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Originally I was going to list what I need to improve upon, in order. Instead, I have opted to take a more in-depth look into the main thing I currently need to improve upon: combos. As I mentioned in my last post, I have never looked into combos before for any other fighter at all. I have started picking it up lately, but I am still far from where I need to be in this area. Hitting someone 30 times per opening vs 4-8 times makes all the difference in the world. Here are the sub-items I need to improve upon, listed in order.
- Execution
Starting the combos I already know. Simply put, a lot of times I end up poking someone 2 or 3 times instead of initiating a combo. I should, in fact, be comboing nearly every time the opportunity presents itself. I think the biggest problem here in I have such an ingrained automatic response of poking opponents with 2 consecutive jabs. I think the best way to address this issue is simply to be more conscious. Think “now I’m starting a combo” the second I see an opening rather than “let’s try to open him up a bit and then do a combo”, which rarely works. Another part of the issue, I think, may be a (valid) fear of getting my combo blocked, leaving myself wide open. Again, I think greater consciousness while playing will help with this. When there’s a clear opening, initiate combo immediately, when there’s a questionable opening, poke.
- Effectiveness
The combos I currently have under my belt are extremely basic. This is not a coincidence, I intentionally started with only basic combos as the subject matter was new to me. However, there’s no question that my combos could be a lot more powerful. Most combos should probably end in hyper moves, currently I only have such sequences with Ryu and, to a lesser extent, Soki. I think this is best tackled in training mode, experimenting with new ways to extend started combos to increase the effectiveness. Important as this issue is, I doubt I will be focusing on it much right away as I have some more basic issues to attend to first, such as..
- Aerial Raves
Extending one’s combos with ARs seems like the natural second step in learning to effectively combo. I can sometimes land these nicely, but often I will miss the jump. Also, I could probably do slightly longer ARs when I do land them. This skill is almost more important as an exercise than as a practical means of ending a combo. I think this is another skill that would be best honed in training mode.
- Consistency
Failure to combo, apart from failure to execute. Sometimes (fairly often?), I will land for instance, a 2-hit combo hopefully followed immediately by a 4-hit combo, instead of a proper 6-hit. While this doesn’t matter when things pan out (and is, in fact, slightly advantageous) the problem is that it’s a break in my attack string, which could be exploited by good or lucky players. Once again, training mode is the place for this.
- Equal Opportunity
Morrigan, in particular, I like choosing on occasion, but as her combo is not standard I really don’t know how to pull them off with her at all. This could be remedied by looking online and, once again, with a little time in training. This is not a huge priority as it mostly just affects Morrigan and it’s not like I play with her all the time, but still it should be addressed sometime soon.
So that about sums up my issues with combos. As mentioned, I believe this is currently the most pressing issue for me to improve upon. Looking over my notes, it would seem a majority of this would be best improved upon in training mode. I don’t particularly enjoy training mode, but I think a few sessions of repetitiously digging a groove for myself would pay off. The most important improvement, however, is more of a matter of being conscious of starting combos cleanly. I tend to be pretty aware of what’s happening during a match, so hopefully keeping this in mind and putting it into action will not be terribly awkward.
I went through a period of Stupid where I was utterly unable to no-miss R-Type’s first loop again. I’d either die at the Stage 5 boss or one of the trickier parts in Stage 6 over and over again. The only reason I wanted to do it again on the Dimensions port was so I could play it on Infinite mode and join the ~100 or so people on the Leaderboards who no-missed it. I thought it’s a bit like getting 300 in bowling. Anyway, that’s done now. And on the plus side, I learned a crapton more about Stage 6 while I kept practicing so I’d say it was worth it. Now, afterwards, I’m a bit amazed I even managed to no-miss the game as I did, I could’ve done it so much easier.
While practicing I also noticed there are plenty of small differences between the Dimensions and the R-Types version of the game. The latter is a bit faster and harder (the back-cannons in Stage 3′s ship being more eager to fire, for example) so I guess I’ll need to clear that version of the game as well. But since I’ve done most of my practicing on the R-Types version anyway it shouldn’t be a problem.
And though there’s still a small desire to 2-ALL the game, I’ve also started playing R-Type II. Damn that’s an awesome game. The stage designs and bosses are much more complex and devious. I’ve made it to the Stage 4 boss on a credit, but I still need to practice Stage 3 boss before I’m really comfortable with him. I beat him most of the time but it always feel a bit too much like luck. Took a peek at Stages 5 and 6…fifth stage feels hard, but the boss is probably the easiest of both games. Sixth stage is pretty hectic with a fairly high bulletcount for an R-Type game. I’d say the game is definitely harder than the original. Yet in sgronblo’s opinion the first game is easier. Wonder if my opinion will change once I get more into it.
R-Type II I’ll be playing on the R-Types version. The differences between the Dimensions version and R-Types version are much more pronounced here – while in the first game they’re noticable if you look for them, here they whack you in the face with a hammer right from the get-go. The enemy dispensers seem to spew less enemies in the Dimensions version, which also has some enemies missing (like one of the medium-sized crafts that jump out from the water after entering the base in Stage 1, few enemies creeping up from behind right before the boss and in Stage 2, bosses seem to take a bit less damage…) compared to the R-Types version. Also, while the first game’s graphics (especially the backgrounds) are a bit bare and the improved graphics in Dimensions were pretty nice, they don’t seem to work in II as well – the game already had more detailed graphics to begin with and they’re still nice to look today. So that’s even less reason to use the Dimensions version when I have R-Types to play it on.
(The title of this post…how come Irem never did a typing game like Typing of the Dead? It’s already in the name! I should make mockups of it for the heck of it.)
As I mentioned earlier, lately Tatsunoko vs Capcom has completed dominated my gaming. Originally, I was planning on starting with a big summary of my history and philosophy relating to fighting games, but I’ve decided to forgo this for the sake of brevity. I will only summarize by saying that I have never been a hardcore fighter. I’ve never dove deep into the intricacies of a fighting game or learned even learned combos. My fighting experience mostly consists of casually playing games here and there and being able to, at least, pull off special moves with little-to-no difficulty. In a case of right mindset, right time, I’ve become fascinated with TvC and have set out to learn the game on a deeper level. I’ve been playing it for about 3 weeks now and while I have a long, long way to go, I can already see significant improvement.
At this point, there is a lot I could talk about. I could talk about techniques I’ve learned, techniques I’ve yet to master, finer points of the game engine, etc. For the remainder of this post I will simply introduce the characters I’ve been using in general order of usage.
Ippatsuman – One half of my main team. Ippatsuman is a great all-around fighter. He has an incredible anti-air hyper (which I need to get better at employing and work into some combos), good close range fighting, and a few tricks from a distance. Balance is his real attribute.
Saki – The other half of my team. Saki is anything but balanced. She’s an absolutely incredible long-range fighter who’s left with few options when an opponent is up in her face. She is very interesting in that some players (semi-regardless of skill) have absolutely no idea how to deal with her, while others find her weakspot quite easily. She has a brutally powerful armor-piercing hyper move. Switching between her and Ippatsuman is also advantageous and enjoyable in that they are played so differently.
Soki – I only discovered him about a week ago and he’s quickly becoming my third favorite option. His main advantage is extreme distance in his pokes, which allows for some easy basic combos. He also has great power and hp, although he seriously lacks mobility and much in the way of specials.
Morrigan – An incredible dragon punch and good projectiles along with an awkward dash, make her a pretty good alternate option. Her level 1 hypers are useless against all, but the worst players, but her level 3 hyper is great.
Ryu – We all know him. He’s extremely well-balanced and comes with an extremely familiar skillset.
Batsu – Similar to Ryu, but I find nearly all his variations disadvantageous. Used against less-skilled opponents for variety.
Chun-Li – I love her from SF2, but I don’t get along with her all that well in TvC. I pretty much only use her for fun against less-skilled opponents.
Viewtiful Joe – After using this character briefly, I don’t like him at all. Limbs are way too stubby for my tastes.
Yesterday night I decided to play through some Mega Man 3. I got excited at the prospect as my friend in Japan narrated what was happening in the Game Center CX episode for Rockman 3 (Talking on Skype). Arino had severe issues clearing the game, coming in at something like 23 hours. In my first experiences with the game at a young age, I felt the game had a darker tone to it… I think that was Snake Man’s stage. I totally forgot that Snake’s Man stage opens up to an outer sky area. But yes! I played Mega Man 3.
I cleverly defeated the 8 robot masters with a few continues. As I was attempting to finish the first of the next 4 stages, my foot hit the OFF on my power surge, so the power went out on the computer. So I stopped playing that for the night.
Alright. I planned to 1cc Salamander 1 and 2 recently, here’s the story about how that went down:
I picked up Salamander Portables on the PSP about two years ago and had been playing the two Salamanders just casually since. I thought, hey, I’ve played these casually enough, hell, (most of my runs were ending at the same points,) so now it’s time to devote to them and clear them. I chose Salamander 2 first.
Since the only method I have of playing Salamander 2 is on the PSP, I couldn’t make use of save states as I did for Salamander 1. At first, I played many runs of the game, plowing through the first 4-5 stages easily, then I would hit a wall usually at the asteroid filled stage with the big gunwall boss. I hit a wall, a gunwall.
After more runs I discovered that the asteroid stage was giving me problems most of the time because I would no-miss my way to that stage. The rank in fact piles up to an apex and when the rank is high, it feels like everything is moving fast: the popcorn ships being spat out by dispensers, the oncoming popcorn enemy swirls and turrets that shoot many aimed bullets. If you’ve played the Gradius games you know that if too many threats flood the space around you — it can mean quick doom. The rank gets crazy.
What I had to do to counter the rank was to suicide at a specific spot: about 40 seconds before the rotating core on the battleship level, on the last pass under the battleships that surround you. This is a good place because there are some power-up drops at this point that you can pick up right after suiciding. It brings the rank down quite noticeably for the next stage, and it makes it much more manageable. I did that. Fighting the boss of this stage was sloppy at first, but after a while I figured out how to do it cleanly. After that is the hardest vertical stage of the game (and the last?) The game gets a bit more serious with a mid?boss that requires a strategy and memorization to effectively beat. It’s a 3 segmented Gradius 1 Big Core-lookin’ boss. The trick is to destroy one of the side pods quick so that you can feel safer on one side of the screen. If the pods survive they continue with a spread laser attack, coupled with straight-shot lasers from the main core, covering most of the screen. I often choked on that pattern if it occurred more than once.
The last boss was tricky. He has a variety of attacks that I needed to know how to react to: when I reached him on my 1cc run I was feeling very nervous about clearing it because of that boss. I lost my last life remaining during the battle and the adrenaline was pumping. With determination I narrowly dodge some of his final attacks after I die and pick up only 1 or 2 options. He felt like he had more health than usual as I got some good hits in, after coming out unscathed of that crisis. Then almost at the last second I beat him. I felt pretty accomplished as I noticed my heart was beating harder from that craziness. Didn’t make it past the first stage of the loop.
Then regular Salamander. This game is kind of an odd one. I went to MAME to play this one. There are specifically tricky parts that require a plan of attack to survive. The first half is relatively easy, and then a vertical stage with a gunwall boss. The gunwall three-core boss requires a certain trick to defeat it without losing a life. It involves positioning yourself inside of the gunwall so that these bouncy blue balls don’t fill the lower half of the screen, instead, so that they lob out into a trapped space within the gunwall. The positioning and timing to pull off the technique needed some articulation, but once I discovered the trick, it didn’t take long for me to grasp the proper execution. Failing to execute it well enough can lead to a prompt game over.
Following this boss is a horizontal asteroid stage. A pretty easy stage. Thanks to save states I was able to find the right positioning to blow through it with little effort. Then another vertical stage, in this stage, pink energy bursts launch from the ground towards you, there’s an easy ass Gradius I Core rush and then some Moai heads to obliterate. That sums it up about. A medium difficulty shooter that’s particular on planning for a few segments of the game.
It feels pretty good to have these two classics under my 1cc belt *shrug*. I recommend giving them a shot, especially Salamander 2. It has this triumphant presentation about it that makes it a memorable game. The original, well, I love the music, and I have a soft spot for the this Gradius relation, I suppose.
A couple weeks ago I ordered myself two Classic Controller Pros for usage with Tatsunoko vs Capcom. They were about 3x the cost of a regular Classic Controller (and I bought 2), but I thought what the hell, it’s worth it for the best controller out, right? Well, in the meantime I’ve been borrowing a regular classic controller, which was fine. Finally got my Pro’s today and…… the D-Pad doesn’t fucking work! I think it’s a compatibility issue with the game as opposed to the controller itself, as I read a post on Capcom’s forums saying the Pro’s d-pads suck and to stay far away from them. Unbelievable.
Please refer to this side-by-side comparison.
So pissed off. I’ll make a proper post soon, just had to vent.
Hello Gamers, some of you already know me as BludClot. I had an account back in the early days of Gaming Journals and always wanted to eventually come back to it. As I’ve been doing more gaming than usual lately, this seemed like a good time. It’s great to see Dan still has the site going strong and some of the early posters are still here. Now, with the personal introduction out of the way, let’s move on to the gaming introduction.
Well, for starters my 360 is broken (whose isn’t?), I don’t have a PS3, and I rarely play PC games. That makes me a wii gamer during this generation. Right now I’m playing:
Top Tier:
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom - This is the game I will talking about most of the time for the foreseeable future
Second Tier:
New Super Mario Bros – I still want to collect all the star coins. However, progress has been almost completely interrupted by TvC
Mario Kart Wii – It seems I may be making a triumphant return to playing this game. This should be one of my more interesting posts when I talk about it.
Third Tier:
Lit
World of Goo
Adventure Island (whatever the remake is called)
I feel I may be forgetting one. Anyway, these are the games that I was playing about a month ago and still hypothetically want to get back to, but it looks less and less likely everyday.
Eventhough I should practice for my exams right now, I feel more like playing Batrider. It’s a free world.
I finally got a D score the other day. While this is not very high it was already enough for #1 over at shmups.com. It’s sad to see so few good Batrider scores. I have to admit though, that playing with a team and triggering the secret bosses is the most difficult challenge I’ve yet encountered in a shmup, Garegga 1cc is a joke compared to this.
It looks like that D was totally luck and that I’m horribly inconsistent at this game. My second best score in the last 3 days was only A,3. I reach stage 5 in every 50th run or so.
Some notes and individual stage breakdown:
Stage 1 – Metro City
-around 800k before boss, no suicides.
-kill Strawman at boss. destroy all parts except the very small turrets at the left and right of the boss. Weaken these and the main body and wait until the fireturrets uncover. Destroy the boss immediately killing the two small turrets (2x30k) and the two fireturrets (2x50k) while he explodes. Sometimes the fireturrets just won’t open themselves, but if everything goes correct my score is around 1,2mill
-I’m not going for his rocket backpack yet. It seems that I destroy the boss too soon if I try. However, with the backpack and some more milking during the stage, I could get around 1,4mill.
Stage 2 – Sky High
-Trigger special shot power up during the very first enemy waves.
-Use a bomb at the missile stream before the boss, Flying Baron’s bomb seems perfct for this.
-1,5mill-1,6mill before boss
-There are two ways to milk this boss. Either you destroy the turrets that shoot the green rings asap and milk the drones for medals or you destroy them asap, weaken the boss until he opens his arms and milk the extensions for 10k each. If I haven’t died during the stage and am still using Flying Baron, I’ll go for the second technique, because I don’t want to destroy drones for the extend. Going from 2 to 3 ships in stock is a huge rank increase compared to 1 to 2. If I’m on my last ship, namely Miyamoto, I’ll go for the first milking technique and collect that extend item. After Boredom I have around 1,9mill-2mill. If Flying Baron is still alive -> suicide.
-Shoot of one side of Bashinet and milk the small rockets with aura. It’s possible to milk the razorblades during his next attack cycle for 3k each, but rather difficult to do with Miyamoto, because of his piercing options that will only give you 300 points each and thus making it worthless. I went for destroying his tail and milking the small cluster bombs earlier, but decided against it in the end. It’s not worth that much and it’s pretty much guaranteed that you lose Miyamoto there, which means, that you can’t milk Bashinet’s last form with his options.
-As already said, milk the last form with Miyamoto’s options. the third option level seems to give the most points for some strange reason. Try to shoot the missiles with shot and not with your options for 1k each. The small pods have to be destroyed with aura if Miyamoto is still alive. With Strawman it’s ok to use shot and/or options to destroy them for 6k each, because they’re both non piercing.
-2,6mill-2,7mill after stage 2
Stage 3 – Sewer
-If Miyamoto is still alive, wait until the first medal appears, collect it and suicide. This way you avoid the infamous dropping 10k medal while you’re respawning – a Raizing classic!
-To make four medals appear for each flipover turret, it’s best to activate (Strawman’s) bomb exactly when the middle turret’s laser is vanishing. I’m still having some consistency problems here and this bit still seems kind of awkward.
-Right after this, a red helicopter will appear, destroy only one of his sidepods and wait until the screen gets crowded with tons of blue helis and the two yellow mechas -> bomb. The red heli is worth 10k if destroyed with bomb. Around here, I usually get my second extend item, giving me back my Garegga character.
-I use another bomb for the three tanks (20k each) and the green house with four medals and of course a last bomb for the houses before the boss.
-Milking the boss is crucially important and it’s damn difficult. 90% of my runs end here. I dodge the first few attacks with Strawman and then suicide to weaken the turrets and get Flying Baron. Set the options to front and milk the turrets. One turret is worth 10k if destroyed with shot and you get 50k if you destroy one hatch. After some milking it’s ok to use a bomb to destroy the remaining hatches. On a good run I have around 4,5mill points before Black Heart.
-Collect the extend from the drones during Black Heart’s first form. Milking the wings with shot on frequency #60 is worth around 200k. When the second form starts, I concentrate on the boss’ weakpoint. Destroying the wings is worth 50k each, sometimes I’m getting one, usually not.
-Around 5mill after stage 3.
Stage 4 – Airport
-Ideally I want to keep Flying Baron through the whole stage, I usually fail at trying so. The stage itself has the obvious hidden medals and is kinda straightforward.
-You can combine uncovering the huge stock of medals in the middle of the stage with bombing the blue helicopters for 10k each. But because I usually miss the two big bomber items at the beginning of the stage on purpose (to trigger another extend item in stage 5), I don’t have enough bombs for this.
-5,8mill-5,9mill before boss
-It’s difficult to milk Bazzcok with Miyamoto, milking him with Flying Baron is a cakewalk though. Destroy one of his turrets first and then milk the drones for around three attack patterns of the other turret. Then destroy the other turret and milk some more. The 6mill extend should appear. If I’ve already lost Flying Baron, it’s best to collect not more than one option item or maybe even none at all for milking. 6,3mill-6,4mill before Gob-Robo.
-I’m luckily getting a bit more consistent at destroying Gob-Robo’s arms for ten 10k medals, but sometimes he still refuses to spin them.
-Around 6,5mill after stage 4 and I’m happy.
Stage 5 – Colosseum
-One of the biggest walls in the entire game
-If I have no bombs left, I’ll lose Miyamoto early on, which means that I won’t be able to fight Tsumujimaru in the highway stage. I just have to pray for an easy first form. The big green rings, the exploding snake pods – his first form is pure horror, nearly as hard as Envy.
-The second form is quite a relief in opposition to the first one. If you get lucky, you can get around 1mill points from this boss only, but I’m glad with everything above 7mill
Stage 6 – Highway
-I get a lot of extends in this stage which means that I can suicide a lot and still have all 3 characters in my team for the three rivals. First I get a score based one at 7,5mill, then I get one from a third dropped big bomber item (either from the yellow tank or from one of the Ninjas) and maybe the extend from the blue hovercraft, which I usually try to destroy, but sometimes fail at.
-Breaking my medalchain is very likely in this stage. There are a lot of really difficult places. The problem is, that you lose a lot of points in the opening bit of Zenovia City if you don’t have max medals there. There are around 30 (!) medals there. On top of that it’s difficult to build up a new chain in the highway stage (because there are close to no medals), making a chainbreak even more regretable.
-Blunt is easy, Sobut is easier, Envy is the killer.
-9mill after this stage, but I jump for joy, no matter what my score is each time I clear it.
Stage 7 – Airport2
-My favourite boss of all time just got an update and got even more dificult as he is in Garegga.
-From here on it’s all about survival, though milking this boss can give you a lot of points, maybe around 3mill.
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.
.
It’s a huge problem that I don’t have a fixed suicide distribution for stage 6 onwards yet. I need to work on that. Hoarding lives only makes Zenovia City even harder, as if it wouldn’t be hard enough already…
On another note I could easily improve my Normal mode score, but I don’t really care anymore for that, Advanced mode has to be my priority first.
Got the no-miss clear of R-Type’s first loop. I’m pleased. And I beat Kiken’s score by almost 100k, that’s a nice bonus.
Second loop’s a bit tricky. The first two stages aren’t that bad (though in this run I messed up in 2nd stage boss) but Stage 3 is already pretty brutal. The big cannon/thruster at the end of the Big Ship takes much, MUCH more hits, the turrets at the front of the ship regenerate quite fast…it’s a whole new ballgame from there on. I’m actually a bit tempted to work on the second loop – the game’s so short that even if I played through both loops it would still take less time than a full run of Contra: Shattered Soldier. But if I do decide to go at it, I’d be doing it with R-Types for PS1 rather than the Dimensions port I played here. Nothing wrong with Dimensions, but in the end I’m just a bit more comfortable with the original – especially since Dimensions doesn’t have customizable controls.
But then, I also want to work on R-Type 2 and about 30 other games. I have a list of gaming feats I want to accomplish, and now I can mark off one of them.
Video at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ghegs_R-Type1XBLA_1stloop_nomiss.mp4
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision