Nash has been a proverbial yo-yo throughout the course of Street Fighter V. After experiencing success in the hands of players during Season 1, Season 2 saw him suffer due to heavy nerfs. He saw a bit of help in Season 3, but with a new balance patch coming in this week, players of the character had every right to be nervous.
According to SonicSol, he has some nerfs, but also some buffs that help him out. While his V-Trigger II was nerfed to the point that SonicSol suggests that no one will use it, V-Trigger I was buffed to the point that you have far more options using it.
We’ve enjoyed plenty of fresh BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, since the game has been showcased at several conventions as well as Anime Ascension, Aksys Games’ own tournament. On one hand, it’s easy to ogle the dynamic 2D action — however, in order to get the edge on opponents, it’s time to get studying. A couple of players who attended the Anime Ascension tournament took the time to write out their impressions, including the latest overview of the game’s mechanics.
Method|Flux, who is competitive in BlazBlue: Central Fiction, wrote out a BBTAG system mechanics primer. He goes over basic controls, noting the default stick control layout and explaining normal attacks. Interestingly, it seems like 5C, the Crush attack which is a universal overhead, seems to have some kind of additional input during it with specific timing that increases its damage. Flux goes over the Assist system as well. Another aspect worth pointing out is that Dragon Punch moves are completely unblockable for airborne characters, so such can work well as anti-airs. Pushblock, which is executed during blockstun, is done the same way as the DP.
As for his general opinion on the game, Flux wrote: “Neutral feels fairly grounded and focused on fundamentals/jockeying for screen real estate. It felt like while playing the game that anything I could think of in terms of setups and combos was achievable if I could execute it correctly. Offense feels strong with the potential to be outright cheap. I said to the people I was playing and myself many times: I wonder if I can do this? And the answer was almost always “yes.” I was able to find ways to exploit the games’ lack of cross-up protection fairly easily, but it isn’t without hope!”
If you’re curious about some character-specific impressions, Spectro wrote about playing Weiss and Es. Kuma wrote a detailed overview on Chie Satonaka.
Street Fighter V, FGC personalities, and reality TV collide.
ELEAGUE has revealed a new spin on their upcoming Street Fighter V Invitational for 2018. Get ready for ELEAGUE The Challenger: Street Fighter V, a five-part reality TV series that will feature “an entertaining clash of personalities, as cameras follow seven contestants in an Atlanta-area house while they face off in Capcom’s classic fighting game Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition.” The show will follow the participants throughout the greater Atlanta area as they complete “challenge” activities to earn a spot to compete in the SFV Invitational event (starting in June).
“Seven contestants. One house. One champion.”
So, who are the participants of this esports-inspired reality show…?
You’ll get to see Commander Jesse, LowTierGod, Sherry Jenix, gllty, BigBossDayasha, RobTV, and JB fight it out in the Street Fighter V house. Tasty Steve and Sajam will join as co-hosts.
ELEAGUE The Challenger: Street Fighter V debuts on TBS on Friday, April 20, at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT. New episodes will arrive weekly, airing each Friday at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT on TBS.
Enter the mind of Supernoon in this video interview.
If you didn’t watch the Dragon Ball FighterZ tournament at the NorCal Regionals, you missed an amazing moment in fighting games. While it came as no shock to some that GO1 and Moke squared off in the Grand Finals, the run back with Chris G and Supernoon provided more than enough excitement for the crowd.
Fresh off his 3rd place finish during the event, Supernoon sat down with BornFree to talk about his history with fighting games — which reaches back to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 — how his name came from a typographical error, and how he feels about the balance of Dragon Ball FighterZ at this point.
Alongside the reveal of Hayate and Sanane last week, ARIKA president Akira Nishitani also mentioned that a new mode would be coming to Fighting EX Layer. Now, we know what that mode is: Expert Mode.
A recent video post by ARIKA’s Ichiro Mihara shows off how Expert Mode works. Veterans may remember Expert Mode from the Street Fighter EX games, where it’s analogous to the trial modes in other fighting games.
Players pick a fighter and then try to complete one of a number challenges for that character. These challenges are ranked according to difficulty, with the video example showing off C, D, and E rank listing for trials — though we assume that we’ll get A and B rank ones in the final game.
SNK has revealed the final character in their second batch of DLC fighters for The King of Fighters XIV. Joining Oswald, Heidern, and Najd is none other than fan-favorite Blue Mary.
Introduced in Fatal Fury 3 Road to the Final Victory, private investigator turned freelancer “Blue” Mary Ryan made her King of Fighters debut in KoF ’97, having been hired by a “mysterious benefactor” who ironically turned out to be Geese Howard, eternal rival of her close friend (and speculated love interest) Terry Bogard.
Part of what makes Mary such a popular character is her unique moveset, a form of Combat Sambo that involves a combination of fast strikes and takedowns — not something often associated with a female character.
On the PlayStation Blog, KoF XIV producer Yasuyuki Oda shared some insight on developing Blue Mary’s moveset, stating that “Blue Mary has always been a challenge to design as a result of how complex her grapple moves are to animate.” He continues by sharing how he actually had to get physical during her development back in the ’90s. “At one point, one of the designers working on Blue Mary, Youichiro Soeda, actually used me as a training dummy to show off some of the attacks he had in mind to the rest of the team. Just watching this new trailer of hers, I think I can feel my neck hurt a bit…”
You can check out this trailer — and some screenshots of her in action — below.
The balancing act between authenticity and efficiency.
The prince of Final Fantasy XV has been mostly well-received by players in Tekken 7. Whether it’s his ease of use or just the visceral thrill of punishing whiffs from full screen, Noctis seems to have made the translation from RPG to the fighting game genre better than predicted. (Having the game’s easiest and most consistent Death Fist punishment tool certainly doesn’t hurt, either.)
Unfortunately, one RPG element didn’t make the translation over to fighting games so smoothly — his damage. More specifically, the FFXV hit-spark introduced with Noctis’s release.
Bandai Namco had the best intentions when it made this hit-spark. This equipable damage-effect modifier shows the exact value of the damage dealt every time you hit an opponent, just like in Final Fantasy. They even went the extra mile made it give a “9999” value when you win the round with Noctis’s Rage Art — an obvious nod to Final Fantasy‘s maxed-out attacks.
Unfortunately, it’s not the idea that’s the problem, but the implementation. Instead of just displaying the “9999” number for laughs, Bandai Namco actually made the last hit of Noctis’ Rage Art do 9999 damage, in the event that the last hit would have killed anyway. This wouldn’t be a problem normally, but now that Tekken has three-meter using characters (Eliza, Geese, Akuma), this essentially means Noctis can’t win a round with a Rage Art without giving these characters full super meter! Whoops.
You could make the argument that this is a balancing tool for these match-ups, since Noctis’s teleporting f+2 effectively negates projectiles. This argument holds exactly as much water as how much you believe linear fireballs are the central part of these characters’ neutral game in the sidestep-heavy world of Tekken. The simpler explanation is that Bandai Namco just didn’t keep this in mind when it designed the critical hit nod — at the time of this writing, there’s been no word from Bandai Namco on how intentional this side effect is.
In the meantime, if you’re playing Noctis, it’s probably advisable to not combo into Rage Art in these match-ups. Thank god your Rage Drive is good, huh?
Witness the end of the Azure Saga for free — with a subscription, of course.
Anyone thinking of getting into the BlazBlue series — and happens to have a Japanese PlayStation Network account — is in luck. The most recent game in the series, BlazBlue: Central Fiction, is available for free with a PlayStation Plus subscription for the region.
BlazBlue: Central Fiction represents the finale of the “Azure Saga” that began with the first game in the series, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. As such, it contains the most complete cast of characters so far in the series.
Both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 versions of BlazBlue: Central Fiction are available for free. However, those looking to obtain the title only have until May 8, 2018 to download it, and will only have access to the title with an active PlayStation Plus subscription.
Mikado Arcade is known as the home of competitive Japanese FGC play for a dizzying amount of classic titles. While most of these take place in the signature Mikado tournament series Street Fighter Carnival, that’s not all there is to the legendary arcade. An example of this is the extremely dedicated group of players that make up the Marvel Super Heroes scene in Mikado.
For those unfamiliar with MSH, a large part of the mental game (and mechanics) are built around its Infinity Gem system. This system allows players to enjoy new mechanics and buffs, which you can read further about at the SRK Wiki.
There’s a lot of history and hype around the MSH tournaments at Mikado Arcade. If you want to know more about the history of this MSH tournament, be sure to read our on-site reporting from previous Marvel tournaments!
It’s been well-known for decades that you don’t want to mess with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, lest you end up shell shocked! The cast of Injustice 2 now has to learn this the hard way, with the quartet having made their way into the game via DLC.
With the popularity of the characters, you knew that combo videos exploring their capabilities were inevitable. This one focuses on Raphael, the bad boy of the group. And his combo capabilities prove that. With ambiguous cross-up setups, great interactable usage, and amazing midscreen combo abilities, you’ll see more than enough turtle power in this video.
: 
