Jump to content
IGNORED

Ultra Street Fighter IV

JLM

By JLM
in Discussion

 Share

Recommended Posts

cale

cale

Posted
Posted

Dark Souls

I've reached the first bit in the game that's feeling a little bit unfair. Trying to beat Capra Demon but it just seems like a crap shoot as to whether I even get to get a strategy together. The two dogs alongside him are really making it hard and that's where I'm hitting problems. If I go straight in and block I just end up in blockstun from the dogs, if I go in swinging I'm running the risk of being hit with his overhead attack.

I'm using fire upgrade resin on my sword to try and deal extra damage once I'm in there but mostly it's being wasted as I get killed before getting a swing off.

I'm not sure where else I can go in the game other than do this bit over and over again. I could go and do some Darkroot Garden stuff, I suppose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
joeplus

joeplus

Posted
Posted

I was investigating Dark Souls. Turns out it was £3.50 as a download for gold members. Bought it.

Only played an hour, not sure what I think yet. I made it past the opening level, but then got absolutely bennied by skeletons when I was exploring the next bit. The note on the ground "beware skeletons" wasn't greatly helpful.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ah

ah

Posted
Posted

Man it took me more than an hour to make it past the character creation screen.

You don't really need to go anywhere near those skellingtons for a fair old while yet! Do a bit more exploring, maybe look for slightly higher ground.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ah

ah

Posted
Posted

The well won't work for him since he just got killed by skellies, remember, you have to be in human form or you just die when you jump down there. Same deal as the secret area under the spider lift in Demon's Souls that everyone also thinks is a troll when you tell them. Their loss, I guess!

I actually played Demon's Souls yesterday and spent about an hour trying to do 3-1 without killing the passive dredglings. Should've just left the idiots locked up...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

It is EXTREMELY Esports, but the player roster is excellent, I'm a big fan of long sets and Gootecks is doing an outstanding job on commentary. Good stuff.

Their twitch channel is here: http://www.twitch.tv/esgn_tv

I paid moneys for the new Excellent Adventures because I love Gootecks and Mike Ross. So much so that I even enjoyed watching them play Hearthstone for forty minutes on their last show.

In other news, yesterday's SFO monthly was the best one to date. Write-up to follow.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

SFO Tings, then.

Please watch the grand finals archive before reading me spoil it as it was a phenomenal set.

Archives should be here: http://www.twitch.tv/sfotv

Can't get on Twitch at work to check, though.

So the first Sunday Face Off monthly at our new venue was a roaring success. 35 entrants for AE is crazy for a local, and it is amazing to me how much the scene has grown in both numbers and stature in the relatively short time I've been a part of it. Lots of work and lots of networking with other local and local-ish scenes has created an excellent little community in the North. There's a real buzz around the SFO events in the weeks preceding them now, and the number of folks travelling from out of town seems to be growing every month. Players came out from Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester, Teeside and Leicester amongst other places and it made for a stacked bracket. We were missing Benners, Brad and a few other people who are at the vast majority of SFO events as well, so there is scope for the next one to be even bigger. Hopefully the offer of Hypespotting tournament seeding and entry will help to entice people back too.

The new venue seems to be an ideal fit for the group's needs. It is not only bigger and inside a pub, but is also twenty seconds' walk from Leeds train station. These grimy little UK fighting game events are often held in whatever venue will have them, so it's almost expected to have to wander about and get lost in a strange town and spend ages searching in vain for parking. Not the case with SFO events from now on, which is a huge plus point when asking people to make the trip to Yaaarkshire.

The fantastic turnout, lovely new venue and some exceptionally hype matches made this the best SFO event to date in my opinion. I'm glad it was too, as my own performance was pretty shocking and I needed the hype and some fun casual sets to alleviate my salt.

The bracket is here: http://challonge.com/SFOJan2014_SSF4AE

Notable out of town folks included Fuzzy, White Daigo, Infexious, ProFluke and OverMostHeads. As mentioned earlier, Benners was the biggest miss from the SFO side, but Ghost put in an excellent performance to make sure there was at least one Leeds player in top 8.

Excellent to see Infexious back on the scene. Plenty of players there already knew who he was, and those who didn't quickly realised just how good he is. Loved watching him heroically attempt to apply Streetfighter fundamentals to Marvel and doing a fine job of it (a tournament winning job, in fact). Makes perfect sense for him to play Ironfist and Taskmaster as they are two of the most Streetfighter characters in the game. He displayed just the right amount of slightly disgusted head shaking after every match in Marvel too, even after he won. Nobody really wins at the end of a set in Marvel; you're both just sort of glad it's over and grateful if you got to play a bit. Then you hit rematch.

I wasn't surprised at all to see that I'd been drawn against Infexious first round in AE. Manchester ranbat flashbacks were happening.

What made this worse is that the odd number of participants meant that almost everybody got a first round bye, but old Jellum was one of the few who didn't. I had to fight Infexious for the right to get into what was first round winners for most of the participants. Curse you challonge!

My matches:

JLM (Chun) 1-2 Infexious (Dudley)

Mixed feelings about this loss. I definitely feel positive about being able to hang with Infexious when I used to be so utterly, utterly free, but I am also very disappointed in my failure to adapt in game 3.

The neutral game is all Chun in this match, though she is one of the more focus-able characters in the game and that has to be taken into account. Sweep in particular is very risky.

I made some adjustments as the set went on, in particular remembering the correct spacing at which I could throw a fireball and then follow it up with cr. mk to punish Dudley's duck. I generally played footsies well, used the right buttons and played the match up correctly. However, I felt towards the end of game two that if I didn't win it I was in danger of cracking. I think the pressure of being on stream and knowing just how good Infexious is made me think that if it went to a third game he'd have me completely figured out and I'd be done. He did end up making another adjustment going into the third game, and that coupled with me starting to get antsy ended up costing me. I had been abusing my walk speed and going in a little bit more than I should have, and Infexious began countering this by checking me with Dudley's fast cr. MP. I kept getting hit by these and I couldn't get myself to revert to what had been working earlier. Also a couple of Smuggles-esque standing roundhouse xx EX MGB whiff punishes put me off my poking game. Lastly, I think he picked up on my fear as the set went on and started peppering me with overheads.

So yeah, a good match and not a bad performance against such a strong player, but I'm definitely disappointed that I completely failed to stop myself doing the thing that was getting me killed even though I identified it while I was still playing.

JLM (Chun) 2-0 Byram (Zangief)

This one was comfortable. It's a winning match for Chun and also one that I'm confident in as I've beaten some very strong Gief players without too much hassle in the past. In this instance he didn't know the match up and didn't do a good job of mixing up his approaches and switching up his jump-ins, so keeping him out wasn't too tough. That said, he did get me with empty jump super and would have had empty jump ultra if not for an execution error. I think that was me getting complacent more than anything though. Played some casuals afterwards and myself and Hadoshrooms gave him lots of pointers on fighting Chun with Gief and on using Gief generally.

JLM (Chun) 1-2 TFC ShaunJS (Blanka)

Ugh, so very salty about this one. It's a match up I know well and have spent a fair amount of time and effort getting good at as Blanka used to be such a menace on Xbox Live. Shaun plays a good mixture of shenanigans and a super lame run away/poking game. Try to get some damage with gimmicks and piano electricity pressure, then close up shop and punish the opponent for chasing you down. It's the correct way to play Blanka, I know that beating him is a test of patience and yet I failed to display any whatsoever. Again I think being on stream didn't help, but I don't have any other excuses for cracking for no reason at all in this set. Took the first game very comfortably. He switched it up in the second and won a close set. I then lost all my patience and started chasing him around the screen whenever he established a life lead. You simply cannot do this against Blanka, as almost all of his tools are designed to punish you for walking in or jumping at him. I was playing like there were ten seconds left when there were seventy on the clock and I completely gifted him the third game.

1 and 2, then. Not a strong showing at all. Bit unlucky to start in the prelim round against such a tough opponent, but I shouldn't have lost the set against Blanka and have nobody to blame but myself for cracking so badly.

Had a fun set of casuals against a guy called Damien who beat me 16-5 or something ridiculous. Some of that was Ibuki Vortex, but I mostly struggled because his style was a sort of controlled insanity where I thought I had a handle on when he liked to reversal but then realised I hadn't figured it out at all. Never felt like I was in control of any rounds against him, even when I got a few maulings and dizzies with Dudley in there.

Also did some Ryu mirrors with Sith because it is the realest match. Always a good time.

I'm sure Sith will fill you in on his own tournament matches, but his loss against ProFluke in particular was an absolute heartbreaker that had everyone watching it wondering how the hell he didn't win. Infexious lost to ProFluke twice in AE as well, so I think El Fuerte lab work will be afoot in Manchester over the coming weeks.

Undisputed star of the show was, as you'd expect, White Daigo. He goes by Blaydon Ryu when he signs up himself, but I think the fact that White Daigo is his unofficial nickname chosen for him by other players makes it all the better. If he signed up himself using that name he'd seem like a dick, but he doesn't. I still struggle to understand how he is quite so good at this game given his age and experience.

The execution I can understand. A lot of people have that these days, and many more could have it if they put the time and effort in. He's still remarkably clean, mind, and will punish with you with solar plexus strike - > cr. mp - > standing mp - > roundhouse tatsu and other brutal max damage combos with alarming consistency. But yeah, I understand that if you have a combination of natural talent and willingness to practise that this is achievable.

However, the footsies and the reads he has are what I expect from players who have years and years of experience, and it's this that I struggle to get my head around. He has a good mind for the game, I guess, and I know he practises footsies against some very solid players, but at times he is Valle/Choi-esque and those guys have decades of experience behind them.

Grand finals was one of the best sets I've seen live. Fuzzy's Cammy is monstrous, Whaigo is the rising and Shaun from Teeside correctly pointed out that Cammy/Ryu is the ultimate good vs evil battle in Streetfighter 4. I wanted Whaigo to win pretty badly, and it took the most clutch of performances for him to do it. The series of reads at the end when Fuzzy clearly had the whole thing won was so ridiculous. He got right inside his head, knew he was too scared to uppercut and staged a comeback that was a joy to behold. He pulled off something similar against ProFluke earlier in the tournament, where he did meaty cr.mp into grab, option selected his back dash with sweep, did the meaty into grab again, punished the sweep again and then did uppercut FADC ultra when he suspected he'd made him crack. He plays those little situations so well, and when I've played against him I never know when to tech and when to worry about the counter hit. I think Whaigo holding his nerve in a longer set with a bracket reset thrown in for good measure was a bit of a breakthrough for him as well.

He had some cr.mk xx uppercut shortcut issues and Cammy is a particularly stressful opponent as well, so to avoid getting too flustered and cracking in those circumstances was impressive. He also popped off a bit after the match, which was excellent. He's usually the most humble and quiet of the Teeside players, but I can't imagine how difficult and satisfying that win must have been for him and he probably needed to vent some nervous energy as much as anything else.

A grand finals set fit to end a major rather than a local in my opinion. Watch it, guys, it was good. Also I realise that Ghost still hasn't uploaded Whaigo vs. OverMostHeads from Teesports. Will start hassling him about that soon as that needs to be seen too.

It really is excellent that a tournament of this size and quality happened on my doorstep and may well happen again next month. Who says London has to be the home of the UK fighting game scene eh? Just need to make sure that I'm better prepared next time, though this is very difficult with my extremely limited XBL opportunities. I am a bit sad at how my skills have deteriorated of late.

Oh, there was Killer Instinct as well but nobody entered because most of us don't have XBones. Still not sure if I can be bothered to learn it. Looks like fun and I think Sadira is an interesting character in particular, but I'm not sure if the emphasis on the combo/breaker guessing game rather than the neutral game is something I'll enjoy.

On Saturday I discovered that Red's True Barbeque does take out and got myself a beastly pulled pork sandwich, some 'slaw and a generous dollop of their lovely potato salad. I like that their potato salad has bacon in it. Always room for more meat. Considering how ludicrously difficult it can be to get a table in there, this is a very exciting development. If they started doing deliveries I think I would be an amorphous blob of a man within weeks.

6
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ah

ah

Posted
Posted

Awesome write up. Don't beat yourself up about the Blanka loss, just remember the lesson :-)

32+ is pretty crazy, hopefully they keep coming back because it looked like a great event. I think the first time I went there were 15 entrants and that was less than a year ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
JLM

JLM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Yeah, I will try to learn from it. I have the exact training I need to do in mind as well. I always come unstuck against oddly shaped characters where my preferred combos don't work on their weird crouching hitboxes. There is no point going into jabs against Blanka because jab - jab - fierce is extremely situational against him and will almost always whiff if he's crouching. Need to drill confirms into EX legs from a variety of different hits rather than just confirming off low shorts as I do now. At least that's something I can practise without relying on the internet being free.

I was mad about eating so many slides, too. I went for focus over and over again at the start to discourage slides, then after doing that three or four times I threw a fireball and he promptly slid under it. Still worth checking to see if a Blanka player is reacting or fishing, as I find it to be a good indicator of how good the rest of their game is going to be. However, once it was established that he was reacting I should have stopped doing it and didn't. There was one moment as well where I threw a pretend fireball using a fake button, got a slide out of him but then walked into it anyway! I am free. Walking in behind my fireball when I know full well they have an answer to it is a consistent bad habit of mine. I am all about taking up as much screen positioning as I can from every fireball, but I have to be aware that there are characters who won't let me do that. I go too autopilot at times. Did it too much against Infexious as well, though I at least improved on that as the set went on.

Nate, yeah, I immediately turned to Shaun and said "too early" when that ultra flash happened as well. Such and awkward thing to time as if he doesn't hold the buttons it will roll into me before I can get the ultra out. On the plus side, the commentators thought I was too late on the U2 juggle against Infexious and I knew that I wasn't. I would have been in Super but it hits a lot lower down now. Gave them a bit of an Aquasilk sideways glance as it landed. Heh.

Very very pleased with the attendance. This is the first SFO event to make a significant profit, which Ty will be investing in superior capture/streaming equipment for the group. There were some people there who didn't enter AE as well, including a few Marvel-only players who will travel anywhere at the mere suggestion of a Mahvel tournament. It's a shame the numbers are dwindling for that game in Leeds because the players are so passionate about it and I love it as a spectator sport. I suppose it doesn't help that Leeds' best Marvel player has to work almost every Sunday and therefore misses almost every event. There were also people in there who couldn't get there in time to register but still came out to support the event and spectate, so the total number in the venue was around 45. Patriot Games would have been bursting at the seams, so Ty did an excellent job upgrading the venue at short notice. I can think of 7 players off the top of my head who are at most SFO events but couldn't make this one, too.

Reducing the number of events and having a big monthly tournament instead of fortnightly ones has made a huge difference, as you get a large number of people making sure they have one day free with a month's notice, rather than watering down the numbers over multiple smaller events. I think the success of Rival Scenes and SFO players traveling in numbers to support the last Manchester Battle Arena and Teesside Fight Club events has established the Leeds scene quite nicely and convinced people that our events are worth the trip.

Was the stream a bit more watchable in terms of audio-sync etc. this time? Yingah from MBA has been helping with the technical stuff as he has a lot more experience than us in these matters, so hopefully things will improve over the coming months. Haven't been able to watch it myself as my rubbish back up PC finds Twitch archives quite a struggle.

I will be all over that Gootecks and Mike Ross show episode later. All over it.

3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ah

ah

Posted
Posted

UltraChen's extended breakdown of FSP vs Ghandi (Rufus player losing to "unorthodox" Ryu on stream at Dreamhack 2013) is pretty interesting, and has further diminished my aversion to hearing James Chen on the mic:

http://www.twitch.tv/ultrachentv/b/498801541

Takes about an hour for them to go through a three-game match so it's pretty slow paced. One of those things where you could write out the key points in about four bulletpoints - and none of them would sound particularly mindblowing - but seeing it all laid out like that probably makes it sink it a bit better.

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