Ultra Street Fighter IV

[JLM]

Indeed. I also need to get into the habit of having a good mix up ready if they just block the hit and the ultra doesn't come out. I sometimes get too obsessed with the OS and forget that it's also a lovely safe jump that gives you good pressure if they correctly decide to not back dash. It's why sometimes when I do the other one against Donut I get this sequence:

Forward throw - > MK duck - > jumping roundhouse option select ultra - > Get thrown - > Rage.

It's pretty advanced.

Same with this new set up, the kidney blow is nice and meaty, so if they block I'm at + frames, and if they press something or try to move I can get a counter hit/regular hit off it. As it stands at the moment I just want them to back dash so the ultra comes out and it looks awesome and stuff.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Yeah, the OS needs to become part of the safejump that you just do without thinking, and then you go on from there.

Of course I only have 1 option select (balrog sweep) and 1 safejump (vega off a backthrow) so I don't really know why I'm talking about them at all.

[JLM]

I've got a few fun set ups, at least one or two for most of the characters I enjoy playing, more with the main/semi main chickens. With Akuma I have one of those nice broken Tokido set ups in the corner where you do cross up short and then land in front of them. Nobody blocks it ever and it is great. I have one of those for Gouken now too, and will be busting it out in a lobby soon.

I am definitely in something of a moral quandry, because I don't want the game to be exclusively vortex/unblockable fighter but I do love a low down dirty set up.

I have an unblockable cross up light kick set up on Guile with Dudley too, I just need a wild Hegg to appear.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

You can do that with Rose, too, but I think it only works in the left corner. Then you go into cr.fierce x hp reflect > whatever and it's joyous. I have done it to donut, once, and then my 'whatever' was basically nothing because I was so surprised I hit it.

[Yasawas]

After our earlier discussions on the subject, the thread will be relieved to hear that Synecdoche, New York has now been added to Netflix.

It's the most depressing thing I've ever seen. I loved it and watched it twice on consecutive nights.

[joeplus]

Guys, I just went past the Casino arcade next to Goodge Street station. Is that the one with an SF4 cab? I wanted to have a nosey around but it's been a 13 hour workday. I felt excited though.

Also the thumbnails on JLM's videos are making me stoked to watch them when I'm off the bus.

[wretcherd]

I love Zhi.

[JLM]

I do too. I will expand on that in my forthcoming lengthy ramble about the CC top 16, which was treeeemendous.

Yes, joeplus, Casino has the AE cabs and some other fighting games. They're in the sweaty basement, which is the best place for them.

[imp]

Guys, I just went past the Casino arcade next to Goodge Street station. Is that the one with an SF4 cab? I wanted to have a nosey around but it's been a 13 hour workday. I felt excited though.

7 cabs bro. 6 single single machines and one with two players.

13 hour workday? Pah!

[joeplus]

7 cabs bro. 6 single single machines and one with two players.

!.

I really should have seen if there were some sweaty basement mans in there. My "13 hour" comment makes me sound like a hospital nurse or something, I was just working a charity event. There were even margaritas and Mexican food at the end.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Good grief, mago just unblockabled Ricky to death didn't he

[JLM]

More CC stuff, top 16/finals etc:

AE Top 16

Kazunoko vs Cuongster was horribly one sided. Not really sure if Cuongster did anything particularly wrong either; Kazunoko just had a great rhythm to his offense and was dive kicking at precisely the right moments to open up Honda. Quite brutal.

Riceata vs Kazunoko was close for a couple of games, though a Kazunoko win always looked to be on the cards. Riceata played his usual game of the super lame Mizoteru-esque Blanka, interspersed with short bursts of TSRAI craziness and gimmicks. It worked pretty well, but he allowed himself to get flustered by Yun's rushdown in this set and got baited on a few occasions where you'd normally expect him to be patient. He also went to the EX rainbow roll gimmicks just a little bit too often. I love watching Kazunoko play, but it is a bit sickening how often he gets away with mashing jab on wake up.

FChamp vs Fuudo was an example of a match up playing out exactly as it would on paper. If two top class players play the match up as well as you could reasonably expect, then the character who has the match up advantage will come out on top slightly more often than the other one. A very high quality set, and Champ put in a heroic performance to take a game and make Fuudo work for the win in what is one of Dhalsim's many horror match ups.

Xian vs Bonchan was an utter beasting from Xian. In typical Xian style, he had a bunch of Sagat-specific set ups involving combos into complete Gekiro followed by various safe jump and half step timings to go for cross ups and fake cross ups to keep Bonchan guessing. Bonchan had no answers to it and spent almost the entire set trapped in Gen vortex hell. Once again, Xian is so gooood.

ChrisG vs Mike Ross was one of my favourite sets of the top 16. Such a close match, ultimately decided by Mike Ross being the clutchingest clutchman whoever clutched. Gripping set from start to finish and I couldn't call the winner. Mike managed to avoid getting Sakura vortexed at any point, but ChrisG played a great game of footsies and got big chunks of burst damage from every small opening to stay competitive without it. I thought Mike was done in the closing stages of the last round, but Mike Ross is of course never done until the round is over.

Gamerbee vs Mago was the cleanest of games, and was settled mostly by Mago just having a little more patience and showing a stoic refusal to let Adon do any Adon stuff. Gamerbee won three rounds in a row to get off to a great start, then Mago stopped getting hit.

Ricky Ortiz vs Laugh was very close, and I think Laugh is gradually getting better at this match up. I know Ryu/Rufus is meant to be in Ryu's favour, but every time I see it played it seems like Ryu has to take huge risks to stem the tide of Rufus' offense. It turned out to be the case here, where Laugh took a chance on an uppercut in the final round and ended up getting dizzied for the loss.

Justin vs Infiltration was a dominating win for Infiltration. I do think Akuma beats Rufus quite handily. He's got the zoning tools to frustrate him, the beginning of the match when Rufus has no meter is very dangerous indeed and he has some particularly dirty cross up and unblockable set ups on account of Rufus' fatness.

Cuongster vs PR Rog was free for PR Rog. Cuongster took the first round, PR Rog made one small adjustment (stop getting blown up by neutral jumps) and then he was in complete control for the remainder of the set. There aren't any Balrogs outside of North America on PR Rog's level, and Europe certainly doesn't have one, so the result isn't that surprising despite Cuongster generally being a great player.

Mike Ross vs Bonchan was a great set. Mike Ross always makes you believe he can beat Sagat with Honda and has a great track record of doing so against the best. There wasn't much to choose between him and Bonchan here, but for him to beat the best Sagat was asking for maybe a few too many miraculous reads. He made him work for it though, and there were a couple of very unfortunate execution errors and unlucky breaks that turned the set in Bonchan's favour rather than him outplaying Mike. Bonchan really is the best though, and I was particularly impressed with him escaping Hands - > FADC - > Ochio that works on everybody and then staying put when Mike went for Hands - > FADC - > Jump fierce the second time. Bonchan is so goooood.

Riceata vs PR Rog was tough for Riceata. He could have won three out of the four rounds he lost, but PR Rog was that little bit more clutch each time. It's still a tough match up for Blanka, but this mostly came down to PR Rog being the stronger and more experienced of the two. Fantastic run for Riceata though, and he causes problems every year at CC. He gets a bit thrown off his game during top 16, again probably due to lack of experience playing at this level compared to someone like PR Rog.

Gamerbee vs Infiltration was insane. Great, great match. Gamerbee is so good at the Akuma match up after all his wars with Tokido, and he brings new Akuma specific tricks to the table every time. In this instance he was using EX Jaguar tooth at opportune moments to pre-emptively hit Akuma out of air fireballs. Normally you can separate the top 5% of good Adon players from all the rest by how much Jaguar Tooth they use because that move is gimmicky and rubbish in 99% of cases, but Gamerbee would be the one to find this one specific use for it. It was fitting that the set went to the third round of the third game, which Gamerbee played absolutely perfectly until he got hit once, got hit by the next vortex mix up, was dizzied and then died. He had 90% against Infiltraiton's 5%, but he got hit by one sweep and it was over. Amazing comeback from Infiltration, and further evidence as to why Akuma is considered top 5 in the game.

FChamp vs Ricky Ortiz was pretty much a waste of time, as it is every time these two play unless it's a smaller tournament and Ricky is nice enough to not pick Rufus because they're friends.. It is sad when Dhalsim comes up against one of those match ups that for all intents and purposes is 10-0. Champ's Dhalsim is still the best there is, but this fight is utterly futile. A Dhalsim player winning a major with no secondary character seems like the unlikeliest of things.

Fuudo vs Kazunoko had Zhi on commentary, which is always a good thing. They both played this very aggressively, most likely because these two play each other all the time and know each other's tendencies. Not much to choose between them for the most part, and I think the main difference was Fuudo's famous lightning fast reactions making Kazunoko work extra hard to get in each time. He was burn kicking EX lunge punches are pretty much point blank range and then converting those hits into max damage every time. Scary. Speaking of scary, half way through this set they cut to a guy in the audience doing the most amazing Q cosplay. It was excellent.

Commentator of the century award

Mago vs Xian had the best commentary from Zhi. He explained the nuances of the match up so perfectly and I could have listened to him all day. So Gen's hands combos are punishable with reversal rekka even on hit. To combat this, Xian mashes the hands for a bit longer after the combo ends to trade with the attempted rekka punish. To counter that, Mago jumps in over the mashed hands and gets a full combo. To stop that happening, Xian doesn't continue mashing the hands after his next combo, and in response to that Mago goes back to punishing it on hit with reversal rekka to bring it full circle.

I wouldn't have picked up on that at all from Zhi, and I daresay none of the other commentators would have explained it either. So good. Aside from the amazing commentary, this was an outstanding match up in terms of footsies, the oki game and me being extra invested in it because I want Xian to win all the time. And he did! What a beast. I think Zhi's other observation that Xian plays against Gackt's excellent Fei Long all the time and Mago only plays Amiyu sporadically was valid as well. Xian is particularly well versed in the Sagat match up thanks to Leslie and he murdered BonChan as a result, and similarly his Fei Long experience here was very evident. Very cool that the very last hit of Gekiro at the end of a long combo was the winner. I also liked that Zhi couldn't hide his bias at all. Bless.

BonChan vs Infiltration was a great fight. Gouken definitely causes Sagat a lot of problems, but Bonchan kept it very competitive throughout, switching up the tempo every so often because it's one of the few matches where Sagat loses the fireball war. Infiltration had the most amazing reaction Denjins in this set, including one against an EX tiger shot at near point blank range. Excellent play from both, and Infiltrations run through the bracket despite going into losers in his very first match is quite remarkable.

Top 8

Ricky Ortiz vs Pr Rog played out as it usually does. PR Rog is getting better and better at the Rufus match up, but Ricky is still a bit of a demon for him for the time being. James Chen's observation that Ricky Ortiz is one of the best at making the opponent flinch at key moments was spot on here, particularly in this instance when nobody else has that kind of effect on PR Rog. Ricky somehow got the win by going for the roundhouse ender on a blocked EX Messiah kick and inexplicably hitting with it. They both looked as confused as each other at the end.

Xian vs Fuudo was another very high quality set with excellent commentary from Zhi. The aforementioned Hands vs Rekkas was again a focal point of the match. This time Fuudo went for the jump in to punish the extended hands, but Xian didn't extend the hands and went for jump back roundhouse juggled into ultra instead. So good. Amazing performance from Xian to beat the two best Fei Long players in the world back to back in what is considered by some to be a 7-3 match up.

Kazunoko vs Infiltration was very one sided. It's cool to see Kazunoko sticking with Yun after his brief Seth experiment. Yun being an absolute monster in AE definitely helped him, but he was never considered to be a Yun fraud and is still a huge threat with middle tier Yun. Again, an incredible run from Infiltration to get this far after losing his first match of the tournament.

Ricky Ortiz vs Mago was complete destruction from Mago. He slowed the pace down and wouldn't let Ricky play his usual frantic Rufus game, and it looked incredibly frustrating to fight against. To make matters worse, after every rekka knockdown in the corner he had a horribly dirty set up where if you quick rise you have to block an extremely ambiguous jumping light kick, but if you don't he jumps over again for a medium kick that appears to be unblockable. Ricky got his by it three times and threw out a panic Messiah Kick to try and escape it on the fourth. Nasty, nasty stuff.

Kazunoko vs Mago was excellent stuff. Kazunoko has the perfect mentality to play Yun. so ballsy and so aggressive. Back when he and Daigo were the two Yuns to beat in AE, I always thought that Kazunoko was the stronger of the two because he was much more in tune with how obnoxious and brazen you have to be to get the most out of Yun. You have to balance what the "correct" decision is against doing whatever the hell you want because you're Yun. Even after the v.2012 nerfs I still think that's how he has to be played and Kazunoko is the best at it. All of that said, Mago won this because he is Mago.

Fuudo vs Mago in Losers finals eh? This is everyone's payment for a couple of blissfully Fei-free top 8s of late. It's an interesting one in that Mago basically invented the SF4 stoic wall of Fei Long approach, taught it to Fuudo and then ended up getting surpassed by Fuudo because he added superior defense and absurd reactions to an already hard to beat mix. However, I still think Mago is more of a character specialist with Fei and he will always have the experience advantage in SFIV because Fuudo switched over to it relatively late. This match played out as you'd expect. Extremely cagey, lots of time spent doing very little in the mid range and every small life lead being very carefully defended. This also created some nice dramatic finishes to rounds in the dying seconds though, which meant that it was never as dull as it threatened to be on paper. Quite a big win for Mago, who hasn't been to grand finals at a major outside of Japan for some time.

Grand Finals

Xian vs Mago was amazing. I've never seen Mago so visibly stressed out during a match. He couldn't deal with Xian's constantly switching ambiguous cross ups and was playing scared in a way tha you never normally see from him. Despite that he was able to reset the bracket because he's such a talented man. Zhi leaving the commentary booth to go and psych up xian after the bracket reset was one of the more touching moments I've seen at a fighting game tournament. I love Zhi even more now.

After the reset you sensed that Xian knew Mago was afraid of Gen's trickiness and decided to play a lot more offensively as a result. In one of the games Mago got dizzied two rounds in a row, which I don't think I've ever seen happen before. Xian also had some amazing reads to chase down back dashes and just wouldn't let Mago breathe.

It's frightening how fast Xian has emerged as the best Gen player in the world since dropping Yun, though it's not that surprising. You only need to watch CC Asia to know just how knowledgeable and talented he is, and with Zhi to work with and access to Japanese XBL players (as well as the highly underrated and extremely strong Singapore scene) it was only a matter of time before he took a big international major. That said, to take one as stacked as this is still amazing. So pleased to see him win, partly because I think he's one of the best players in the world and hasn't received that much recognition for it, but mostly because he seems like such a nice young man. His and Zhi's celebrations after the win provided more awwww moments too. Let's go Singapore, and let's go Gen!

AE v.2012 is consistently delivering astonishingly good tournaments. Character variety, variety of winners and new characters winning majors for the first time. If this is indeed "Apology Edition" then it's doing a fine, fine job of it so far.

[joeplus]

Zhi's combination of obscene knowledge and playful metaphors ("the last drop of the waterfall!") was amazing. I was aware of the name but I went proper google on him after hearing a few rounds of his commentary.

I think I've hit a wall with Super Meat Boy so I might spend next week doing execution drills (my new grip is to try and do a proper grip but end up spazzing) and playing lobbies. I'm so out of practice my Rose will probably put a curse on me.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Yeah, if we actually do go to SVB I'm going to have to actually pick a main, get combo execution down and spend a while practicing serious matchups. I don't want to be totally embarrassed, see.

[Spuck]

Awesome stuff

Thanks for that writeup, missed a bunch of the matches live, time to go catch up!

The Tekken play was pretty woeful to be honest, which was a shame. Gamerbee vs. Floe probably the highlight of the cup for me, plenty of back and forth.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I have to admit, if mago vs ricky and possibly xian vs bonchan are an indicator of where the game ends up going as it's totally figured out, high level play is probably going to be a bit of a chore to watch. Knockdown > unblockable setup > rinse repeat isn't exactly the most fun to watch. I don't really want any balance updates, but if they could patch out that glitch before it becomes too integral to the metagame then that'd be nice.

[Nate Dogg III]

I have to admit, if mago vs ricky and possibly xian vs bonchan are an indicator of where the game ends up going as it's totally figured out, high level play is probably going to be a bit of a chore to watch. Knockdown > unblockable setup > rinse repeat isn't exactly the most fun to watch.

True enough. Might just be the novelty factor but I will take hardtoblockables and vortex settling who wins tournaments over everyone playing Street Fighter for three days and then Rufus wins. I think it's made it more interesting to watch, and guaranteed another year or two of the game's life while people work out how to spot and escape them.

Also I just gave another of my talks at the ExPlay thing in Bath. A full-on Edge panel on inspirational game design, with five of us speaking in all, but I did get to spend eight minutes shiting on about the focus attack, which was nice.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Half the time hard-to-blockables are safejumps as well. Admittedly, some can be escaped by crouching, reversals, focussing, etc, and it's probably nowhere near as broken as some of the shit in SSF2T.

Yes, though, at least we've not had a rufus win for a while. It does annoy me when characters who are specifically designed to not play street fighter win tournaments.

[Qazimod]

Catching up on some of the CC bits at the moment. Zhi and Chen are a great commentary combo - so much knowledge between them.

[Lyrical Donut]

Apart from when James Chen starts calling almost everything that hit someone post-knockdown an unblockable

Alioune was abusing them yesterday though, I guess he kind of had to after getting sent to losers.

The Paris qualifier is on tomorrow btw.

That is one nice option select.

No, no it isn't, Joffo.

[ah]

Half the time hard-to-blockables are safejumps as well. Admittedly, some can be escaped by crouching, reversals, focussing, etc, and it's probably nowhere near as broken as some of the shit in SSF2T.

Yes, though, at least we've not had a rufus win for a while. It does annoy me when characters who are specifically designed to not play street fighter win tournaments.

Rufus isn't specifically designed to not play street fighter - he's designed to blow up throw techs/anti-airs but he still has to work to get in against defensive characters, and street fighter at its very best is about an offensive character fighting against a defensive character. When he did stupid damage a couple of iterations ago then the balance was shifted in favour of the offensive character, sure, but it was still street fightery.

For me when someone says "designed to not play street fighter" they're talking about characters like Seth and C Viper, with their totally safe 50-50s and get-in-from-anywhere mobility. With these characters it's not about the defensive character playing street fighter to keep them out, it's about the defensive character just picking a direction to block.

Maybe if I played Dhalsim I would feel differently. I'd probably still find Rufus offensive though.

[Plopboy]

Then again Rufus is hardly Elf, possibly the most non SF fighter. Then again my skills are woeful so perhaps it is me

I'd did manage a quick go in ranked earlier, after nearly a month off and boy was I as rusty as an old Fiat at the seaside. I only had two matches, won one lost one, but I did manage a wake up ultra and beat an Oni so all in all not too bad.

Another lovely write up JLM and I love the fact that Xian is playing with a character that isn't seen as top tier but doing so well by being so awesome and understanding the game to the n'th level.

Also I just gave another of my talks at the ExPlay thing in Bath. A full-on Edge panel on inspirational game design, with five of us speaking in all, but I did get to spend eight minutes shiting on about the focus attack, which was nice.

Did the panel have Doritos and Mountain Dew?

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I'm pretty sure mago's setup on ricky was unblockable, he got hit both sides off the same setup it seemed and couldn't do anything about that. It decided maybe 3 of the rounds of the match.

And rufus isn't designed to be a street fighter. Everyone knows fat people can't fight. Except for butterbean.

[Yasawas]

The Paris qualifier is on tomorrow btw.

Wait! So this thing that Haunts keeps tweeting about is a different thing from the French SF25 tournament?

[Plopboy]

Everyone knows fat people can't fight.

My childhood disagrees

[JLM]

Fightery anyone?

[JLM]

Weird Streetfighter cropping up in IRL social occasion with real people setting happening to report.

So I went to Cabin 164 in Leeds this evening with a group of friends. It's a shisha bar/dessert lounge and it is an excellent place to spend several hours playing cards and smoking shisha and drinking Oreo milkshakes on a cold Friday evening. By chance, one of my friends' friends from work was in there and ended up joining us. He was wearing a t-shirt for a band I'd never heard of called Sonic Boom VI. Their logo on the shirt is in the Streetfighter 2 font and, me being me, I casually asked what the t-shirt was about.

So he says they're a local band and he knows one of the members and he gets free merchandise and whatnot. One of my other friends obviously knew that I asked because I'm a Streetfighter nerd and explained this to the stranger. He said "oh one of my friends is into that but I don't really play it much" and we left it at that.

Then, after leaving, it transpired that I live around the corner from this new person, so we ended up walking the same way. I speed up a bit to catch him up, ask some inane questions about how he knows my friend, then he goes "so do you know who Clakey D is?"

Erm... say what now?

Turns out he's a League of Legends stream monster and knows that Clakey D is a tournament player in both LOL and AE, so we end up having an incredibly nerdy conversation about esports all the way home. It was the oddest of things. Also, also, it turns out there is a weekly session of local casuals in Leeds that runs every Sunday that I previously knew nothing about.

What the actual fuck.

[Qazimod]

Sorry I didn't take up your offer of fightings J-Lum; I saw your post up there and was going to try and get some games in later but I kind of got sidetracked and spent my time on Hotline Miami. Which is ace, by the way. Just not very fight-y.

[Yasawas]

Some breakfast ST - http://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters

[ah]

Weird Streetfighter cropping up in IRL social occasion with real people setting happening to report.

This means he may know who Marn is, too. Be careful in your conversations lest he pegs you for a stalker of some kind.