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Writing entries always really motivates me to go do what I am talking about. Case in point: after my last post, I went into training mode and really pounded out some of those headbutt -> ultra juggles. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I also realized it’s easier than I thought because I was practicing against an opponent in the corner and it seems the window of opportunity for the ultra is about twice as large when you’re not in the corner (and you’re usually not). Even in the corner, I can get it pretty good now. The main thing I learned is to arch my fingers so as not to put the slightest pressure against the kick buttons. Preferably I don’t want the shadow of my fingers to hit the kick buttons cause the TE stick is that sensitive. I’ve extended my practice to doing c.mp xx headbutt then ultra. The c.mp xx headbutt is quite easy, but adding another step does increase the overall difficulty a bit as it’s a few more things to keep in mind (start with punch, cancel it into headbutt, maintain backcharge the entire time). Still, not bad though, and makes for a pretty hurtful combo.
I also worked on my links a bit for the hell of it. Balrog’s are practically impossible for me. I gave up fairly quickly and discovered Guile’s are quite a bit easier (at least the ones I was attempting). And by quite a bit easier I mean very difficult, but not soul-crushingly so. So now my training consists of the 3-step Balrog combo I mentioned above and I will start doing lp > mp and c.lp > c.mp links with Guile. Impressive, I know. I can get Guile’s links down a decent amount of the time, like maybe 33% or so, but the timing on links is so strict that I still feel very far away from any kind of reliability. And, unlike Balrog’s juggle, this is really just a building block as opposed to a useful combo.
It also occurred to me after my last post that I do actually do a few more combos that I never talk about. When I play Ryu on occasion, I can do some of his simple stuff. And I very often attempt Balrog’s c.lp, c.lp > c.lp xx headbutt in real matches. It works sometimes. I only try it because otherwise I’d just be doing c.lp, c.lp, c.lp at these times and I figure I might as well try to add the headbutt in (which might even connect if it doesn’t combo. Or it might get blocked and punished).
Quarter circles are getting a lot easier on the TE stick, even though I am rarely playing QC characters. Even double-QC’s are coming along ok although I’m still not comfortable with them.
I like Fei Long a lot as a character. I never cared for his gameplay much in SSF2 and still he’s not at all my type of character. He’s a rushdown guy, where I’m more of a zoning type of dude. Still, he’s pretty badass and I think I’ll start playing him a bit on the side. I think the main stumbling block to getting just the basics down with him is that one of his main attacks is a QC, which can (and should) be followed up by 2 more immediate QC’s. This is not exactly the same as a double-QC, as it’s a full QC with attack, followed by another 1 or 2 full QC’s with attack. I almost never get the second one out. I think I got the third out once. Perhaps he’s the perfect way to learn QC’s. Or to drive myself over the edge of sanity.
When you first get into a deep game like this it’s a little paradoxical from a journaling perspective. Everything is so new and interesting to me, I have a lot I could talk about; on the other hand, all I can speak of is the most basic stuff. Let’s start with a quick recap of my fighting career to remind you where I’m coming from. Played SF2 a lot right when it came out. I was just a kid, I learned a lot of good basics, but also picked up a shitload of bad habits in the name of playing honorably. I also didn’t even look at combos for a second, although I was aware of their existence. After that, and I’m talking SF2:WW, I played most major fighters a bit here and there as they came out, but never put in much time with any of them. That was all until I got TvC:UAS a few months back and really, REALLY, got into it (thank you online play). My point here is just that I want to give you an understanding of where I’m coming from. Even though I’m always talking about fighters, I am, in the scheme of things, pretty new and a lot of things don’t come easily to me (i.e. combos).
I’ve been mostly (and I mean 85%+ of the time) playing Guile and Balrog (“Boxer” if you wanna sound cool). I’ll talk about them more some other time, but let’s start the combo discussion. I think I’ve mentioned before that I seem to always be talking about combos here, which would seem to elevate their importance (and interest as a topic) in the games. Well, the reason for this is a) it’s really my bottleneck right now and b) it’s very easy to discuss since it’s so mechanical.
For those of you who don’t know, combos consist of three different types of connectors: chains, links, and cancels. Chains are easy as hell, but extremely weak on their own. Cancels are almost always easy and are generally
normal->special moves. Links are tough as hell for me and are generally
normal->normals. When I say links are tough as hell, I mean it. I more-or-less don’t attempt them at all in matches. They require the strictest of timing. I’m sure this will be a source of conversation and depression for quite a while. But for now, let’s talk about the simple combos I AM attempting.
For Guile, I’m using a simple c.mp xx hk flashkick combo. (I know most of you don’t come from a fighting background, “xx” means cancel). Just a simple 2-hit combo, but it’s pretty decent for punishing vulnerabilities with nothing but a charge. The main downside to it is that you cannot hit-confirm before going into the FK, so it leaves you extremely vulnerable if blocked. The end result is that it’s a decent combo, but only suitable for nearly guaranteed openings. A more versatile combo would be c.lk > c.lp > c.mp xx hk flashkick. This actually does ever-so-slightly LESS damage than my combo, but has the added benefit of time to confirm the combo is working before going into the flashkick or aborting the combo if it’s not. The problem here is those “>” in the combo mean link, which means it’s a lot more difficult.
With Balrog, I’ve been doing c.mp xx hp headbutt. It has all the same benefits and drawbacks as the guile combo, so I won’t reiterate it. It’s basically the exact same thing. The last thing I’ve been trying is Balrog’s hp headbutt to ultra(1)(PPKKK). This is an extremely effective combo given that it results in an ultra landing. There is time to hitconfirm the headbutt before committing to the ultra, however the headbutt itself is unsafe on block. Therefore, it’s a pretty high-risk high-reward combo. At my present skill level, this type of thing is well worth doing once in a while for winning and worth doing quite often for practice. Again, once I can get a handle on links, I’d be able to extend this combo a bit to hit-confirm it before committing to the headbutt. Right now I can pull it off maybe 25% of the time or so. The most difficult thing, by far, is the timing of when to start the ultra. The timing is very strict to land it. So this one is my main focus for now. The other two I mentioned are pretty easy and I only have to get used to doing them reflexively on opportunity. This one is slightly difficult, but I’d say I’ve already done the hardest part (the first 25% accuracy), so I will be practicing this for a bit. Links are very important, but will have to wait for a bit as I address lower hanging fruits of victory.
Progress in MMPU. I cleared all 10 of Mega Man’s challenges. They weren’t bad at all, with the exception of ‘Octo Battery Assault’. That’s a long series of jumping puzzles with various patterns of octopus batteries flying at you. They’re the stoplight-looking jobbies that open up their one eye and fly along the X or Y axis.
I got through 2 more of Cut Man’s challenges, which brought me to the one I was stuck on way back in the day: “Survive Rare Enemy”. You’re stuck on a narrow icy platform, waves of enemies spawn and you have to survive without getting hit for 1 minute. I lasted 10-15 seconds on a few quick tries.
This probably wouldn’t be bad as Mega Man, since you can spam buster shots. But you can only fire two cutters at a time. (I’ll leave it to the MM dorks to fill in the actual weapon name. I know them all by the bosses. You kill Elec Man, you get “Elec Man’s shit.” I don’t know if it’s supposed to be the Wave Jiggler or something.) So I’m hosed if I let one go too early, or too low/high on a jump.
Ahhh, I’ve had a lot of new stuff brewing lately, so this is gonna be another disjointed “catching up” post that jumps around from subject to subject.
- First off, I got my MadCatz Round 2 TE stick about a week ago. Being that I’m no joystick connoisseur, I was very interested to get this, the Cadillac of arcade controls, to compare against my TvC stick, which is regarded as high quality, but not quite as high. The main difference I notice is that the buttons on the TE stick are super sensitive. In fact, quite often I’m accidentally pressing 2 buttons at once, while I mean to just press one while resting my finger on the other. The other thing I notice is that the joystick seems to require slightly smaller movements to register. I’d have to agree that the TE feels better, but the differences are pretty small. The other great thing about the TE is that it’s USB, which means it doubles as pretty much the best commercially available mame controller as well. And what the hell is up with mame not supporting CPS 3? All that aside, the stick is taking some getting used to, even having gotten fairly used to the TvC stick. Quarter-circle motions are still kinda difficult for me (lol), and double-QC’s are still quite difficult.
- I was barely playing SSF4 before I got the stick. The game is awesome! The only problem I have with it is the ultra moves. They’re stupid. They’re the blue shells of street fighter.
- Three days in a row, I played against three separate friends who are into video games, but not really fighters. It was fun to share my passion with them, but of course it wasn’t much of a game. There’s pretty much no level of taking it easy that makes it a fair fight other than just plainly not trying to win. Don’t get me wrong, if they had even like 3 hours of practice it might’ve been a different story, but against a rank newbie, it’s just not a real game. It’s like: here, I’ll start out with 50% health. And not use ultras. Or supers. Or specials. Here, I’ll just walk around a bit and try to block, try some stuff.
- Last night I signed up for Xtortion Live (Gamertag: BlueC1oud). Even though I think monthly payments for online gaming is pretty much gouging, let’s face it, I want my online fighting. I’m also kinda pissed cause my 360 came with 3 months of free membership and I have no idea where I put that coupon. Anyway, at least it really is a nice experience. Similar to TvC, it’s only when I get online that I really become interested in the game. Playing AI is ok for a bit, but quickly becomes stale. After I signed up I played for about 6 hours straight until 3am :). Compared to TvC, there’s much less lag and much more opponents, so overall it’s a great experience. Although TvC does have a few online aspects that are nice. For instance, I can’t understand why SSF4 doesn’t offer you to rematch your ranked battles, nor do I understand why it sends you back several menu screens after your 1 battle is done. Finally, I get “Unable to join session.” on about 80% of my connection tries, which is apparently a firewall issue that I’ll have to work on. Still, overall it’s pure awesomeness and I’m sure I’ll be playing lots of SSF4 in the near future.
- I doubt any of you noticed, but last night someone left a couple of nasty comments on my blog. That’s cause last night I outed him as a chronic ragequitter on some TvC forums. I really don’t mind that RQ’ers hurt my ratio a bit while improving their own, it just bothers me to think of how lame and overall shitty some of the people that I’m playing with remotely are. But anyway, at least it brought him to the site and he probably learned a thing or two.
This is going to be another Mega Man post. Which makes me get that queasy feeling of needing to justify myself. Like when someone walks in on you pantsless.
I don’t really consider myself a Mega Man guy. That is probably disingenuous given that I’m playing two MM games right now and a third was my favorite game last year. The only game of the lot that I think is really exceptional is MM9. That includes the X series, which is mostly forgettable. But being recent 2d shooty/jumpy games with tight controls puts them in an uncrowded category.
Perhaps it helps my case that I’m abandoning MM10. In our last episode, I had died on Chill Man. Cleared him, cleared Nitro after an easy and mostly uninteresting stage, then tried Commando. That stage punched home the lesson that was more subtly taught in the prior stages: this game is deliberately unfun. Commando Man’s stage has a periodic dust storm effect that could only have been intended to make sure that we are not enjoying ourselves. Wind effects are a staple of the series, but this is a combination wind effect and whiteout. You can’t see the platforms while it’s blowing. Which might be kind of cool for the speedrunner, who will need to progress blind. But the safe tactic is obviously just to stop. To sum up: multiple times throughout the stage, you’re encouraged to stand still and do nothing for while.
The theme from my last post was basically that I wanted better weapons so I could cruise through Chill Man’s stage faster. Going smoothly and quickly through hard stages is what makes MM fun. That’s what each stage should aspire to. MM10 is instead full of stuff to sabotage that. It’s choppy and it drags. Screw it. I’d rather go back and play more of MM9.
I also dusted off Mega Man Powered Up recently. I lost my save at some point, so I’m doing all that jazz: unlocking each dude and playing through all the challenges. The core New Style game is middling. The challenges are the real meat here. There are 10 per character, 100 in total (Mega + 8 Robot Masters + a boss survival set). They’re Break-the-Targets-ish mini stages which are built around the special abilities of each character. They ramp up quickly to being all kinds of hard. Dozens and dozens of restarts hard. Hard enough that the lack of an instant restart annoys after a while. I’ve learned to hate the little intro animation you have to do on every single restart.
Little progress to report. Got through six or seven of Mega Man’s challenges and five of Cut Man’s.
I’m not playing anything seriously. I played some Mega Man 10 yesterday but it was the barest sort of dabbling, which does not leave me with much to say about it. Well, there’s one thing I can say.
All my weapons blow.
I failed to clear Chill Man’s stage, wiping out with two deaths on the boss. It’s a stage with multiple sections that are tedious with the mega-buster. I’ve cleared Sheep, Pump and Solar at this point in my save, so that’s my arsenal.
Consider taking out an Octopus Battery that’s one block above the ground. Easy enough, but jumpy and slow with just the buster. The sort of thing I’d gladly blow weapon energy on to speed it up. None of those weapons are at all useful. I guess Solar Man’s jobby might save 1 jump, but it’s also slower firing, so that’s probably a wash.
At the same point in Mega Man 9, I’d be sporting the Splash, Gravity and Concrete weapons. All clearly better than the crap I’ve got, and two of which would speed up the Battery scenario.
I have been lollygagging.
My posting pace has faded to essentially zero. I have a fair excuse for this, with the birth of my daughter heralding in a total cessation of all gaming for quite a spell. But I’ve always shaken an indignant fist at posts by others which try to plead life-event excuses, so I expect no sympathy.
Further, my post history makes it pretty obvious that I was slacking even before I stopped altogether. Switching games after a single post, never finishing a thread. Today: reparations! Let’s recap the projects of the past and update progress. Or report abortion.
Raiden Fighters Jet. Aborted. I can barely remember it, in fact. I stopped playing even before the folks in last year’s STGT started.
Mega Man 9. I got the buster-only boss clear. Then by the end, I was kind of irritated by how goofy my criteria for that were, so I got a legit buster-only clear. 1CC, no special weapons. Tiny exception on the specials rule for a section in Wily 2(?) where you need to laser trident some blocks. I know of no other way past there. I also used some items against Plug Man, because fuck Plug Man, that’s why. Either an E capsule or a 1/2 damage jobby. Cleared Superhero mode, which rocks the body that rocks the party. Never 1cc’d, though. I’ll have to come back to it at some point.
Spider-Man 2. I only spent maybe two weeks on the Great Project this time around. My shame is vast. No aborted effort looms larger.
Umihara Kawase Kanzenban. No new progress since 101. I will claim this is still an open effort nonetheless, because I have played recently.
Bionic Commando (GameBoy). Aborted. In a good way. The back end of the game was pretty weak, with little in the way of cool swinging. And then I credit-fed a bit and realized there’s a whole battleship level after you finish all the map stages. And then I gleefully quit.
I think that sweeps the desk clear so I can start piling up brand new half-assery.
I know this game doesn’t get much love, but I’m right now infatuated with Söldner-X Himmelsstürmer on the Playstation Network. I must have odd tastes because as hard as I try I cannot understand all the harsh criticism it gets. I will not comply with all the bullshit about euroshmup features or presumably bad stage design. I think this game is gorgeous, extremely challenging and epic.
Last night I just collected all the necessary secret keys to access the 5th and last stage. This means that I’ll still be spending more time with the game for the next few days. And I need more practice to properly deal with Windgeist, for he’s an even greater prick than the 2nd boss was.
Another game I’ve been playing (again) is Zero Gunner 2 on the Dreamcast. I decided to get back to it because I had finished it in its default difficulty, which is 4 (Normal). After a while I knew that the correct default should be 5 (Arcade), which is actually in line with all other Psikyo games I’ve already played. Even with only one step higher in the difficulty range, it’s fairly easy to notice how the rank shifts from Normal to Arcade. Slightly faster bullets and longer fights, for which one more second or one more stray bullet does make a difference. One thing does remain the same though: the game is pure, undeniable fun. Still the most enjoyable Psikyo I’ve ever played.
On the shore of rare shmups, a few days ago I tried Space Turtle Battleship, the Korean-exclusive title for the Mega Drive. I think I was able to reach the 5th stage then. It’s pretty stantard vertical fare, but I did enjoy the fact that all bosses have a numerical health bar, something rather unique for its time. I was commissioned a review of this for Sega-16, so hopefully in a few weeks it should be ready for publishing.
videro games is still awesome and I might actually stick with this for a while
dangun feveron still doesn’t bore me whenever I play it, I finally figured out how to play mr. driller properly so I might take it up fo realz, majesty is still nice and relaxing. somehow I found a codec and configuration that actually works so I might start recording things too. also I got skype for whatever reason, alice00hh1
I am able to do this all because night sleep fails
You might expect I would come back with a 15mb post about SSF4, but nope! Tatsunoko Vs Capcom! OK, the status of things is this: I think the last time I really talked about my plans was when I wanted to get Soki up to par. That’s mostly happened, I’m decent with him now. He’s still a 2nd choice for sure, but I’ve become pretty competent with him and can land his vanilla combo about 1/2 the time (the other half resulting in a smaller combo). I’m happy with that, I’ll continue to use him as an alternate, but my focus is now back to my real team. I’m in a state of wanting to branch out into new combos and techniques.
Ippatsuman – My main combo is pretty good now. I still drop it a lot, but a lot less. It’s pretty damaging when completed. I really want to add that last jump,medium into the end of it. The reason being I think, but I’m not positive, that it makes hitting the hyper grab afterwards a lot easier. Right now alert people can often avoid that last (and very important) step in the combo by double jumping or doing certain specials. I think adding the extra jump in my combo would eliminate that option. It’s hard, but occasionally I can land it. It’s strictly in training mode for the time being (and dummy-like opponents). Also, I’m working on a new sequence for him that could be brought into the main combo eventually, but can immediately be used to extend sliding kicks (which I’m a big fan of). It’s an extremely difficult sequence, but is quite extended if mastered (I believe it’s part of his ideal combos). As with most of these combos, if I can do the first 1/10th of it, then that’s 1/10th better than a sliding kick without combo, so it can be immediately put into use. Right now I’m quite poor at it. Details to follow (probably). And also, I’d like to get a better corner combo going. Right now I just use my regular one in the corner, which is not fully taking advantage of the situation. It’d be nice to find some long, hurtful combo including a Saki assist there. The sequence I was just talking about earlier would probably be an excellent fit there. It’s all a rich tapestry.
Saki – I’ve got a few new things cooking with Saki as well. Most simply, this really cheap tactic I haven’t talked about yet (I will sometime) I am working on making even cheaper. Adding another jump, shot, grenade, shot to her aerial assault. That’s vague, but I don’t feel like describing it right now. Anyway, this is fairly easy and I just need more practice to pull it off more often. I’m attempting this immediately in real games as well. The main thing I’m changing with her is that I’m going back to using more unblockable hyper shots when I can. Specifically, when I have 2 hyper gauges, I’m starting to spend one up for the unblockable load and then SAVE it. Then, when I block their combo attempts, instead of going into my usual 2A,2B,positron storm I can instead go into 2A,2B,3C,jump,B,B,jump,B,B, unleash unblockable, catch with positron storm, for a devastating combo. It’s fairly simple, but I do need more practice with it. I don’t think I’m timing the unblockable shot with perfect timing, allowing for a small gap for escape. Also, I’ve heard I can sneak a grenade throw in there as well :). Even without the combo, unblockable into positron is fantastic. The one major drawback is that holding the unblockable takes away my favorite toy, regular C shot. Still, I think it’s a good thing to develop.
So that’s what I’m working on right now. It might be a little bit much to take on all at one time, but maybe the variety of tasks will prevent me from becoming complacent in practice… maybe. To recap: With Saki I’ve got cheapness drills and jab->unblockable->positron combos to work on. With Ippatsuman I have to add an extra jumpkick to my standard combo and I have new kickslide-based combos and corner combos to work on.
Edit: Nothing like writing all about the combos to make me wanna go try them. Had a quick Saki training session that was very productive. Added the grenade as mentioned before and it seems to plug the gap in the attack string. It’s actually very easy to do. This combo does about 70% damage and it only requires Saki with an unblockable loaded and a free hyper. This might completely change the way I go about playing Saki. I might start taking a more aggressive approach, trying to land this, cause it’s really a devastator. This has to be my #1 focus in the immediate future.
P.S. That combo might still be a little bit off. But it’s damn close and variants on it should be easy as well. Just needs a little bit more playing around to figure out how to eliminates holes.
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision