Category: Fighting Games

With his unique style that focuses on using nearly full-screen space control to set up mixups and offense, Dhalsim is one character that some players may have difficulty approaching in Street Fighter V. Any who’ve faced off against Dhalsim’s current version know that he’s much trickier than any of his previous incarnations.

Those having trouble with this match up can take heart, as none other than the Beast himself, Mad Catz’ Daigo Umehara, is here (with help from Jiyuna) to offer a new video showing his strategy for fighting against the Yoga master.

Do note that Daigo is approaching the matchup primarily as Ryu; that said, most of the tactics he discusses can work for most of the cast.

Source: MCZ|Daigo Umehara

The atmosphere is heating up for this month’s St. Charles, Il., tournament, Combo Breaker. Earlier today, the event’s website revealed details on the results of cooperation between Ultra Arcade, Ultimate Source, and the Killer Instinct Community Fund.

Provided by the Community Fund, a $3,000 pot bonus is up for grabs at the event. What’s more, the winner also automatically qualifies for the next Killer Instinct World Cup, which crowned this year’s champion, Rico Suave, with a hefty cash payout. Those who finish in top 16 will also be awarded points toward qualifying them for the World Cup.

Furthermore, every participant at the event will receive a free Ultra Arcade x Combo Breaker t-shirt and a KI wristband. And if that’s not enough, the highest placing competitors who exclusively use Fulgore, Hisako, Sabrewulf, Jago, and Shadow Jago will earn a Wave One figure of that particular character from Ultimate Source.

Stay tuned to our ongoing Combo Breaker coverage as May 27th draws near, and be sure to read up on the other games’ pot bonuses revealed so far.

Source: Combo Breaker

Last weekend saw DAT Team, London’s premier Super Smash Bros. tournament organizers, host a two day, tri-game national called Albion. This event saw Smashers from all over the continent gathering in London to fight it out to claim the Albion crown. In the midst of all the hype and spectacle, we got a chance to have a brief chat to Tom Scott, lead tournament organizer for DAT Team and notable London Ike player, to talk about the UK meta, DAT Team’s growth and the general state of UK Smash.

Sam “Trilby” Foxall: First off, how do you feel about DAT Team’s growth in the past year?

Tom Scott: To be honest, we didn’t really exist a year ago. Well, we kind of did. How DAT formed was literally a case of me running tournaments by myself at the Heart of Gaming with ‘Dat Smash,’ with them going pretty badly as I was running them by myself. So, Ben and Eve (two other integral DAT Team members) came up to me and said ‘we’re helping you now.’

SF: I remember being at DS6 and it not running as smoothly as planned.

TS: It wasn’t ideal. The venue wasn’t the best place to run things. The people of Heart of Gaming are cool, but the venue was suited for around 60 people and we were having 80 or 90 people turn up, along with other people playing arcade games at the venue.

SF: What are DAT Team’s plans going forward for the next 6-12 months?

TS: The first non-professional plan is to finish uni and actually do what I need to do in that regard outside of Smash. After that, I’m not sure at the moment. We’ll probably have a sit down and have a meeting to say what we need to do as a team. The rest of the team isn’t that interested but personally, I want to start running more Melee events as I know a lot of the Melee community and they are really cool guys.

SF: That’s actually something I want to ask, with Albion being a tri-game national, do you think this tournament is a step forward for UK Smash unity?

TS: I’m not going to say just yet, but I feel that it’s a start because we haven’t had a dedicated Melee and Smash 4 event in the UK for so long. It’s really kind of sad that it hasn’t happened until now because both scenes are cool. Maybe in another 6 months or so we’ll do another Albion, but I’m keen to stick to October rather than May. May is packed full of things with exams and other events so we’ll steer away from that, but we do want to do more events like Albion in the future.

SF: How about with Dat Blast Zone?

TS: DBZ will stick to being just Smash 4 as that’s when the Smash 4 community is dedicated to doing their stuff, but I might start doing dedicated Melee tournaments as the alternative. With Albion 2, we may try for a Nintendo sponsorship.

SF: Did you approach Nintendo at all in regards to Albion?

TS: We spoke to the UK community manager, but there was the big issue of Project M being here. I always wanted to do a Project M tournament as PM still has a very active scene here and I wanted to make sure they had some representation but next time, we may leave PM out. As much as we want all 3 games here, a Nintendo sponsorship is very hard to pass up. That’s the main thing for growth of DAT Team, really.

SF: How do you think the UK stands up compared to the rest of the European scene in both streaming events and general player skill?

TS: In terms of streaming, we are only second to GeekyGoonSquad for stream quality. There are some kinks we do need to work out, especially scheduling games for the DAT Team streams as at the moment, it’s very much ‘this game looks good, we’ll get you two on stream now.’ We’re going to start really planning out our programming so we know this game is on next, then this game and so on. That’s for Smash 4. Melee unfortunately doesn’t have that much actual streaming in the UK. I know the Midlands has some tournament streams occasionally, but there really isn’t much else out there which is a shame. I really want to start hosting Melee to boost streaming for them, but I’ll need to get a separate streamer for that I think.

As for player skill, that’s a super difficult question. It’s kind of the same for both scenes, the UK only really has one player. Well, actually, we’ve got two. For Melee, it’s Professor Pro and Fuzzyness, with Ixis and J Miller being our two major talents for Smash 4. We really struggle on a global scale because we’ve got these top players then there is this enormous gap until you reach everyone else.

SF: Well that’s my next question, what can the UK do to improve?

TS: That’s really hard. First off for Smash 4, the best player in the UK in my opinion just doesn’t enter tournaments. KillerJawz has such an understanding of the game that every time I talk to him, I come out a better player. People need to talk to him and get some tips from him as he is the best. We say at DAT Team events that KillerJawz is here, he will help you improve at the game. He won’t just help you improve by telling you how to beat this player, he will help you get good at understanding Smash 4 as a whole. His mechanical and technical knowledge is pretty much perfect so players just need to talk to him. For Melee, I’ve been out of the scene for a long time so I can’t really say what the UK has to do there.

SF: For Smash 4, do you think there is anything that typifies the UK meta that makes it different to Europe or the US?

TS: We’re very untechnical. The rest of Europe is very aggressive and technical when it comes to how they play while the UK just isn’t. Besides Ixis who is very technical with his Sonic, the UK is very neutral heavy and we avoid the flashy aggressive stuff because we lose neutral. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s bad. The best example would be to look at Khanage, our best Peach compared to someone like EOE or Meru. His technical knowledge is lacking, but his fundamentals are solid, which is pretty typical of the UK.

For any more information on DAT Team, you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook for the latest information on any tournaments in the London area and make sure to tune in to twitch.tv/datteamlive every Monday night for their regular Monday Meltdown tournament stream.

During the recent PLAY Expo Blackpool event, the folks at Manchester’s Battle Arena were able to get quite a bit of time with a console version of the soon-to-be-released Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, which featured two of the upcoming characters, Raven and Kum Haeyhun.  In these videos, we’re treated to a brief look at each of these fighter’s intros, colors, normals, specials, Overdrives and Instant Kills. General overviews aside, we also get to see players face off with them in real matches, showing how their various tools can be applied in the heat of battle.

Several move interactions and properties are also tested throughout these videos, and some attention is even paid to the new FAQ option available from the Pause Menu, which offers answers to such queries as, “What kind of characters are there?”  “How do I do the Special Moves?” and “What’s a Roman Cancel?”

You can see both videos below.

Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- is set to release on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on May 26 in Japan, June 7 in North America, and June 10 in Europe.

Source: MBA GAMING

Tier lists are frequently at the forefront of many players’ minds, and it’s no surprise that among Super Smash Bros. for Wii U’s big cast there are a few characters left collecting dust. The tournament scene in particular is often prone to pitting the same fighters against one another on the same stages over and over.

Competitive Smash Bros. player TSM|ZeRo takes a closer look at a few underused characters in his latest video. ZeRo discusses five characters that he sees having more potential than what players have tapped into so far. For example, he discusses the complexity of Shulk’s Monado Art management, which not only adjusts the character’s strengths and weaknesses on the fly, but opens up advanced tricks with Art landing cancels.

Check out ZeRo’s opinion below, and let us know if you agree with his list in the comments.

Source: ZeRo

Evil Geniuses’ Momochi recently continued his Street Fighter V lecture series with a look at “The Perfect Victor,” Karin Kanzuki. With limited playable appearances to her credit, the heiress to the Kanzuki Zaibatsu may be unfamiliar to many players who started with Street Fighter IV. 

As is customary with previous videos in this series, Momochi begins by breaking down the archetype this particular character falls into before spotlighting some of her notable normals for footsies, hit confirms, and anti-airs. He then shifts focus to her specials, making sure to spend time on the myriad of branching mixups the noblewoman has at her disposal, as well as the properties of her just frame Tenko.

Momochi closes the lecture by explaining the uses of her V-Skill and V-Trigger, as well as showing off some highly damaging combos.

Lastly, he notes that, “while she has the impression of a difficult character, if you master Tenko, everything else is pretty straightforward,” so don’t let the size of her moveset intimidate you.

But Karin isn’t the only character Momochi covered in recent days, as he also released a video focusing on one of Street Fighter V’s new challengers, Rashid.

Though perhaps known more for the catchy beats of his character theme than his performances in competitive play at this point in the game’s life, the Middle Eastern fighter certainly packs plenty of tricks to compliment his love of gadgetry. These include his unique non-step dashes that give him access to quick throw mixups and special, motionless versions of his Spinning Mixer and Eagle Spike.

As always, Momochi uses a hand cam to display him performing his inputs for the viewers, while taking them through Rashid’s normals, specials, combos, Crush Counter confirms, ways to build V-Gauge, and mixups. He then moves on to discuss Rashid’s V-Skill and V-Trigger, noting that the unique movements the character is afforded with Ysaar is the main reason to use him.

Source: Momochi & ChocoBlanka TV

Putting together much of what we’ve gone over in past articles in this series, it’s easy to see that a huge part of leveling up involves putting in matches against an opponent. Understandably, the people you play have a major impact on how you approach the game. If you consider that a major part of improvement is reflection, it makes sense that the people you play against will have a big part in that.

That being said, who do you play against to get better? Locally, you have limited control over who you get to play with regularly. Your local scene is a great resource for feedback, but you live where you live; unless you’re willing to travel, your immediate pool of players will be small. However, with the advent of netplay (which we’ve discussed before), you as a player have much more control over your competition.

“Find someone your skill level to practice with!”

I don’t think this is wrong. Actually, this is pretty good advice, but personally, I don’t think it’s enough. Since my goal is not just improvement, but to aim for consistency, when I’m getting started in a new game or with a new tactic, I like to:

• Play someone under my skill level
• Play a random player/someone I’ve never played before/someone I don’t play often
• Play a peer (as in, someone at around my skill level)
• Play someone significantly above my skill level

Play someone under my skill level

Usually, when I want to try out some new tech, I’ll go online and try it out on a random player. If I determine that they are under my skill level, I’ll definitely be sure to try brand new strategies, confirms, strings, etc. (when I say “brand new,” I mean probably 1-2 days old). I like doing this because, personally, it’s hard for me to implement something new. It usually takes me a little while to force myself to try out new techniques, combos or strategies in an actual match.

Play a random player/someone I’ve never played before/someone I don’t play often

I lump this into the same group. What I like about playing someone I don’t really know is that I can’t be sure how they’ll react. If I have no data on the player, I can’t use a player match up as a crutch, and I’m forced to rely on my knowledge of the opponent’s character. This is especially important in a game like Guilty Gear or Street Fighter V, where there can be many ways to play a character since you can’t necessarily convert a hit into a knockdown.

On top of that, because I have little or no information on the player, I am forced to adapt to them quickly if they do things that are unusual or outside the scope of my character knowledge. To be honest, this is probably the best practice for pools; you never know what you’re going to run into in pools.

Playing a peer

Again, playing someone that’s around your skill is commonly given advice to new players, and it certainly is effective. It’s a pretty healthy way to play, as neither of you will overwhelm the other all the time. It’s good to have someone that is improving at about your pace; they understand how you think, they understand your problems (since they likely have similar issues), and you can speak to them about the game at the same level. You can also measure each other’s progress against other players. This point has been a huge help to me in the past.

Playing someone significantly above my skill level

Generally, when I talk or ask people about what types of players they like practicing against, they don’t really mention this one, but I really like this category when I’m starting out. It feels like bootcamp. I feel like getting mercilessly rolled over by someone will give me a lot of input about a character or the game in a short amount of time. Not only that, when I go back to play someone at or below my skill level, I often feel like it is much easier (and it is).

Now, you wouldn’t want to simply play one specific type of player. I’m under the belief that to be your best, you should try to play against all of these types of players. The reason why you’d want to segment them out is so that you can know what you can take from the games (from a reflection standpoint) after the session.