Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Dig Dug]

Started playing this online on PC. Did shite during my first session, 2 wins in 15, played 10 matches just now and won 7 of them.

[joeplus]

That happens to me a lot - sometimes you have your groove on, sometimes you well don't. Ranked or endless?

I'm torn between the two when I play online at the moment. If I got some proper endless sets in I'd do much better learning matchups, but there's something so pure about that one-time, points-on-the-line ranked thing. It's like the FA Cup.

Definitely said this before, but I wish there was a UK Street Fighter league system, like Topanga but bigger and with more divisions. And that everyone had massive broadband so that it would be even remotely possible. Maybe I should wait ten years for the infrastructure to catch up then try to organise that for Street Fighter V.

[Dig Dug]

I played ranked. Had to learn to beat Ken players all over again.

[joeplus]

You never learn to beat Ken players. You can only try to adjSHORYUKEN aww goddammit

[Dig Dug]

I respect Ryu and Ken players who batter me without resorting to excessive zoning, I can't however stand people who only use Hadoken/Shoryuken/H.Leg and Ultras. Akuma players aren't as bad, I can bear playing people who put everything on whether or not they can hit Raging Demon.

I swear I have a better chance of finding a £50 note on the street than having a Honda Mirror Match online.

[Nate Dogg III]

I went to a splendid gig by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks tonight, and they opened with a song called "Lariat".

Also their drummer looked, and was dressed, exactly like me. That was a bit weird.

I love that song. The new album's great, actually. I am furiously jealous you saw them live

[ah]

Joe is the second person I know to have mentioned this week that Malkmus was playing after he had played. I need to step up my ticket buying game.

I play Endless. I'm mad I forgot to lobby for Ultra to change the ranked format to best-of-three. Last night I played about 25 games against a Bison player and got hit by two hits of j.whatever juggled into ultra about a zillion times. He also kept doing this thing where he'd land that air-to-air, juggle with a normal and then do a psycho crusher which I assume crosses up and I could have blocked, but looks really weird. Not seen it before. I also still don't have a gameplan against Bison's varied wakeup options.

[ah]

Oh, it's Friday.

Jenny and the S-tier, Dog

Church on White Daigo

Max Range Life

[Nate Dogg III]

Ooh. I can actually play this one!

Rattled By The Rushdown

Boxer Elder

Date With Sakura

Claw Song

etc.

[sith]

Angry as a raging demon.

Sums up my morning working for Sky on a Friday morning.

[joeplus]

I love that song. The new album's great, actually. I am furiously jealous you saw them live

Aye, it's splendid! I was hoping for Lariat and Houston Hades and got them both. And they did Baby C'Mon. Sorry to make you jelly.

Plink India

Vague Spacing

Gold Roundz

The Hegg

[JLM]

Loretta's angry scars

Hit the plane wing down

[cale]

Dark Souls question.

I doubt it but I'll ask anyway: Is there a way of 'banking' your souls? Basically, I've just beaten Taurus Demon and subsequently been baked to death by some dragon. I'm about to try and trek back through Undead Burg to reclaim my 8000+ souls but before I start the trial and error of working out what to do and where to go with this dragon bitch I was thinking it'd be good to avoid putting those souls at risk. I'm sure there's a bonfire nearby but I'm not there yet so the nearest one is still the one in the first bit of Undead Burg.

Do I just have to spend them on levelling up in order not to lose them?

Additionally, at the risk of getting stoned, I think that new Malkmus album is... alright. I've given it a couple of goes and I'll give it a couple more but I'm not sure I'll discover much more to it. Don't hate me, guys.

[Nate Dogg III]

You spend them - either on levels at bonfires, or with merchants and blacksmiths - or lose 'em. To get past the dragon just strip all your kit off to maximise your run speed and sprint along the right hand side where you'll find a staircase. Go down there and have a careful look around for a shortcut

[df0]

If you do not want to level up, buy Titanite Shards. One can never have enough of those, as all "normal" weapons (= non boss and tuff like the Drake Sword) can be upgraded to +5 once you find and deliver the Amber. Experiment away

[Plopboy]

Still haven't played this game in a while, deen too busy with the Souls games, but I have been playing a little third strike.

I've been playing about with the big man in a pink leotard and he has the most lovely command grab, throw enemy at the wall and then an age to excute his Megaton Press. He just seems to have lots of setups with throwing people at walls, I like this

He also has a special taunt to bring Poison on which is also nice, I wonder if that will be in Ultra?

I other news, Cale dump the Drake sword (if you are using it), you just end up relying on it too much rather than upgrading weapons and using specific types of weapons against certain enemies e.g. a divine weapon is far better against the undead. I wish I hadn't used it on my first play through

[Plopboy]

Oh and I found this video of the prototype Hugo that is in New Generation

worth watching if only for some comedy moments and the remix of Hugo's theme, even if it does sound like a dodgy Rammstein cover.

more info here http://tcrf.net/Street_Fighter_III:_New_Generation

[ah]

A couple of highlights from Jellistarr's excellent adventures this weekend, which were really mostly just JLM's excellent adventures while alistarr cooks dinner, but whatever.

First up, JLM is gifted Yun by random select and ends up stuck in a mirror match. About six seconds into the clip below I turn from the bubbling pots on the stove back towards the Xbox setup, because JLM's exclaiming in loud annoyance "you're just mashing jab every time you land!". Categorise this one under "hard reads":

This next one's more just my proudest moment than particuarly spectacular play, but: later that evening he goes on a spree with Chun and Rose, leading me to complain that my PP total is now even more fraudulent than it was after the last time he stayed over*, so he makes me play some ranked matches myself to see how things go. I win one against someone JLM says is a good Ryu, then another two against dudes who don't know what they're doing. It's all going worryingly well and we're teetering on the edge of 3000 PP, but then the Jellistarr kryptonite appears to turn our fortunes around: a Standard Balrog. Balrog follows us both everywhere we go - knocks us out of tournaments, wrecks our evenings online, and generally just makes us not want to play Street Fighter simply by pressing Balrog buttons for a while, not caring about our meagre punishes for his unsafe stuff, and then doing overhead for the win - except this time I was scouting for it:

JLM is correct that playing online with someone sitting next to you is a lot of fun. I'm still mad that ranked isn't best-of-three, though.

*I have this theory that there's a sweet spot of PP you should aim for that's just high enough that good players don't kick you from lobbies without even giving you a second game, but just low enough that it's not immediately obvious that you don't deserve to have as many points as you do. For me I think that's somewhere in the 2000-2500 range at the moment, so I'm clearly going to have to either offload some points after this weekend's antics or just get better at the game to even things out.

[Dig Dug]

I'm playing MVC2 on xbox over and over so I can unlock all the characters read for the tournaments this weekend, tedious reason to play the game but its helping me pick my mains. Currently maining Cyclops, Rogue and Captain Commando though I'm not sure if Rogue is a good character to play as when you have the game speed set at Turbo2.

That team will probably go out of the window when I unlock more broken characters like Iron Man.

[joffocakes]

Original xbox version? I think everyone is unlocked by default in MvC2 on XBLA. I have no idea how to play Marvel 2. I don't think I've even finished the arcade mode, ever. I'm tempted to learn to play on a basic level since I'm off to Texas for three weeks in April and the only arcade cab near where I'm staying is MvC2. Didn't even bother last time since I don't even know the basics.

[Dig Dug]

I have the 360 version of MVC2 but my 360 is back home while I'm at uni, I keep my original xbox with me because it is modded and has emulators and a 500 gig hard drive and shit.

I've beaten arcade mode once I think back on the PS2 version when I was using Captain America, Hulk and Venom oddly enough I can't seem to get on too well with those characters anymore, my entire venom play was just spam venom fang. I think what happened is I turned the game speed up to turbo 2 and realised those characters don't do it for me anymore.

[ah]

You should pick Cable and just do beam super over and over again.

Joffo, I'd play that game with you a bit if you're around any evenings over the next couple of weeks. I run Zang-neto/Storm/Sentinel, but I haven't played since the one day that I played it with Jason for the first time so I know basically nothing. I think I made some brief notes...on which buttons to press on character select to get matching colours.

[JLM]

I play Whoever I feel like/Strider/Doom. Even with 0.00000000001% of ClockWork's skill it is still amazing fun to do Doom Rocks/Ouroboros pressure. Love it.

Excellent weekend of IRL fighter at Allystah's house. Thank you for putting up with me in my emotionally fragile state and letting me not be in Leeds for a couple of days. Definitely needed that. Also for all the food and tea and agreeing to my extremely cheeky request to stay an extra day at short notice!

I wish I had gone on that run of ranked victories on my account I must say. Went from 2,400pp to over 3,000pp using solid Rose play mixed in with two godlike set ups that literally nobody blocks the first time. Genuinely had a 100% success rate in ranked with both of them. I often wish I'd dropped Chun when AE first came out and picked up Rose full time; I think she's one of my strongest characters and is a really good fit for me, I have a good understanding of how to use her, I have lovely tech I've stolen from Louffy and I win far more games than I lose. She struggles with the same match ups as Chun, though, which is a bit of a shame.

Lots of fun offline fightings as well, though I was annoyed at just how much stuff I was dropping. Doesn't bode well for the SFO tournament next weekend. I did get EX MGB dash ultra 2 with Dee Jay at the first and only time of asking though. My goodness I feel good about myself when I do that.

Nidhogg is absolutely excellent and I would love to play it again whilst not in the middle of having my heart broken via Facebook messages! Also we forgot to play Yatagarasu. Want to do that again soon too. Also poverty fighters maybe.

I hope we can do some or all of those things again at Joffo estates in March, minus the sad bits. I am very excited about that trip already.

Had a couple of hours with the SFO people this evening too. Played Dee Jay against Nayfmo's fledgling Viper and won lots. Played Rose against Brylarke's Cammy and won just about more than I lost. Horrid match up for Rose, probably worse than it is for Chun in fact. She no likey dive kicks at all. Also played Cammy a bit and did lots of fun combos and was all gleeful/guilty. Cammy is just awful but is so much fun. Just before leaving Allystah's I was mauling Rufus with Cammy having just eaten curry and chocolate cake and drinking a lovely cup of tea and it seemed for a while that maybe things might just turn out alright. I bet K Brad sleeps like a baby after a weekend of Cammy-ing.

I went out for curry for dinner as well. The place we went to had peshwari naan, but instead of sultanas and coconuts it was made with pineapple and pistachio nuts. What the blazes? Also our taxi driver on the way home did an impromptu Derren Brown-esque mind-reading thing on my friend that is still baffling me right now and will probably keep me awake all night. Sorcerer!

I don't like it when you go to eat something that appears to be coleslaw but it has bits of tropical fruit and stuff in it. I don't think that's on at all guys.

Also here is ProFluke getting a round off to a good start:

[JLM]

Also here is Pro Fluke doing a Fuerte thing I have never seen before that is fucking brilliant:

One of the lobby checklist for sure.

Page 1,000!

Oh, I forgot to mention that secretly fighting SFO Brylarke using Alistarr's account was amusing. I was doing random select ranked and beat him with Ultra 1 Hakan in what was quite a solid performance by my Hakan's standards. Sent him a message saying he'd just lost to SFO Dragonman. NO ONE IS EVER SAFE.

[ah]

And then in the runback he had to fight Dragonman's cautious Rufus. GGs sir, hope your heart mends itself :-(

I'm almost certainly not going to make it to SFO next week as it's the only weekend for a while that we're both at home, plus we now know that there are no trains to Leeds on Sundays!

[Plopboy]

What an awesome post for the 1000th

[Nate Dogg III]

This popped up in my feed. After-hours NEC FT5 between Smug and PR Rog. Gloves everywhere:

[imp]

My god, that perfect!

[JLM]

Apex stuffs:

Holy shit that grand finals set. Never have I seen Ricky Ortiz take such a savage, savage beating and look so utterly lost. Sanford fucking Kelly doing whatever the hell he wanted for six straight games. Reading every back dash, hitting almost every overhead, making hard reads and being right almost every single time. Phenomenal stuff. Imagine beasting Ricky Ortiz so badly in grand finals that you can spend the entire last round making sure you finish him with a raging demon. Oh, and he beat Justin on his way to the finals as well, finishing him off with a demon as well for good measure. Magnificent clutch performance against Dieminion in losers finals as well. Sanford is the best. There may be better and more successful players, but Sanford is the best.

I thought SkiSonic made a good point about Oni being a great "round one character" and therefore particularly well suited to fighting Rufus, who is always at his weakest at the beginning of the match. oni doesn't need meter to defend himself or to get his offense started, and once he gets momentum everything sort of pays for itself because he can build as he goes. Sanford likes to make hard reads, too, so Oni not being able to FADC his uppercut is almost liberating because he never has to worry about having two bars for that and can just uppercut when he feels it like he would anyway. Oni has many of the same anti-Rufus tools as Sagat but can also maul Rufus early and dictate the pace of the match. There are also little things like Rufus only being able to punish stomps with jab xx EX tornado. So he needs a bar to do it and even if he does it's only very average damage that Oni can shrug off. Definitely seems to be a great pick for this match up.

Oh, and the bit against Justin where Sanford knocked Justin out of the air with a charged fireball and juggled with roundhouse tatsu on reaction was ridiculous. There is a man who has been putting in work with his new character.

Top 8 was on Spooky's stream and the rest was on Bifuteki for you archive watching types.

Also this man's Youtube has most of AE top 8 and a couple of selected earlier matches, though Bifuteki is currently trying to get him to take them down: http://www.youtube.com/user/mickdo8640

Oh, and this Ibuki thing from eventhubs has fun stuff in it. My eyes glaze over a bit when I see the latest Sako/Sonyono autopilot Ibuki compilation, but the target combo glitch this guy uses to loop people, his love of catching things with raida and other fun quirky stuff sets the video apart from the usual Ibuki ones:

[joeplus]

Sako playing Chun-Li:

1:23