Month: May 2016

Just prior to the release of Street Fighter V, old-school Street Fighter player Graham Wolfe emerged from a long period of relative obscurity to show players the strength of classic Street Fighter fundamentals in Capcom’s newest title. Since then, Wolfe has made relatively few tournament appearances on the grand stage. However, he has remained hard at work behind the scenes digging into the fine details of Street Fighter V and posting his findings to Twitter.

In these Tweets, Wolfe focuses on common gameplay situations that many players continue to fail to punish, whether through lack of practice or simple lack of knowledge.

For example, Chun-Li’s instant air Lighting Legs can be hit clean with a delayed crouching jab by most characters (with Zangief and Birdie using crouching strong). Jabbing too early will whiff, causing the attack to hit you, so head to training mode to work on the timing.

Despite its slim, low-profile appearance, Karin’s sweep leaves a 4F hurtbox during its recovery, allowing it to be punished on block with a variety of moves, such as a reversal Dragon Punch. In addition to worthy matchup knowledge, this is a great lesson on the abstract nature of hitboxes and hurtboxes versus the appearance of a character’s model.

Continuing down the list, Necalli’s fierce Dragon Punch is invincible on startup, making it his go-to meterless reversal. However, the attack can actually be low-profiled on startup with moves such as Chun Li’s slide, or a well-placed crouching forward. This allows you to apply safer pressure, and force Necalli to take some risks or spend meter if he doesn’t want to block.

Wolfe has created a blog that collects this great information in one place. Pay a visit and check out his Twitter page to keep up with the latest tricks that can keep you from letting damage slip through your fingers.

Sources: Graham Wolfe

During my time playing and exploring Namco’s experimental hybrid fighter, I have become fascinated by one of its quirkiest system mechanics: the Phase Shift. When Namco first advertised this game’s switching phases, I believe most gamers (myself included) were focused on the phases themselves. How does each phase play? Do the buttons change for the same move? How will you play the game with one Wii U? Etc., Ad Nauseam, forever and ever until the end of Pokkén.

At the time, what got lost in the noise was the switch itself. Phase switching isn’t just a simple swirl of the camera; it is, more and more, the meta-defining mechanic that determines your combo length, pressure, wake up timing, and other options. It is, perhaps, the very heart of this game’s future.

And Psyant seems to believe this too, making an incredibly in depth video covering the subject!

A Phase Shift is far from a random chance occurrence. The game employs an invisible point system of “phase points” that accumulate every time you hit an opponent. If you’ve explored Pokémon games down to their nitty gritty details before, this may bring back memories of IVs. IVs were invisible stat points in those games, and it’s possible Phase Points are some sort of call back to this secret depth.

All Pokémon have a 12 point limit in each phase, and once one Pokémon reaches 12 points, the Phase Shift occurs. Different moves get different knockdown properties once the shift takes place, so knowing your safe jump timing off of, say, a charged Field Phase Counter Attack vs. a charged Duel Phase Counter Attack is a big deal.

You can also reset the phase points to 0, as demonstrated in this silly (but useful for demonstration purposes) Blaziken setup. It turns out that the windbox from Burst Mode activation always resets the phase points to 0. Another thing that causes Phase Shifts are combos that reach 21 hits, and this is a (very expensive) way to circumvent that.

Keeping track of your phase points will help you maximize your knockdown and damage opportunities. This is powerful information, particularly if you like to employ okizeme-heavy gameplay (read: Lucario, Garchomp, Machamp…) But how can you keep track of that which cannot be seen?

Thanks to Pokkén player SSJ-Luffy, this information is now readily available for the whole cast. Cozy up with this excel sheet, grab a cup of coffee, and get to work on manipulating those phases to last as long (or as short!) as you need them to.

Sources: Psyant, Monkey D Vegetto, SSJ-Luffy