Fighting Game Catch-All

Sonic Fox bringing out Kitana! Oh yeah! I'm going to stick with Assassin but he's definitely giving me some play style ideas.

EDIT: He's on fire. Dare I say... toasty?

Honeybee did really well though. That D'vorah was really impressive.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Sonic Fox bringing out Kitana! Oh yeah! I'm going to stick with Assassin but he's definitely giving me some play style ideas.

EDIT: He's on fire. Dare I say... toasty?

Honeybee did really well though. That D'vorah was really impressive.

So which variation is Sonic Fox using? He is scarily good at any fighting game he picks up which inevitably makes for tense underdog matches in the finals with whoever ends up facing him. But my main exposure to him is through MKX.

Nice to see D'vorah in the mix. That's another character I'd like to learn how to play better.

He used Royal Storm.

Spoiler:

He beat Honeybee with Erron Black to make grand finals, then he reset the bracket with Royal Storm Kitana vs. Tempest Kung Lao. His opponent then switched to Buzz Saw Kung Lao and demolished his Kitana, so he switched back to Erron Black and cleaned up. I was really surprised his opponent didn't switch after he went to Erron Black but he stuck with Buzz Saw and lost 3 in a row.

EDIT: Spoilered the results for those who want to watch it via vods later.

Kane Blueriver is really impressive in UMvC 3. I've never seen Hulk/Haggar at a tournament at all, let alone in top 6 at EVO.

EDIT: Top 2!!! This guy may take the trophy with Hulk/Haggar/Sentinel which is unbelievable.

Good news, everyone!

UMvC3 still looks like incomprehensible nonsense to me!

Dat Hulk tho.

Edit: Oh sh*t, that's not Honda.

I like watching UMvC 3 for the light show. Plus it's super rare to see meta changes to a game that old, so it's really interesting to see players showing up with characters not considered top tier. Not only that but beating Justin Wong with them.

Nemo v AIAI.

Jeeeeeesus

Kappa should've had that, he worked so hard to come back. Nemo is damn good though. I predict it'll be Nemo vs. Gamerbee in the grand finals.

EDIT: Oh, I didn't see it was them right now. Well I have no other predictions, I really can't say who'll take this.

I want Nemo out. He took AIAI from me.

#teamgamerbee

Edit: Awesome.

I'm picking Momochi to take this but I'd like to see Infiltration. All 3 guys left are super fun to watch.

I don't know who to root for in this one. Both fantastic players, both have had to earn their wins.

Juri will never die! I know who I'm rooting for now.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Juri will never die! I know who I'm rooting for now.

+1

HOLY COW! Match of the tournament. What a comeback.

omg. omg.

What a match. Holy sh*t.

So the question is, is gamerbee out of gas? Does he have anything left?

*cry*

Gamerbee clearly wants this, and it means a lot to him. At this point he's got my vote, simply because he's done so much and still has never won this tournament.

There have got to be at least 1,000 sticks in that room! Just give him another one!

Oh. My. God. WOW!!!!!

Well.

That was the best SF4 event I have ever seen.

Overall definitely. I think the finals from last year still win for best finals, there was just so much unprecedented stuff that happened there.

That final round. Oh man, I can't help but wonder what it would've been like if there hadn't been stick troubles.

EDIT: You know, Momochi may have won the tournament, but it's Gamerbee everyone is going to remember. As I think back on that round it is starting to overtake last years finals in my mind.

Some of you may have seen ads for Rising Thunder, that kind of silly looking robot fighting game, advertised this weekend.

Well, it's made by 2 EVO founders and the guy who made GGPO. That's enough to make me curious. I think it would take something exciting to get SKill to leave Sony.

So that's what he left Capcom to do. It would've been nice if they'd put that in the trailer. I'm very interested as well now. His description in this article sounds like the kind of change that fighting games have been overdue for. Boil the game down to the tactics, the execution really doesn't need to be a barrier these days.

He left Capcom to work at Sony Santa Monica for a while, I'm willing to bet that helped the SFV deal along. He wasn't there for very long before leaving, though, and I guess he went to go make fighting games with his friends.

“This is a terrible scrub who’s really bad at fighting games but it turns out he’s a smart player. He is able to understand what is going on; he just couldn’t do the moves before. That completely locked him out of the competitive experience. He’s now in it and he’s having fun. He’s into my head and playing against those ideas, juking me. As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about how great fighting games are, actually seeing that transition in a realistic amount of time—where you can ask people to stick with a game for a couple of weeks vs. a couple of months—is staggering.”

PC Gamer article on this.

I'll bet this thing takes off (har!) in a big way.

http://www.pcgamer.com/rising-thunde...

Half-circles (sometimes dragon punch for me), sure, but quarter circles are too complex? Still, I had the thought the other day, "wouldn't it be cool to have a completely programmable fighter?" so I'm all for wacky ideas.
I really hate the aesthetic though, and I reached the end of the video where they both unleash cutscene attacks. Blegh. They just keep making them longer and longer (I'm watching you SFV).

A fighting game I didn't know about until watching a few matches from evo but is really really pretty is Persona 4: Ultimate Arena.
I'd say it's prettier than BlazBlue and Guilty Gear Xrd.

oilypenguin wrote:

Good news, everyone!

UMvC3 still looks like incomprehensible nonsense to me!

Me too!
How a character can tag in and completely destroy a full life bar and still this is a competition seems weird.

RolandofGilead wrote:

A fighting game I didn't know about until watching a few matches from evo but is really really pretty is Persona 4: Ultimate Arena.
I'd say it's prettier than BlazBlue and Guilty Gear Xrd.

Really? I've been talking about P4A since the first one came out. I guess we don't frequent the same threads often. It's one of my favorites, but being an Aksys game it's got the same steep learning curve and heavy reliance on combos.

RolandofGilead wrote:

How a character can tag in and completely destroy a full life bar and still this is a competition seems weird.

UMvC 3 is a game that is entirely about footsies. You're throwing out attacks in the hopes that your opponent guesses wrong and mis-blocks. The first person who makes a mistake loses a character, and then you guess again. Execution is also a factor but if you're even showing at EVO in UMvC 3 then you have the execution to OHKO.

In a lot of ways UMvC 3 is like Divekick, another game that is entirely about the footsies and spacing game.

Hookay, finally back home and settled enough to do a little AAR of my first EVO (it's a bit long and rambly so I'll spoiler tag it to save space):

Spoiler:

I got in late on Friday so I missed most of the initial stuff, but I will say that Bally's was completely overrun with EVO attendees. It was kind of a surreal moment realizing that I was in Vegas at a casino and surrounded by a bunch of people cosplaying and carrying around fighting sticks. And then watching those same people trying to juggle their sticks while simultaneously carrying:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/vTbTwJT.png)

I didn't really get to experience anything until the next day, but I did check out the convention hall. They filled two rooms--one was the main stage area where multiple stations were set up for all of the pool matches (the aforementioned crowded area). There were also some stations set up around the main room that were playing games but we never figured out if they were smaller tournaments or if they were just pick up games. The games that were being played there were ones that I didn't really recognize (and a few were japanese imports). Again the crowding was a problem so I couldn't really see exactly what was going on, mostly because the games were being played on tiny 13 inch CRT monitors and TVs, another odd thing to see.

In another room was the exhibition hall, where you could buy swag and check out some other random games. Strangely enough Splatoon was being shown there, but every time I walked by the machines seems to be down. In addition there was an area to test out Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V. Again though, whenever I took the time to check those out the machines were either off or people were taking half hour turns. So I wasn't able to get any real hands on for either of those.

The next day was when the majority of my group were competing as they're all MK players. Consequently, it was the day I spent the most at the actual event. The group's morale was slowly taking hits as no one was really making it out of pools, so the mantra became "Just Win One" very quickly. Then it ended up happening--our friend Dave (can't remember what his game name is now) won his pool.

Immediately after winning, one of the organizers came up to him and asked if he wanted to be on stream. So, naturally he said yes and then had to face off with Biohazard. There was a point where we thought Dave was going to take it since he plays Ferra Torr as a secondary and Biohazard chose the pair. However it was a different variation and he couldn't get in close enough as Demo Sonya and ended up losing.

I took off at this point just to get out of the throng of people, where I kept hearing people talk about a really good Vega cosplay. I did not see the costume, but it was still pretty cool to hear about later.

The next person in the group to fight was my friend Ken. We figured out that he was going to be playing Mike Metroid, and he spent the majority of his time practicing against Stunt Double Johnny Cage. We were all feeling pretty confident, and then they got to character select...

And the guy picked Erron Black.

So, now faced with playing against someone he was totally unprepared for, my friend ended up losing.

And just like that, our Road To Evo was over. And that's when we switched gears to licking our wounds over beer and gambling.

Overall it was a good experience not because of the tournament but because of the group I was hanging out with. Like I said before, that feeling I got initially seemed to continue throughout the three days we were in Vegas. That's not saying there were pockets of people who were friendly and welcoming (especially later on as everyone was a little more intoxicated), but it was certainly not as inclusive as I would have hoped. Slightly disappointing, but I ended up meeting a good group of people and enjoyed some time in Vegas.

It's not something I would plan on going to every year, but after a few years I'd be cool with making the trip over there again. It was fun, just not every year fun.

Lessons learned:

  • Don't stay at the hotel of the event. The lines to wait at the elevators were ridiculous
  • Those plastic souvenir drink things will mess you up if you're not careful
  • Sonicfox may be 17, but he celebrated his victory a little too hard after the tournament--his posse was basically carrying him around Bally's at one point.
  • Don't stay at the hotel of the event.
  • A three day weekend in Vegas is the right amount of Vegas to take. After that you get burned out
  • Don't stay at the damn hotel of the event.

Hey Domano,

So for the slap and tickle next year, I was thinking about staying at the hotel of the event. Good idea, right?

Well yeah, I mean you'll be right at the convention, so you'll never have to walk anywhere. Makes the best sense.

For those watching via VOD, here's a playlist of all Top 8 + Finals from EVO 2015.

EDIT: I couldn't find a single video of Smash Wii U Top 8, but here's a playlist someone else made.

Thanks! I had found a similar video round up yesterday but the quality was trash.

Still working through the MKX Top 8 matches...

Spoiler:

Honeybee plays a sublime D'vorah. The way he stacked on damage with his full-screen combos. Very good composure as well. He just couldn't adjust tactics on the fly as quickly as Sonic Fox could. I was really rooting for him to take the tourney (also Canadian bias)

I was shocked that he stuck with his character when SonicFox switched. Failure to adjust as you said, which is clearly key to victory in these events.