I was scheduled to play my first round match tonight, so I had spent some time practicing, got home with plenty of time to spare, warmed up… and waited.  For half an hour.  I ended up winning by default because my opponent never showed, which is apparently par for the course in these WCG things.  I sent him an email, and apparently he doesn’t own an XBox, he signed up with a Gold account he made on someone else’s? I don’t know why he’d bother to sign up if he wasn’t going to play.

At any rate, as a belated introduction, I need to get back into the groove for VF5, and this blog is also going to have posts with the progress on that front as well.  I’m entering every tournament I can make it to both to gauge the progress of my game, and to get over the nervous jitters I get before any big match.  So even though I won by default tonight, I failed on both those counts.

So I played a bunch of Ranked matches online in Championship mode.  I got to a class where I’m winning and losing 50/50, so I have a fair way to go.  One irritating part of playing online is that with a matchup like Zangief or Sagat, where deep jump-ins and timing and spacing the anti-air exactly right is so difficult already, the lag makes the matchup that much harder.

But the real thing I wanted to say in this post was that I played my first Gouken and Seth online, and lost both matches by a small margin.  Vs. Gouken it came down to the last hit of the last round, and he pulled EX Demon Throw, which I completely forgot he had.  Vs. Seth, I really didn’t know the properties of the Ultra, and it owned me both times.  Knowing how the opponent is going to panic when it comes down to the wire is what wins matches, no matter what the game is.

I want to get better against Brice’s runaway Akuma just because it’s a cut above all the awful people who have a runaway Akuma online.  Russ’ Blanka is a hard matchup for me too; even if I get past the tricky cross-up shenanigans, Blanka is still a character with solid normals.

• Against Akuma, make sure to time Ultra against air fireballs, I saw a video where it worked against the low air fireball, too.
• Abuse standing roundhouse, ranged crouch, try to get more trades through his fireballs– I can actually win the damage race for once.
• Be ready for demon throw okizeme, jump straight up maybe, since jump forward could mean eating a fireball?

• Against Blanka, make sure the Ultra hits every time off the missed Blanka ball.
• Use focus attack more against his normals? A lot of that has crazy range and speed.
• Come up with better punisher for blocked moves like the slide and sweep.

All in all, good games.  I learned some, but not enough yet, I think.  Also, those Mad Catz TEs felt pretty good, but $150 is too steep considering I already have an arcade controller.  I think it’s time to buy some Sanwa buttons.  I also wanted to try and mod my spare Hori EX2 into a PS3 controller, so I think I’ll try and see how that goes instead.

A quick match from 11/01/08 at a Ranbat at Tokyo Game Action (before its unfortunate closing).  I don’t understand this matchup at all, and the tactics in the video is the sort of thing I need to learn how to beat.  Justin Wong has sort of perfected this school of play, so it’s going to be the yardstick for Rufus play from now on.

[MP4]

Not that it’s really surprising, but the round robin between Justin Wong, Daigo, Iyo, and Poongko was really amazing.  Like, probably the best SF4 that’s been seen yet, anywhere.

If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out.

Went over to MD with Chris, Russ, and Ek and had some great games with the guys over there.  It’s really gratifying to be able to play and see how everyone’s improved, and how you’ve improved as well.  Got some matches against Ken that were very informative, played against DevilJin’s formidable C. Viper, and had a good yardstick against Balrog.  Didn’t play against Blanka as much as I would have liked, plus the Chun mirror match is a little nebulous as to who’s going to win, and why.  In any case, good shit all around, and days like this are why I play fighting games.

Anyone else have a character that they’d love to play, it just doesn’t suit their play style?  In Third Strike, I always wanted to play Makoto, but no matter how aggressive I got, I was never at a point where I was brave enough to dash in and command throw every 2 seconds.  I’m watching some youtube vids of this guy Allen, and his Cammy is pretty good.  He doesn’t do the Cannon Spike FADC into Ultra, and I’m not sure why, but he has the TK Cannon Strike combos down, and a decent poke/pressure game.  I’ll keep Cammy on the back burner, but I don’t think my play style is balls out enough to manage it.  If the West Coast motto is “rush that shit down,” my attitude is to always about being patient, standing my ground and finding answers.  It’s been true since SF2 came out when I was in the fourth grade and played Guile, and just played defensively all day, sometimes being surprised at how well it worked.  Of course, no one can win by being 100% defensive, so I’m trying to learn more footsies and setups, but I don’t know if I can change my style that much.  When I picked up SF4, I was determined to play a rushdown Cammy, but that turned into a defensive Cammy, and now not Cammy at all.  Anyone else had success going against the grain and changing their play style for a character?

One thing that’s nice about switching my main away from Cammy to Chun-li is that the Ultra is a bit easier to use and combo into (well, I guess Cammy does have TK Cannon Strike into Ultra, and Cannon Spike Focus ).  It’s not a lot of damage, and is only really worth doing when the opponent ends up in the corner.  I got it for the first time on instinct during a match yesterday, so hopefully, I’ll be able to use it more.  I did screw it up on a XBL match today and lost the round (pretty solid Sagat), but I’ve gotten it a few times to win, too.  It’s high risk, low reward, but all high-level combos in fighting games are.

I had some decent matches on Live today, but I played a solid Guile.  Honestly, that might be my least favorite matchup.  I’ll lose in a fireball war, can’t Ultra through it, hard to instant overhead out of the reach of the flash kick, etc.  I really need to learn how to find the gaps in his offense in order to win, since I doubt I can out zone him.  My only hope is that my pokes are faster.

Oh, and also, it seems like I can punish M. Bison’s scissor kick on block with Chun-li’s Ultra, which is awesome.

I’m going to branch out in terms of posting non-Chun-Li featured videos from now on, but I wanted to include this because I’m most familiar with the Boxer matchup thanks to TerryBogus =) Also, Nuki is as good a role model as any to watch as I learn Chun.

[MP4]

Was very worn out for today’s matches, and felt like I couldn’t really concentrate that well. I was doing reaction Hasanshu’s over Ryu fireballs and countering with Ultra, but everything else was just off. I realize my main problem against shoto is that since Chun doesn’t have a go-to anti-air move that can hit a shoto doing a deep roundhouse/crossup. One thing I learned is to judge the distance when they begin to jump in. Either they’re far, and stanidng HK and HP will hit them, or I’m too close, and I need to maybe do standing MK to hit them out of it.

Beyond range games, the biggest problem in my game is pokes and footsies. I listened to an ep of the Gootecks show with Combofiend, and he talked about footsies for like, an hour. As Chun, I don’t know a  really solid block string, plus I never do it because I’m trying to keep them ranged outside my jab range.  I have been neglecting jabs, mainly because I try to play keepaway most of the time.