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JLM

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JLM

JLM

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The top 8 has been really good fun in fairness. I love that

Law/Kuma a/k/a Law 'n' Paw

is one of the teams in grand finals. I did wonder when they released Cody if he'd be utterly godlike in that game because of his amazing crouching short. Turns out yes, he is, particularly in the hands of someone with footsies as great as PR Rog's.

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JLM

JLM

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AE Top 16 in ten minutes. Excellent looking bracket:

Winners bracket

AGE|Snake Eyez (Zangief) vs. Jayce the Ace (C. Viper)

cc|Mike Ross (E. Honda) vs. EG|Justin Wong (Rufus)

MRN|ClakeyD (Ibuki) vs. DRS|Chris (Ken)

AGE|Vangief (Zangief) vs. Luken (Ryu)

Losers bracket

EG|PR Balrog (Balrog) vs. MTLSF|Chi-Rithy (Cammy)

Hoodaman (E. Honda) vs. TFA|LPN (Cammy/Adon/Most of the cast)

AGE|Flash Metroid (Sakura) vs. RZR|Latif (C. Viper)

EG|fLoE (Guy, Rufus) vs. DRS|Filipino Man (Rose)

Rooting for Michael P. Rossington or one of the AGE 'Giefs, predicting Chi-Rithy.

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mayor_mike_haggar

mayor_mike_haggar

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It does seem that tokido basically picked him because he has the best low light attack in the game, along with that disgustingly safe st.mk. Leave it to him to find the most broken shit possible.

I was just in an endless with some mans and I got 3 dan FADC into crouching taunts off. I love dan. I might make him my shoto of choice. I certainly don't play him anywhere near enough. bollocks to ryu, actually. More dan.

also I had actual online games of street fighter against joffo tonight. I'm sure there must be a sufficiently powerful adjective to describe this, but I'm buggered if I know what it is.

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JLM

JLM

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Well that was fucking amazing.

Things...

Snake Eyes vs Jayce The Ace was a complete beasting from Snake Eyes. He is just so good, and I'll be sad if he doesn't take a major before next year's Evo. He had a great read on Jayce's seismo timings throughout this set, and just relentlessly chased him down and commenced mauling when he got there. Great stuff.

Mike Ross vs Justin was a bit sad because Mike had the upper hand in almost every round before making one bad decision or just succumbing to Justin's amazing ability to make a comeback. Justin is so good at turtling when he has a big life defecit and slowly picking his way back into the round and eventually taking it. It's really weird seeing Mike Ross whiff normals for safe jump timing.

Clakey D vs DRS Chris was disappointing because Chris played so solidly each round before losing to the same ambiguous jumping short mix up and jumping short unblockable set up. He couldn't get a handle on it in time and look for the half step to set up the cross up when he could block it, and then Clakey followed up with the unblockable. It allowed Clakey D to consistently win rounds where he was otherwise outplayed. Clakey D identified that he couldn't deal with it early on in the set and quite rightly went to it repeatedly, but it was quite frustrating to watch. I feel like DRS Chris is one of the more underrated American players, and he's one of the best Kens they have, particularly now that BananaKen is semi-retired. Lots of dirty set ups, good mix ups, a solid mid range game and his only real weakness is that he has a tendency to get flustered when the opponent has the momentum.

Vangief vs Lukens was excellent. I say this every time, but Ryu vs Zangief is the greatest. I love playing that match up as either character and it's my favourite match up to watch played by pros. Vangief is still the best there is at walk up SPD and whiff punishing normals with it. Beastly. Lukens' main issue in a generally good performance was that he was playing a traditional footsies game of going back and forth, but in this match up it really pays for the Ryu to be brave and just walk forward to meet Gief's walk forward. Alex Valle is the absolute master of this, and is the only player I see routinely corner the best Zangief players.

PR Rog vs Chi-rithy was an immaculate display from PR Rog. When he's on top form I'm not sure if anyone's better. Footsies, reactions, counter hit game, defense, pressure, he is good at everything and has such insane mastery of the character. Chi-Rithy played well, but this is still a bit of a troublesome match-up for Cammy and PR Rog just played far too well. My prediction for Chi-Rithy to claw through losers and win was way off, though I think if he had overcome this hurdle he could easily have taken the whole thing.

LPN vs Hoodaman was an example of why Mike Ross manages to over achieve with Honda where others don't. Hoodaman played the match up sensibly and patiently and it played out how it does on paper and he lost. I think Honda's best chance against Sagat, Ryu and his other problem matches is to adopt the Mike Ross approach and play the match up "incorrectly". Go in hard, use gimmicks, go for crazy reads and try anything to stop it playing out in textbook fashion. LPN is very good with almost the entire cast, so it must be horrible to be drawn against him when your character is especially vulnerable to counter picks.

FlashMetroid vs Latif was very close and very entertaining. Cool to see Flash stick with Gen for another tournament. He could be one of the top ten players in America if he wanted to, and he could easily have beaten Latif here if not for a couple of costly errors and getting Viper'd out at the end. Latif did well to recover after initially getting blown up by Gen's usual array of tricky jumping MK set ups.

Filipino Man vs Floe was such an impressive win for Filipino man. This is a horrible match up for Rose, and even Louffy has real problems with it, so it was cool to see Filipino Man approaching it completely differently in the early going. Floe adapted and showed his experience and started abusing the fact that Rufus can jump and maul Rose for free if he gets a bit of momentum going, and the most impressive thing was that Filipino Man was able to regain his composure once again and clutch out the set. Filipino Man looks so good every time I see him at tournament, and it looks like all he needs is more big tournament experience like this. It's also notable that there is no other Rose player I've seen who is as consistent with the Rose hit confirm b'n'bs as he is, and that includes Louffy and the best Japanese Rose players.

PR Rog vs Mike Ross is always a fun match. Honda vs Balrog should be terrible, but they both go in and have a laugh with it and manage to stop it becoming a chore. I never want either of these two to lose, but PR Rog definitely had the better of it and deserved it. It was cool that you could here Mike Ross shouting "oooh!" on his big hits early in the match and that they were both laughing and talking shit for the whole set even at the serious business stage of a tournament. Two of the scene's true gents.

Jayce the Ace vs LPN was largely comfortable for Jayce. I wonder how good LPN could be if he was a character specialist.

Latif vs Lukens was mostly about Lukens trying not to crack under Latif's flurry of doing Viper stuff and ultimately failing. He had flashes of playing a very solid game, but once the nonsense began he couldn't keep it together for long enough to survive.

DRS Filipino Man vs DRS Chris was extremely close, and it's cool to see Rose vs Ken so late in the tournament. Could have been anyone's game and you can tell they play each other all the time.

Justin Wong vs Snake Eyes was just silly. T. Hawk beats Gief 5.5/4.5 if the T. Hawk is experienced and knows the match up, but it's not exactly a hard counter pick and it was obvious Justin didn't know what he was doing. Amazing footsies from Snake Eyes here though, and no Gief has a better sense of spacing than he does. Routinely batting away Hawk's standing roundhouse with standing MP at max distance and generally looking totally comfortable. That Justin didn't switch after losing the first game was baffling.

Vangief vs Clakey D was a great showing from Vangief in one of his trickier match ups. Brilliant reads when he had the initiative and lots of great patient approach play. Gief mirrors in winners' finals is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I was as hype as Ultra David for this.

PR Rog vs Jayce the Ace made me very salty. PR rog completely dominated the neutral game and is clearly a much stronger player but then Viperlol. Grrr.

Latif vs Filipino Man was convincing for Latif. FMan looked a bit overwhelmed by Latif's craziness and dirty mix ups. I'd have liked to see him go further but this was still a great showing. Viper is dumb.

Clakey D vs jayce the Ace was madness, played at something approaching the pace of a Marvel match. Good run in this tournament for clakey D considering that he's mostly a League of Legends player these days.

Justin vs Latif was a tremendous performance from Justin. Really showed his class here, staging a couple of very unlikely comebacks and showing how he's adapted to the fact that Viper players never block on wake up. Good stuff.

Justin vs Jayce the Ace was another show of just how good Justin Wong is. He won in straight rounds but had to make big comebacks in three out of four of them and made it look easy. He has such a perfect balance of patience and rushdown based on momentum and how flustered he feels the opponent is getting. As fun as beast mode Ricky Ortiz can be on occasion, if given the choice I'd much much prefer to watch Justin's Rufus over Ricky's almost every time.

Vangief vs Snake Eyes in the Revelations runback was very convincing for Snake Eyes. I think his SF2 purist style of Gief is much better suited to the mirror match than Vangief's. Snake Eyes in another grand final in winners. Let's go Gief!

Vangief vs Justin Wong was textbook stuff from Justin. A long, super patient war of attrition. Vangief didn't do anything especially wrong here, it's just one of those matches that boils down to one situation repeating itself over and over, and it's who makes the better call each time.

Snake Eyes vs Justin Wong was possibly the greatest grand finals set I have ever seen. First two games were a lesson in how to play Zangief vs. Adon from Snake Eyes. There aren't many players who have better footsies than Justin but Snake Eyes is one of them. After that, Justin switched to Rufus and I was on the edge of my seat for the next however long it went. It went long. It probably won't be to everyone's tastes because it was long and it looks like bunch of nothing happening, but I was utterly, utterly gripped and the ending was the most dramatic one you could possibly ask for.

Justin's form throughout this tournament was the best SF4 I've seen him play in ages, and Snake Eyes had to match him move for move. It helped that I was desperate for Snake Eyes to win, but even without that it was such a phenomenal display of patience, footsies, spacing, mind games and clutch play in the dying seconds that I'd have loved it anyway. Ten games, almost every game going to three rounds and almost every round going down to just seconds on the clock. Absolutely gruelling, and I don't know how either of them held it together for the whole thing.

474px-13_sfxtscreen22.jpg

Yes!

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joffocakes

joffocakes

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Excellent stuff Jellum; something to read on a slow work morning.

Connection test with Samuel was successful! There were some little laggy hiccups, but almost certainly my side. Good times. Ryu mirrors also. Best/Worst (Best).

I also played an excellent bunch of matches against Cale on ye olde 3rd Strike Online Edition. Some brilliant back and forths and parries all over the place. And about a million throw techs. It was just amazing fun. We all need to get in a big lobby sometime, like pals. Cale did some quality Seaning on me as well.

EDIT: Finished the write-up JLM; Good read! I'm excited to watch some of that later. Good to see a top 16 with such character diversity this late into the game.

EDIT 2: I've also made a start on Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors on DS, after getting it aaaages ago, playing it for ten minutes and playing Kuru Kuru Kururin instead. It's pretty good so far. I'll decide just how pretty good it is in about a year when I bother playing it again.

EDIT 3: I really wanna play Valkyrie Profile again. Seems to be going for utterly, utterly wild prices on PSone. Should I just try get a hold of a PSP and get that Lenneth one? There's a VP game on DS as well it seems; is it at all similar?

Back on topic, I had some excellent faketoberfest eatin' this weekend; bratwurst, sauerkraut and homemade hot potato salad with some Löwenbräu, Rauchbier and home-made pretzels. It was the best of times.

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cale

cale

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I started watching Top 16 last night but only got two matches in before falling asleep. Is there a link to the archive for Top 16 that anyone can throw my way? 3S one too, if poss.

And speaking of 3rd Strike I had a grand time on it last night. I tried and failed to set up a lobby properly after Qazi showed interest and instead of just him and me we had all manner of wild men appearing in some kind of weird drop-in centre scenario. I only managed to play him once or twice so it was a bit of a failed experiment (we'll need to rectify that soon, sir!) but it was fun playing against some other bods after farting about in arcade mode for so long. Singho was there too, styling on me with his Oro and not acknowledging my 'hey rllmuker' match-beginning taunt. I kicked a couple of beasts for being too beastly but made sure I messaged them straight after to say 'too good :)'. One of them replied with something like 'oh ok. it was a good connection though so I'm a bit sad'. I'm paraphrasing a little but I felt slightly bad about it. I felt too weird picking Gill in that environment so I didn't until after Qazi left and Joffo appeared who did know how to setup a 2 man lobby.

Such fun was had. We had a good load of matches, making use of the wonderful 'rematch' option and I sort of started to get a feel for some of the really basic things in the game. For instance, we had a series of Dudley (Joffo) v Ken (me) and at certain points we were dancing around at mid-range with me throwing out cr.mk and buffering super to try and catch a dash in or another attack. Conceptually it's all fully informed by SFIV, of course, but with no focus attacks or FADC's to mess about with it feels a lot more high-stakes. I ate so many cross counters in that set too. I also couldn't low parry a single one of his meaty sweep / throw people up in the air thing. I was bobbing up and down like mad too but didn't catch one. Which now makes me think that you have to parry it forward instead of low? Or that I'm just shit. Joffo's Necro is really good too.

I tried to mess about with some of the cast other than Ryu and Akuma and think I could have some mileage with Sean and Elena. Time will tell for sure but Elena in particular looks like she could work for me. And Gill, who is just absurd. Fun. But utterly, ridiculously absurd.

Street Fighter!

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JLM

JLM

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Guys, guys, I did the four bar Dudley combo I've been practising in a match against a random Akuma fellow:

cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing roundhouse - > EX Machine gun blow - > light ducking upper - > FADC - > light ducking straight - > EX ducking upper.

So expensive, so classy. Oh Dudley. :wub:

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ah

ah

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Well that was fucking amazing.

Haha, just finished watching this (SF25 LA qualifying tournament) - it's like the universe heard that some people were uncertain about the recent shift towards vortex characters and decided it was time to make amends by serving up some of the best "street fighter"-style SF4 yet played. I approve.

I went looking for the grand finals on youtube for the benefit of people who don't watch streams. Everyone who likes this game should watch this match (just make sure you're sitting comfortably and you don't have anything important to do for the rest of the day):

Lovely.

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JLM

JLM

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All Snake Eyes/Gief praising aside, I really should emphasise just how good Justin Wong is. People seem to forget or question it when he isn't winning every tournament, or when his play style isn't to their taste. In this case in particular, it's worth noting that Rufus/Zangief is still agreed by consensus to be in Zangief's favour, either at 6-4 or at worst 5.5. However, to win this grand finals Snake Eyes had to play for forty five minutes and win by the thinnest possible margin in a winning match up from the winners' side of the bracket against a player who splits his time between this and other games (and excels at those games too). Tournament results don't always bear it out, but he has the best Rufus in the world, and when he's at his best he's still the best fighting game player America has.

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JLM

JLM

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At Revelations the commentators were saying that one of the biggest obstacles to Gief winning a major is that the Gief player has to avoid cracking and getting impatient for an ungodly length of time over the course of the tournament, and will most likely have to win a grand finals set like that to finish it off. Snake Eyes couldn't do it there, and it was frankly insane that he pulled it off here.

I love that AE2012's excellent balance can deliver a grand finals set played in such a traditional style and give a character his first major win since SF4 came out, and yet the same game can deliver something as ridiculously frenetic and as the Clakey D/Jayce the Ace Ibuki vs Viper. Also the top 16 had excellent character variety once again. This is expected for this game now, but I still think it's a remarkable achievment.

Also yes, I will watch the ST. Snake Eyes turns SF4 into that game and it is beautiful. It makes sense too, given that it's where he started and he won HDR at Evo. I love that John Choi was the first player to come up and congratulate Snake Eyes on his win. He knows good Streetfighter when he sees it.

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JLM

JLM

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Also I am excited for new Venture Brothers.

Also also, can anybody name all the characters in that excellent bit of artwork Plopston posted? I can, but a couple of them took me a minute as they're a bit obscure.

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