The era of Street Fighter V is unlike any that the FGC has experienced before: between the attention the community is getting, the level of interaction with the game’s developer, the growing sizes of pot bonuses, the scope of exposure and the size of the community at large, we’re truly living in a new age. With our new size, however, there are bound to be some growing pains.
Yahoo! Esports’ Bizarro Mike has done his best to provide commentary and exposure for the community through his medium, and in the latest episode of I Got Next, he talks about the latest ELEAGUE event–specifically, discussing the feuds, the obsession with bashing each other, the production value, and whether or not we’ve let our obsession with “thuggery” overtake our sense of reason.
The era of Street Fighter V is unlike any that the FGC has experienced before: between the attention the community is getting, the level of interaction with the game’s developer, the growing sizes of pot bonuses, the scope of exposure and the size of the community at large, we’re truly living in a new age. With our new size, however, there are bound to be some growing pains.
Yahoo! Esports’ Bizarro Mike has done his best to provide commentary and exposure for the community through his medium, and in the latest episode of I Got Next, he talks about the latest ELEAGUE event–specifically, discussing the feuds, the obsession with bashing each other, the production value, and whether or not we’ve let our obsession with “thuggery” overtake our sense of reason.
YouTuber Cochroy found a great way to take advantage of Ken’s back throw when it lands you and your opponent in a corner situation. If the setups demonstrated in his video are executed successfully, the spacing you’re left with following the knockdown can lead to some series damage.
The clip covers options for crush counter, on-hit and blocked first attacks. The setups shown all start with standing roundhouse–but after watching, you will get the gist of how to create various post-back throw corner setups of your own.
Earlier this week, SNK announced that Rock Howard would be joining The King of Fighters XIV as its 4th DLC character. Though the trailer was certainly hype, we now have our first footage of him in an actual match, while he has a sparring session with his trainer Terry Bogard. The single round of action gives us another look at his supers, including his Deadly Rave Neo and a MAX Mode combo.
We also have another clip of combo footage, courtesy of Gatoray. where Rock performs a variety of sequences on Iori Yagami in one of his alternate colors. You can see both videos below.
Rock Howard will be released alongside Whip, Yamazaki and Vanessa on Wednesday, April 5th, as part of the game’s version 2.00 update, which will include two new stages, balance changes for the entire cast, the ability to save Training Mode settings, and more.
Super Steam Xrd Exhitbition League, which features two FT7 matches every week, continues this weekend with a new set of challengers. The PC league will include an exciting matchup between May and Chipp, which can get very explosive. That’s between BloodWolf and B.Z.B. The second set, between Grant’s Slayer and zenzen’s Ky, will be a good demonstration on how Ky establishes control, versus the Slayer player taking smart risks.
Here’s a breakdown on the new fighters duking it out this weekend, and a little on their background:
BloodWolf
On the match: “I am very excited for the set. I’m glad I was chosen for this event and given such a skilled opponent. I’ve played him a few times in the past and the matches were always extremely exciting and enjoyable. I hope we’re both able to play at 100% and make this event entertaining for those watching.”
On his opponent: “I think he’s an extremely skilled player, and a pretty nice guy when I’ve talked with him. In the times we’ve played, he was always on point with his confirms and made it very difficult to get a hit in. I’ll have to make sure I make my hits count.”
On his own playstyle: “My own style? I’m not sure. I’m pretty terrible at the self-assessment and classification thing. I guess I’d say I play through instinct. Maybe that’s not the right word. Ironically, I think a ton in the lab all day, and when I get home to play games, I do just that, I play. I just play a lot. Gameplay-wise, I chose May because of her dynamic options and combos from the summons. I get the most enjoyment out of confirming stuff based on ball position or a summoned dolphins, so I like to summon a lot. That’s not something I can do too freely in this matchup though. This is more like catching an angry wasp with….well, an anchor.”
B.Z.B.
On the match: “I personally feel like it’s slightly in May’s favor. Chipp can out-maneuver May, but May can take a lot more risks to even it up. She’s got a quick backdash and a very good jump arc to get away from my ground normal and pressure me from the air. Air-to-air is very risky to try to beat her normal preemptively. Solid neutral and not dropping oki opportunities is going to be key for me.”
On his opponent: “I met BloodWolf for the first time at Evo 2015! We’ve only played casuals at tournaments I’ve managed to make it out to, but we did get some recent matches online via Steam. He’s learned a lot since we last played! I’ll definitely need to step-up my gameplan to beat him.”
On his own playstyle: “I would say my playstyle is very momentum-based. Xrd was the first installment of Chipp that really normalized his combos, which let me focus more on learning his okizeme and playing the player rather than the matchup. My goal with Chipp is to frazzle you and capitalize on your mistakes.”
Grant
On the match: “When it comes to the character matchup, this is going to be a tough match. Ky is a very hard character for Slayer to fight due to how safely he can play neutral and establish an effective zoning game. When you pit him against Slayer, who has to take high risks in order to get started, he is very oppressive. Luckily, I often play against many talented Ky players, so I feel like I have a very good grasp on the matchup. I am confident that I can win this FT7.”
On his opponent: “I think that zenzen is a very undervalued player who is definitely a threat. As far as I know she only appeared on the radar quite recently and is starting to become well known in the US scene for her solid Ky play. I think that she definitely has the potential to become a bracket killer so I expect great things from her.”
On his own playstyle: “I think of myself to be a very aggressive and read-based player. I love getting in my opponent’s head at close range and using all of the tools at my disposal to instill fear. I do play very risky, so I enjoy characters that give me a good reward for taking such risks. Slayer is a perfect character for me since he excels at all of these things. Since I mostly play from the heart and focus on player vs. player interaction, I feel like I make decisions that other players wouldn’t think to make. This does get me into trouble from time to time, but I feel like my mentality is both the most fun for me, and I’ve managed to make it work for the most part. I still have much to learn until I can consider myself a top player, but I am confident that I’ll get there!”
zenzen
On the match: “I personally think that Ky has a distinct advantage in this matchup, due to Ky’s neutral game having consistent answers to Slayer’s options. For example, Ky’s 2D is a strong tool due to its fast startup and incredible amount of active frames. This can easily stuff two of Slayer’s main movement tools in his forward dash and Dandy Step, which both have invulnerability; forward dash in the later portion. Other useful tools in my arsenal include 2S, f.S, and Stun Edge YRC. IAD is also generally not a good option for Slayer to approach with, as Ky’s 6P and 2H will cleanly stuff any jump-in.
“However, not everything is sunshine and Greed Severs for Ky. Whiffing any Slash normal is dangerous, especially if Slayer used his forward dash or Dandy to go through it. This situation will almost always lead to a knockdown for Slayer, and that’s when he gets really scary. Once he has his pressure going, he has access to a lot of great tools. Many of his moves are plus on block, even if Instant Blocked, and can lead to deadly frame traps and even mixup if respected enough. 6K and It’s Late are throw invulnerable, so they can blow up mindless throw mash easily and go into high damage combos. Backdash cancel is also an annoyance, even if I’m on the offensive; Ky’s usually consistent okizeme options can be evaded by BDC jump and BDC Dandy YRC.
“Overall, the matchup is personally very fun to me. With Ky’s strong neutral, it can seem hopeless, but knowing that Slayer just needs one chance can be frightening, yet thrilling.”
On her opponent: “Grant is a player that I have a lot of respect for. I got to meet him at CEOtaku this past year, and I had a lot of great back and forth matches with him. I haven’t gotten many chances to play against him since, but I’m excited to play against his Slayer. I think he’ll come in with a good approach with the matchup as well, as he has two good Ky players in his area, Ukyo and Kizzercrate.”
On her own playstyle: “I like to play characters with strong normals and good neutral control, so I think Ky fits me like a glove. Despite that, I have a fairly aggressive playstyle. It used to be aggressive to the point where playing a character like Ky probably wouldn’t fit me well, but over the time I’ve been playing Guilty Gear (since Xrd release), I’ve calmed down and learned to play reactive when needed to. And reactive play is something that Ky excels in.
“As for my aggressive play, I try to be relentless in pressure, sometimes getting greedier than I should and getting blown up for it. I’m also not against utilizing hard reads often depending on the matchup; for example, I try to IB into Vapor Thrust a lot on defense if I’m playing against a character who has a lot of gaps in their offense. Despite how risky it can be, I find that it can help tame a player’s offense, giving me opportunities to get out of pressure later on without having to go to such an option.
“Perhaps that shows how inconsistent my play can be sometimes, but it’s what feels right to me!”
zenzen will be up first against Grant. After that FT7 finishes, BloodWolf will make his case against B.Z.B. This time, the league match will air on Sunday, April 2nd, 7:00 PM ET/6:00 PM CT/4:00 PM PT on silva_hime’s Twitch channel. FaultyDefense and Voguekun are up to provide commentary.
After covering the concepts of offense and defense, as well as where a new player should start in fighting games, Frabisaur examines the science of hitboxes and hurtboxes in episode 3 of his new Fighter’s Dojo series. Noting that the episode will answer the questions of “why did or didn’t that hit?” and “what button should I use?” Frabisaur provides visual examples from Street Fighter V to display what hit and hurtboxes look like, as well as why certain moves–such as Urien attempting a Spartan Bomb on a crouching Ken–don’t work, despite his hand visually going through Ken’s body. He also provides a succinct definition of the concept:
Hitboxes and hurtboxes are how the program understands that two things have come in contact with each other. This is how the game, computer, console, whatever, is looking at to go, “Hey, this character has now touched this character, or this character is touching this projectile.” This is the way that it knows that something has happened on the screen.
Though this knowledge is specifically applied to Street Fighter V, hitboxes and hurtboxes exist in all fighting games, so these concepts can be easily applied to your preferred fighter of choice. This video is a great way to familiarize yourself with this terminology in an easily digestible fashion, and could also be worth a watch for veteran players looking for a refresher course. You can catch the video in its entirety below.
Feel free to pose questions to him in the video’s comments section, as he replies quite often. You can also follow him on Twitter at Frabisaur or catch him on twitch.tv/frabisaur for more content and further explanations on some of these concepts.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is one of those classic games that seems to keep on giving as its gets older and its scene evolves. Despite its age, players continue to play–refining the tactics and tech that they use, oftentimes not only finding ways to do things that were thought to be impossible, but eventually finding out how to make them easier to perform.
One such example of this is Makoto’s double Fukiage combo against Chun-Li. An essential part of her touch-of-death combo using Super Art 2, it was long thought that this was impossible to perform on Chun-Li, until about five or so years ago when Telesniper put out a video showing how it could be done. Despite this, the combo was still pretty difficult to land, require pixel-perfect positioning. However, after seeing top Japanese Makoto player Tominaga have so much success with Makoto at this year’s Cooperation Cup while landing the double Fukiage on Chun-Li multiple times, Telesniper decided to go back and see if there was a way to perform the combo more consistently.
It turns out that there is a way to do so. In the video below, Telesniper demonstrates how walking backwards before the first Fukiage makes it easier to land. It seems that walking back with Makoto partially matches Chun-Li’s forward momentum. With this, the window to land the Fukiage now increases to about 3 to 4 frames, instead of the 1 to 2 frames it was before. Take note, however, that this is actually different from how Tominaga does it: which is with a late dash, however this technique requires that the Fukiage motion be done much faster, even if it increases the window by the same amount as with Telesniper’s updated technique.
For those interested in learning more, here’s Telesniper’s original video on the double Fukiage combo on Chun-Li.
In the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 community, the name RUBEKS is synonymous with high-level Super Skrull play. In an attempt to shed some light on what it takes to be a high ranking Skrull warrior, keo c recreates some of RUBEKS’ X-Factor “touch of death” combos in the video below.
Different variations for how the combos start are noted on screen, but it’ll be up to you to determine the specific inputs required for the exact outcome demonstrated. Also note that the use of a Spencer assist is employed, and that has an effect on some of the combos as well. Still, it’s easier to study the essence of RUBEKS in this isolated format, rather than trying catch glimpses of advanced tactics mid-match. This video alone will not make you a godlike Skrull main of course–but it’s a step in the right direction to start playing like one of the best.
Back in the mid-1990s, when the fighting game genre first went 3D, multiple development teams tossed their hats into the ring, doing their best with their own take on the 3D fighter. Now, a new indie fighter Schwarzerblitz pays homage to those early efforts.
Creator Andrea Demetrio states that they were inspired by “countless hours spent in the local arcade playing Tekken 2.” The game itself does its best to capture both the look and the spirit of early-nineties fighters. The former is pretty obvious, with low polygon models and somewhat questionable animations. Making up for that is an eclectic cast of fighters (including an armless fighter who attacks solely with kicks) that would feel right at home in that decade.
In addition to this, the game follows in the footsteps of many nineties 3D fighters that added their own unique twists on resources with a “bullet counter”: a meter used to power the game’s Trigger Attacks –Tekken-style unblockable moves that deal extended stun, allowing for longer combos in an already combo-heavy game. The same meter also powers a counter move called “Trigger Revenge” which acts as a sort of combo breaker that cancels hitstun.
You can see more of the game in action in the video below.
Interested players can dowload the game’s alpha demo over at Itch.io.
