A collection of tools to help Shadaloo’s number two fight like he’s number one.
F.A.N.G is Street Fighter V‘s resident low-tier oddity, a character that becomes attractive to play solely out of the challenge of proving your skill with a sort of “handicap” — but F.A.N.G can still be devastating in the right hands. And the thing is: his unusual set of abilities makes him deadly on account of his encounter infrequency alone; not knowing the match-up can lead to a fatal dose of poison for many opponents, giving new prospective F.A.N.G mains an extra edge, albeit a small one!
rooflemonger thought the current up-to-date material available out there for players looking to pick up the poison-slinging assassin was a bit too sparse — so he decided to put together these helpful video guides. Start by learning F.A.N.G’s bread-and-butter combos, and okizeme game!
To add some extra slipperiness to your assassination game, rooflemonger also offers an over-twenty-minute look into F.A.N.G’s blockstring and mix-up potential, discussing the sneaky tricks needed to keep your enemy on edge.
Use Okinawan Karate (and more) to bust open some old-school-style heads in this upcoming indie game.
Indie developers Steven Miller, David Miller, and Gary Angelone are aiming to bring some retro-fueled violence to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with “intense, skill-based” action-platformer Okinawa Rush, a love letter to classic side-scrolling brawlers, platformers, and RPGs in one. Behind the cartoony sprite art, the game sports a gameplay engine that borrows heavily from fighting game sensibilities: utilizing a broad move set, a combo system, and “parry anything” mechanic.
In addition to single or multiplayer action, the game will feature RPG elements in the form of a detailed story mode, shop system, multiple playable characters with different backstories, and dojo maintenance that will affect your fighter’s abilities. You’ll even be able to improve your stats by practicing katas.
To try the demo, head over to the game’s Steam Greenlight page. You can watch the Super Best Friends try it out for themselves in their YouTube video below (note, NSFW language!):
As of this writing, Okinawa Rush has met its crowdfunding goal, and there are still about twelve hours left. Head over to their Kickstarter page for more detailed information about the project and its developers; they have claimed that if their goal was met, the game would include a guest character: the Baz from Divekick! We’ll have to keep an eye out for confirmation as the project goes forward.
With the official release of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite just a week away, Capcom Japan has seemingly started releasing small video featurettes going over certain characters moves. The first of these involves Iron Man, and goes over just how different he is from his previous incarnations.
Coming into Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, Iron Man has received a revamped moveset that’s designed to make him a better zoning character. The biggest changes are the replacement of his “Repulsor Blast” and “Smart Bomb” moves with the “Repulsor Array” and “Smart Mine” moves respectively. These, the moves that have remained, and a few combos are featured in the video below.
While big brother Melee has enjoyed several invitationals with events like Smash Summit and Yahoo Rivalries, the Smash 4 community has been rallying to get its own invite-only tournament. Well, VBGC has finally answered the call and is hosting Smash 4’s first big invitational — named the Smash 4 Boot Camp.
Hosted between December 7th-10th and with $10,000 up for grabs, its structure will be familiar to anyone whose tuned into Smash Summit. There are eight already invited players, two wildcards which qualify by placing highly at either The Big House 7 or GT-X and then six fan voted contenders. The eight invited players are as follows:
TSM|ZeRo
CLG|VoiD
MSF|Larry Lurr
RNG|Dabuz
MVG|Salem
P1|Tweek
FOX MVG|MKLeo
NRG|Nairo
Much like Smash Summit, there will be plenty of other events and side activities alongside the main tournaments. If you have your own ideas for potential activities, put forward your thoughts via this sheet. For extra information on the event, check out the official Smash 4 Boot Camp smash.gg page. Player voting will commence in early November, so start thinking of players you’d like to see at Smash 4’s first major invitational.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is the third entry in Square Enix’s Final Fantasy fighting game franchise, and it’s a massive departure from its predecessors. If (somehow) you did no research on the game’s arcade run and found yourself in the beta, you would have likely been surprised to find that the Dissidia series has now morphed into a 3 vs. 3 team game.
Before we begin, let’s get something out of the way: I doubt that Square Enix and Bandai Namco (makers of the new Gundam Versus arena fighter) conspired together to run betas of their team-based fighters on the same weekend. The coincidence did make it difficult for me to not compare the two, particularly since I had interest in both. I feel like both of these games target the same respective crowds of franchise fans, while teasing open-minded FGC players with interesting system mechanics. I will restrain myself from mentioning Gundam Versus any further in this article, other than to say that my experience with Gundam Versus did not help — or hurt — my opinion on the Dissidia beta. [But I would definitely expect to see some very direct comparisons between these titles in the near future, especially after this one launches in 2018. Our impressions of the open beta for Gundam Versus can be seen here. – Editor]
The official in-game tutorial video.
As a brand-new player to the Dissidia series, I found Dissidia’s offense relatively easy to pick up. Even though the UI is overwhelming at first, and the in-game tutorial neglects some surprisingly important information (for example: HP Attacks are unblockable!), it only took a game or two before I began to feel like I was really in control of how to move and what attacks I wanted. Dissidia’s dashing/flying mechanics require just the hold of a shoulder button, and the combination of auto-locking and an evasive sidestep make the defensive aspects of Dissidia simple, smooth, and inutitive.
By far the biggest problem I had was losing control of the camera. It could be likely that manipulating the camera is just not a skill playing other fighting games has taught me, but the somewhat limited turning range the camera made it really tough to keep focus on what I wanted to. Sometimes action, or my proximity to a wall or building, would move the camera in a way that left my character completely out of frame, which was frustrating. I felt like by the time I was finally getting my bearings on how the camera works, the beta was done and over with. Controlling the camera was by far the most negative experience I had in the entire time of the beta, and I’m hoping that it becomes a little more clear upon release what actions will cause the camera to unalign.
Offense is easy to get to grips with because it is relatively simple, and largely based around footsies. On the surface, it seems like there’s a lot of weakness in defensive play: you can be guard crushed, sidesteps have very vulnerable recovery, and an opponent can only dash away for so long before their dash meter depletes. Combine that with the unblockable HP attacks and you end up with a game that rewards baiting whiffs or forcing mistakes and punishing them.
And I could probably stop there, were this a 1v1 game. But, ultimately, this game is about two things: positioning and teamwork. While, yes, you can outplay someone in neutral and do sick combos (to an extent — it is possible to cancel some attacks with dashing, and wall splats leave the opponent open to attack), that will only get you so far in a Dissidia match. Without a communicative team and awareness of Summoning Cores across the field, it’s easy to have a game go south very quickly.
An example of high level play from Japan’s 2017 National Tournament, commentated by Jaghancement.
Summoning Cores are large crystals that spawn around the map during the course of the game. Smash em’ to fill your summoning gauge. Once it’s full, one (or all) of your teammates can start holding down a button to call the summon you picked prior to the game. Summons are very powerful: they fill the screen with giant attacks and give various buffs to your party (or debuffs to the opposing team.)
Now is a good time to mention one other mechanical problem I had with the game: targeting the Summoning Core. Sometimes I’d sit there staring directly at the Summoning Core and would hit the “Target Switch” buttons, and it would continually spin me away from the core and target a member of the opposing team. This was frustrating — but I eventually found I could get the game to cooperate sometimes by just looking away from the Core after a failed attempt to target it, then look back at it and successfully select it. I suspect this a bug that will get ironed out, but I am surprised it happened to me with the frequency it did. [In my personal experience, I could target Cores by holding down both Target Switch buttons simultaneously, which should lock on to the nearest target. But even this was kinda twitchy in practice. – Editor]
Because of the power of Summons, there’s lots of fighting around Summoning Cores. Though battles can be won or lost long before a Summon is used, the fact that they exist and are so powerful makes it too important to ignore. I’m mentioning all this to tie in an earlier point I made: the team aspect of this game rules all decisions.
Without communication and awareness of your team, it’s easy to get wiped (or wipe your opponent’s team) because someone was a weak link, or someone didn’t go after a crystal. Each team has 3 “lives,” and you can theoretically kill the same person 3 times and win without touching the other two opponents. This will likely be the biggest thing that drives away many potential players that are more interested in the fighting part of this arena fighting game. Dissidia’s old 1v1 mode has yet to be confirmed, and even if it was, I kind of find it difficult to imagine some characters that were clearly balanced for 3v3 mode being even remotely viable in a 1v1 mode. More than once I would find myself paired with two random Cloud players and automatically know what the fate of our team would be. Shockingly, I couldn’t find a way to switch characters once a team was made, if there even was one. In a game where team composition is so crucial, it baffles me that this isn’t an option (yet).
If there’s no 1v1 mode, that almost definitely will reduce competitive play to just online, and… whew. Let me tell you. Six people all playing in the same game from around the country can result in some horrendously unplayable matches. When Dissidia’s netcode behaved it was a beautiful thing, but I think I was blessed with playable connections only about half the time. Otherwise, games either chugged, or matches straight up dropped at the beginning. I also occasionally would wait up to 10 minutes to find opponents. That may be forgivable right now due to the nature of a closed beta, but it still worries me.
Overall, I enjoyed the beta a lot, and I found that each character I played brought a uniquely deep set of mechanics to the battlefield. When I was locked in combat versus another person vying for positioning, the mental game was addicting. Every game left me wanting to play more, and 2018 seems really far away because of that.
But for every good decision in character depth or game design, I see a potential red flag for this game’s success and longevity. There needs to be a solution for the netcode, and at least some sort of custom ruleset to allow 1v1s. Without at least one of these issues being addressed, I think the core of the FGC will simply not be interested enough, no matter how good the game is. And while that’s a shame, I wouldn’t blame the average FGC player for thinking the 3v3 team game wasn’t for them.
Get a closer look at the in-development Omen of Sorrow with this preview exhibition.
AOne games brought their in-development horror fighter Omen of Sorrow to First Attack 2017 a week ago, and have since uploaded the footage of an exhibition match they held at the event. Bolillo pits his Vladislav III against Mcfly’s Zafkiel, while commentators James Chen and UltraDavid provide their thoughts. Watch it here:
Learn more about AOne’s Omen of Sorrow on their official website.
Body Count Fighting is back with the third entry in their title-defense series. At BCF2’s conclusion, two champions were crowned: Frank “Slayer” Perales had retained his Injustice 2 championship, while Long “LPN” Nguyen defeated Jesse” Command Jesse” Espinoza to claim the Street Fighter V belt.
At BCF3, two new belts will be up for grabs for Tekken 7 and Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. In addition, BCF3 will have 5 undercard matches, making this event — by far — the largest BCF event to date. Below are the scheduled fights:
Even though its official release is still a week away, more than a few players have gotten access to early copies of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite through stores breaking street dates. A few of these players took to the internet to stream or share their findings about the game.
Below, you’ll find some interesting bits of tech, as well as more than a few combos from some players who’ve been putting their time in their early copies. The most active of these has to be Splyce’s Filipino Champ, posting videos on Twitter.
One of Champ’s findings is that Haggar actually finds power-ups when using his new barrel special. These will either give him super meter or gem meter when he picks them up. Sadly, it seems that there’s no life-giving turkey to be found under those barrels.
Haggar can randomly find items that gives him some Super meter or Gem meter Blue Can = Super Meter Pink Can = Storm Meter #FchampMvci101pic.twitter.com/SYgZBWP6Vl
Of course, Champ has also put in the work for Dormammu — the character he was most known for in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. First up is this combo that utilizes multiple spells, including his floating bomb super, to keep it going.
Additionally, he’s found a Power Stone combo that uses its damage-boosting Infinity Storm to kill off Zero, one of the lower health characters in the game. This use of the Power Stone seems to be the way to create UMvC3-like touch-of-death combos in the game, and Champ has challenged players to try to find other touch-of-death combos on Zero via the #ZeroMustDie hashtag on Twitter.
Speaking of Power Stone combos, fLoE has also been working on one, this time using a combination of Thanos and Jedah. Now while we don’t know if it’ll make FChamp’s challenge, we do know that it does a decent chunk of damage on Ultron, who presumably has more life than Zero.
TastySteve on the other hand has showcased what Zero can do with a short combo video that he posted on Twitter. The combos here include a corner-to-corner combo that only uses 1 stock of meter, but does about 60% damage on an opponent with full life.
Honzo Gonzo also got himself an early copy of the game and was streaming it. One of the things he was exploring was the “bullet hell” that Morrigan can generate, this time using the Time Stone’s Infinity Storm, exploring how much damage it can do if the opponent gets caught not blocking.
Meanwhile, on Bum’s stream it has been discovered that Thanos has a kara throw involving his command throw. This gives the command throw in question dangerous range.
Finally, BROKENTIER’s Clockw0rk, who was also streaming the game, demonstrated a combo that seems like it will be the go-to bread-and-butter combo for Strider, with some additional damage by Gamora at the end.
Gengar doesn’t show up often in tournament play outside of Japan for Pokkén Tournament, and the reason for that is simple: it takes a lot of work to be a good ghost.
Far from beginner-friendly, Gengar’s main bread-and-butter combo requires not only difficult execution but a keen understanding of how Pokkén puts together combos. The trade-off, however, is that you gain access to high damage options for one of the game’s slipperiest, most difficult-to-hit characters. Armed with a number of invincible transitions and movement options, properly-played Gengar can weave around opponents and cash in his hits for big, flashy damage… assuming, of course, you’re a good enough trainer.
YouTube channel Body Count Fighting has been steadily pumping out tip videos with notable players for Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and Injustice 2 since the channel’s debut about four months ago. Some of the pros that have been featured on the SFV side of things include the likes of TempolAlex Myers, CircalLPN, Commander Jesse, and Bushinstyle.
Among the recent batch of uploads, BCF has put out a couple of SFV tip videos with Team GRAPHT’s Leah “Gllty” Hayes going over beginner tips and combos with recent DLC newcomers Ed and Menat. She goes over how to utilize each character’s V-Skill and V-Trigger, as well showing off some basic setups and combos. Check them out below.
Without communication and awareness of your team, it’s easy to get wiped (or wipe your opponent’s team) because someone was a weak link, or someone didn’t go after a crystal. Each team has 3 “lives,” and you can theoretically kill the same person 3 times and win without touching the other two opponents. This will likely be the biggest thing that drives away many potential players that are more interested in the fighting part of this arena fighting game. Dissidia’s old 1v1 mode has yet to be confirmed, and even if it was, I kind of find it difficult to imagine some characters that were clearly balanced for 3v3 mode being even remotely viable in a 1v1 mode. More than once I would find myself paired with two random Cloud players and automatically know what the fate of our team would be. Shockingly, I couldn’t find a way to switch characters once a team was made, if there even was one. In a game where team composition is so crucial, it baffles me that this isn’t an option (yet).
