In his effort to spread around as much Ultra Street Fighter IV knowledge as possible, Bafael has released yet another addition to his Primer series, this time focusing on counter-hits.
Understanding these unique hits work in Ultra Street Fighter IV can mean the difference between closing out a match with a win that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible and holding that loss. Counter-hits provide extra hit-stun, more damage, higher stun output, and sometimes even change move properties entirely, which makes understanding how your character handles these situations a key component to high-level play.
While the rules for counter-hits are typically universal, there are some exceptions. For example, Bafael examines the bonus frame advantage that Hugo receives in some situations, as well as the fact that Guile’s Sonic Boom can be countered well after its startup frames have ended, making trades against the projectile all the more valuable.
If you’ve missed previous videos from Bafael, follow this link to get your information fix.
We’ve got another round of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tech for you today featuring a good selection of characters and team compositions. Hopefully you’ll see something useful here, if not, there’s always the next roundup!
To get things started, we’ve got a clip from The Black Eye’s Kane Blueriver featuring Haggar. This combo dishes out massive damage and may be the best numbers that he can put out when left by himself. If you’re looking for a good way to secure that Mayoral comeback, this could be the strategy that you need.
In this interesting bit of tech from Marvelo, we see Captain America provide Doctor Doom with a hard tag entrance. Once the Latverian takes the stage, he’s free to do what he does best: let the Foot Dives flow! In this case, the resulting combo tops 900,000 damage, so it’ll take care of plenty of cast members without issue.
To close things out, we’ve got a team synergy showcase from e mc that shows off a team comprised of Super-Skrull, Doctor Strange, Storm and revolves around a hard tag followed by a Team Hyper Combo. If Skrull lands a throw in the corner, Strange can come in, activate the THC and unleash hand loops until the bad guys’ health drains entirely.
Sweden-based Marvel group The Marvelous Vikings have been pumping out useful Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tech videos for quite some time now. A great deal of those videos come from fallb0rn, who has become known for his mastery of Super-Skrull and Rocket Raccoon, among other things.
His latest, however, includes a lengthy set of incredibly useful reset options available to Dante when he’s paired up with the Master of Magnetism himself, Magneto.
These setups combine Dante’s incredible mobility with Magneto’s Disruptor assist to put opponents into a guessing game that could crack even the toughest defenses. Fallb0rn provides a look at both cross-unders and fake cross-unders, as well as Dante’s options should he expect something like a Foot Dive or an upward dash from a desperate opponent.
If your Dante could use a new best buddy, why not give Erik a shot?
A great deal of Phoenix Wright footage has surfaced in recent months, some of it practical and some of it anything but. The importance of knowing lengthy, high-damage combos as well as multiple paths to get them started can’t be stressed enough. It’s important to keep some of the more impractical tactics available to your character of choice in the back of your mind for when certain scenarios arise, but sometimes you just need some solid bread and butters to get you through the match.
With this in mind, Aonien has compiled a collection of combos that will come in handy during nearly every match and can be used in a variety of situations. You’ll learn plenty of ways to follow-up after an air grab (one even offers an opportunity to collect a great deal of evidence), how to hit-confirm into an Objection! for when you’re ready to enter Turnabout Mode, and some simple strings to take advantage of that mode once you start pointing fingers.
Whether this is your first time taking opponents to court or if you’ve won countless cases in the past, this footage has a lot to offer.
While many titles easily fall into the fighting genre, there are plenty of games out there that make use of common fighting conventions, but still remain largely ignored by the vast majority of genre-loyal players. One notable series that is often overlooked is Ultimate Ninja Storm, which is based off the popular Naruto franchise. These games combine beautiful cel-shaded art, a cast of characters that are easily recognizable, and battles that unfold in a manner that positively bleeds anime–in a good way–all while offering up plenty of the best aspects of our genre of choice.
Ultimate Ninja Storm provides players with the strategic depth of standard fighting games, but removes complicated combos and setups. These features, which fighting veterans undoubtedly love, ultimately work as a barrier preventing the entry of new players into the scene. In my personal experience, I’ve encountered difficulty getting friends into fighting games and have often wished for a way to bridge the gap between non-fighting titles and those that make the Evo lineup. Divekick has proven successful in this endeavor in some cases, but the single hit losses and often frenetic game play–while appealing to a great number of players from outside of the fighting game community–can just as easily put up the same wall as high execution requirements.
The first thing that any fighting game veteran will notice when stepping into Hidden Leaf Village for the first time is the simplistic combo system. If they want, they can mash the attack button to chain together a flashy string of hits and drain their opponent’s health. There are no fancy directional inputs or various strengths of attack to choose from–though there is a dedicated ranged attack button which some characters can use for ranged auto combos–just a simple button that leads to simple combos.
This combo system is akin to what you can find in Persona 4 Arena, though while Persona’s feature can, in some cases, work as a functional piece of larger combos, the Naruto combo system remains markedly more simplistic. Certainly, assists can be called and dash cancels can be used for combo extensions, but you won’t find yourself Tiger Kneeing any Dragon Punch inputs or worrying about landing a successful series of one-frame links to put a stylish end to your opponent.
So without a complicated combo system, what can you expect from this series? At the most basic level, fights revolve around proper use of your evasive maneuver (kawarimi). This mechanic lets players escape combos or, if timed correctly, avoid the first hit of a combo entirely and put themselves at advantage. This combo breaker resets a negative situation to a neutral one, but if your opponent is prepared, they can chakra dash to chase you down and put you into yet another combo. You can, of course, block this attack or escape in a number of other ways, but if you run out of resources, you’re going to eat a huge combo and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. This creates a bluffing system that adds depth to the matches and allows for advanced tactics much like managing bursts in airdashers.
While I would call kawarimi the core feature of the game, there are a number of other systems at play that work on top of the ease of combo execution to provide a well-rounded fighting experience: guard breaks, assists of varying types, parries, ring outs, a unique method for building super meter, and plenty more features combine to make a game that’s got a lot more going on beneath the surface than might immediately meet the eye.
Of course, if you’re a fan of the Naruto series, you’ll be pleased to discover that an impressive amount of the cast is not only represented in the game, but also playable. Additionally, you’ll find a lengthy story mode complete with voice acting and appropriate battles to keep you immersed in the action when human opponents aren’t around.
Interestingly enough, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is the most pirated game in Oklahoma according to Movoto. Sure, that’s only a single state, but taking into account that no other fighting game made the list (and that it was facing off against heavy hitters like Watch Dogs and entries in the Elder Scrolls series), you should have no problem finding someone to spar with.
Witty Gamer has provided an in-depth video introduction to the game’s mechanics as well some match footage to give you an idea of how the fights flow. Are games from the Naruto series for everyone? Certainly not, but if the videos pique your interest, there’s no reason not to give them a try.
[Note: All information presented in this article, as well as the videos from Witty Gamer, refer to Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. There has since been another recent addition to the series, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, which added new characters, new game modes, and new story elements, but left core gameplay mechanics intact.]
We’ve seen plenty of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 combo videos lately that focus on the game’s lesser-used characters, but sometimes it’s good to get back to the top of the tier list where all the popular kids like to hang out. In this video, pat728 partners Vergil, Morrigan, and Strider to dish out heavy damage in a number of situations.
Both Vergil and Morrigan take point throughout the video to do what they do best: dispatch enemy fighters. Clocking in at just shy of ten minutes, there’s a lot here to take in and, as with any combo video featuring Vergil, there are plenty of sword loops involved.
In addition to combos, pat728 includes some tricky incoming mix-ups that combine Vergil’s insane normal hitboxes with a Strider assist to open up all but the strongest defenses and get the damage going.
If you like seeing strong characters showing off how they got their reputations, this video is for you!
YouTube supporting 60 frames-per-second videos has changed the way that we view recorded game footage in the short time it’s been available. If you haven’t had the chance to take a gander at what this means for the fighting game community, you can follow this link to see a collection of footage that takes advantage of this new technology.
Below, you’ll find a Gouken combo video from DoinDamage that also takes advantage of the buttery smooth streaming quality that a true-to-game framerate allows. While the applications of the Red Focus mechanic in the footage are more for conceptual purposes than anything else, the blows that follow are positively stunning–quite literally in some cases.
DoinDamage has also included some handy resets that can make Gouken even more formidable, so give their video some of your time and see if you can add anything to your own game.
Today we’ve got another collection of short combo videos for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. These clips each contain a single combo for some vastly different teams. Let’s get started!
The first combo, from Broshadian, will change the way that you look at Spider-Man. When Peter Parker teams up with Rocket Raccoon and Deadpool, the Web Throws just keep coming until even the heartiest health bars are drained. It’s damaging, it’s fun to watch, and I don’t even want to think about how frustrating it would be to fall victim to.
Next up, The FatTreeWizard shows off some interesting tech when Super-Skrull buddies up with Amaterasu. It seems that after Ammy has thoroughly slowed things down, Kl’rt can repeatedly cram a boot into his opponents face for one of the most disrespectful loops in the galaxy. It’s the perfect way to close out any match!
To round things out, we’ve got a couple of videos from Eldon Moore that involve Chun-Li leading two very different groups of fighters into the fray. The first puts her with Rocket Raccoon and Dante to deliver an incredible 1.1 million damage before the blows stop coming.
The second manages to reach the same damage total, but this time Chun finds herself hanging out with Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath. Certainly an unlikely team, but not one to take lightly.
Venom47 is back with another round of impractical Ultra Street Fighter IV combos for your viewing pleasure. As with previous installments to this series, most of the combos will never make it out of the training room, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t fun to watch unfold.
As has become standard in all training mode-only combo videos, Decapre’s Psycho Stream makes multiple appearances and for once Dhalsim takes a crack at dishing out some damage while punching that purple ball of plasma. He may not be fast, but his long limbs keep him popping out fierces until the energy ball eventually dissipates.
Venom47 also included a handful of hitbox and hurtbox oddities that give us yet another look at what we already know: sometimes some weird stuff goes on when Hugo gets involved.
Damage scaling in fighting games is nothing new; it’s the reason that touch of death combos aren’t typically easy to come by. That doesn’t mean these combos don’t exist–they certainly do–but we have damage scaling to thank for keeping them mostly under control.
As with any mechanic, damage proration in Ultra Street Fighter IV has a lot of nuances that play into how much health any given series of hits will drain. Everything from number of inputs involved to the remaining health of your opponent can keep combo damage lower than expected. In his newest video, Bafael explains how all of these pieces fit together to give us the system that we have today.
While this information will benefit newer players the most, it’s important for all serious players to understand how to properly optimize combos so that they can weigh the benefits of using, say, a multiple input target combo to hit confirm instead of a couple standing strongs. The difference in damage could be enough to result in a win where an opponent would have otherwise limped to victory on a single magic pixel.
If you’ve missed previous videos from Bafael, follow this link to get your information fix.
