Ultra Street Fighter IV

[cale]

I ponied up for the Canada Cup archive and am wading my way through AE pools.

Human Bomb performing THE Human Bomb! He did a Sakura combo that ended on the two hit Otosh for the knockdown, landed then did a fireball, flower kick (overhead) which hit, knocked Jozhear back into the fireball then combod a srk.

So, so sick.

[ah]

Dark Souls laughs at your pain, mwah ha ha

I just don't know what's good for me - because I picked a thief I got the master key, so I figured before I did anything else I'd go take down Havel. You know, just for a laugh. I spent half an hour whittling him down to about 5% life with backstabs that do a meagre 52 damage, getting killed in one hit and then running back to do exactly the same thing again.

Discounting the half hour that I spent burning through the tutorial and beginning of Undead Burg, the other half of my two hours thus far was spent on the character select screen, trying to pick a name and a physique, neither of which I'll now notice for the remainder of my time with the game.

[Plopboy]

She is a cruel mistress, but it is so satisfy at the same and doing the same thing over and over that gets you killed is a favourite of mine.

[imp]

Hah, I considered doing Havel, but then skipped on by. By the way, the road I look down on from my window in imp towers is called Havil street. So close.

I spent about 90 minutes grinding for the Baller Swag Sword as well today. Got it! Immediately went and utterly destroyed the Gargoyles, good times. Next up, Moonlight butterfly. Already level 28, jeez!

Also, choo and I spent about an hour flitting about characters in GG. I think I'm going to play I No, or Chip Zanuff. Chip must have the most ridiculously fast normals in any game ever.

[joffocakes]

I only use Venom so far, and not very well. I got utterly destroyed earlier by a swedish man. Also, I bought BlazBlue CS 2 for 3DS from CEX for a tenner earlier. I've had a wee go of it, and it's a nice effect seeing those lovely sprites in 3D. I don't know what I'm going in that either, but the man who owned it before me seems to have put 245 hours in. It makes me sad that he chose to sell it.

[imp]

Well, try and cheer up, maybe he's sold it in anticipation of the sequel.

I really like Guilty Gear, except it's completely bewildering. I'd like to see a modern version with tutorials and stuff. The animation is fucking incredible though, I guess it would be exceptionally expensive to update.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I went mad earlier and paid two hundred whole pounds for a nexus 7.

does it play street fighter?

also I want to use it for smart glass. which someone will now explain to me.

[joffocakes]

Mr Pickford seems to be pretty savvy with it; you should ask him.

"left" has stopped working on my arcade stick. It makes things a little difficult.

[Qazimod]

I once broke the "up" switch on my controller. It made things a little difficult.

[imp]

blocking is for dweebs.

[Plopboy]

Unless you are player 2

[Yasawas]

I went mad earlier and paid two hundred whole pounds for a nexus 7.

does it play street fighter?

also I want to use it for smart glass. which someone will now explain to me.

I don't know what a "smart glass" is but one can certainly install emulating software on a Nexus 7 and control it via a PS3 controller if one is so inclined. It can handle up to about PS1/N64 stuff with no problem and I think Bingowings has CPS2 games running on his phone.

[joeplus]

Smartglass is like using your phone as a 360 remote or something, plus some spaceage-looking stuff from commercials? I don't know. I downloaded the Xbox iphone app to see if I could bypass sending messages with a fightstick, but it was too much faff. Plus I felt like a corporate shill having an Integrative Media Experience.

[sith]

Anyone else waiting for a huge JLM report for Canada Cup?

[joffocakes]

Yes. Yes I am pretty excited about that. The mornings I come into work early and it's quiet and JLM has posted a great big breakdown of some stream or other are the best mornings.

Also also, I think maybe the man who had my preowned copy of BlazBlue on 3DS might not have played for all those hundreds of hours, because it turns out it's just impossible to delete the save data on there. Probably loads of people half heartedly playing it and getting rid of it. That's a bit of a shame. More so because I'll do the same.

I had a bit of a mess around in training using Makoto and Bang; they're interesting. I'd only really used Ragna the Dragonpuncher in the first BlazBlue. Plus I played that game on a stick back in the days where I still mostly played on pad, so I couldn't even do the moves.

[Bingowings II: The Revenge]

I don't know what a "smart glass" is but one can certainly install emulating software on a Nexus 7 and control it via a PS3 controller if one is so inclined. It can handle up to about PS1/N64 stuff with no problem and I think Bingowings has CPS2 games running on his phone.

Yes. Yes I do. With a combination of a SixAxis, the SixAxis app and the CPS2 emulator. Mobile versions of X-Men: CotA, X-Men vs. SF, and Aliens vs. Predator are fucking go!

[ah]

Guggs to the late-night crowd last night. I will be trying to play again at some point this week before I have to start getting up early again. Haven't played a solid session since JLM visited but it started to feel a bit less unnatural by the end of the evening. Need to learn that I don't have assists to cover my unsafe approaches. I was laughing so much when Mr Donut made a third consecutive last-round comeback with barely a pixel of health remaining. I won one eventually. And of course how mad me and Mr Haggar both were about each other's gimmicky dive kick characters.

[Lyrical Donut]

The best bit was that one match where you had me cornered, we both had not health. You had ALL OF THE METER IN THE WORLD yet you refused to EX uppercut. So I threw you instead.

Cancelling shoulder into GeneiJin and then doing nothing was pretty special too.

I tried to send you a 'ggs!' message via Smart Glass about 5 times in a row, but it failed every time. Shart Glass.

[imp]

Guys!

OooooooooooooooKAMI HD is out tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Aha, yes, I got so violently salty last night. Stupid fat fucking rufus. I think it was mainly because I was basically completely exhausted due to fitness training, and therefore my hands and brain were about 3 seconds behind the action.

Also because of that bleeding gen finger poke move that takes off about 75% life.

My cammy gimmicks are a bit rusty, I've not used her for a while. I also think the various divekick setups for rufus are different than other people, due to fat. She might also have unblockables on him, you know. I should learn those.

[Nate Dogg III]

Guys!

OooooooooooooooKAMI HD is out tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indeed it is. I have it already and it's pretty lovely - just don't expect it to be too lovely. Still looks a bit washed out in places. Oh, and I hope you still like pressing X through interminable exposition scenes where you can't speed up the text! gnhnngnggg.

[imp]

I'm going to order the JP disc version because I am a giant weeaboo and like paying over three times the odds for games. Or I will just do the sensible thing and download it tomorrow and never play it.

[JLM]

Finally finished the pool play from Canada Cup. It was very good.

AE Pools

Canada Cup isn't far off Shadaloo Showdown in terms of the strength of the AE bracket. Almost every pool match on stream would be top 16 at another tournament. Lots of great commentary teams throughout the day too; Marn and Justin, James Chen and Justin, Mike Ross and Gootecks. All the good guys.

Pools opened with Riceata playng a textbook Blanka vs Zangief match to put Vangief into losers. Riceata is a problem every year at Canada Cup, so it wasn't that surprising to learn that he'd already claimed a couple of big scalps off stream in his first two matches. There are two ways to play Blanka and have a chance in tournament, and they're the TSRAI insanity model and the Mizoteru zen model. I think the latter is likely to take you further, because even if you actually are TSRAI and have that absurd mix up game, there are ways out of it and there are characters who have good answers. However, if you play Blanka as lame as humanly possible he is incredibly frustrating to fight and he has match ups he can make almost unwinnable.

801Strider against Justin was just sad. Strider seriously needs to learn a pocket Sagat or something because this happens to him at every tournament. Best Abel in the U.S. but he routinely gets annihilated by the EG Rufii and there's seemingly nothing he can do about it.

ChrisG beating HumanBomb could be considered a small upset in that HumanBomb is more dedicated to AE and more of a Sakura specialist than ChrisG. There wasn't much to choose between them though, and I think the fact that it was a mirror match helped because not many character specialists enjoy them. Sakura is particularly vulnerable to her own close lk tatsu cross up set ups, so there were a couple of extremely dirty ones in this set. Good stuff.

Johzear vs FChamp was comfortable for Champ. It's so impressive that this used to be one of his worst match ups and he now makes it look completely free against possibly the best Vega in North America. He's made so many little adaptations to his play style to acocunt for Dhalsim's grounded anti-airs losing to Vega's jump ins. Air to airs, anti-air ultra 2 and the active, movement heavy style he employs against Vipers to keep Vega frustrated. Just too good.

I was so, so hype for Xian vs Ricky Ortiz. I had a suspicion that Xian might take it and he didn't disappoint. Fantastic match as well, would have liked to see it later in the tournament really. I don't see any other Gen's with execution as clean as Xian's. Not even Amiyu is quie as tight with turning every errant hit into something big. I also loved that the one occasion Xian went for a wall dive gimmick, he went for the exact opposite of what all Gens do in the same situation and just went for a really unambiguous meaty Oga to the front and Ricky got hit for being too clever. Xian is so gooood. The commentators said this was an upset, but I think Xian is as good as any of the world's best on his day. This match was also amusing because James Chen (correctly) observed that Xian doesn't typically complete the Gekiro in favour of the slightly better oki you can get if you drop it early. He pointed this out to Mike Ross on commentary, then Xian proceeded to complete the Gekiro every time after that and made Chen look like he is big fool and Mike Ross would not let it go.

Justin vs Kazunoko in the runback of the runback from Evo was, again, more than worthy of top 8 and couldn't have been any closer. I like that Kazunoko stuck with Yun for the whole set. As overpowered as AE Yun was, Kazunoko was still really good with him and he still is now. This could have been decided on a coin toss though, and Justin somehow missing an EX Messiah right at the death was what settled it in the end.

Tokido vs MBR was another one of those unique match ups you only see at Canada Cup and Shadaloo Showdown. Very disappointing that the occasion seemed to get to MBR and he looked uncharacteristically flustered. It must be daunting to be playing against arguably the best user of your character in the world in your first match on stream at your biggest tournament to date I suppose. Still a shame, as he could clearly hang with Tokido when he was playing his own game, and I think it was failing to close out the second round of the first game when he had an enormous advantage that ended up mindfucking him. He had Tokido down to chippable health, forced Tokido to block and then inexplicably didn't ended it with an inescapable uppercut for the chip. Tokido then pulled back the massive defecit and MBR looked completely broken.

Gutted for Emersion that his first and only singles game on stream was against Floe too. Again, I really think Rufus vs Vega is 7-3 in Rufus' favour. Rufus will get in, and when he does it's game over. The ways Vega can fight this match up on paper do not apply when the match actually happens. Rufus can go nuts, Vega can only stem the tide for so long, it's almost unwinnable as far as I can see.

Infiltration blew up Floe with consumate ease, showcasing some horrible looking anti-Rufus unblockables in the process. Tremendous. He followed this up by dismantling Vangief with Gouken. Not a good match for Zangief generally, but Infiltration still played it beautifully and had some great match up specific tricks up his sleeve. Crazy how many great players couldn't get out of pools here.

HumanBomb vs DoomDomain was also disappointingly one sided. I assume the Netherlands doesn't have a Sakura on that level because he looked completely overwhelmed by HB's pressure and mix ups.

Ricky Ortiz vs Tokido to get out of a pool in losers is ridiculous. Great set too, with Ricky steamrolling it at the beginning but only winning by the narrowest of margins at the end after some good adaptation from Tokido.

ChrisG vs FChamp was a classic example of how FChamp can get people to play into his hands. ChrisG is prone to getting frustrated and throwing matches away, and you could tell when he lost an extremely hard fought first game here that he had cracked mentally, and FChamp's Dhalsim is the master of exploting that. Second game was a total wash as a result.

HumanBomb vs Johzear was an excellent back and forth set, highlighted for me by HumanBomb busting out one of the best Sakura tricks I've seen to date, and I thought I'd seen them all.

Standing fierce - > EX tatsu - > Two hits of Sakura Otoshi - > whiff jab for timing - > fake the meaty fireball and let it go half way charged so it just barely whiffs - > overhead to knock the opponent backwards into the fireball - > combo the fireball with cr. MK - > SRK. It was fucking brilliant.

Johzear was able to clutch it out against Sakura, prompting HumanBomb to go back to his old main Yang. I wish more people still played Yang, I like watching him played well. He murdered Johzear in game 2, then Johzear got some advice from 801Strider that appeared to help a lot and was able to save the match and take the set.I'm a big fan of both players, but you have to root for the local hero and slight underdog here and I was pleased to see him take it. A great win against two characters who both give Vega a lot of problems.

Sad that Johzear couldn't get out of his pool in the end, particularly as he lost to ChrisG, who still didn't look like he could even be bothered playing any more. Shame.

Was cool to see Kim1234 at a Western major, though his first match on stream was a Bison mirror and they're always a bit silly.

I was pretty hype for Marn vs Laugh, and Marn did very well in it despite showing clear signs of rust because he never plays this game any more. He remains the last of the North American Dudleys I expect to see in majors though, and he's still amazingly fun to watch. Laugh clearly downloaded Marn over the course of the first two games though, and by game three he looked comfortable even though it ended quite close.

Bonchan vs Laugh was quite the beatdown. Bonchan is a monster, and probably has the strongest claim for best Sagat in the world, though that's one of the more hotly contested "best with x character" titles. I love how Bonchan is able to juggle for extra damage any time a stray tiger shot knocks someone out of the air.

Mago vs SherryJenix was not a good time for Sherry at all. Gamerbee vs Clim was not a good time for Clim at all.

PR Rog vs Kim1234 played out as Bison vs Balrog tends to; one of them gets a life lead and then the other has to do the work. The main difference between them was that PR Rog was able to make significant comebacks when he was the one with the defecit.

K Brad vs Air was a beasting from K Brad. Air did his best to adapt to the Cammy onslaught but it felt like a matter of time before he'd get opened up. Not a good match for Ryu, and certainly not against a Cammy with this kind of offense. K Brad's rushdown is insane, but it's also good to see that his defense and other aspects of his game are getting stronger of late. He doesn't look quite as prone to flinching aas he did just a few months ago, and it seems like he's only going to keep getting better.

Fuudo vs Kaiser was a comfortable win for fuudo despite a strong start from Kaiser. Kaiser looked a bit flustered and was carelessly finishing his combos on block and missing counter hits and making lots of other mistakes I haven't seen from him when he's playing in the Singapore tournaments. Fuudo, on the other hand, played his typical machine-like game and made the whole thing look very easy.

Mike Ross vs Chi-Rithy was an excellent set. First game was a display of superior footsies from Mike, bullying Cammy into the corner and mauling her both rounds. Second game Chi-Rithy got his knockdowns in and Cammy vortexed him up. Mike was being criticisised on commentary for pressing buttons during her pressure and going for jump back fierce during block strings, but the problem with Cammy is that the alternative is to eat a back throw, and that back throw is death. There are definitely situations where you want to take the throw rather than get counter hit, but Cammy's throw is such a massive problem that it's hard to know what to choose. The cross up roundhouse set up she has on Honda after the back throw would tempt me to take the counter hit instead just because her set up after the ensuing combo won't be quite as strong. Third game went a bit wild, and was setlled by Mike pulling out a series of his signature great reads and reaction moments to catch Chi-Rithy by surprise. There are still few better at the old ultra out of nowhere moments than Michael P. Rossington. Best read of the set was Mike's winning move, where he reacted to Cammy jumping in from far away with an extremely early EX butt slam. No time for her to dive kick or even empty jump; Mike knew he was going to jump and was up there the second she left the ground and there was nothing Chi-Rithy could do.

ChaozTheory showed flashes of brilliance against Mago, but you could tell he was defeated mentally after losing a couple of gruelling rounds and ended up handing the set to Mago. ChaozTheory had some particularly dirty post-throw ambiguous cross up set ups with Bison and was generally solid, but there were moments in the mid range where Mago's stoic refusal to do things made him get a bit fidgety, and Mago's play style is 100% based around making you pay for that flinch. Having watched North American majors without massive Japanese representation for a bit, I'd almost forgotten just how strong a character Fei Long is and how depressing it looks to try and fight against Mago and Fuudo.

KBrad vs BonChan was a reminder that BonChan is one of the masters of this game. First game he went nuts, going uppercut happy, throwing unsafe tiger shots and trying to match Cammy's whackiness with his own. This invinted KBrad to go apeshit in the second game, which he duly did and delivered an absolute mauling. Poor Sagat gets even worse Cammy vortex set ups than the rest of the cast, and some of these were frankly absurd. Third game, in true BonChan style, saw BonChan play at a completely different tempo, change up almost everything he was doing before and make KBrad look like an absolute chump because he'd trained him to play the match in fifth gear whilst neatly sliding himself in the slow lane with some Classic FM.

Bonchan is so gooood.

Mike Ross vs Fuudo was miserable. What a horrid match up for Honda. Mike Ross can't be expected to pull off a miracle against Fei Long every time I guess.

Cuongster vs Gamerbee was surprisingly one sided. Cuongster isn't normally one to have a problem with patience, which is exactly what Honda needs to beat Adon, and the match up is actually in his favour if he plays it lame. For some reason he got a bit bull headed and played into Gamerbee's hands and looked suitably angry at himself afterwards.

Air vs Laugh was the classic Ryu mirror between two of the best. Still waiting on that 32 man tournament of Ryu masters. I'd pay $8.95 for that.

Mago vs PR Rog was quite an upset win for Mago. He usually has problems against PR Rog, and you could tell he was taking this extremely seriously. PR Rog was laughing and joking after the second game, but Mago was just pointing at the rematch button and urging him to get on with it. Not like Mago at all, and I wonder if his slightly underwhelming tournament results in the West are starting to get to him a bit.

Mike Ross vs Chi-Rithy in the run back was very close indeed, though it again mostly played out with Mike generally outplaying Chi-Rithy and then occasionally getting vortexed up. He pulled off a great comeback in the third round of the last game though, showing more patience and composure than I'm used to seeing in such a frustrating match up. Very clutch indeed.

FlashMetroid vs KimLegend was surprisingly free for Flash. I assume Korea doesn't have a top class Gen, because KL clearly didn't know what to do and was eating every mix up Flash went for.

Cuongster vs FlashMetroid was notable for FChamp ruthlessly ribbing Mike Ross for the entire set, though honestly most of what he was saying was true which made it a bit funnier. Meanwhile, Cuongster disposed of FlashMetroid's Gen with very little trouble because Cuongster is godlike. C

PR Rog vs Kim1234 was more entertaining that Bison vs Balrog should be. PR Rog had the better of it from the outset, and even though Kim adapted well to take the second game, it felt like he was stalling for time rather than taking control of the set. It feels like Balrog has the edge in these charge character stalemates, simply because his up close pressure game is scary and he's better equipped to make comebacks than you'd expect from a charge character.

Laugh vs KBrad was a great way to end pools. Laugh made the slightly controversial choice of picking Akuma in this match, and it was unclear whether Infiltration just disagreed with the decision or was a bit put out that Laugh was running back the Seasons Beatings grand final with Infiltration's character. He didn't look pleased either way. It ended up not mattering though, and I think Akuma is certainly more capable of fighting Cammy than Ryu. There were some uncharacteristic drops and nervous moments on both sides, it went to the last round of the last game and it was almost impossible to call but I was pleased to see Laugh clutch it out in the end.

[Nate Dogg III]

Spoilers!

[JLM]

Sorry, sorted it now.

Also Acidglow is starting a video guide series for Killer Instinct 2 that has taught me more about the game in five minutes than I had picked up from all the cumulative time I've spent flailing away trying to play it. I really like that little design choice to encourage more variety in people's combos where your combo enders get more damaging and fancy looking if you make sure to do different ones each time. Definitely suits the game's combo-obsessed system and makes you play it how the developers wanted you to.

!

I still think pressing towards + jab repeatedly with Cinder is the best strategy though. It was in KI1 on the SNES anyway. AWESOME COMBO.

[JLM]

Also also, I watched the King of Fighters movie at the weekend. I thought I was adequately braced for its terribilitude but I was not. My goodness it was bad, but fortunately it was hilariously so at times. I was somewhat offended by their portrayal of Mr. Big, because he is the coolest motherfucker in fighting games and he was grossly misrepresented, but other than that it was all funny. Terry Bogard as an extremely dry C.I.A. agent was an odd choice, but the real comedy gold comes from the depiction of Kyo.

The character is Japanese, but in the film he's played by a white guy. This is slightly odd, but Kyo is pretty Western looking in the games so I didn't object to this too much in principle. The dude certainly doesn't look like he'd be called Kyo Kusanagi, but it's certainly not impossible. However, his father (also Japanese in the games) is portrayed in the film by a Japanese man. The idea that his blatantly Japanese father passed on none of his genes at all was where it started to get silly. They do show pictures of his mother in the film and she's white, so I get that he's meant to be mixed race (or "dual heritage" if you prefer), but usually if someone is half Japanese they don't look like Tom Cruise, though admittedly he was the last Samurai.

However, when it crossed over into outright, jaw on the floor absurdity is when they cut to flashbacks of a young Kyo being taught martial arts by his father, and they used a JAPANESE CHILD in the flashbacks. There are also numerous photos of a young Kyo at various ages in the film, and he is clearly Japanese in all of them. I was desperately hoping for one of the other characters to bring it up but nobody did. It definitely added an excellent layer of comedy value to the film though, and even the horribly slow, plodding dialogue scenes were made entertaining when a character said something could be construed to be alluding to the ethnicity elephant in the room.

The best performance in the film is from Ray Park, who clearly had a blast playing Rugal (or Roogle as they call him) as a sort of maniacal pantomime villain who feels the need to change costume every ninety seconds. He didn't look a thing like Rugal, but he was a wonderfully hammy villain nonetheless.

Sixteen stars.

Five Stars.

Three Stars.

STARS.

[Lyrical Donut]

Did Terry Bogard ask anyone if they were OK at any point in the movie? If not, that's a sorely missed opportunity right there.

[JLM]

No!

He didn't tell anyone to get serious either, and there were so many opportunities. He was playing a straight laced C.I.A. agent and people were telling him all manner of bullshit about the power of the Orochi and interdimensional fighting tournaments, and he didn't tell a single one of them to get serias. No fan service at all in this movie.

[imp]

He didn't tell anyone to get serious either, and there were so many opportunities. He was playing a straight laced C.I.A. agent and people were telling him all manner of bullshit about the power of the Orochi and interdimensional fighting tournaments, and he didn't tell a single one of them to get serias. No fan service at all in this movie.

Wat.

I give this film

[Nate Dogg III]

Thanks for spoilerising, Jason. I'm going to watch top 16 tonight once I've stopped mourning the apparent death of my profession for what feels like the 13th day in a row.