Category: Videos

While the Japan E-Sports League is a great source for a variety of competitive games, from time to time the organization features top-level Japanese BlazBlue: Central Fiction players. This clip compilation focuses on CYCLOPS OSAKA|Dogura’s Azrael, who did several first-to-five sets with some big names in Japan.

The Maneater faces Souji’s Arakune in the first clip above. Souji is on the defensive at first, as he has trouble completing the Curse without Overdrive. Dogura’s confidence easily shows in Azrael’s rushdown. Souji almost loses the battle in the next match, but then turns things around with a perfect win. They do a longer FT10, but it looks like Dogura started with one point by mistake.

In this shorter FT5 set, Dogura faces none other than Fenrich’s Jin Kisaragi. Fenrich seems a little nervous or caught off-guard, as he doesn’t do that well in the first match. Jin catches up to Azrael’s tactics and brings the score to an even 2-2, and continues to find his element as he starts pulling off some unburstable Overdrive finishes.

Lastly, Dogura fights Gackt’s Hakumen in a FT5. Despite using Overdrive a lot to easily gain resources, Gackt falls to Dogura’s baits and relentless strikes in the first match. It’s tough for Gackt to surprise Dogura, but when he confirms an Overdrive combo, he pulls off over 6000 damage. It’s a very head-to-head battle as the players both reach four wins before the deciding match.

All the clips are a great way to study those matchups! Note that in similar sets from Japan E-Sports League–featured yesterday–Fenrich also fought Souji and Gackt.

You can also watch the action live at the Japan E-Sports League’s Twitch channel.

Source: Japan E-Sports League

A newcomer to Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Kum Haehyun feels very different from the rest of the cast. Most readily compare him to a Street Fighter character, as he has difficult links and generally shorter combos. Good Haehyuns distinguish themselves by aptly “tuning” their projectiles to set up dangerous situations for the opponent. While he’s far from popular in competitive Guilty Gear, that doesn’t mean his combo potential is sub-par.

There are creative uses of Kum’s Dust attack, impractical-but-hilarious combo starters that can result from trades or from a high RISK bar, and intense 22-hit sequences that can deliver the minimum damage to finish off Potemkin. Even if that’s hard to come by in a real match, maybe at least some of those Instant Kill confirms can work their way in for some memorable matches. Still, there’s plenty of damaging ones, and some showing off with double Overdrives.

Check out the full video below to get inspired to play the Korean character–and don’t forget about this must-see Jam combo video, covered previously.

Source: Six Newell

One of the most entertaining players to watch is Fenrich, and his Jin Kisaragi. It never gets old to see nearly flawless combos, incredible Burst reads, and his infamous Overdrive combo finishes that make you think, “Is he really going to kill them now?!” The Japan E-Sports League is a great place to catch some top-tier players duke it out in BlazBlue: Central Fiction.

In the first clip above, Fenrich faces Gackt’s Hakumen in a first-to-five. Gackt pulls off a ton of impressive counterplays to get Fenrich in a quick 2-0 lead. But as one could predict, Jin starts to adjust and starts netting some victories, pulling ahead to a 3-2. It’s definitely worth it to watch how Fenrich gets around Hakumen’s Drive ability, and Gackt’s frequent usage of the Yukikaze super.

The next clip has Fenrich facing Souji’s Arakune. As competitive players realize, Arakune can’t be taken lightly in this edition of BlazBlue. Jin’s excellent toolset of anti-airs, pressure resets, and even his projectile help in this match up, but he still has to chase Arakune and play around the Curse meter, which is easier than ever to fill, particularly thanks to Overdrive and Active Flow. Souji takes a dominant match early on, but Fenrich starts to turn things around by catching onto his movement, and doing highly-damaging confirms.

Source: Japan E-Sports League

The European family is going to be on board with Guilty Gear players in North America, as publisher PQube has announced that the upcoming Xrd REV 2 expansion will be available in that region soon.

While PQube didn’t really offer additional details to the content of the game, or officially announce a release date, it linked an Amazon UK listing for Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2. This store listing is the first one visible for the game, available to pre-order. The retailer lists the release date as May 26, 2017. This is possibly just a placeholder date, as it is not yet confirmed by the publisher.

It lists the price at a hefty £44.99 (approximately $56 USD), however, keep in mind two things: for one, this may not be the same price in other regions, and secondly, already owning a PS3 or PS4 version of -REVELATOR- will allow a digital upgrade to REV 2 that will cost less. PS4 will be the only version available in stores as a physical copy.

There are no details about the Steam version of REV 2 yet. To read up on more details on what’s coming to REV 2, check out the American version announcement with the launch of the English site and move lists for Baiken and Answer.

Source: PQube

In an announcement that many have predicted, ever since the success of Evo 2016 on ESPN 2 and ESL’s Brooklyn Beatdown and King of the Hill series, Street Fighter V will be joining the ELEAGUE in March. For those who aren’t aware of it, the ELEAGUE is a televised esports league, shown on TBS and produced by Turner Broadcasting, which brings in CS:GO teams to fight it out across annual 10-week seasons. Now branching out into other esports, the ELEAGUE will be hosting a special Street Fighter V invitational, bringing many of the world’s best Street Fighter players to battle for the title of ELEAGUE Champion.

While details are scant on how this invitational league will play out, the competition is set to begin on March 27th, with the action continuing every Friday on TBS. Players will compete for a share of a $250,000 prize pool, with 16 players coming from Capcom Cup 2016 and the other 16 being chosen specially by ELEAGUE itself. It is unknown at this time whether the invitational will have a seasonal structure similar to the CS:GO ELEAGUE, but we will no doubt find out more in the coming month. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to TBS–you can watch all of the action via the ELEAGUE Twitch channel.

Source: ELEAGUE

With Injustice 2 dropping soon, fans are itching to get their hands on the last few pre-release details. They’ve been pouring out recently, and today we just got another character reveal: in “Shattered Alliances, Part 1” we get a glimpse of Cyborg as he faces off against Blue Beetle:

Shattered Alliances Part 1: The Regime will rise – learn how #Superman became one of Earth’s greatest threats… #injustice2 pic.twitter.com/5CfGiQpvpO

— Injustice2 (@InjusticeGame) February 23, 2017

While we don’t see any direct gameplay for Cyborg, he’ll likely be playing fairly similar to his prior Injustice: Gods Among Us incarnation. He does have a new super move, which was shown in the Injustice 2 Mobile game, which launches the opponent to what appears to be Apokolips as they’re attacked by Parademons–both of those being calling cards of Darkseid, who will be available via pre-orders.

In addition to Cyborg, we get interesting bits of story regarding the upcoming title: Superman, Wonder Woman, Robin, and Cyborg seem to be allied, while Supergirl may have just arrived from Krypton and is slowly realizing what the Man of Steel has become. She may have even been the one to free him from the Red Sun prison we see him in, thinking she was doing the right thing.

Either way, we can certainly look forward to even more reveals, up until the May 16th release date.

Source: Injustice 2 (Twitter)