Jump to content
IGNORED

Ultra Street Fighter IV

JLM

By JLM
in Discussion

 Share

Recommended Posts

nuskool

nuskool

Posted
Posted

Mr. Haggar Jnr, glad to hear your Dad is doing well.

If you want a distraction tomorrow I'm planning to go to Telford and if you would like to go I'm sure I can go a little off the planned route to pick you up (I'll be travelling from South Birmingham). I'm not exactly what times I'm planning to go but maybe midday-ish until I get bored.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

NEC '13 is on this weekend. It being an East Coast tournament, the focus is a bit more on Marvel because the East Coast is still the home of Marvel hype. The AE and Marvel singles tournaments are being spread quite evenily accross the Spooky and Bifuteki streams though, and the AE bracket has Snake Eyes, Valle and a number of other strong non East coast players in it.

Bifuteki has been showing the AE singles pool play tonight, and I tuned in to see an outstanding set between Snake Eyes and L.I. Joe's Sagat. Snake Eyes was only a dropped combo away from taking it, which is so impressive against Joe, who has been using Sagat since vanilla. Snake Eyes is so gooood. I made the mistake of reading a bit of the stream chat after the match, to see people complaining about the game being "match up fighter 4" which is comfortably the most absurd and nonsensical "X fighter 4" variant I've seen so far. On the plus side they had Min on commentary, which is a good thing in my book.

Streams/archives are here:

http://www.twitch.tv/teamspooky

http://www.twitch.tv/bifuteki

Alex Valle vs PZPoy in Marvel pools was amazing. Everyone thought it'd be a routine win for PZPoy because Valle has only ever played Marvel very casually and just enters for the fun of it. Then he took a game and the crowd got interested. Then he went 2-1 up and the entire East Coast crowd were suddenly cheering for Mr. CaliPower himself because the wily fighting game veteran beating the established Marvel pro and the Captain AMURRCA player beating the Phoenix player are both better causes to root for than East vs. West. So much hype. I love East Coast Marvel tournaments.

Also GGs for earlier Donut. There was some mildly annoying lag going on, but it never stopped the games being playable, so that's good.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ah

ah

Posted
Posted

Alex Valle vs PZPoy in Marvel pools was amazing. Everyone thought it'd be a routine win for PZPoy because Valle has only ever played Marvel very casually and just enters for the fun of it. Then he took a game and the crowd got interested. Then he went 2-1 up and the entire East Coast crowd were suddenly cheering for Mr. CaliPower himself because the wily fighting game veteran beating the established Marvel pro and the Captain AMURRCA player beating the Phoenix player are both better causes to root for than East vs. West. So much hype. I love East Coast Marvel tournaments.

Thanks for mentioning this - I wasn't going to watch the first day but have skipped through and watched a few games now. The match you mention is at about 2h30 in this archive file:

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky/b/344574528

Other than that match, I really like watching Shady K play and I hope they keep running Unknown vs OMG Itz Andre grudge matches for the rest of the game's lifespan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Yasawas

Yasawas

Posted
Posted

SF25 Salt and spoilers

Xx6iF.png

Bit of a shame as Ryan usually seems one of the more eloquent ones when you put a mic in front of him. Momochi and Mago wanted to go, he wanted to go, he wasn't good enough. I don't see how it's any different than him entering the Paris qualifier and potentially denying one of their locals a spot.

Otherwise, and incredibly, Combofiend and Zhi's commentary had me rooting for ImStillDaDaddy at one point. Their japery lends him an affable comic air the tracksuits and general demeanour don't usually give him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nuskool

nuskool

Posted
Posted

Also... On the way out I snatched a load (well, maybe 3 or 4) of the 25th anniversary t-shirts for you guys. I'll check tomorrow when I'm less tired but I think I have a small, 1 medium and 2 large ones. PM me if you fancy one (for free - postage will most likely be free too). If i get more people PM than t-shirts I'll do a random draw or something in a few days.

y55Gil.jpg

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

That Combofriend picture is the greatest thing. I would have been very disappointed if this weekend went by and not one of us got to stalk him in person. Excellent, excellent work Mr. Nuskool.

Here's another excellent thing from NEC. Floe asks if he can wear SkiSonic's hat:

9eZGg.gif

Yipes' face is gold.

4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

London 25th Anniversary qualifier

A lot of the early pools matches on stream were really bad. It made sense for them to play out an entire pool on the stream station for organisational reasons, but at most majors the stream gets cherry picked matches from every pool to keep the quality up a bit, which made some of these early games a bit jarring to watch. Also Kevin/Cameraman from CC Asia is not one of my favourite commentators and also seems like kind of a dick. He didn't have much of a rapport with Combofiend either, as utterly ridiculous as that sounds, though this improved quite a bit as the event went on. Apparently Zhi was salty at his performance in SFXT the previous day and was all business for SF4 day, which meant I was denied ComboZhiend until much later on in the day. :(

Third match was between a couple of players who had really nice set ups and gimmicks for their respective characters (Akuma and Makoto) but were just doing them blindly regardless of what the other player did. The Akuma did uppercut or teleport on every single wake up, without fail, yet the Makoto was still going for tricky fake cross up set ups and feints into karakusa and letting him escape for free every time. It's like he was acting out a V-Ryu video except the training dummy kept moving. Very frustrating because he had the set ups down and had good execution and reactions but seemingly no interest in reading the opponent and adapting to his tendencies.

An early highlight of pools was Fuzzy demolishing Hadoshrooms' Gief with an impeccable display of Ryu fundamentals. Fuzzy won the HDR qualifier and is one of Europes best SFXT players as well, and you could see his ST/HDR abilities transfer over here. He beat Hadoshrooms with 90% fireball and sweep. The number of sweep whiff punishes he crammed into four rounds was ridiculous. Such a crisp, clean performance and it was great to see after level 3 focusing ultra 2 Ryus in the previous matches. Hadoshrooms then came over to Combofiend on commentary because he wasn't using his usual stick and therefore "couldn't block", which was rubbish because almost all of the damage he took was from whiff punishes and anti-airs. Salty NeoEmpire players are funny.

Fuzzy vs Jinty was probably the best match from the pool they showed on stream. It was a shame Fuzzy picked Cammy instead of Ryu for this though. He didn't look completely comfortable using Cammy, not making the most of her offense and missing out on max damage combos that could have taken rounds. It was also disappointing because you hardly ever see Ryu vs. Ken in tournament any more. It was a good set regardless, going down to 5% life each in round 3 of game 3, and a welcome break from the baaad matches.

Jinty put up a good fight against Ryan Hart, and I think nerves were his main enemy because he made some poor decisions despite showing that he's clearly a strong enough player to know better in his earlier games.

Winners Bracket

After that the quality upped dramatically because they ran Winners' finals from every pool on stream.

First up was Andreas vs MetallicMike in an absolutely outstanding match. I find MetallicMike a bit irritating but his Juri is excellent, and he gave Andreas a lot of trouble here, highlighted by a tremendous Feng Shui Engine comeback that drained 45% of Andreas' life in one sequence with a quick overhead reset in the middle. Andreas looked a bit flustered and stuck for ideas early on, but he adapted well and started baiting out EX pinwheels and punishing them hard. Very very close set, and the first on stream that felt like a big tournament match, and I was pleased to see Andreas take it.

Gino vs Chi-Rithy was outright destruction. Gino had a great first round, Chi-Rithy completely downloaded him and then it was nothing but savage Cammy maulings. Not a good match up for Seth at the best of times, and Gino's isn't in the same league as Problem X's, so this wasn't too surprising.

Mago vs Shau was your typical Fei vs Fei match, where nothing happens until someone gets impatient or gets a jab into rekkas whiff punish. Mago is the best at this mirror match, so it was impressive that an out of practise Shau made him work so hard for the win here. Shau used to be one of the UK's best players at SF4, but has been out of the scene for a while and has only been back playing for a few months. He took a couple of rounds here, but Mago was in control from the second round of the first game onwards, establishing an early life lead and then picking Shau apart as he tried to make up the defecit. I like that Mago fed Shau a couple of free punishes by stopping at two rekkas in the first game, then cashed in on it later by going for the delayed third rekka to punish the attempted punish in the later rounds when it counted. Everyone knows about that Fei mix up, but the way Mago established it and controlled it over the course of a short set when both players have the same options was very impressive.

Taaha vs Imstilldadaddy next. Obviously I was rooting for Taaha big time here. Imstilldadaddy is such a ridiculous caricature of a man that I slightly suspect it's all an elaborate ruse. The name, his online behaviour, his clothes, his JD Sports bag. It has to be a wind up surely? I like that when Logan called his name, Combofiend heard it as "Absolute Daddy" which is probably a specialist publication of some sort. Imstilldadaddy's Guile is good though. Not as good as he thinks it is, and you can't really be good enough to make up for being as much of a tool as he is, but good all the same. Taaha looked like he was getting frustrated, and Imstilldadaddy just kept flash kicking at all the times you'd think it would be a stupid thing to do, which meant that Taaha could never build any momentum and start the Abel vortex. A surprising and disappointing result.

I'm sad that Slizzle and Yota ended up in the same pool. The UK's two best Fei Longs, but Slizzle doesn't play the game as often as he used to so he got outclassed in the mirror match. He was forced to switch to his old main, Sagat, and that match up is absolutely horrible. He kept it very competitive because his Sagat's still really good, but he was fighting from the corner for the whole match and it was pretty much unwinnable.

Momochi vs SYN Chuck wasn't even a contest. Four straight rounds of Momochi beasting. I'm sad that Momochi played Akuma for this tournament, but I can understand why he did.

Afii vs F-Word is another one I was disappointed to see in winners finals of a pool as they're two of my favourite UK players. Dee Jay makes Ibuki work a bit harder than most characters because she can't use kunai mix ups against him, but it's still hard for him to keep her out and she has plenty of other mix ups that will work. She can also abuse the overhead a lot because Dee Jay wants to sit in down back to keep his charge a lot of the time. Both played well, but Afii got a bit impatient and twitchy at times and got hit with a couple of nasty frame traps that ultimately decided it.

Andreas vs Ryan Hart was a heartbreaker for Andreas. He played brilliantly in what has always been a bad match up for Rufus, but a couple of huge and extremely uncharacteristic execution errors saw him throw away his best chances of winning it. He looked so angry at himself after the match; he's definitely capable of beating Ryan's Sagat, and it must be gutting to lose because of very avoidable mistakes.

Chi-Rithy vs Imstilldadaddy got off to a funny start when Chi-Rithy laughed out loud at Imstilldadaddy's name being announced. I wonder if he thinks he's some sort of Ali G style parody character.

Imstilldadaddy started off with the same brand of Xbox live flash kicks that annoyed Taaha, going for he EX one rather than flash kick FADC for extra rrrraggo factor. It's probably a smart move against Cammy as well, because she gets enough free pressure as it is, and a lot of Cammy players get very comfortable pressing buttons. Chi-Rithy had a little knowing smirk at the end of the first game as if to say "OK, I see what's going on here". Then Imstilldadaddy stopped doing it and got diet Cammy pressure for the rest of the set, even sneaking in some cheeky throws when Chi Rithy stopped to bait flash kicks. There is method to his chavness. Sorry. It is the perfect strategy for a two out of three set though, and is one of the many reasons why two out of three sets are two short. BonChan is a master of doing this too; where he plays stupid and reckless for a game and then switches to doing nothing and sees if the opponent can change gears in time. I wanted Imstilldadaddy to get mauled here, but in truth I was fine with seeing Chi Rithy sent to losers because I didn't want a North American Cammy player taking one of the London qualifying spots. It's pretty ridiculous that Chi-Rithy routinely beats the best Guile in the world but lost to Mr. Million Pound House.

Yota vs Mago was agonisingly close, and I was fully invested in it despite it being the third Fei Long mirror of the day. I was desperate for Yota to win it but knew that he wouldn't because Mago never loses Fei mirrors. If Yota took the game more seriously and didn't keep toying with learning new characters he could be the UK's best player. As it stands he's just very very good, and there was very little to choose between him and Mago here. I think losing the first game after concentrating and working so hard ended up costing him the first round of the second game, whereas Mago seemingly has endless patience and unbreakable composure, which is why he is the best at a match that is entirely won and lost on those qualities.

F-Word vs Momochi was profoundly sad. I want F-Word to win all the time despite thinking Ibuki's a pretty silly character and he was gifted a huge opportunity to take the second game here and didn't take it. First game Momochi was in complete control. It's a battle of two vortex characters, but Akuma is stronger in the neutral game and Momochi's mid range game is insane, so he set the pace for most of the set. Both Europe and North America need a world class Akuma player pretty badly too, because both region's players only get to practise against high level Akuma when international players visit and it's clearly not enough. Despite that, F-Word put up a good fight despite the first game making it look hopeless, and Momochi dropped his teleport cancel Ultra 2 combo in the game 2 to hand F-Word the game, only for F-Word to input his ultra too late and miss the punish. Gutted.

Strekken break

Strekken top 4 was pretty fun, mostly because Momochi was playing a different game from everyone else. I know Cody is too good in the pre-2013 build of the game, but still, he was murdering everybody so spectacularly that it was almost comical. MetallicMike was fun to watch because I love Strekken Juri and because nobody plays Alisa or knows how to fight her, but nobody was in any position to stop Momochi steam rolling the whole thing.

AE Finals

Zhi on commentary for these matches, making my Combozhiend dream a reality and doing a typically outstanding job of dropping knowledge, making terrible jokes, going off on tangents and making fun of Imstilldadaddy. I know his humour splits opinion but I could listen to him all day.

Andreas vs Slizzle was comfortable for Andreas. Slizzle made a lot of odd decisions and also failed to complete a number of his rekka combos. Just didn't hit his stride at all and Andreas was never really tested.

Chi-Rithy vs Afii was quite one sided as well. Dee Jay eats worse combos than most characters from Cammy because of his wide hitbox, so every EX cannon strike leads to huge damage. Afii appeared to crack early on, when he had the first round under control and then did a fireball inside ultra range and lost for it. After that Chi-Rithy turned up the offense and took the remaining rounds comfortably.

Jinty vs Yota was a bit more competitive, though Yota always looked the favourite. I was impressed with Jinty's Ken thorghout the day, but he started to crack here and threw out some very risky and unnecessary uppercuts and paid the price for it.

Mago vs Momochi was predictably outstanding. Momochi plays Akuma completely differently from everyone else, and he has been the best user of Akuma's standing roundhouse since Vanilla where it was insanely overpowered. In the first game he took almost an entire round using crouching medium kick, which is ridiculous against Fei Long, who is known for mauling shotos in the mid range game. At one point he FADC'd his crouching medium kick on reaction to Mago focus absorbing it as well. Momochi is too good. Mago fought back in game two and actually took it in quite dominating fashion, then in the third game Momochi landed a whole load of perfectly timed and spaced standing roundhouse kicks and won with ease. Comfortably the highest quality set of the day so far.

Ryan hart vs Imstilldadaddy was the classic ranked match monster vs tournament veteran match. Whenever he had the upper hand he'd find a way to do something reckless and hand the round back to Ryan. I was more than a little nervous when Imstilldadaddy took the first round though. Seriously guys, it's not funny any more, somebody needs to put him in losers now. Thankfully Ryan Hart obliged, and Combofiend and Zhi got a few more digs in at Imstilldadaddy before it ended.

Taaha vs F-Word was crazy. Two vortex characters going in hard, pausing for occasional cagey mid range stand offs and then back into the blender again. Third game was just a frantic rush of reads and guesses, ending when F-Word inexplicably for hit by the last hit of change of direction after blocking the rest. In the midst of the vortex madness there was some really nice spacing and match up knowledge from both players, but they've played each other so often and have such vortex-heavy characters that it was mostly settled on post-knockdown craziness and frantic attempts to escape and chase each other down. Madness.

Chi-Rithy vs Andreas was free for Chi-Rithy. A horrible match up for Rufus, and the UK doesn't have a Cammy even close to Chi-Rithy's level. Brutal stuff, highlighted by Chi-Rithy doing an option select jump to punish a Messiah kick with jump roundhouse into ultra.

Taaha vs Yota was a good match but Taaha was visibly very disappointed with his performance. He's very good at the Fei match, which is one of Abel's worst, and he showed it here for the most part but was let down by some execution errors and by playing a bit nervously at the start. He let Yota out of the vortex too easily a couple of times by respecting the flame kick, and at the end he dropped the Abel COD - > FADC - > Cr. fierce link which I don't think I've seen him drop on stream before.

A brief musical interlude from Project Dolphin followed this. I like Project Dolphin. I still think they should get Desk to do some kind of exhibition or feat of magic hands brilliance when he attends events like this though.

Top 6

Chi Rithy vs Mago was a dominant win for Mago. Combofiend's commentary throughout this match up was absolutely spot on. Chi-Rithy refused to wake up with Cannon Spike, which is generally the right move with Cammy because it's easy to make it whiff and it's massively punishable. However, he was stubborn about it to the point of allowing Mago to take massive liberties and bully him for the entire game. At some point he needed to just do it and take the punish if necessary just to stop Mago pressing buttons and going for meaty tenshin whenever he felt like it.

Also, although Ultra 2 works wonders for Fei in this match up and is a good deterrent, Chi-Rithy was showing it waaaay too much respect and basically allowing Mago to stop him doing everything that makes Cammy such a top tier wrecking machine. As Combofiend pointed out, the correct response in this instance would just be to continue going in, maybe take one ultra 2 when it's half stocked and just keep daring Mago to use it. Passing up Cammy's post knockdown pressure for the entire set is far more damaging to your chances of winning than eating one half-full counter ultra, and that's if Mago's even prepared to throw it out. You only need to empty jump once or twice to let him know you're aware of it and it then becomes a massive risk for him. You have to bear it in mind, but it's just one (very risky) option and shouldn't completely neuter Cammy's offense like it did here. The match ended with Chi-Rithy getting perfected, and Combofiend saying "it's too late, don't uppercut nowww-oh my goodness" as Chi-Rithy whiffed his first uppercut of the set to lose via perfect.

Imstilldadaddy vs Yota made me throw up in my mouth a little. It was a really great set, close back and forth affair, but the result... oh god the result. Yota is better than that, I cannot believe that happened. Oh dear.

Imstilldadaddy vs Mago was terrifying. First round Mago made it look like business as usual, completely clean round, classic Mago performance. Then in round 2 Mago cracked. You rarely see it from Mago, but suddenly he was getting hit by everything and it suddenly turned into a ridiculously hype set where Imstilldadaddy's... unorthodox playstyle... might end up defeating the 2D god. Personally I was invested in it because I was terrified that he might win. I didn't want the Japanese players to take the London qualifying spots, but I'd rather see just about anybody win ahead of Imstilldadaddy. Thankfully Mago pulled it together, though honestly it was mostly because Imstilldadaddy made a couple of massive unforced errors. Imstilldadaddy should have won for sure, but I am so relieved that he didn't.

Momochi vs Ryan Hart was a tremendous set, made extra tense for me because I was desperate to see Ryan Hart take one of the two San Francisco qualifying spots. He's the only UK player close to being in Momochi's league and he showed it here. Gutted that he lost the last round due to a missed dive kick input of all things.

Mago vs Ryan Hart was awful. It's such a terrible match up for Sagat, and Mago has played BonChan at it countless times. Ryan did as well as you could expect him to, but I didn't see any way he could win this and it turned out there wasn't. He looked absolutley broken after the match and I don't blame him.

So that was that. Although on paper it's the predictable result and the Eventhubs and SRK folks will be saying "stay free Europe" and all that stuff, the finals were still very strong and Ryan Hart vs Momochi in particular couldn't have been much closer. Disappointed that a few of the other UK players let the occasion get to them a bit and didn't play to their usual standard, and I think it's the lack of major tournament experience as much as the standard of competition that handicaps a lot of them. Ryan Hart's already apologised for the Twitter outburst. That's the problem with having the option to Tweet from your phone at any time I guess. It's a shame Ryan Hart won't be at the San Francisco tournament for sure. I think the only UK representative will be ProblemX, and I don't want to cheer for a Seth player. :(

3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks, though I just realised I didn't watch the grand finals. I was too deflated after Ryan Hart went out. Also I forgot to spoilerise it. Pleased for Mago though, he hasn't won as many majors as you'd expect him to since signing for Mad Catz.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I think some of us should have. Whilst watching those opening pool matches I was counting in my head how many of us could comfortably beat the players involved. All of us I reckon. There was a Ryu player who kept going for meaty level 3 focus on the opponent's wake up as his go-to mix up. I haven't seen that since vanilla. Bringin' it back for the... 0-12, I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. Use of this website is subject to our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Guidelines.

  I accept