So Ryu's Back

After watching and waiting my boy Ryu is back and with a bang in 2012 Apology Edition. I was messing around with Gouken and some hit me, Gouken is really dependent on frame traps and other gimmicks since he can't convert off light hits. It really kinda sucks plus he has poor reversal options. So I may have to look at switching out Gouken for Ryu.

Ryu is pretty simple up front but does have some solid mixups and frame traps of his own. Meanwhile Cammy waits in the wings. According to Daigo Cammy and Ryu are both some of the strongest characters in the game. It's one mans opinion so take it with a grain of salt, although this is Daigo talking so that merits a heap of motherfucking salt.

Season's Greetings, and may the new year bring you a new UMvC3 team.

How's it going people? Just wanted wish everyone reading this a Merry Christmas!

So I've been spending the better part of the last few weeks working on UMvC3. I've been doing a lot of work trying to find characters that I like and that I can make a viable team from. So I essentially started with Dr. Doom who is a solid character with somewhat easy execution, and played around with a number of other characters including Nova and Wesker.

After a few weeks of work with various characters and gradually increasing my execution, I played with one character that I never thought I would mess with due to the reportedly high execution requirements. C.Viper.

The reports of her difficulty are not an exaggeration. Her B&B combos are not the hardest thing in the world they just require specific timing of air dashes and fast fingers. What makes her really high execution is some stuff you might have seen from MarlinPie, that would be the rapid seismo.

So a neat little trick of a lot of Vipers moves are that they are jump cancelable. So if you want to you can do a seismo, input a jump and before the jump comes out, cancel to another seismo. It's really difficult, but it provides her with a really good zoning tool. I'm still working on that trick. But the short answer is that I've found probably what will be my point character in Viper.

I'm still working on the third character, right now I'm running a variation on MarlinPies teams using Viper/Doom/Ammy. I'm going to keep focusing on Viper/Doom but I'm going to experiment with Magneto and Iron Man. I got rocked by an Iron Man a few weeks ago and it makes me think that the character is not as bad as everyone thinks.

Anyways, signing out for now. Check out twitch.tv/vgbootcamps I'll be on that stream from time to time playing and hopefully commentating in the near future.

Happy Holidays!

Season's Beating, UMvC3 and AE 2012

Greetings everyone,

It's been a while since I last updated my blog. But I've been a little busy with work and other such things. But on a brighter note, Season's Beatings was a ton of fun. I got to meet a bunch of my favorite players and got in some great matches with a variety of people.

As far as my performance goes, I know I went in woefully unprepared. My first round was found against a solid Chun player. I lost in convincing fashion. My second match was versus another young Chun player, who was doing his best but threw out some random Ultra's and while I punished her I know I should have made that match a blow out. My last match was versus a great Ryu, I completely forgot my fundamentals and went into autopilot and got blown up as a result.

I know as a player I have a lot of growing up to do, I have a bad tendency to loose focus of my opponent. I stop watching their character and go to autopilot, it's a bad habit.

On the brighter side of things though, I started playing UMvC3 and I rather enjoy the game. I'm still kind of in the process of soul searching for a team. I have a couple characters figured out, Doom is always the most solid of my characters, with Strider providing support with his teleport kick assist. Strider is a little hard to control and lends himself to lots of resets and mixups. My final slot I belive I may have to give to Vergil, I have to test some things out but I think he will work out well, need to get to the lab for that.

Most importantly AE will be getting the 2012 patch in just about a week and I am very excited. With the new patch I'm going to take a look at making Gouken my main, with Evil Ryu as a secondary. Gouken hit's like a truck and lend himself to a more controlled pace where he can zone with a fireball game and explode for a ridiculous amount of damage. Evil Ryu is someone I'm interested in after seeing Mr. Naps do a fantastic job with him. He's like Ryu but has way more damage potential, from a solid FADC combo he can easily rack up around 400 dmg.

My final thought for the night is towards a new arcade stick, I think I'm going for the Eightarc Quanba which is already dual modded and has gotten solid reviews from people. I need to have a PS3 compatible stick, I found out recently that my converter tends to drop inputs. On a related topic I pretty much am going to have to starting making my way out to our local gathering place Xanadu Games and play on PS3's more. Also we have some great players for both games out there.

That's about all for tonight, Peace

Jon

Season's Beatings just got even more hype

Greetings,

As if they weren't even hype enough Seasons Beating's confirmed some really cool events they are doing plus one of my personal favorite players is coming over to the US for the first time. Uryo is coming out. I would love to get some casual matches in with him if possible. We shall see.

Anyways, this weekend is Xanadu Games local monthly tournament. I'm going to step up and bring out Ibuki and Sakura. My only issue right now is a lack of live experience plus they are playing on PS3's which is a pain, there is a definite difference between the two systems. So I'm heading out there tonight to get some casual practice and see if I can get my combos and execution to work right on the PS3 platform.

Peace out, will let you know how the tournament went.

Season's Beatings

So, I've been working hard at Ibuki for a while now. Things are starting to workout, I still need to work on my execution but it's getting better gradually. I signed up for Season's Beatings in October. This is will be my first major in a very long time, but I look forward to it a lot. I'm taking a friend of mine along for the ride since they have never been to one of these events. It will be a good road trip, there will be a good number of international level players there including Mike Ross, Gootecks and Poongko. 

Since I'm only entering one event, AE I'm going to help out and volunteer at the event as well. Also in the area on Oct 1st is the Xanadu Games local tournament as well. It will give some good practice of being on the stage with Ibuki. I wish to god her U1 didn't suck so much, you can only nail people with that on reversal. None of the setups I have are safe at all. Fortunately I've gotten decent at super jump canceling her U2.

On a side note, after witnessing the power of Cammy I think I will use her as a secondary, I'll start to cultivate her. She has high offense, very fast with great pokes. She does a lot of damage. She has a little more health than Ibuki, some of her links are a little more forgiving than Ibuki's 1 frame ones. Also a nice thing is she actually has a good srk that doesn't require meter to make useful.

Ibuki

So I was playing around this weekend and someone suggested to me that I take a look at Ibuki if I like a speedy aggressive character. Lo and behold I really like Ibuki, shes very similar to her Third Strike version.  She can push into your space easily and good lord the mixups. I found a few people on xbl to help me work with her, so pretty much I'm going to commit to using Ibuki only for the next couple months. No more hoping between characters.

Reason for Sakura

Here are some clips of probably one of the best Sakura's I have ever seen. These are a few clips from Godsgarden 4. This is where you have a tournament of the best Street Fighter 4 players in all of Japan, Singapore and Korea.

Take a look at the damage she can get off some B&B combos.

You have solid B&B combos into great damage, mixup potential, zoning. I'm going to enjoy beating people down with Sakura. Going to be in the lab tonight working on the basics and maybe get some online matches.

Sakura

So after some long session with Makoto the other night, I think I'm going to take up Sakura. She has great mixups, solid pokes, good damaging combos and based less off of the guessing game than Makoto is. I really like playing Makoto but I think for more or less the style I think is more my speed Sakura will have to take over for Makoto. I'll still work on her, and keep working on her from time to time and learn the matchups to cover those bad ones that Sakura has. But I feel that Makoto at the time is a really advanced character that I'm not ready for. 

After seeing Uryo's work at Godsgarden the other week it makes me feel like I can make Sakura work for me. I'm not jumping on the Sakura bandwagon simply because of that, but I think overall the style will fit me better.

I saw a really good Gouken the other night and it was pretty nasty.

Rumors of Makoto's demise greatly exaggerated

So, after playing around with Akuma for a while. I'm going to stick it out with Makoto. After some time in the lab, some things are starting to come together for me. I still get bodied but I'm learning quick some of her mixups.

I still hate the Ibuki and Sim matchups with a passion. Although Ex. Oroshi is finding more use these days as an anti poke where a TK axe kick won't do. 

Main character change for the moment

After playing around with Makoto for a while, I've decided in order to improve my basics I'm going to work on Akuma as a main character now. He's a shoto,can help with my fundamentals of the same and is just an all around fun, but damage character.

Secondary Character

So after thinking about it for a while and doing some research, I think I'm going to learn Akuma as a secondary character to cover the match-ups that Makoto has a problem with. His style of attack and guessing games/damage potential is similar enough to Makoto that it works for my playstyle.

Words to the wise

So just as a side note, I have a ton to learn. But I have a year to do it in.  Makoto has to be the character with highest learning curve, if anyone wants to pick her up cold be prepared to loose a lot. Online play especially can be frustrating with the complete random BS that floats around and lag. But battle through it and you will be rewarded with a beastly character that will body just about anyone with a few bad guesses.

Makoto Basics Part 1: Normals

Morning peeps,

I'm going to review the Makoto basics in the next few posts. It will be broken down into Normals, Specials, Super/Ultras, Combos, Footsies, Defense, Offense etc.

First off lets do a review of the notation that gets used. I'll use the standard Japanese notation. Below is a diagram to help understand.

My button notation comes from Third Strike. Just a quick review.

jab = lp
strong = mp
fierce = hp
short = lk
forward = mk
roundhouse = hk

example: s.mp = standing strong

A lot of what I'm talking about it's good to go into training mode a check out. Makoto has a lot of normals, the majority of them are darn good. But it's a lot of work to go into the details of each and everyone.

So in some cases I'll provide links to comprehensive reviews that have been done of her moves before. I'll just give my opinion and what I happen to use them for. This is less of a guide and more of a review of what I know at the moment. I'm not going to touch every normal move, just the ones that are more or less useful.

s.lp: standard jab, it can be canceled into a hayate or into itself. Safe on block +2

s.mp great normal, big hit box, lots of active frames. Great for frame traps, +2 on block, +5 on hit. (can do 2 x s.mp, 0 frame link)

s.fp: slow normal, can be used as an AA. Unsafe on block. This is mainly used in your Karakusa combos (more on those later)

s.lk I don't use this much on it's own, it's a little slow for my taste 5 frame start-up. Can combo into a hayate if you want.

s.mk I use this as a far anti-air. Can be used to counter poke but your better off using s.mp since it gives more frame advantage and comes out faster. Can't be punished on block (-2)

s.fk: I hardly ever use this one, it's a big meaty attack with 8 start-up frames and 8 active frames.

c.mp: great poke, can combo into Hayate or Ex-Hayate. I tend to use this when poking at mid range as a way to move in. Hit confirming this into an Ex-hayate leads to the wakeup game and up close and personal time which is where Makoto is the best.

c.fp: oddly enough this is one of her two sweeps, the one I use more often than not. 

c.lk: good poke, can combo into Ex-Hayate. Can be used in her post-Hayate guessing game.

c.mk good poke, makes for an odd AA like Juri's c.mk. Doesn't combo into anything.

c.fk big roundhouse kick, long range, don't use it much

f.mp: this is a great move as it advances you forward, is safe on block, can be used as a meaty and has the ability to stuff a lot of other normals. When in mid range can be used to push in closer into zone where Makoto does best, up close and personal (i.e. karakusa, s.mp, c.mp range)

f.fp: great meaty, tap fp twice more to get extra hits.

f.lk: Makoto's odd thrust kick. This is unsafe on block, I don't use this as a poke. This normal can be used to kara-cancel in her command grab (karakusa). It significantly increases the range of the grab which is where a lot of her most damaging combos come from. Takes a little practice to make it work but well worth it. Starting to work it into my play style.

f.hk: Makoto's other sweep, your not going to use this as a sweep. If you hold the roundhouse button this turns into a feint where she just steps forward. Right now a lot of my kockdown mixup game comes from this. If you start the move next to their body, this move will cross over their body to the other side, making it very useful.

As far as jumping normals go. There are only a few I use:

nj.mk 10 active frames so it makes it great for safe jumps.

fj.fp Makoto's hurtbox on this move is very small so it's very difficult to beat mid air.

fj.mk useful for crossups, but most of the time Makoto's cross ups come off a knockdown or using Tsurugi.

I'm still spending a lot of time in training mode learning how to use these.


I'll cover her specials at a later time.


Peace

Statement of Purpose: Evolution 2012

Greetings everyone,

I'm creating this blog in an effort to chronicle my year long training to prepare for Evolution 2012.

Just to give a bit of background on myself I'm a 31 year old scientist, martial artist and gamer. In the early 2000's I got in competitive fighting games. I grew to love the fighting game community and the games themselves. I played Third Strike and CvS2. Recently with the release of Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition I felt the urge to re-enter the scene.

After watching almost non-stop the Evolution 2011 tournament I have made it my goal to prepare as much as I can and go to Evolution. I'm going to document my progress and my thoughts in the process. 


In Street Fighter I main Makoto, and I'm still looking for a secondary possibly Juri.


I'll give you my current feelings on Makoto since I mained her back in Third Strike.


Makoto doesn't really fall into the standard archetypes of characters (i.e. Grappler, Shoto....) She's in a class of her own. She's capable of blowing you up just like she could in Third Strike through the use of her really nice normals and nasty high damage/ high stun combos. 

I'm in the middle of grilling dinner so I will have to write more later on.