Saturday, December 29, 2012

Introduction: First Post! Shinnkuuuuuu...

About Me
Greetings! DirtyLittleBird here. Thanks for checking this out. I am a long time video game fan that grew up on NES, Sega, SNES, all the way to present-day consoles. A long time Street Fighter fan, playing SF2 Turbo a few years after its release, MVC2 (among many other fighters), and playing SSFIV in late 2009/early 2010. I bought my TE fight stick after being far too frustrated as a pad warrior for a few weeks and my friend beating me down with Ryu again and again.

I quickly became committed to improving.

Fast forward about three years, I am working on the post-3000PP climb and I main a B+ Akuma with a secondary B rank Ryu. On the side or for casuals, I enjoy playing Seth, Ken, Oni, Sakura, Evil Ryu and anyone who has style combos, some vortex or is a mix-up heavy character. I like flashy. Except Cammy, screw Cammy. amiright?

Since 2009 or 2010, whenever I started playing, I have played against hundreds of players, mainly online but a lot of offline as well. I have over 4,000 Ranked matches under my belt (lots of wins and lots of losses), so believe me when I say I know what online XBL cheese is.
That is going to be the main focus of this blog--how to survive the battle of trying to be more of an honest online warrior, rather than a salty online warrior. In other words, I want to help beginner to intermediate-level players step up their game against the online crowd. Unfortunately I will only be able to offer advice to shoto players. Good thing 85% of PSN and XBL plays them.

I do not want to make it seem like online is only filled with really bad players. This is mainly in the beginning stages, more like 0PP-1000PP. My brother and I have concluded that these players do not really have good resources to help them improve, so they become one-trick-ponies online because IT WORKS. How frustrating, right? Believe it or not, PSN and XBL do have some good fighters. I have been bodied (read: BEAT DOWN) by amazing players. Players like Strider801, LapChi, gozuso, etc., you name it. The big dogs around XBL, you can say. If you can beat these guys, props to you--because I sure can’t yet (I did beat gozuso once...).

I am sure this may read as way too confusing, or with unnecessary information, but I am a mixture of excited, nervous, and very ready to talk about SSF4 AE 2012! Please just deal with me for a bit if it seems rocky, once I get the hang of this the posts should start coming together more and more.

Okay, whew, that is out of the way! I promise I will not make long self-posts like this again.


My Intentions

The main reason behind this blog is an effort to aid my brother who recently picked up SSF4 AE 2012. He has been out of the loop since the days of SF2 Turbo and MVC2. I also figure I can help other new players while I am at it. I have noticed a lot of folks who probably picked up the game or received it as a gift over the holidays.

Very recently I have been watching my brother play people on PSN. Note that he just started playing SSF4 AE 2012 and I have three years of experience playing this game. It is he and my eldest brother that taught me the ways of the shoto fighters (back in the SF2 days), so this is kind of like giving thanks. A lot of the time I am biting my nails when he lands an anti-air LP shoryuken and he has ultra 1 stocked. It is rather exciting, but on the downside, I really dislike watching bad players cheese him. I dislike it a lot. Enough to want to start this for him and other newcomers.

So that really set this off. No newcomer fighter with a good fighting-game background shall be cheesed again! Hopefully. Or I hope that the advice I give is enough to make you and other folks better players.

I am going to kick things off with a very unusual Ryu vs X (where X is each individual character) match-up guide and how to deal with the ONLINE CHEESE that plagues low-level play! It will not be like your usual SRK match-up thread. Although the SRK match-up threads are helpful, it is not going to help you improve if you cannot get passed the bad players who wake-up ultra, jam shoryuken through dropped links, and who all around have no sense of what an honest match feels like.

After that, I will write a similar Akuma vs X match-up guide for every character. However, for newcomers I would recommend Ryu as a first and picking up Akuma later.
My Intentions: What I Want to Cover. Tatsuuuumaki Our Way to Victory!

As I mentioned earlier, I want to write mostly about how to deal with the majority of these bad online warriors. I have so many ideas for this blog that I am bound to run into trouble trying to categorize everything. Maybe at the header of each post I will give a description to the level of players I am trying to reach out to with a summary of the focus. So something like:

Player Level: 1 to 2, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest.
Focus: How Properly Anti-Air with Ryu
Summary: Ryu has many anti-air normals (cr. HP, cr. MP, st. LK, etc.) and his shoryuken special move to aid...you get it.

I realize that all of this information already exists and can be found on websites like Shoryuken, EventHubs, or on videos from YouTube--but I think I want something that is mine. It is going to be my advice and what I have found out by applying my many battles and match-up knowledge from that.

I can understand if people do not find this information useful, whether you are too high-leveled or simply do not want to read it. I want to direct this information to those who are just starting with the game or still cannot apply what they know effectively in battle. If you like it, awesome. That is why I am doing this. If it does not apply to you, but maybe a friend or someone else you know would benefit from this? Link it! I guess what I want to say is that whole bit with the “If you don’t have anything nice to say...” You know what I mean. That aside, I do welcome constructive criticism and what not. I just do not want salt all up in my cupboard. Nawmean?

All this information aside, I will post higher-level tactics, such as my favorite--using Akuma’s Ultra 1 Wrath of the Raging Demon as an anti-air in high-pressure situations. It will be a good mix-up (har har har) to posts about low-level play on PSN and XBL. I will also be happy to reply to questions from visitors. Let us discuss your videos (link them from YouTube), chat about your Ryu vs X or Akuma vs X match-up trouble, and so on!


Lastly, a worthy mention of my good friend Tom (XBL: xXHootingtonXx)--Tom plays a very strong “poke-you-and-kara-grab-you-to-death” Vega. Tom has great knowledge of Vega and other charge characters. He also has good knowledge of XBL, most recently at 3000+PP and a B+ Vega. He has graciously offered to contribute posts for my blog. For a peek of a highlight reel of his gameplay, check out this video: Tom's Vega Clip
For a quick highlight video of my gameplay, check out this video: Me lookin' good fighting a 'Gief.

I will be uploading other fights or clips of certain situations when they become relevant to a post.

If you read all of this, I wish I could pat you on the back. Sorry for the excruciatingly long first post. After rereading this a million times, I did not see anything that I wanted take out. I am looking forward to updating this often. Check back every now and then for a good dose of how to not get salty while playing online!

WELP. I think that is all I wanted to put out there for now. Keep fighting the good fight, fellow fighters. DirtyLittleBird out.