Played IMX in Casino tonight… first time I played him since SvB. It was good practice. He plays an oddball team (C-Chang/Raiden/Zangief) and has the basics down really well, his main game seems to be poke, poke, poke and then when you get scared to poke, start jumping in and working mix-ups from there. The most annoying tactic to fight against is jumping attack > delay > command grab, which caught me out an embarrassing number of times.

Anyway, I decided to play most of my A-characters because even though IMX plays weird characters, his poking and anti-airing is waaaay above anyone else I play in UK at CvS2. So it was a good chance to see if I was better or worse with characters than I thought I was…

A-Mai // Better // Still my best character by far. Playing against grapplers favours Mai anyway, because she can keep them out fairly easily, but even so I feel really, really comfortable using her. More so than any other character. All I need to do is figure out her problem match-ups of Vega and Blanka.
A-Sakura // Same // I’ve got the basics down well enough, it’s just the cr.LK, cr.LK, st.LK xx SRK combo and her CC that I’m still inconsistent with. And her roll cancels. So the problem is execution. Practice should sort that out.
A-Hibiki // Worse // Same as Sakura, just the execution problems are even more apparent. Seriously thinking of dropping her.
A-Athena // Worse // Once her parlour tricks are figured out, I’m kinda lost with her. Don’t have much of a gameplan, much of a strategy, much of a threat, much of anything.
A-King // Better // Though oddly, I might be better with King than I think. She’s the worst character in the game and nothing but one big parlour trick (her extremely quick dash and roll) but everyone I’ve played with her has struggling to cope with her speed. I still think it’s as much due to people underestimating her as much as anything else.
A-Yuri // Better // Like Sakura, minus the execution problems, plus hideous match-ups.
A-Todo // Same // I screwed up his CC several times but got down his RC grab consistently. Weird.
A-Eagle // Same // Still not really comfortable enough to use him as anchor and I don’t like him anywhere else on the team.
A-Joe // Better // I’d never ever use him in a ‘proper’ match but I did okay with him. Not knowing the really advanced stuff with Joe meant I kept it simple (no jumping, no fishing for stupid combos) and that seemed to work. Lots of fireball pressure! That’s how you use him.
A-Ken // Same // I’ve just lost interest in using him. Same with A-Haohmaru, who I didn’t even use.
P-Vega // Better // Much easier to use than I thought, mostly thanks to his walking speed allowing for a pretty menacing throw game.
P-Kyo // Worse // Much, much worse than I thought. My P-Kyo is terrible. I think I’m going to stop with him now.
P-Cammy // Same // The fierce punch link into level 3 disguises how good/bad I am with her, so it’s kinda hard to tell.

I figure my new team will be A-Mai/Sakura/Blanka, once I get practice Blanka. Can’t be arsed learning a new character, Mai is there, Sakura is almost there, Blanka doesn’t need that much work anyway. No more Hibiki? Seems that way…

Virtua Fighter 5

I spent most of the Saturday playing Virtua Fighter 5 casuals. I’m really happy with my Sarah in VF5 at the moment – she’s supposedly the worst character but I got plenty of wins, learnt a few new tricks (low punch > back dash > dragon smash = BLATANT) and got some funky stuff going from her Flamingo stance. Also tried Aoi for the first time – I was freezing up a lot to start with but her PKG stance is much better than I thought, works really well against human opposition. I still can’t get Aoi’s follow-ups for her counters down yet, or her multi-throw (or even her 270 throw) but she’s in a better state than I thought she would be. Still way more confident and effective with Sarah though.

Shame there was no tournament for it but overall, I was pretty happy with how I played. The only thing I did find annoying was the sheer amount of Akira players. About half the people there were using him. BORING.

Knocked Out: Group stages 

I didn’t qualify from Hyper SF groups – I finished 3rd in my group and came one win away from making the last 16 but I lost to Chunkis and Neo-G, which is fair enough. What was weird was how much I’d forgotten to play this game. I play ST Vega and was trying to do crouching fierce as anti-air (?!) for the first two matches, forgot his slide is abusable and completely forgot backflip built meter. I’m probably lucky I only lost two matches, given it took me about two games to remember what I was doing. Lucky I still remembered whoring crouching medium punch with Vega is pretty much all you need…

Knocked Out: Semi-Finals 

I made top 8, just like I wanted to. I didn’t think I would because I played some of the foreign guys in Casino arcade on Friday and they were beasting but I lucked out - I was handed a relatively soft group with only Ryan Hart a big threat (I threw away my match against him) and Groovy Gunnar, a Swedish player (I OCVed him). That put me through to the top 8 and the big stage, with all the matches being played on the projector. At this point, I decided to run with A-Mai/Sakura/Hibiki but oddly enough, I wasn’t getting any combos out. I don’t know if it was rust from lack of practice, nerves, an off day or what but I had to change the way I played slightly - less combos, more poking.

Then, I lucked out for the second time. My quarter-final match was against middlekick, meaning I avoided playing Eugene or Louie, who would have walked all over me. Being on the stage made me really, really nervous and I was missing Custom Combos all over the shop – even Mai’s brain dead simple one wasn’t happening. To make matters worse, I lost the first game to middlekick, who opened up with an ultra-conversative Iori, which I wasn’t expecting. I won the next two to make it to the semi-finals but honestly, I don’t remember anything about the matches. It’s all a blur. I remember middlekick doing a level 3 super through a full screen Mai fan and I remember a lot of random activates working but that’s about it. I can’t remember a damn thing.

Against Grand Lethal in the semi-final and Louie in 3rd Place Play-Off, I collapsed. I had pretty much had enough by that point and wanted the experience over and done with. I had run out of gas. I didn’t embarrass myself but didn’t do well in any of the games against them, I just didn’t have the mental energy or fight left in me. So, fourth place – much better than I expected and hearing so many people cheer me on was my highlight of the weekend

Knocked Out: Top 16 

The only game I did really well in and again, I met my expectations by getting to the top 16. My group was tough – I had RaJu (winning of last RB season), Dukus (former SBO UK team member) and Darkside (French Urien player) as the three I expected to contend to go through. My first match was my Elena against Dukus’ Dudley and after getting absolutely RAPED in the first round, I just about beat him when I played more aggressively and he ended up missing a Dudley combo that doesn’t work against Elena, which left him open and handed me victory. RaJu then ran through me without any trouble, so I had to beat Darkside to go through… after two very close rounds, I gambled on an overhead linked to SAII when we both had no energy. I fuck it up ALL the time but not today – it worked and put me through. Afterwards, Kenpachi told me I had a nice Elena. Given he had spent two days booing UK and UK players, I felt pretty happy about that.

I got smashed in the last 16 by Mymoza but my job was done. I got to the last 16.

So overall, I was really happy with how I did. Fourth place in CvS2 (undeservedly so) and top 16 in 3S (deservedly so)… not too shabby. Along with Iron Man, it’s probably the only tournament where I’ve really been happy with how I’ve played/where I’ve placed. So yeah… a lot of fun, a lot of stress, a lot of positives, a lot of memories.

Here’s a list of everything about the Bad Company beta that sucks:

- No prone option sucks
- Too much auto-aim sucks
- Locked weapons suck
- Gold Rush sucks
- No sniper GPS sucks
- No parachute sucks
- No bailing out of choppers sucks
- New spawn system sucks
- Graphics suck
- Constant “medic!” crying sucks
- New knife move sucks
- Maps suck
- Title screen music sucks
- Points system sucks
- Suck suck suck suck suck

And now here’s a list of everything about the Bad Company beta I really like:

-

So this coming weekend is Super Vs Battle in London, the biggest fighting games tournament UK has had for some time, with players coming from all over – Manchester, Newcastle, Northern Ireland, Greece, Sweden, France and Belgium… and I haven’t practiced, at all. And I’m helping run it. I’m going to get absolutely raped by a Greek man! I can just tell.

I don’t even know which team I’m going to use for CvS2 yet and that’s the game I should be strongest on. It’ll either be A-Mai/Sakura/Hibiki (my best team but Sakura and Hibiki are execution heavy) or P-Blanka/Kyo/Cammy (not too good with them but I have way more fun with that team). I’m tempted to go with the P-team but I know some people are expecting me to do well, so bleurgh, I dunno. It comes down to whether I’m more confident with Sakura or Cammy, as both teams depend on how well I do with those characters. Japanese schoolgirl or Kylie Minogue?

Hopefully I’ll get top eight in CvS2 and top 16 in 3rd Strike. Don’t know about Hyper. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

This one doesn’t need Wystery Miskey to run, either.