Let's You and Me Fight: There Wulf. There Castle.

Before we go any further, I’ve got an important confession to make: I’d intended to keep to my semi-regular schedule of getting these up on Sundays, but I spent the lion’s share of Sunday the same way I spent the lion’s share of Saturday, and indeed the lion’s share of my Friday evening—watching the Combo Breaker tournament on this very website (thanks for allowing me to not have to sit in Twitch chat, Giant Bomb, I appreciate it more than you know). It was a massive bummer to have the streams go down as often as they did (some serious ISP shenanigans apparently went down, and that’s a shame), but whenever the feeds were up it was great to watch a bunch of intensely good players do battle in games which I either own or happen to have an interest in. I particularly enjoyed watching the Killer Instinct and Guilty Gear Xrd finals (I wanted to watch the P4AU finals too, but stream problems prevented it). I will never be on the level that basically any of the participants operated on, but there’s always some knowledge to be gleaned from watching folks play at a high level (like “block sometimes” and “maybe don’t just charge at people all the time”). Also it’s fun to watch and chat with people who know more about fighting games than I do. Some pretty damn good matches happened over the weekend, and the MKX final in particular was intensely exciting.

So obviously I finished watching Combo Breaker footage and got intensely excited about playing some more fighting games—specifically, I got intensely excited about playing more Killer Instinct.

I Gave Iron Galaxy Five Dollars

Shortly after my last post, some discussion in the comments ensued, and it was recommended to me (thanks, @l1ghtn1n) that I should consider buying either Jago or Sabrewulf, as my previous posts indicated a preference for rushdown characters (which is pretty accurate, since my go-to strategy involves just lumbering forward like a big dumb animal and swinging wildly—there’s a tip for any of you who happen to encounter me in any fighting game). A vague memory of playing a lot of Sabrewulf on the original KI as well as a passing interest in werewolves (I would kill for a Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines type of game, except you get to be a werewolf instead, because vampires are fuckin’ boring) got me to shell out the $5.00 it took to unlock Sabrewulf.

Here’s something I really like about Killer Instinct: It has a nice training mode (not the best training mode, but a nice one) that lays out the basic mechanics and has you essentially do a bunch of crap as Jago. Once the combo system was explained, I had a better idea of what I was doing—and it turns out Sabrewulf’s linkers are insanely easy to pull off. I pulled up the arcade mode and jumped in, setting the AI to I think “medium,” which in my parlance usually means “this will beat the piss out of you,” because as I may have mentioned in the past I’m not very good at fighting games.

I charged in, started a combo, hit a linker, and then… everything slid into place. 16, 24, 32 hit combos, all of them suddenly pounding the absolute shit out of enemies I’d never managed to come close to beating in previous, aborted attempts with Glacius to do anything of note. The system clicked for me, and I fell instantly and irrevocably in love with this fucking game. I haven’t taken the game online yet—I was going to do it over the weekend, but Combo Breaker happened—but it is something I am pretty excited to do. If you happen to see me online and in Killer Instinct (my XBL handle is forddent), feel free to challenge me and, I’m sure, beat my ass like a fucking drum because I’m still pretty shit.

The Quanba and CronusMAX combination, incidentally, continues to work well as a way to have a fightstick on the Xbox One—I leave the stick set to 360 when I use it, and since the adapter isn’t doing any weird-ass macro inputs or anything (because who has time to fuck with all that nonsense, also why would you want to? That whole concept is dumb as hell to me) and just serves as a bridge I haven’t noticed any input lag of any sort—although I struggled a little more to pull of some quarter-circle motions with Jago to start out with, so maybe there was some lag in there after all? I kind of doubt it (it is more likely that I just wasn’t making a smooth enough motion), but more testing will doubtless suss out the truth of the matter.

The Perfect Training Mode

I think I mentioned this last week, but I was alerted to a sale on the Humble Bundle store which had Skullgirls on sale for like… three dollars or something like that. I if course grabbed a copy because I’d been considering doing so for a while and three dollars falls well below my threshold for impulse purchasing. I mean shit, you can barely get a drink for three dollars these days.

Anyway I grabbed Skullgirls and jumped right in, although I should be up front and admit that I think I’ve played the least amount of this one—only an hour and a half or so (Steam claims I’ve played like 38 minutes but I think that’s probably not accurate). I’m most impressed with how comprehensive the tutorials in Skullgirls are: they explain a lot of basic fighting game concepts which a beginner might not understand, for example, and have you pulling off combos before you even quite realize you’ve gotten that far.

The MvC team play that Skullgirls seems to rely on is not exactly my cup of tea—I prefer to have my fights as one on one affairs, for the most part—but I went through most of the story mode with Miss Fortune and had a lot of fun with it so far. The story mode’s a little weak—you have some random fights and the occasional story beat, and that’s about it—but it is a decent way to experiment against different matchups with a character, which is all I ever use story mode for anyway (unless we’re talking the story mode for the last two Mortal Kombat games, which are more of a sampler that allows you to figure out which characters you are good with). I’ll probably head back to Skullgirls sooner rather than later, because there were some entertaining SG matchups at Combo Breaker that got me itching to play again.

The Rest of the Stuff

I did some more SFIVU experimentation, and wound up changing characters again—I’ve become attached to Elena, who more than any other character got me close to actually winning a goddamn online match. I’ve had some pretty rotten lag on a couple matches, which is probably because I’ve been trying to find games late on weeknights—certainly when I bother to look for matches on the weekends I’ve had a little more luck. I am still terrible, and I do mean terrible at SFIVU, but I’ve found my footing a little more to the point where I can actually get through most of the arcade mode (when I’m not being interrupted with online match requests, which are pretty frequent if you turn them on) without getting super-stuck, so there’s been a little improvement there.

Persona 4 Arena is probably still the game I’m playing the most of, if only because I really want to get through the story mode—I’ve unlocked all the characters, and just need to knock those out before I get to the bottom of things. It’s a hell of a lot of fun and, like I mentioned last time, almost stupidly easy to pick up and play. I’ve been focusing only on Chie when it comes to online play, and she’s won me more than she’s lost, which is unusual. There’s still a pretty good online community for P4AU, which is a relief, since it’s the game I’m actually decent at.

I have played very little MKX recently, partially because I’ve been focusing on other games, and partially because I am just tired of the terrible online performance (and sure, partially because if I’m gonna play a fighting game on the Xbone, I’m going to hook up my stick and play KI). There was some really exciting action at Combo Breaker that got me thinking about jumping back into it though, so I’ll probably wind up heading back to that soon. Supposedly they’ve tweaked Sub Zero a little so he’s slightly less terrible? That’s an exciting thought. Killer Instinct, though…

Basically, watching the Combo Breaker tournament got me excited to play more fighting games. Next year I might even head down and check the thing out. I considered heading down this year, but for a variety of reasons (mostly involving my inability to plan ahead, so I would’ve been paying to get in like, at the door) I gave it a miss. Chicago’s only an hour-hour and a half drive for me, so it should certainly be worth checking out. Maybe I’ll even register for a tournament and get my ass kicked (probably not though).

BREAKING NEWS: I won a ranked online match against a dude playing TJ Combo. I feel like a goddamned GOD. Only took me getting housed the previous seven fights with other dudes to taste sweet, sweet victory. It was even better because the guy had the audacity to teabag me after he took down my first lifebar, which made the ultra combo finisher I dropped on his ass all the more satisfying.

The training mode and tutorials are so good in Skullgirls that I wish I could play it. But team games are really not my cup of tea.

btw if you really want to get better, local matches are really important! Maybe not a major tournament like Combo Breaker, but even finding a few people to play locally helps.

@perfidioussinn: Yeah I know there's no substitute for local play when it comes to this stuff, but I want to have some semblance of a game before I go through the process of meeting new people and (presumably) getting my shit completely wrecked live. It's definitely a thing I'm looking into though--I have a feeling that Chicago's got a pretty solid FGC scene and, in spite of a few high-profile PR disasters, the community as a whole seems like a group of pretty chill folks.

@l1ghtn1n: So one thing that you are able to do without owning characters is set up AI fights against them--so even though I can't play as everyone, I can at least fight everyone and get a feel for them that way. The only way to approximate an actual person is to crank the difficulty up to Very Hard, of course, which can be rough, but it's probably the reason I was able to get the victory I did (I'd been housed by a couple TJ Combo players earlier, and decided I would practice against him specifically). I've been practicing switching up linkers, and it's paid off in that I can usually get through a combo without being broken, and I'm getting a little better at breaking combos, although I still tend to guess wrong and get locked out more often than not.

Cinder is fucking crazy--those sticky grenade things he throws are a goddamn nuisance and I'm still puzzling through that a bit (I'll check out that guide you linked and see what's what). I fought a Cinder who managed to...it looked like he canceled out of his ultra combo finisher and was able to just restart and roll them together into what was like a 110-120 hit combo finisher, which I didn't even know was possible. It was pretty fucking cool to watch, if a bit embarrassing.

I love that you said this half a week before Shadows dropped. (I hope you're playing around with Shadows, btw, because it's incredible. :D )

@fnrslvr: Yeah I have been spending an awful lot of time messing around with Shadows since they dropped--it's fun as shit! I meant to write some more about it this past weekend but I got consumed by errands and video games, so I never got around to it. Doubtless I will make up for it next time.

@ford_dent: Sub-Zero is top 10 at least, arguably top 5; has been since launch though some of the more elaborate setups don't work anymore. The fact that he doesn't match up very well with Kung Jin is his only particularly salient weakness. Also everyone who plays him is a scumbag, at least in my experience. Having salty Tom Brady as the front man for the character isn't too great.

@fredchuckdave: I have to spend some more time with Sub-Zero and see if I can get a better feel for him. Part of the problem is that online matches have been so goddamn laggy I don't know if it's me inputting combos wrong or the lag (certainly I seem to pull things off with greater regularity offline, but I'm also only fighting the CPU offline, so...). I also still think his freeze ball comes out too fucking slow. I bounce between him and Mileena, who can combo with the best of them but I've not been huge on any of her special moves (the roll is pretty clutch, but that's about it).

And yeah salty-as-hell Tom Brady is a poor rep for him, but that's the hand we've been dealt.

@ford_dent: I'm sure lag can make some of his weirder combos less doable (uppercut into Ice Clone for example) but in general any character with a stun is easier to use in lag than those without. Mileena suffers from almost all of her moves hitting mid/high, though that doesn't stop a lot of online champions from doing well with her apparently; but I'd be surprised to see her in many top 8's in the future.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah her low hits are few and far between, and I haven't spent enough time with her to get to the point where I can pull off her more impressive stuff yet. Shit, come to think of it I haven't spent time with anything MKX in over a week; it's been all Killer Instinct and USFIV for me.