening and most of tomorrow afternoon, and then most of the weekend also.

And then probably most of the rest of my life as well.

I'm definitely up for playing more 3rd Strike. I'm not really comfortable with any character and can only really play as Necro. I enjoy trying to parry absolutely everything, including things that haven't even been done, until I'm dead.

[Plopboy]

I meant to try and catch joffo for some Tekken action last night but by the time I had installed my new router it was gone nine and he was watching films. My bear was sad with me for being so slack and my ninja is now not talking to me.

Though it would be good to start up a SFIII lobby

[Camel]

I have a brilliant SFIII Oro. Actually, he's terrible. I may as well let the cat play.

But if I'm ever on (a rare thing these days), I'll be up for some games.

[joffocakes]

I was going to play Nights yesterday when I got home. Then I realised it was out on Friday instead and refused to play any xbox games in a massive huff. I watched Adventure Time instead. Best cartoon.

Also, Donut, you like competing for scores; get on that NSMB2 DLC high score action!

[joeplus]

Ah, sod it - just bought 3SOE with my leftover points, in case the sale ends. Even though I'm in Glasgow til Sunday. I haven't seen joffo or the Consolevania boys yet, but I did have haggis for breakfast.

[joffocakes]

I've got an hour to waste from four pm; let's go play Street Fighter in St Enoch's square! haha

[joeplus]

I'm at a dull conference, you can come visit if you fancy becoming a GP. You know, just quickly like.

[joffocakes]

I don't wanna be a GP. I get too sad when I hear sad stories. I'd probably spend most of my time with my practice door closed, weeping at my desk.

Also, my doctor's name is almost Dr Cuddley, which I find most excellent of him. And once I was tested for gluten intolerance so he advised I try laying off breads and things for a while to see how I feel then about three days later I was waiting to cross the road and looked up to see him about to do the same from the opposite side. I was absent mindedly picking at a huge baguette. The traffic lights took aaaaaaaaages.

[JLM]

You were just holding onto it for a friend.

Seasons beatings AE things:

AE Pools got off to a brutal start, with random local players getting taken apart by Ricky Ortiz, Alex Valle, Playing2Win, Infiltration and ChrisG amonst others. Such violence. ChrisG's Sakura gets even flashier against mediocre opposition, going from 10-12 hit combos to a nice round 20 instead. Infiltration had a convincing but not entirely free win against an Adon player, but still felt the need in one round to do dash up demon in the middle of a footsies exchange. Because why not.

Laugh had to run a gauntlet of tricky Ryu mirror matches, then finished his pool with a good match against FlashMetroid's Gen. Flash would still be a real threat if he stuck to one character and took the game seriously, but he looks like he's having a lot of fun just finding a load of broken and unblockable stuff with a different character every few months now. Fair enough, it's very entertaining to watch. He could have gone a lot further in this tournament if not for getting far too cocky against a less experienced Ryu player and throwing away an enormous life lead when he had the game well in hand.

Felt sorry for Snake Eyes having to face Infiltration early on in pools. Both Gouken and Akuma are horrible for Gief, and it's a credit to just how good he is that he made Infiltration's Gouken work so hard to take the set. I'd love for FlashMetroid to go back to Gief full time to complete the AGE squad of amazing Giefs. Pleased to see Snake Eyes get out of his pool, winning a difficult match up against Adon to get into top 32 losers. He took one round to download the guy and ten completely destroyed him over the next three rounds. The guy was playing the match up correctly too, he didn't do anything particularly wrong, Snake Eyes just got inside his head with one round's worth of info and then picked him apart with typical precision. Sogood.

Gootecks vs Valle in pools was a great pure fundamentals match. Gootecks let himself get flustered and eventually threw it away, but it's in a match like this where you see just how solid a player he is when he isn't having to deal with too much bullshit and can just play classic Streetfighter. The way Gootecks went out of the tournament was the same situation. Gootecks outplayed the guy's Chun in a clean 5-5 match-up based on footsies, meter management and the projectile game, then the guy switched to Viper and just did lots of random shit until Gootecks was dead. He wasn't even a good Viper, he was dropping things all over the place and essentially beat Gootecks by flying all over the place and doing the throw/TK burn kick 50/50. I felt mildly nauseous after the match and I'm sure Gootecks did too.

ChrisG vs Derek Legend was a highlight from Pools. Derek Legend's Juri has just the right mixture of Feng Shui Engine madness and brainless moments of "did he really just EX pinwheel AGAIN?" to put the fear into even the most experienced tournament player. Good stuff.

Then they took the archives down so I missed loads of stuff. Booo.

AE Top 16

Infiltration vs Alex Valle was an extremely high quality match. Infiltration ran away with it in the second game, but you could tell he was playing very respectfully. Ryu looks so limited against Akuma in this match up, and for all Valle's excellent spacing and approach play, Infiltration was too mobile and Akuma too versatile for him to keep up. I thought the highlight was Valle's succession of incredible blocks during the second round of the first game. Infiltration was looking for the comeback and put together a ridiculous sequence of offense ending in a meter-heavy string of counter hit set ups and Valle refused to press a button through any of it. So impressive.

K Brad vs Justin was complete domination. K Brad gets better every time I see him play, but it has to be said that Cammy is fucking ridiculous. Bad match up for Rufus too; she deals tonnes of stun, she can get Rufus off her if he mounts offense and she can kill him before he gets multiple Messiah Kicks stocked. She just needs to bait out one and he's done because he has no answers to her rushdown without it, and even getting hit by one or two isn't a big deal for her. There aren't many characters who do have answers to her rushdown anyway; she can jump in for free whenever she wants and has one of the best post-knockdown games in the game. And we all thought she was nerfed. lol.

Vangief vs PR Rog was my favourite match up of quarter finals. Vangief has always been the most clutch Zangief in the face of counter picks, and I don't think I've seen any Gief win their bad match ups as often as he does. I still hope that one of the team AGE Giefs will take a major this year, but poor Gief is so vulnerable to these kind of shenanigans that they'll have to be perfect for the whole tournament to get it done. Hawk is such a pain for Gief. He dominates the mid range like a lot of other characters against Gief, but Gief usually takes solace in the fact that if he gets in that one time he can ruin you. Not the case against Hawk, where the close up game is at best 50/50. Tremendous adaptation from Vangief as the set went on, and in the end it came down to him making some of his signature great reads to put it away. So glad Vangief is back.

Laugh vs Ricky was the most even of sets. Ricky lost it due to one dropped plink in the end. Great match from both players, though I always root for Ryu when he's against dive kick or other nonsense characters because the Ryu player has to play so intelligently but also take som brave risks to get it done. Even though Ryu is generally thought to beat Rufus on paper, against Ricky Ortiz's rushdown it doesn't often play out that way and I think the Ryu is always the underdog. I think people sometimes forget how good Laugh is now that Infiltration has become the man to beat, but I've always been a fan of his Ryu and his balance of Air-style match up science and Valle-style "emotion play". Excellent set from both players here.

Laugh vs Vangief is a match I was very pleased to see drawn in brackets. Ryu vs Zangief at high level may be my favourite match up. Valle vs Snake Eyes, Valle vs Vangief, Air vs Zzangmoo, it's just such a classic Streetfighter match. Unfortunately Vangief lost patience early on in the set and ended up giving this one away. One of the commentatos at Revelations was commenting on the other obstacle to Gief winning a major aside from his bad match ups is that it's so mentally draining for a Gief player to remain patient over the course of a long tournament. Vangief had to play such a drawn out, measured game against PR Rog's Hawk and you could tell he wanted to just run in and maul Laugh and ended up playing into his hands.

K Brad vs Infiltration was another beasting for K Brad. K Brad in amazing form here, perfect with the reads and reactions and maximising damage on almost every opening. Infiltration could do nothing about it, though I agree with Flash and Skisonic that he might have considered switching to Ultra 2 so he could have a few free teleports to get out of her vortex. Still, very impressive from K Brad, quite the beasting.

PR Rog vs Ricky made me sad. Nobody must be sicker of the EG Rufii than him. He still played brilliantly here, and it never ceases to amaze me how consistent he is with his links and counter hit combos, and he should have had the first game if not for an extremely rare dropped ultra.

Valle vs Justin was almot the same as Laugh vs Ricky, though this time it was decided by Valle being that little bit more clutch when it came to an even life stand off at the end of the third game. Very entertaining match, and a testament to the strength of the bracket that Justin went out before top 8.

Ricky vs Infiltration was the other side of the Ryu/Rufus coin, where it played out like it's supposed on paper because Infiltration played the match up so perfectly. I feel like when that happens I'd favour Justin to overcome it over Ricky because he has a better rounded Rufus game. Ricky looked short of ideas here when his usual steamroller approach didn't work out.

Valle vs Vangief was a clean win for Valle. He is the master of Ryu vs Zangief, but I was still a bit disappointed that Vangief couldn't make it a bit closer. That moment where Valle accidentally whiffed a focus attack, Vangief reacted late with the punish and ended up whiffing a lariat and then Valle had the presence of mind to punish with ultra was what Valle is all about. SkiSonic was commenting in one of Valle's earlier games that he is exceptionally good at getting the better of those little flashpoints in matches where it gets messy and falls apart, and that presumably comes from over 20 years of experience playing these games in tournaments.

Valle vs Infiltration wasn't as close the second time. Such a tough one for Ryu. I feel like Akuma beats him at every aspect of his game aside from life/damage. He has better walk speed to win at footsies, he has a stronger fireball game and obviously vastly superior mix ups. Very difficult, plus North America still lacks a top class Akuma who travels to tournaments so I don't know where he could get match up practise at the level required to be ready for this.

K Brad vs Laugh was more complete domination from K Brad. Never seen him play quite like this before.

Grand finals was fantastic. Amazing back and forth set. Infiltration showed great adaptation, clocking that K Brad (and Cammy) really only has one speed a lot of the time, and also that K Brad's defense is a little bit suspect. I think a combination of beng a product of Xbox Live and maining a character who more often than not sets the pace and controls the offense is going to make your defense suffer a little. The most common example is that the vast majority of Xbox Live Ibuki players have absolutely abysmal defense. It was great to see Infiltration really tested over a long set too, because he had to go deeper into his bag of tricks than he normally would, and I saw him go to a couple of vortex set ups I've never even seen from Tokido. Great play from both, and I'm glad that Cammy major win I've been waiting for has happened because the only possible argument against her being top 5 in the game is that she hasn't won many tournaments. I suspect this won't be the last one.

Also here is Infiltration showing off his Hakan again:

[Plopboy]

Awesome JLM, just an awesome write up

[Qazimod]

I'd be up for more 3S:OE if I can actually remember to come online this time.

[ah]

I'm cooking now, so I guess I'll be around from about 7 onwards if I'm lucky, 8 if not.

Thanks for the partial SB pools write up, JLM - slightly mystifying why the had to take them down if they were going to put all the big ticket stuff straight up on their youtube channel anyway, but never mind, I'll take the top 16s over nothing at all :-)

[Plopboy]

The main event, the Rose Bowl playoff

[ah]

I'm around most of the day for fightings.

[joffocakes]

I thought I'd be on a fair bit this week, but all my lady's plans have changed so instead it's all pumpkin spice latte evenings and Netflix. I really wanna get some games of 3rd Strike with y'all.

You still using Ryu? I saw you and Qazi were playing last night. I was jealous.

[ah]

We were picking everyone last night. I think Oro is my dude, but Ryu is much easier not to completely lose one's mind with. I mostly just empty jump parry all day long, though, then mash out a super or two when it looks like I'm nearly dead.

[cale]

I bought it last night so will hopefully be in for some matches at one point. Maybe tonight, I don't know. I'm finding it hard to stay awake past ten these days because I am an old, old man that needs his sleep.

[joeplus]

Anyone know a decent basic 3s guide, preferably readable on a smartphone? Be nice to read up some moves on the train/coffee breaks, hopefully get some games in next week.

Chun is good, right?

[Camel]

Isn't Chun like super top tier?

Last time I played online everybody was Chun-Li fighting. In fact, it was a little bit frightening.

[ah]

Anyone know a decent basic 3s guide, preferably readable on a smartphone? Be nice to read up some moves on the train/coffee breaks, hopefully get some games in next week.

Chun is good, right?

You could search for a PDF of the bradygames street fighter anniversary collection guide - it's a pleasant read (half is about SF2 anniversary edition and half is about 3rd strike). I think Shend linked to one a while back, but I'm sure google will provide.