Month: April 2016

ESL’s Mortal Kombat X competition returns today with the first weekly tournament in their third seaosn. Similar to previous seasons, the first few rounds of this online tournament have narrowed the playing field down to eight competitors in each region, who will be going at each other’s throats today to earn their way towards the grand finals event next year and its $200,000 prize pool.

Some of the more notable players you’ll see participate this week include cR|Sonic Fox, UA|Scar, Jupiter, st9rm, Harry NightMare, Sakr0n, Arzu, and more.

The stream is live below, but you can also visit Twitch if you prefer to chat with fellow viewers. Europe’s portion of the event begins at 11 AM PDT, 2 PM EDT, with North America following at 5 PM PDT, 8 PM EDT.

Watch live video from NetherRealm on www.twitch.tv

Sources: ESL, NetherRealm

It’s safe to say the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U community isn’t all that fond of Bayonetta. Sure, some have made light of her strengths, and there are folks who genuinely enjoy playing her. I’ll admit she has a fun array of tools at her disposal, but it wouldn’t be out of line to say that the fun tied to these tools stems from the fact that many of them are, in the current state of the game, blatantly overpowered. To make an analogy to Super Street Fighter II Turbo’s Akuma would probably be a bit much, as Bayonetta doesn’t necessarily break the game’s rules, but at the same time, she doesn’t exactly play by them either.

Upon her release, folks were afraid the guest character’s decent-at-best frame data would prevent her from being effective, but her combo potential–among other things–soon dissuaded anyone from calling her out on mediocre buttons. She’s fast, she can tack on damage from a distance, she has numerous ways to turn hits into kill situations at relatively low percentages–and, you know, sometimes at no percentage–and she has Witch Time, perhaps one of the better moves in the game.

It’d be easy to argue that, on paper, a character this powerful demands immediate balancing, especially since players are capable of using her to end grand finals matches in under thirty seconds. The important question, though, is do all of her strengths–and the fact that they largely outweigh any weaknesses she may have–make her worthy of a tournament ban? The Spanish Smash community recently decided that they do.

Now, these decisions are never easy to make–banning a character, barring any obvious game-breaking glitches, is tough, and often brings to question whether or not a given community has taken the time to fully analyze what weaknesses they have, assuming there are any. With this in mind, Team SoloMid’s Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios recently took to Twitter to note that he doesn’t agree with the ban so early in the life of the character, and went on to say that he’d like to learn to beat her–a truly noble cause.

Anyone can make such claims, but ZeRo was quick to put forth ten tactics to use against Bayonetta. Granted, these tactics aren’t going to change the fact that she can potentially secure a stock with little effort, but they’re definitely a start. We’ve included these tips in the drop down box below, so you can give them a look for yourself.

While the Bayonetta ban still isn’t official, ZeRo’s tips should definitely help those in desperate need of advice.

So what do you think? Is Bayonetta worthy of a ban until Nintendo addresses her current state? Let us know in the comments.

Sources: ZeRo, Smash Bros. Spain, Grewardz, Rush Hour Smash