(Super) Street Fighter IV

[mattshutter]

i use the D-Pad on the 360 but still struggle with basic quarter circles at times. more often than not when going for a super, i'll end up jumping forward:(

[KFR42]

I'm starting to notice how occasionally unreliable the xbox analogue stick is. The amount of times i've tried that overarm punch combo with Abel only for him to do something else and stand there to take a beating is ridiculous.

I still don't get how people can struggle with supers and ultras though, they're easy as.

 

The analogue stick is still infinately better than trying to use a d-pad. Even the PS3 one.

[FLips]

I'm starting to notice how occasionally unreliable the xbox analogue stick is. The amount of times i've tried that overarm punch combo with Abel only for him to do something else and stand there to take a beating is ridiculous.

I still don't get how people can struggle with supers and ultras though, they're easy as.

 

The analogue stick is still infinately better than trying to use a d-pad. Even the PS3 one.

 

I know, that's why I use it. It's just beginning to dawn on me how useful an arcade stick would be though

[JLM]

Yeees, yeees, I expect to hear clickety clicking through my headset in the near future. Arcade sticks are the way, the truth and the light.

[FLips]

Getting sick of this game quite fast now. Online play loses all enjoyment when all I come across is Zangief and Ken spammers. I just encountered a Blanka and thought it would be pretty cool. He just spammed that falling swipe thing as Ken would spam a leg sweep and if he wasn't doing that he was doing his lightning crouch thing.

 

Irritating.

 

I went into player matches to see if would mix it up a little and would you have guessed it!

 

Ken, Sagat, Ryu, Akuma and Zangief.

 

Might as well be the only fucking characters on it.

[Mattyc]

That sucks.

 

I

[Full Moon]

Getting sick of this game quite fast now. Online play loses all enjoyment when all I come across is Zangief and Ken spammers. I just encountered a Blanka and thought it would be pretty cool. He just spammed that falling swipe thing as Ken would spam a leg sweep and if he wasn't doing that he was doing his lightning crouch thing.

 

Online gaming would be great if it were not for people...

[DeanoTheGame]

Give it a few months and the majority of annoying XBL users will move on to the new 'in' game, and the real Street Fighter fans will be there to put up a challenge. It happens with pretty much every game except Fifa and Halo I find.

[mattshutter]

Thats a good point DeanoTheGame.

 

I was getting frustrated last night as well. I ended up giving up and sticking to Challenges.

 

I am getting a tiny bit bored of the game though but i'm gonna stick it out with my Dhalsim!

[Whinehouse]

Noooooooooo, don't give up. Actually, trust the casual spammers to ruin the fun for everyone else. Damn, I hate what Xbox Live does to games sometimes.

 

I didn't manage to get online yesterday. Inexplicable lag ruined any potential fun I might've had. The trial game though before I was lag disconnected was against a Ken, somewhat unsurprisingly...

 

However, I got round to unlocking Seth yesterday. As expected, he's been nerfed pretty badly when you get to be him. Having many moves is good, but his defence is even lower than Akuma's. I was fighting Balrog and his charging punches absolutely annihilated me, doing ludicrous amounts of damage!

 

Also gave the game a shot on the Hardest difficulty. I was able to complete it with not too much trouble using my character of choice. Zangief was a bastard who took a few tries and was beaten through excessive poking, though my character has somewhat subpar poking abilities. Seth is almost no harder on the hardest difficulty than he is on the easiest, which is bizarre, yet reassuring.

[JLM]

I think Seth just has one AI routine that can have very slightly higher or lower intensity depending on difficulty. It's often the case with bosses though isn't it. He is quite rubbish as a playable character for the reasons you outlined. Against human opposition you have to play him pretty much like the computer (which I did pull off in one online match against a certain UKFFer ) or you'll get absolutely battered. This is good though, because I expect the odd ranked loser to pick him if they manage to get him unlocked under the assumption that he will be all-conquering. I look forward to this.

 

Also, yes, see what I mean about Zangief's pokes? Christ, his crouching jab is up there with T. Hawk's. Do you have any idea how shit Blanka is against pokes? A jab can beat a Blanka ball, and it does silly damage for a jab because getting knocked out of the ball multiplies the damage. I hate Zangief.

 

Everyone else, yes give it time. The Ken and Sagat noobs will move on once they've milked it for the achievments or hit a level where they can't get any higher. What you have to understand about a new Streetfighter game is that its lifespan runs into years rather than months like your average triple A title these days. SF3 Third Strike and Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo are still played at tournament level, and the true mark of whether SFIV really is a worthy addition to the franchise is if it lives on as a competitive game over the next decade or so.

 

Player matches will pick up massively as soon as the following happens:

 

1) The scrubs get bored and move on to something else.

2) Capcom puts in the multi-person winner stays on lobbies and spectator mode that they had for HD remix.

 

The latter is essential. When that happens is when SFIV online will really be worthwhile. In HD remix you could go into a lobby with four to six guys in it, and one of them will be on 18 wins with the other three trying in turn to take him down as you might with some uber-player at an arcade. The other players in the lobby get to watch the match that's happening while they wait their turn, and you can learn so much from doing that that you wouldn't by fighting yourself.

 

Ranked matches are not important at all. It's fun to see how many Battle Points you can amass etc. but the joy of Streetfighter is creating rivalries and sharing/learning/improving in conjunction with other players. The "play to win" philosophy is fine if getting up the leaderboard or actually entering formal tournaments is your game, but if you want to improve and get maximum enjoyment out of the game then you need to make communities happen.

 

If you and another forumer are in player matches and are STILL getting Ken/Sagat spammed, then play each other instead! With a little more practice you should be able to see off 99% of the Kens anyway, they're really quite rubbish. If spamming sweeps works against you then it's partly on you to find a way around that. Same with Zangief's lariat. If that's all he does then keep your distance, spam projectiles until he mistimes it or get your own timing right and hit a sweep. Either you'll slowly chip him to death or he'll be forced to try something elese. I can understand getting annoyed by Sagat's all-round dominance, but if you're being beaten by one move on repeat then you need to have a plan to beat it, otherwise you can hardly blame the other player if that's all it takes to beat you. Getting frustrated and losing your temper is what costs those games, not just the opposition's "tactics".

 

One thing you could do is pick your character, pick training mode, put it so player 2 controls the "dummy" and then get someone to do Zangief's lariat over and over and over. Then see what your character has that can hit him out of it. Boring maybe, but it'd only take a couple of minutes and you could then ruin the next fucker who tries that method.

 

"

[Carbomb]

Forgot to ask - does this have the Parry system or the Alpha block system? Or even both?

[mattshutter]

Thanks for the great advice again JLM.

 

You've given me a kick up the arse and I'm now thinking about going home to play!!

 

Unfortunately my Xbox Live Gold 12 month thingy ran out today. I wasn't going to renew it but I think I'll do it!

 

I might focus on the Challenges until some of the spammers foxtrot oscar.

 

Also, that spectator mode sounds amazing! I'd love to watch some shit hot players fight it out!

 

I hope they do that soon!

[Chest Rockwell]

That spectator mode does sound pretty sweet...

 

When they did it on HD Remix, was everyone's mic live? I can imagine that being like crowding round an arcade machine so badly.. that would be awesome.

 

 

Tonight is the only night this week that I'm gonna be in so I'm definitely gonna have a bit of a game; if any of you fine jerkwads wants to test your mettle then holler at me..

[JLM]

The impression I get from Capcom is that they're experimenting with the HD remix lobby system at the moment but aren't willing to decide on it unless they can get it working flawlessly. The netcode for this game is solid, but it's obviously a lot more complex and fancy than HD remix, so presumably it makes things a touch more difficult.

 

I can't remember if everyone's mics were live in the HD remix lobbies. Might just have been the two people fighting. Everyone could talk in the lobbies, but during the matches themselves I can't remember. If we did a UKFF lobby it'd be all about the party chat anyway, so we could talk regardless of what's happening in the games. I love party chat (even if it sounds like one of those 0891 50 50 50 services). Having my cousin on the line and hearing her get increasingly annoyed by Tomb Raider whilst also talking to the people I'm playing Halo with while another group plays Left 4 Dead is amazing stuff. Good old technology.

 

So yeah, arcade-style lobbies aren't definite but Capcom will sort it if it's viable because the demand for it is pretty huge amongst fans and it was very popular in HD Remix.

 

On the plus side, the update that Capcom have confirmed contains a tournament system that matches you based on "tournament points". So winning tournaments qualifies you for higher level tournaments. Better still, it's going to have a fight recording/replay mode, which should have been in it in the first place but was presumably not quite done in time for launch. Very welcome addition that.

 

Bombcar:

 

The game doesn't have parrying, guard pushing or alpha counters etc.

 

It has focus attacks though.

 

You activate this by pressing both mediums together. You can tap it, hold it for a brief moment or hold it for a couple of seconds to get three different power levels of attack. The focus attack crushes guard and the full strength one makes the opponent crumple, allowing for free hits.

 

How this relates to parrying is that the focus attack comes with "armour" which works in a broadly similar way to parrying - deflecting an attack whilst responding with your own. The armour is the same strength regardless of the strength of the focus attack, but how long it lasts is dependant on which strength focus attack you do.

 

For instance,

 

Tap MP and MK: focus armour lasts for the split second before the attack

Hold MP and MK briefly: focus armour lasts for about a second

Hold MP and MK until your character goes all ink-effecty and awesome: focus armour lasts for the whole attack.

 

If you get hit whilst focus armoured, you "no-sell" the hit as with a parry, and this little blue shield thing appears instead of an impact spark to show that they've hit your focus armour. You can then hit back using the focus attack itself, or you can cancel the focus attack by dashing and then follow up with whatever you want.

 

You can also do a focus attack whilst in the middle of selected normal and special moves a the cost of one super bar. This cancels the move you were doing into a focus attack and makes you flash yellow to give you temporary invincibility like an EX-move. This is called EX-focus cancelling. You can then further cancel *that* by dashing. EX Focus attack dash cancelling. Yeah.

 

Some of the possibilities for this are astounding.

 

The downsides for what is known in some circles as "focus-parrying" are twofold. Firstly, a number of moves have "armour breaking" as one of their properties, allowing them to break focus armour. Also if you get hit by two or three hits in rapid succession, your focus armour won't hold up. Something like the legendary Daigo full parry from Third Strike isn't going to happen to this game, but using focus attack dash cancelling and other new techniques will require just as much skill and dexterity.

 

The otherdownside is that focus armour doesn't totally protect you like a parry would. In SF3 if you parry an attack it does nothing to you at all. No block damage, nothing. In SFIV, a focus armour hit turns some of your yellow life bar into greeny/brown life. This can be recovered (like "red life" in the versus games) and isn't really "lost", but if you take even the slightest knock before the green life turns yellow again, then you lose it all.

 

An example is what happened to a guy on another forum. He was fighting a Sagat who was spamming high and low tiger shots. The guy was inching towards him, using focus to absorb the shots and keep going to cut down Sagat's range. He got to Sagat on what appeared to be full health, but then one light kick from Sagat did the damage of all four or five absorbed Tiger Shots, which is huge. So yeah, focus parrying is great and all, but you either need to go straight on the offensive after it (which is what Capcom intended) or use it as part of keep-away and allow your life to recover before you next get hit.