Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Matt G]

I played a bit tonight. My viper made an appearance and a very sorry one it was too.

Sorry I couldn't play with you Matt G, I had zero bar with your mate so the game just froze.

Hehe, it wasn't a mate, just a random off setting up a lobby - should have kicked them. Weird as the first half of your match seemed alright and then the arse just fell out of it. Thanks for the friend request, weds evening is looking like Street Fighter night for me at the moment while the missus is on a course.

[ah]

i didn't play any street fighter yesterday nor did i even read anything about it so i don't really have anything to contribute, but i did like seeing pixelbark call endless battle "sissy mode" on the previous page. respect.

[JLM]

That's right, Jason, a fullscreen super.

:

Oh dude, just laughed a bit too loudly at my desk there. Turned it into a cough, so it's fine.

So I was terrorising ranked with Sakura last night. Only lost once to a Blanka player, and managed to subsequently beat him in extremely salty rematches with me playing Balrog and then Blanka mirrors just to teach that FUCKING SPAMMING WON'T WORK IN ARCADE EDITION FUCK A FUCKING LESSON. Ahem.

But yeah, lovely run with Sak, and it was even lovelier (yes, lovelier) that by far the two closest games were with rllmukers. Nate should 100% have given me my first loss of the evening. Not to say that the three rounder against Jiro's Vega wasn't close, but Nate was winning at the end of the third round, had gone for the balls out fierce SRK approach to escape two reset situations and was generally bossing things. Then, at full screen, he did a fireball cancelled into Super. I showed no mercy. That PlayerJun video will be the death of you sir.

Had my first instance of back to back rage quits. I get dizzies more with Sakura than any other character, and final round dizzies cause a lot of rage quits. A Balrog player who I didn't even know had a headset yelled "I blocked that you CUNT!" after the classic tatsu - > stand jab - > dash under reset and then quit. Then straight after I had a Ryu quit in the second round after a Sakura Otoshi dizzied him. No ranting or message from him though, just a disconnect.

So now the dream is to score that hat trick.

In other news, I saw Black Swan. It was really quite good.

Unintentional comedy highlight was a girl in our group going "erm, is she turning into a duck?" during that bit where she appears to have webbed toes.

Yeah, she's turning into the BLACK MALLARD.

In other other news: SUAAAREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ. What. A. Finish. Ahem.

[carlito]

In other other news: SUAAAREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ. What. A. Finish. Ahem.

What by Wilkinson? It was ok as far as own goals go.

I often wondered why you love that jab mixup so, it does way less damage than the j.rh and is far less ambiguous. Is it just because of it's reliability?

Whenever I play Sakura now I enforce a strict Ultra 1 only rule to promote better execution with my new grip - it reminded me of how much more damage it does. It's upsetting how much I lose due to me fucking it up.

[JLM]

I use the jab because I like that there's about half a step's difference between going under and not going under. I also find that resetting people lower to the ground gives them less time to think about/prepare their mashed reversal. There's something about air to air hits that makes people hit reversals as soon as they touch the ground. The jab reset is a bit more "WTF???" if they've not seen it before. Plus, yeah, for reliability and positioning I prefer the jab. I use jumping fierce and roundhouse as well though, and I'm using the two hits of Sakura Otoshi for untechable knockdowns thing a lot more now as well. Oh, and the jab is also in honour of Sabre, who introduced the world to Sakura resets back in Vanilla and beat the piss out of Alex Valle's Ryu using that reset. It holds a special place in my heart for that reason.

The "ahem" was acknowledgment that it was not a good finish at all, you silly sausage.

[Nate Dogg III]

Yeah I was devastated. Just complete brainmelt, was getting a bit late for me and the hands just did what they wanted to. Especially crushing as I felt pretty confident that I'd take it once I realised I could HP SRK in relative comfort as I know you go for the reset every time. But no, fireball > Super from full screen. Textbook.

Pretty wretched night all told, but I did successfully bait a jumpin over an FADCed fireball to Ultra 1, and perfected a Fei and a Seth, but not much to report elsewhere. Had another couple of goes with Bison, and I still feel like sending a message to apologise whether I win or lose.

[JLM]

The funny thing is that I'd been doing jab - > dash under - > block against some previous SRK-having opponents and then ate two SRKs off you even though you've seen me try the same shenanigan countless times and had no reason not to do it. Bah.

I have ways of making my Sakura less predictable which I was trying to work on last night before falling back into the same reset habit, so I'll try and surprise you next time.

[carlito]

I don't think I've used jumping fierce, do you still have to hit silly early to cross under?

[Nate Dogg III]

The funny thing is that I'd been doing jab - > dash under - > block against some previous SRK-having opponents and then ate two SRKs off you even though you've seen me try the same shenanigan countless times and had no reason not to do it. Bah.

In fact I've spent the last couple of weeks chucking out FSRK with reckless abandon whether I have meter or not. Last night in ranked I even whiffed two on the trot. Flowchartz.

[JLM]

Jump fierce is for cross-ups rather than cross-unders, but it's a similar thing in that you can cross up or take a very small step back and not cross up with the difference between the two being fairly difficult to spot.

Destin, who was one of the best Sakuras in America until he dropped the character, reckons that jumping light kick is the best for all round ambiguity though, because they can't react to it like the jab dash under and it's even less visible than the jump roundhouse reset. Essentially, if you do the jumping light kick reset to perfection then they literally have to guess. I'm rubbish at it though, so I'll need me some lab time.

Destin also says that you should never use the Otoshi juggle, but I don't necessarily agree with him on that because I think the two hits of Otoshi safe jump set ups are brilliant for Sakura and it means you can reset a bit further into the round once you've inflicted some good damage.

[JLM]

In fact I've spent the last couple of weeks chucking out FSRK with reckless abandon whether I have meter or not. Last night in ranked I even whiffed two on the trot. Flowchartz.

That's exactly why it worked twice on me, because you're not a flowchart Ken and I thought you just did it the once to "keep me honest" as they say on the streams. The second time I had absolutely no idea if you'd just block, the reset would work or if you'd SRK again. The only person I mixed up was MYSELF Nate. I did cut myself a little afterwards. Just a little. I do enjoy these meta-games against familiar opponents. Because of Joffo I find myself doing empty jump - > throw about five times in some rounds and wondering why it doesn't work.

[jiroczech]

re: getting used to using a stick - I've been playing with a stick since I got back into SF, with HD Remix and I'm still getting used to it.

Like I'll be trying to hit something and it'll be coming out as another move and if I go into training and look at my inputs I'll see that I'm hitting forwards instead of up-towards or something. Looking at your inputs in training is the best/only way to figure out what you're doing wrong although it can take a bit of interpretation cos there's no way of knowing the timing. Another thing I've been finding useful is looking at my hands on the stick when I'm doing a move - sometimes I'm surprised to see that I'm not doing what I thought I was... it's weird. It's a good way to help lock down timings too.

Some ggs last night, Jason in ranked and a lobby with Hegg later on. Highlight was hitting hop into Ultra with Blanka against someone annoying Chun when I totally meant to do it.

edit: Oh, Dave I forgot to download the Fight Night demo - how is it? Fuck looking in the thread to find out. I don't go in the other threads. They're full of weirdos. Hope you're ready to get your liver punched out.

[carlito]

Nah, Destin's all about j.rh, he bleats on about it in his guide on SRK.

He is also not a fan of people using s.lk instead of c.hp to link tatsu! Not one bit the grumpy little bear!

Seem to remember him saying that every Sakura player should be FADCing single Shouken into cl.hp xx lk.tatsu, c.hp xx whatever and that "it's not that hard if you practise". Good one Destin, fuck off.

[JLM]

That's the guide I mean. Further on he says that the light kick reset is "impossible to see." He does list jumping roundhouse as the end of Sakura's B'nB and for damage, but the lk is the most ambiguous for pure shenanigans.

I think if I am going to sacrifice the damage of a power move at the end of the combo' date=' I want the completely ambiguous power of jump LK for the more damage, rather than the weaker crossup with the dash, as dashes are possible to react to at 18 frames. If you have the spacing down for jump lk, that shit is impossible to see, they have to guess. Jump LK also lets you move back at the last second and backdash even sagats tiger uppercut.[/quote']

Just before the section "3) Do the correct combos. Stop being lazy."

Agreed on his tone; his guide was pretty informative but it's not a very nice read at all.

[Lyrical Donut]

Managed to re-fuck, and now, un-fuck my stick again this week. Good times.

Came across a lovely chap last week - joins the Endless Lobby I was in, and proceeds to attempt to dry it up with some serious ranked Ryu tactics, he was laggy as fuck too. But I persevered, as you do!

Somehow managed to scrape the win with Mak'... well, I would've if he hadn't dropped half a second before U2 finished him off. Then I got this:

anytime everywhere against laggers. said that, bad repped, devoiced plus reported for lagging. communications blocked, goodbye son.

Totally couldn't sleep after that. I would've messaged back asking why he didn't drop sooner if it was really that bad, but hey, he blocked me. Bless 'im. Cunt.

Boardwalk Battler

[Nate Dogg III]

Name and shame, Donut, he's not blocked the rest of us.

[Lyrical Donut]

I googled his tag after (yes, I was that hurt) and I found a post on the NeoEmpire bad games thread with someone complaining about the exact same thing, I guess it's just how he rolls.

Letshock is the name, being a bellend's his game.

[Nate Dogg III]

Kinda the wrong thread I know but did you guys see that there's no spectator mode in MvC3 at launch? Patching it in later apparently. Fuck that noise.

[JLM]

Oh that is not good at all. I guess people will have a bit of time to get their lab practice in before we lobby it up then.

I want Taskmaster on my team and it turns out he's likely to be the last character you unlock. That's some bullshit right there. It's still going to be great though.

SFIV: We thought it'd be pretty cool if you had to unlock the extra characters by playing through the single player ga...

The world: NO! IT'S BULLSHIT! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO UNLOCK ANYONE FROM THE MAIN ROSTER IN A VS. FIGHTING GAME AND YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO UNLOCK ALL THE FUCKING TRACKS IN MASHED EITHER.

SSFIV: No unlocking guys! Day one fun for all! Lobbiiieees!

The world: YAAAAY! Man, Hakan is TERRIBLE. YAAAAAY!

MVC3: So we thought it'd be pretty cool if you had to unlock the extra characters by playing through the single player ga...

[Matt G]

Epic truths

I suppose the only consolation is that the MvC3 unlocks should be pretty quick by the sound of it. SFIVanilla was the biggest pain in the arse ever, I had to look up a guide at the time and I can't remember it all now - "Chun Li unlocks Sakura, Sakura unlocks Dan etc." I think almost everyone would use one of the bonus characters as a secondary character if not a main, so it must have been hell for tournaments/lost save files. I literally can't think of a worse game for this.

[JLM]

I've seen conflicting reports on it now. A couple of sites have said it's "play through X times = X character" then repeat until done, but then others suggest a points system where you earn points for playing the game generally (versus, single player, lobbies etc) and then buy the characters with that. MVC2 had that points/unlocking system. The Live arcade version didn't though, because that system was, y'know, a bit shit.

But yeah, only four characters to do in MVC3 and it should be pretty swift. If there's no spectator mode out of the box then I'll probably get it done within the first few days, especially if I want to get my practice in with El Supervisorrrrrrrrr.

Chun Li is in it and is also in Streetfighter. I'm pretty sure Shuma Gorath is into coleslaw as well.

I'd also like to lay an early claim to the team ShumAkumaDoom. Excellent team of villains with a snappy frat/sorority house-esque monicker. It's no Castle Man Thor X, but it's a start.

[Nate Dogg III]

It just completely puts me off. I've never put enough time into the series to understand it really, but I'd like to get good at it and I know SSFIV's going to be a bit quiet for a couple of weeks at least after Marvel comes out. Not being able to watch other players in lobbies not only means 20-odd minutes of sitting staring at nothing while two people make excited noises, but means I won't get an opportunity to learn. Only having Arcade mode and ranked for the first couple of months or whatever just sounds pointless and painful.

I mean this thing's been in fucking development for ages, they've removed characters to help the netcode...how bandwidth-intensive can it really be to send input data to six other people in the lobby? No excuse at all.

[Mr. Gerbik]

I mean this thing's been in fucking development for ages, they've removed characters to help the netcode...how bandwidth-intensive can it really be to send input data to six other people in the lobby? No excuse at all.

I've already said this in the other thread, and yes I'm making the same point in two threads JLM-stylee, but if spectator mode isn't working yet then the game is not ready to ship. As far as I'm concerned a spectator mode is/should be a standard feature of online beat'em ups nowadays and I would argue that it's main reason for making the genre relevant and viable again in this day and age. They should have either delayed the game until it was ready -fuck this shameless patch it in later the fans will buy it anyway attitude- or spent less time working on DLC to milk paying customers for all they're worth instead of concentrating important stuff like the fucking netcode.

[Uzi]

I've already said this in the other thread, and yes I'm making the same point in two threads JLM-stylee, but if spectator mode isn't working yet then the game is not ready to ship. As far as I'm concerned a spectator mode is/should be a standard feature of online beat'em ups nowadays and I would argue that it's main reason for making the genre relevant and viable again in this day and age. They should have either delayed the game until it was ready -fuck this shameless patch it in later the fans will buy it anyway attitude- or spent less time working on DLC to milk paying customers for all they're worth instead of concentrating important stuff like the fucking netcode.

I agree. The only factor now is how long will the patch take. If it's something like a day 1 or at least within the first week, that's actually ok. I can take time to learn the game, get the unlocking out of the way, achievements, training mode, 1v1 against a few friends, some local matches can keep me going without lobbies for a little while.

If it's something that will come weeks or months down the time, that would be a disaster. But the fact that the lobby mode is there and one (well the main) aspect of it isn't working, I suspect they'll have it sorted fairly soon.

My preorder stands anyway

[Nate Dogg III]

Agreed entirely. What's the point of even having lobbies if you can't even watch the matches? They've obviously hit a wall late on in development.

Also I'm betting half a white cabbage that the DLC Shuma Gorath and Jill will be 100k "downloads". I'll even throw in a grated carrot and some mayonnaise too.

[JLM]

Agreed on all counts really. It's shameful that it'll come out with the most important feature of all missing, but my pre-order stands as well because I'm such a mug.

[Spuck]

New EE is up, with a serious dose of Dandoms

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

^Cheers, whats everyone's training like?. I do warm ups for 30 mins and then do the trials again with Akuma to the level I'm currently on. Been watching more combo vids from LordUltimita I think which is a fantastic source for Akuma noobs like me.

[Nate Dogg III]

^Cheers, whats everyone's training like?. I do warm ups for 30 mins and then do the trials again with Akuma to the level I'm currently on. Been watching more combo vids from LordUltimita I think which is a fantastic source for Akuma noobs like me.

Feed the cat, pour a beer and skin up a spliff while watching a couple of replays from my last session.

I tried a half marathon once, it didn't work so well.

[ah]

for training i do two raw hours of ranked matches with a character i've never used before and try to read the relevant prima guide pages during the other players' ultra animations and win screens.

for sissy mode i just press the big question mark and then banter my opponents to oblivion with my high spirits and unwarranted exclamations.

happy days.