Month: June 2018

“The damage is too high.” “Burst sucks.” “DP and Reversal moves are scrubby.” “The game is easy, and execution and skill don’t matter” — those are some of the opinions you may have seen floating around BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Indeed, the game does make some bold design decisions, but, according to accomplished BlazBlue: Central Fiction player PG|SKD, naysayers shouldn’t dismiss the game too quickly.

“In a nutshell, I think this game really rewards good strategy and application, so I think those are two aspects that make it a good fighting game,” writes SKD in a post on Team St1ckbug. “There is a high ceiling for deep, effective strategies. The game gives you so many options, the ensuing ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ can become really layered. Calling it ‘RPS’ is not really applicable at that point though, because the practical outcome is that a lot of wins come down to coming up with better strategies and applying them rather than winning the RPS.”

SKD goes on to counter a lot of the negative opinions and misconceptions floating around BBTAG. He said that the damage isn’t too high, unless it’s a Reversal Action punish or a non-mix-up starter. Tagging partners helps counter the high chip damage in the game, especially from Resonance Blaze mode. SKD does bring up Jin and this strategy (Jin can effectively spam his full-screen super to chip down an opponent’s health to 1) and recognizes that it’s a little too strong currently.

He gives a lot of advice about Cross Bursting, as some people believe that it’s too strong and others that it’s too weak, since it loses to anti-airs, assists, and Reversal Action. According to him, the key is watching the Cross gauge and understanding how much resources the opponent currently has. SKD also addresses the auto-combo system and the notion that some characters are watered down from their respective games:

“I see a lot of things like ‘I wish I could do Hyde’s 6B! How could they deprive my favorite character of his best normal?” The best normal in UNIST context is not going to be the best normal in BBTAG context. You may not actually need to, or want to use that normal, and that’s fine. Even if it was good, Hyde did not have an assist in UNIST,” he writes.

“You have to play these characters in BBTAG, not in their original games. To be honest, I do think that the characters were ported relatively well, and retain the meat of what made them ‘them.’”

It’s definitely worth to check out the whole article on Team St1ckbug as SKD addresses a couple more misconceptions. All in all, SKD professes that BBTAG is worthy of your “love, respect, and admiration” and is a good game on the competitive (and casual) level.

Source: Team St1ckbug website

Last March, we reported that the organizer of Community Effort Orlando, Alex Jebailey, had reached out to Kenny Omega and New Japan Pro Wrestling to put on a live professional wrestling event in Daytona Beach, Florida during the event’s first night. Well, as we’re now less than two weeks away from the festivities, we now have the full match card from top to bottom, as well as livestream details. Mark your calendars, because those who are unable to attend live can still enjoy the action of what looks to be an absolutely stacked card, featuring many of the Japanese promotion’s finest. The matches we’ll be seeing are as follows:

• Special Tag Match: The Golden Lovers (IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi) Vs. Los Ingobernables De Japon (Tetsuya Naito & IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion/ Best of the Super Juniors 25 Winner Hiromu Takahashi)
• Special Tag Match: Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH) Vs. CMLL’s Dragon Lee & Ryusuke Taguchi
• Special Tag Match: Bullet Club’s Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tonga Loa) Vs. Juice Robinson & David Finlay
• Special Singles Match: Jushin Thunder Liger Vs. Roppongi 3K’s Rocky Romero
• Special Singles Match: Jeff Cobb Vs. The Bullet Club’s Chase Owens

Tickets for the event are on sale now, ranging from $20-$100 (before fees, via TicketMaster. Over 8,000 seats at the Daytona Beach Ocean Center will be available on Friday, June 29th.

For those unable to attend in person, CEO and NJPW are going to ensure that no one has to miss out on this top-notch wrestling action, as the entire event will be streamed live on twitch.tv/ceogaming at 8:00 P.M. CST.

There will also be a special commemorative event shirt that can be bought on-site, featuring the entire match card listed on the back, while the front has JeBailey and Omega re-enacting the infamous handshake from X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, which will also be made available on Pro Wrestling Tees for online ordering for a full week after the event. You can see a picture of the shirt, as well as match graphics, below.

 

No meet and greets are planned for fans to interact with the NJPW stars. Unfortunately, as many of the Strong Style practitioners are traveling directly from Land of the Rising Sun for this show — but if something can be arranged, Jebailey will make a formal announcement to let everyone know. There will also be Dark Matches for the live crowd in attendance, in addition to the 5-match Main Card scheduled to run around 2 1/2 hours.

No commentary team has been announced for the streamed broadcast, but provided they don’t get some FGC notables on the mic, we’ll potentially receive the English New Japan World duo of Kevin Kelly and Don Callis. Stay tuned to Shoryuken for any additional developments concerning the event. For additional concerns, visit the FAQ section of ceogaming.com/njpw.

Source: ceogaming.org/ceoxnjpw