Ultra Street Fighter IV

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I'm counter picking with bison

[hegg]

This is now what I will be saying to myself whenever I see Oni win, even against me. Genuine thanks.

Hegg, I hope to make it on Thursday but it will depend on work. I've seen next to no classic sci-fi films including this one so I'd really like to!

Be wicked if you can make it dude, good luck with work things.

[cale]

Jellum just KO'd me with a slo-mo legendary taunt finish. What a wildy beest.

He's savannah laugh, isn't he? That's just plains wrong.

[Qazimod]

Thanks to joffo and JLM for lobby fun; apologies for cursing under my breath every five seconds and getting hyped whenever something worked As ever I'm impressed with jellum's ability to pick any character and do obnoxious combos with them, and of course I still need to learn to calm down instead of jumping in and pressing buttons, even though the latter is so much more fun. I will see if I can squeeze in more games sometime soon, as I've been away from SF4 for ages...

[IgTerminals]

Camel - amazing games yesterday. FT10 was disappointing, but I feel I got a bit better handle on Dhalsim as the day progressed. I had been struggling to block your teleport crossup setups, as I was either blocking low (a'la Seth's teleport setups) or, I think, trying to adjust my stick too quickly and jumping.

Some awesome stuff happened in those matches.

The second lot of casuals was even better. I assume you were enjoying yourself immensely too, as I messaged you at 12:10, you replied "Ok, but not for long", then I left the lobby at 2:20 due to tiredness and not being able to think anymore.

Two sets of two hours. Epic.

I want more!

EDIT: Guile High Kick AA > Backfist may be my new favourite thing.

[JLM]

GGs Alistarr, Joffles, Haggmond and Qazzleston. Was lovely to have 50 games that were mostly playable. Haven't had a session like that for ages. I was pleased with some of my own tings, but I was most delighted by Joffo's Dan trickery on Bison's wake up. Oh, and Haggmond making all the right reads on The Valle Ryu corner mix up.

Also I'm a supporter now, so I can see what you guys are up to. STOP NEGGING ME JOFFO YOU DICK.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I genuinely think that if I'd been playing you in that match, I'd have gone for a third throw, because of our discussion about the corner ex tatsu earlier. But yes ggs and 'ting. I'm de-rusting a bit as time goes by. Also ggs camel. I'm a bit clueless at the old honda matchup, you hardly ever see him on ranked these days, so was fun to get a little set in.

Also is anyone else hegging tonight? I'm taking a genuine real-life non fighting game friend along, so I get to awkwardly introduce him to Hegg and then explain how we met on an internet forum and play childrens video games with one another.

[Camel]

Thanks for the games Ig and Hagg. Sorry for the terrible quality of my lesser characters but I do get a bit bored of old Stretchy McStretch sometimes. Can't believe how many times I failed to persuade fat Rufus to Ultra

The best bit though was when I did ex messiah > fadc > BACK dash > ultra. wtf.

Also when Ig waited patiently for my Rufus Ultra 1 to finish inches from his nose only for the final hit to touch him him for a chip win. Good times.

I'll write up some feedback about our ft10 when I have 5 minutes, Ig.

[IgTerminals]

I'd forgotten about the Rufus thing. That was a bitch.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I'm in a room with Hegg!

Also he was right about the food. They do amazing coleslaw and have a projector. Next heggfest here?

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Zhi is foully tweeting stuff about some kind of USF4 announcement. Delayed wakeup is confirmed, red focus crumples on level 1 when you FADC into it (4 bars). Wultra will do 60% damage.

poor dead ibuki.

[joeplus]

Hope the film night was good, sorry I couldn't make it. My stepmum's in an experimental one-woman theatre show and last night was the only time I could see it. Was good but if I'm honest I probably would have enjoyed the film more. Hope it'll be a regular thing!

Weirdly the most exciting thing about Zhi's announcements is finally knowing what the red focus command is (MP+MK+another attack button).

[imp]

Kara red focus for Ken is going to be out of control fun to do.

[Camel]

Any release date news? I can't wait to be able to rocus into wultra.

[JLM]

I think a fun thing to do with Wultras if they insist on having them would be to have a sliding ratio bar that you set before the match. So they can both do 50%, or one does 60% and one does 40% etc. So it'd be more like Yatagarasu, where both are available but you pick which one you prefer/are more likely to land in the match/want to be the bigger threat.

I'd have preferred them to do half damage rather than 60%, but no matter what the damage limitation I think it's a silly idea to give characters so many options.

Ha, Rocus into Wultra. We should work for Capcom Camel.

[Camel]

Wouldn't it be great if you could customise these options in a lobby? eg, you could create a lobby with no wultras and no rocuses.

Ig, some feedback as promised:

Camel (Dhalsim) vs Ig (Guile)

10-1

First off, most of these matches were really close, and obviously the score doesn't really reflect that. But I really had to work bloody hard for those wins.

I think the main reason I won out overall is that Dhalsim's zoning game is better than Guile's and you spent a lot of time keeping me out with booms and flash kicks. At 3/4 of the screen, Dhalsim doesn't care if you're keeping him out. He can hold his own in a projectile war and also punch you from the other side of the screen. Lots of times when you did focus more on getting in, you did much better. SO I think my advice here would be: try to get in more when you're facing a Dhalsim.

Love that jump-in attack, c.HK (?), flash kick. Looks lovely and also, ouch.

I started to notice a pattern in your EX booms. A lot of the time during a projectile flinging match, you'll throw an EX out as soon as you have meter. I think you stopped doing this later on though.

I played a very dry game as I'm aware of how consistent you are at knocking Dhalsim out of teleports. I don't know if you were waiting for the teleport in a lot of matches. On a few occasions where I did teleport in because I had a fireball on top of you during wakeup, you were good at flash kicking me to hell. So well done there.

Lovely crouching combos into flash kick.

Blocking Ultra set-ups. I know these are annoying. The trick is to block wherever Dhalsim is. So once I've teleported to the other side of you, start blocking me and not the horrible giant fireball.

Excellent use of back knuckle, especially after sonic boom. You caught me out with a few of those. Although I was very pleased to punish one of these with a super.

I'll watch the matches again and see if there's anything else I can offer.

EDIT: oh, here's another thing. I do a lot of tick throws. lk. slide into throw. I do this too much. In fact, I'm trying to stop myself doing it. But I think I got away with this a lot during our matches. If you see me slide, punch me in the face.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Capcamel?

[Camel]

?

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Anyway, so what the hell does gief do after an SPD now, then? He's got no meanty/spd/block mixups guaranteed any more, because you can't risk whiffing an SPD on their wakeup if they delayed rise. Also t hawk. Everything hawk does relies on getting the jap spd into his terror mixups, that option seems somewhat negated now.

I really think that charge charaters might end up being top tier in this edition, since the vortex is basically dead. They've all got good defensive options, generally decent normals and it's much easier to react to a focus/red focus with an armour breaking attack if you've got charge instead of having to do a motion.

Also the focus/throw tech option select is dead.

[JLM]

Not sure about delayed rising at all. I don't like being so negative but I don't think any of these major game changing updates are necessary or wanted by the community. They have placed so much emphasis on fan feedback for this update and then added a bunch of features that nobody wanted. Getting rid of unblockables was the only major one people wanted; everything else feels like someone at Capcom attempting to make another SF4 update easier to justify.

They've already taken the hard knockdown off Ibuki's non EX neckbreakers, and I think character specific nerfs like that are a better way to get rid of the overly strong vortex game. Make Akuma's sweep more punishable, take away LK tatsu into sweep, add recovery to some of the demon flip enders. There are things that can be done to minimise it without another system-wide change that hurts some characters much more severely than is necessary.

[Camel]

Oh look, I'm famous.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/181114/hall-of-names-good-players-you-fought-online

[IgTerminals]

I can't find delayed rising confirmed, it's not on Shoryuken or Capcom blog, at least that I can see.

What's the source on this?

Also: Loctests may prove some of these changes are crap, and they'll change 'em back. OR... loctests might prove they all work brilliantly. Still a lot of time left.

And we'll always have AE, darling.

Mr Camel, thanks for the excellent write up. You're very kind, but I was woefully disappointed with that FT10 set.

I did try to tech an awful lot of your throws, but it just wasn't happening for me. Also, fighting so hard to get in, getting off some hits then getting thrown back out was soooo disheartening. EX booms were a symptom of this frustration early on, but I noticed I was wasting metre in anger and tried to calm down a bit. I also tried to bait you by throwing a normal boom as soon as I got metre, but this worked about once.

One thing I will say: I know your Yogi Bear Fire > teleport behind > Stuff worked early on, but when I started blocking and punishing it, you still kept teleporting to the same side. Also you tend to pattern your limbs (ooh, pretty). Like st.LP, st. LK (I think), st. HP. Or Yogi Bear Fire, step forward, st.HP, st. HP. It made it really easy to predict them and FK them.

I dunno why I'm giving you advice after 10-1. Just gonna make it easier for you to beat me.

When you wanna fight again? Am free later this afternoon, possibly until about 7pm.

[Camel]

Yeah you started flash kicking me pretty consistently at one point so I changed my patterns which mostly meant throwing out less HPs which is probably a good thing.

I can't play today as I'm at work at the moment and am about to leave to go and watch a school assembly. I might be on tonight, if you're about?

[IgTerminals]

Possibly after about 11.30pm, but can't guarantee it. Will try my bestest though.

EDIT: It's DF HK, for info (which I always think of as 3HK, thanks to Blazblue). Called the Guile High Kick. Can be followed with a FK on the ground, or a FK or Backfist after AA. Backfist is easier, has more range and does more damage.

'Tis definitely my new favourite thing. Well, my new favourite thing I have pulled in a match. My real new favourite thing I'm still working on...

[Goemon]

Unlike Lyn, this is certainly in the realms of Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iYA_gX1d6wg#t=815

[JLM]

I love Daigo so much. Nobody knows the mind of an opponent quite like him. Even when he got 6-0'd by Infiltration he still produced the highlight of the set by going for dash dash dash dash grab. He just knows.

[ah]

Hang on, how does a FT10 finish at 9-1?

[IgTerminals]

It was 10-1.

[ah]

Oh well, I thought there might be an opening for a ridiculous comeback because you'd forgotten to play the last match!

[hegg]

Haggar, thanks so much for coming along last night. Did you have fun? I like the venue, pub noise is a tiny bit annoying, but not too bad. I should have turned the volume up a little bit. I also should have done an actual introduction just before the film started, on top of my 10-minute warning waffle. Hopefully I'll get more comfortable with all that after I've done it a few times.

In general people seemed to dig it, so fingers crossed it turns into a regular thing.