There are many people enjoying the chance to play the Beta for Injustice 2 right now; some are enjoying the lore details we’re getting, some just like playing it early, and a few are reveling in the early competitive edge they’ll have at tournaments. In this effort to explore the new game–for whatever reason each player has–content creators are already putting together combo videos for the new game.
One such content creator is YouTuber ETCChile, who has put together combo videos for Mortal Kombat games in the past. He sets his sights on the Dark Knight this time around. The video contains combos that may of course change at some point leading up to the main game’s release, but seeing the combo extensions and side switch combos in their current state is still pretty exciting.
Relative newcomer to the world of esports–and one of the handful of fighting games in the platform fighter category–Brawlhalla hasn’t been shy about making waves. Between the rare free-to-play model for a fighting game and the professionally-dressed nature of its scene, the game and its community have been making big strides into carving out their own niche as an FGC.
Despite having a World Circuit that’s running full-throttle this year, Brawlhalla hasn’t cut back on its constant influx of new characters. The latest character reveal shows off Nix, an apparent mid-range character with long-reaching command grabs that help her control space and get kills. She can use a scythe or twin guns, which seems to give her a balance between pure damage and superior zoning potential.
The King of Fighters XIV World Championship just went down in Tokyo; aside from the tournament itself, many were excited for an expected big reveal at some point during the event, and thankfully we were not disappointed.
There was an announcement that Classic Iori would be available Febuary 23rd, but the most eventful news was that there will be 3 new costumes, 2 new stages, and several new characters were on their way. While no solid release date was given, the costumes were said to be available “Spring,” so the wait shouldn’t be too long.
You can see the alt costumes below. Meitenkun’s Pillow transforms into a stuffed cat doll, while Sylvie’s purse transforms into a tiny wolf bag. Kula doesn’t seem to get any noticeable model additions aside from the dress (though we do get a clear look at her normally-covered hands), and Angel gets darker skin and horns along with her attire.
The stages that were announced can be seen in the slideshow below. These are said to be free for all users, and feature one train-themed Mount Rushmore stage, while another features what looks like a section on a race track.
As for the new characters, our best look at them is this silhouette. It’s anyone’s guess who they are presently, but more details should be released next month.
While at first glance it appears to be 3 characters, it may in fact be 4 new additions; you can most easily see this by counting the number of left legs you see on the right side of the image (there appear to be 3) and then of course the character crouching on the left side of the image. While it’s hard to make out right now, that hasn’t stopped fans from outlining who they believe to be hidden in this image:
After nearly 20 years of Guilty Gear, the series has visited quite a few different art and sprite styles, along with several different genres altogether. This varied history is familiar to some of us and a whole new experience to others, which naturally comes with the territory of any seasoned franchise.
To help with both new players learn their roots and give old players a dose of nostalgia, the folks at Indie Achievement have seen to it to create for us a visual journey along the evolution of Guilty Gear, visiting each fighting game, console, and genre up to today’s Guilty Gear XRD -REVELATOR-.
With Injustice 2 mere months away, and an ongoing closed beta for lucky players, the excitement is at an all-time high for the next entry into the Injustice series. While most of us still don’t have access to the beta, we can all appreciate and explore the lore of the games and what we might expect from the upcoming title.
Recently we enjoyed a history lesson from History Behind the Warrior, wherein he taught us about the first four of the five years of a growing Superman regime, leading up to the events of the first game. Here, he brings the preceding story to its conclusion with one final video.
He also briefly goes over everything we know about which characters have died in the Injustice universe. He covers some commonly-known deaths, like Lois Lane and that universe’s Joker, but also goes over every confirmed death in the prequel comics. The most interesting death is of Swamp Thing, who has been confirmed to appear in Injustice 2. There have been several people called Swamp Thing [or not really people at all… – Editor], so we’ll have to wait to see whether this is a new Swamp Thing or the old one resurrected. Another interesting death is John Stewart, who appears as a alternate costume for Hal Jordan (presumably) in both the first and second games. This likely confirms there will be no significant story attached to those DLC skins.
Directly opposed to the theme of the above video, here we have a very interesting theory about Green Arrow making a return to the Injustice universe. The Green Arrow from the original Injustice universe–as the above video covered–was murdered by Superman, and the Green Arrow that appeared in Injustice: Gods Among Us was from the universe with the good Superman. However, with the inclusion of Black Canary, Oliver’s wife, we have some interesting possibilities. During the prequel comics Black Canary was sent to an alternate universe where she met an alternate Oliver, so there is a possibility that she comes back with that Oliver Queen in tow. This is made more likely by some select dialogue found in the Injustice 2 beta. Watch the video for the full breakdown.
Despite being over 15-years-old now, Super Smash Bros. Melee is still incredibly popular. It enjoys a lasting community and tournament scene, despite having two sequels–which for nearly any other game would have more or less put an end to that. This wide popularity does beg the question though: just how much longer is Melee going to keep kicking?
This question, among others, are addressed in Yahoo Esports’ latest Melee Mailbag episode. The host of the show, Daniel “Tafokints” Lee, estimates the time left for the game, considering the fact that it’s still going strong, and growing each year. He also addresses whether or not the Melee meta is stagnant, and looks at some of the things he’s excited for in the coming year.
Recently it was announced that some last minute Skullgirls changes would be tested through the Beta to address some new one-reset-kill tech that was found. The first of these changes went through testing a week ago, and after as much testing as a week allows, a final list of gameplay changes has been announced. The list of changes is pretty short, and thankfully doesn’t change much for most players; they’re mostly designed to soften the damage just enough to prevent those optimal routes from killing as efficiently.
As for the changes themselves, they primarily focus on lowering the potency of damage and resets at maximum undizzy–called Drama in-game–and they also offer a few character-specific changes to reduce the damage they can do at max undizzy. Here’s a list of the non-bugfix gameplay changes from the Steam page (there are several bugfixes and non-gameplay changes in the full patch notes), including the character-specific changes:
Overall Gameplay Experiments
ALL damage when above 240 undizzy is simply scaled by an extra 45% (to 55%, 1000 -> 550), with the same minimums as normal.
When undizzy is at 240+, the bar waits for 6f after recovery from hitstun before starting to decrease, so that resets must give the defender a larger window before no longer being penalized.
Snapping out a character on a trio now locks out both assists, not just the one you snapped out. This also locks out DHCs to both characters, and in general makes playing a trio riskier.
When undizzy is at 240+, the attacker always gets the minimum damage-scaled metergain and the victim always gets the maximum.
Big Band
All versions of A-Train are now IPS tracked, and can grant undizzy or IPS bursts if not chained into. (For IPS it counts as a separate special move from Brass Knuckles.)
He now can’t use taunted supers during the same combo that he gained the taunt.
Taunted Super Sonic Jazz -190 damage. At full scaling having a taunt gives almost exactly one extra super’s worth of damage now, instead of more than that.
Beowulf
Non-super versions of Canis Major Press are now IPS tracked, and can grant IPS and undizzy bursts if the grab-mode-starting attack wasn’t chained into.
Cerebella
Pummel Horse is now IPS tracked, and can grant undizzy or IPS bursts if not chained into. (For IPS it now counts as Excellebella, because they are both combo-able grabs.)
The last hit of Excellebella assist only and all followup damage is force-scaled to 33% maximum. (Raw assist 1650 dmg to 1047 dmg.)
j.HP scales damage to 75%, to give her slightly less reward for how much blockstun and priority it has.
Valentine
Purple poison now decides whether it will be max-undizzy-scaled or not when the syringe hits, and doesn’t change any time after that.
The international anticipation for the SNK-hosted King of Fighters XIV World Championship has reached a fever pitch. The event will be taking place in Tokyo, Japan, and will be broadcast across several streams in Japanese, English, Korean, Cantonese, French and Español. It features 16 different players who have won various regional qualifiers over the past few months, so the competition is sure to be intense. [See the list of qualified players here. – Editor]
With such a wide-reaching event, it can be a bit hard to keep up with what’s going on. Luckily the fine folks at Orochinagi have set up a guide for the event, listing details on all 16 invited players, all streams, and the time of the event in various different time zones. For those of you in the US, the event will be on the 18th at 1:00 AM EST, or the 17th at 10:00 PM PST, and will be streamed on the TeamSp00ky channel.
Skullgirls is a game that’s generally described as being fairly balanced, with a large percent of the cast being competitively viable with few incredibly unfavorable matchups. This isn’t to say that such matchups don’t exist, but today we’ll focus on one that may have just gotten a lot more fair.
One of the harder situations to deal with in the game is Peacock vs. Beowulf with Big Band assist, purely because of the team’s ability to punish Peacock for nearly anything she does. This domination Beowulf/Big Band seems to have over Peacock was most prominently shown last Combo Breaker in the cR|dekillsage vs. SwiftFox-Dash, but some new tech could change the pace of the match a lot. Dekillsage is here to show off this tech, but makes it clear that he was initially shown this by Lawnba.
The Smash community has become so wide-scale that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Between just the 2 main Smash titles there is a lot going on, sometimes you just need cliff notes just to stay informed. Now we have just that, in the form of “Smash News”: a relatively new series from the Beefy Smash Doods, focusing on catching players up with recent and upcoming happenings in the scene.
This episode briefly covers the Smash Summit voting, which has just begun, and covers how it’ll work overall. They also go over worldwide tournaments being held for Smash games, and where that $100,000 pot bonus is going. They also cover some other topics, such as player standings, newly sponsored players, and events to look out for.
