I'm sure you guys know by now the people behind GODSGARDEN6 will be hosting MBAACC as it's featured game. I'm sure you also know from SRK or MBread that Donjon Network's own Silent Shinobi will be restreaming the event along with hosting a little hotel party / tournament for the occasion. What you may or may not know, depending on if you follow me on twitter or not is that I'm in the process of going to Japan specifically for this event. Now I know what you're thinking..."Brandino I thought you said you was done with MB when you played Skullgirls?" and you know what you'd be 100% right if they never announced this event. I was more or less ready to move onto another game unless a big MB event was announced, in the US or otherwise and it just so happens that GODSGARDEN6 is that event. I really didn't have interest in going to GG6 until Shinobi and I were talking about potentially restreaming the event. I just figured if I have opportunity to fly to Alabama and help him restream what is exactly stopping me from going to Japan? So after talking to my older cousin who lives there and agreed to house me during my time there I made a much bigger effort to try and go.
This particular tournament is sort of weird for me because not only is it my first time playing in Japan, but I really don't have a way to effectively train for me. Generally in US events I have a very good idea on what to expect from my competition from consistently playing them throughout the years, but this time I'm not only going to be in a new environment, but I'm also going to be playing against players I've never played before and who are most likely better than me. I'm not really accepting the advice of just cracking out in training mode because I'm at the point now where training mode isn't really helping my weaker areas outside of keeping my execution up to par. I don't have access to strong, dedicated MB players within respectable distances so I can't even grind match-ups properly.Now you may be wondering why don't I just watch match videos of my competition and to be honest I really don't like watching matches that don't have my character because I don't feel like I'm learning anything from it. The neutral game is play out differently from character to character so what benefit would I get watching a Warc vs. Satsuki matchup? Now this also serves another problem that no one really plays F-Ciel, much less the way I play her so watching match videos, while an option, isn't really a strong one for me. So with that said...how am I going to train up for this event? The answer is simple: not to psyche myself out and just enjoy the experience. I've always had that problem a month or so before a major where I get very, VERY anxious and to be honest I'm still a bit anxious, but it's less about how well I'm going to do and more so just me preparing for the event. I'm essentially in the worst conditions to be training for a major for this game, especially one of this caliber. The best solution I've come up for it is just to treat this tournament as a once in a lifetime experience. Naturally I'm going to aim to do my best, but given the competition I'd be happy to not go 0-2 at this point. I'm just going to play as much as possible when I get there and just not get star-struck when I find myself playing a well known JP player. Not that I've had problem with this playing Garu in the past, but going up against the likes of GO1, Leo, Hare (insert any top JP player here) would be daunting for anyone, but at the end of the day they're players just like anyone else and they'll be prone to make mistakes so I'll just go in and give it my best. Yeah it sort of sucks that I don't have an elaborate training regime for this event, but when the preparation is more mental than actually training what can you expect?
Now does this mean I'm done with Skullgirls? No. Does this mean I'm putting Skullgirls on the backburner? Yes I am.
Doing a better job in maintaining the blog, aren't I? Well I figured since with the semester being over next week I figured I'd have more free time to keep the blog up to at least an semi-weekly basis. Now with that out of the way let me go over my impressions on Skullgirs in greater detail since last post was to focus primarily on what happened in the past 2 1/2 years.
Well as you know, Skullgirls has been out for almost a month now and I know a bit more about the game now than what I knew in my last blog post. Like I said in my last post I really didn't have any intentions on taking this game seriously, much less playing the game at all. The first time I played the game was at Frosty Faustings 4 and to be honest I wasn't really attentive when I played the game there. I sort of just mashed in order to kill the time while waiting for my MB matches to come up. None of the characters released at the time interested me and I really didn't follow any of the games mechanics so naturally I got scraped pretty badly. I always thought the game could've been fun, but I never took VS games with any amounts of seriousness and knowing that Skullgirls was just that I just let it passed me by at the time. I really didn't bother to do any sort of research for the game until the day the game came out when I decided to give the game a fair chance. I looked at the characters released, looking to see who I liked to play and at the time I really took a liking to Filia and Valentine since they were described as mixup / rushdown oriented characters. From there I decided to look into the mechanics of the game and the one thing that interested me the most was that you could actually decide and play a one man team. Now in case you didn't know, I'm not exactly one to learn multiple characters. I usually pick one and stick with her. Melty Blood? Ciel. Third Strike? Ibuki. Arcana Heart 3? Weiss. You get the idea. I figured with me going into a game that's completely out of my field I should at least try to run a two man team so I decided to run Filia / Valentine. Well that sort of changed a couple of days after playing the game and noticing that my Filia was leveling up while my Valentine stayed a meat shield. It also didn't help that most I played online and offline couldn't get past my Filia so it was then that I decided to run Filia solo and yes people told me that was a bad idea, but me being stubborn I decided to let it rock and it wasn't until Power Up 2012 that I found out that running her as a solo character was a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IDEA.
Let me give you a quick rundown with Filia. She's a rushdown character with amazing mixup in the corner and strong 50/50's midscreen. The bad? Well...everything else actually. Her ground normals are terribly unsafe with the exception of her jabs, lights, and standing MP. On top of unsafe normals, she can't safely cancel her normals into her specials since they're either terrible on block or have punishable startup. she gets around this by having an assist of sorts to extend her ground pressure or to make her advances safe. Her normals aren't very good in neutral either since she has such short limbs on most of her normals and they're not active for a very long time, with the exception being J.HP being her best means to approach in most neutral situations. Now because of both her air and ground normals being very sub-par this limits her approach to air dashing and hitting j.HP and despite it being one of her best normals, it can still lose to much better normals and simply out spaced by jumping back and tagging her. Again this can mostly be covered up by having an assist of some kind. Another issue I'm seeing with her is that her good hit confirmable normals (j.MP and cr.MK) prorates her damage to hell which sucks because you use those two normals a lot as part of her combos and it really hurts her damage potential midscreen. Her damage in the corner however is very strong and it leads to reset city so if you're a fellow Filia player be sure to take advantage of that. Overall I think she's a pretty strong mixup / rushdown character ONLY if she has an assist to cover for her glaring weaknesses. Otherwise I feel that you really gimp yourself by running her solo and playing an ineffective rushdown character with absolutely nothing safe.
Since I talked about Power Up in my last post I'm not going to go into detail about it other than the fact I ran into a lot of Parasoul players running her 2nd. It was then that I decided I had to have an assist backing Filia's advances on top of making her safe during pressure so I figured I may as well try Parasoul. Let me get this out of the way now...I hate this character in every conceivable way imaginable. I hate her playstyle. I hate her design. I hate her combos. The only reason I'm using her is because she's an amazing assist that Filia can really benefit from. Yes you can make an argument about Cerecopter and Hornet Bomber, but I can't play grapplers and I can't get the grasp of Double's entire design at all so I figured I'd go with the lesser of 3 evils and play a zoning'esque type of character. I've never played a zoning character with any amount of seriousness before so when I'm at neutral with her my mind sort of goes derp. My thought process in playing fighting games is to go the fuck in and beat my opponent before I have to deal with any of their BS. It's how I went about playing MB and for the most part it worked out for me and the characters I play. With Parasoul however she's not really meant to go in like that, but play neutral and let the opponent mess up. I'm not one to let my opponent mess themselves up and if I still can't get in the process of just chilling back and chucking projectiles since I really don't use projectiles in that manner with F-Ciel and Ibuki's projectiles are meant to start her rushdown. At this point I'm still using her, but to be honest she's nothing more than a meat shield who I use in the same manor MvC2 players use CapCom or Psylocke AA assist.
Now I know I've gone on about my characters and how I feel about them so now I'll go on about how I feel about the game and where do I see myself going with Skullgirls. Despite some of the popular issues I see in the game (mainly Peacock and Double assist) I love the game. I didn't expect to like this game anywhere near the amount I like it now. I was sort of going to play Skullgirls with the intent of just playing the game on the side, but after playing the game as long as I have I can safely see myself making this as main game. Despite not having a strong local scene for the game, the netcode for the game is simply the best I've played in ANY fighter and the players I play online and offline whenever I can make a trip to Columbus makes it worth sticking with it. If I didn't like Skullgirls as much as I did I'd honestly say I would be done with FGs on a competitive level since there's not really any other fighter getting released in the near future that I'm crazy for, except MAYBE Persona 4: Arena. With all that said...thank you for reading the blog post and good night!
Ok now I know what you're thinking. What made you decide to come back to your neglected blog? Well, to be honest I sort just remembered I had a blog. I'm still playing fighting games, but I've sort of picked up a new game in place of Melty Blood, which I'll go into greater detail later on this post. I will however give you a quick rundown of what's been going on with me and fighting games between EVO 2010 and now.
Well EVO 2010 came and went. I ended up getting 5th place losing to Lord Knight and H-F Blade in the losers bracket. At the time I was sort of torn about my placement because in the back of my mind I sort of felt as if I didn't deserve it. Mainly because my bracket was considered the "kiddy pool" due to not having any strong MB players. Personally the only players I felt who had any chance of sending me to losers was Numakie with his abare / random style of play and Nas due to lack of match-up EXP against F-Ryougi. Even when I played those two I pretty much won my matches pretty convincingly. I felt that the "real EVO experience" was going to be the following day when I had to play Lord Knight on stage. Maybe it was because of my inexperience on a "big stage" but I felt really cold and nervous which is pretty out of character for me. I was told that I have strong tournament nerves and even I will say that I hardly ever get star struck or nervous when I'm actually playing someone in a set. When I played my final match of the tournament against H-F Blade I calmed down a bit, but was still playing scared and as such missed huge punishment opportunities which ultimately costed me the set. Overall however I felt as if I played really well against the people I played throughout the weekend. Fast Forward to December 2010 and NEC XI is on the horizon. Now at this point I was sort of slowing down on MB mainly due to major competition in North Carolina (where I was living at the time due to military) more or less collectively dropped the game so I had no real competition and as such I really sort of went into NEC with a "whatever" attitude. At this point my play style has changed a bit being more conservative on meter usage and used more of F-Ciel's frametraps over trying to break the opponents guard. At this tournament I ended up finishing 4th losing to Tonberry, who used C-Kohaku at the time and Lord Knight. This tournament was weird in the sense that I where I usually do really good the day before singles I possibly had the worst showing during the team tournament. I lost just about every game with Pfhor, who was my 2v2 partner, carrying me throughout the entire team tournament. I felt really off losing to people I know I could possibly beat on any given day, but in a FT1 just about anything can happen so I don't find it too odd now. Now I don't know what happen, but during singles however I just got into gear and played MUCH better. I felt that I was on point with most of my play minus a few setbacks during a couple of my matches. I more or less got lamed out by Tonberry in my winners match and Lord Knight (notice a trend? D:) just STEAM ROLLED me in losers. I remember one point in particular where I went to bait a DP and clearly I wasn't high enough because I ended getting pulled INTO the DP and got hit. It was at that point I just laughed and just not gave a fuck for the rest of the set. Anyways that's my wrap up for 2010 and I'll briefly go over my 2011 year as that year was probably my least eventful year as far as FGs goes.
As I said earlier, 2011 was probably my least eventful year and here's why. For one reason or another I could not attend any of the majors I aimed to attend to: Final Round XIV, CEO 2011 and NEC XII all of which I had to miss due to circumstances outside of my control. Aside from that the only real eventful thing I did this year was pick up Arcana Heart 3 for the PS3 and that didn't last too long. The main problem with the game was that Microsoft didn't bother to put it on it's marketplace so no US360 players had no means of playing the game unless they decided to import the game AND system. Now let's be realistic...no one expects people to do that for a game only 3-4 people in their states will play. The game did have a good following at EVO that year, but aside from that the game wasn't really getting numbers to warrant making it a main game for me. I really didn't play much FGs competitively this year and just played MB "casually" until they announced Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code for the PC. At first everyone was pretty hype for not only for a new MB, but also on a platform that was accessible by most people complaining on the forums...a PC. Now this also posed another problem; the only you was able to obtain a legal copy of the game was buying a LE BRDVD copy of an anime called Carnival Phantasm. The 3rd season of the anime, which also had the copy of MBAACC wasn't available until New Years so this gave us, the MB community, a lot of time to figure out exactly what we was going to do to make out game hype again at majors so myself, Silent Shinobi, Komidol, Kamina, Zar and a few others decided to hype up the first big major where MBAACC was going to be an official game...Final Round XV. We pulled out all of the stops for this: hype promos, interviews with Shin Blanka (the main TO for Final Round), promoting our events to the JPMB community (even getting ECOLE to take notice!) and garnishing an international presence from players such as Canada, South America and Japan. Garu and Chelsea were the two JP players that was confirmed for the event. All this happened happened before the game even came out and a month before the event.
2012 is here and I'm already starting off in a much better situation than 2011. I was able to make it to Frosty Faustings this past January to run the MBAACC side tournament alongside play an early build of Skullgirls. Now I will say that at this time I had no motivation to play Skullgirls seriously. I really was never too keen on the VS games and it didn't help that I didn't like much of the characters designs so I played the game without any thought put into what I was doing. Melty Blood ended up being pretty small with only 12 players from Chicago and Wisconsin. I ended up taking 1st place. It wasn't until a couple of weeks before Winter Brawl that I decided to drive out to Philly with DaFunkDoc. This event ended up pretty fun despite not having a hotel room to crash in for the weekend....we ended up staying in some random MK players room on Friday and I ended staying at one of the locals place for Saturday. Now at this point my playstyle has completely changed and most people was able to notice and I was able to notice that everyone was leveled up exponentially since I last played them back in the MBAA PS2 days. I ended up placing 5th losing to Tonberry, who's playing C-Maids, and Lord Knight in losers. I felt a bit contempt that I was able to still hang with the majority of the competition, but I still wasn't too happy of still losing to Kohaku...but then again who is at this point!?
Now we're here at what's the 2nd biggest MB event since EVO 2010, Final Round XV. We ended up pulling a total of 73 players which was more than what I was expecting considering people was talking about not showing up and such. I was really happy to see people I haven't seen in almost two years such as Silent Shinobi, Bellreisa, H-F Blade, Pfhor, Jaxx, Kid Viper, Kensou, Divine Arc and Voomer who I haven't seen since NEC IX. It was also a blast meeting up with Garu and Chelsea again which I will admit was awesome despite being a scrub in the JP language. Overall the event was pretty awesome with me playing the "Game of Death", watching Kusoru body America in UMVC3 and "Kusoru Gear" as Chelsea puts it :D . I didn't end up making top 8 this major, which is the first time I've never done so since playing MB on a competitive level. I wasn't too upset about it because the level of competition was really stacked this year and it was really cool to hear people tell me how much I've improved despite not feeling so myself. This major was more godlike just hanging out with the community watching random YT videos, getting drunk and playing Melty Blood...which is what the MB community is all about at the end of the day.
Now throughout this blog you're probably wondering what's up with this Skullgirls picture, I thought Brandino had no intentions on playing this game!? Well that was true until the day before the game came out and I decided to do my research on it. I found the game to be a bit interesting at that point and figured I had the funds on my PS3 already I thought "what the hell. why not give it a shot?" Well I didn't expect to like it as much as I did and it also helped that I found a character I REALLY liked and her name is Filia. She's a pure rushdown character with amazing mixup opportunity and DEADLY mixups in the corner. Her major problem however is that she's also very unsafe without an assist backing her up. She can't safely chain her normals or cancel her normals into specials without getting punished and her air to air game is very weak unless you push J.HP which is undeniably her best air normal for her air approach. I liked the game so much I decided to go to Power Up 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio solely for the game. I ended up solo Filia since I didn't really have enough time to learn another character and I didn't know what I know about Filia at the time. Well, needless to say I ended up making top 8 losing to OMGItzAndre and JetM who ended up taking the tournament. Needless to say I didn't play in the MB side tournament due to wanting to focus on Skullgirls, but I did play casuals with the players after the event was over. Overall, Power Up was a great event with lots a space and the tournament was ran great in my experience so I'll gladly go back next year
Well that's a quick rundown of the past 2 1/2 years for me. Right now I'm not really playing MB as much anymore and I'm currently on that skullgirls crack with an Filia / Parasoul team. I'll go over in greater detail as to why I'm not really focusing on MB in my next post. I just wanted to give people a rundown on what's been going with me in the past 2 1/2 years. I've also left the military and I'm a full-time college student now living my hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Till next time!
I'm drawing a blank for EVO. I'm excited for EVO and all, but I'm also very very very very very nervous too. The LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST thing I want to do is not make it out of my pool and place low at the biggest MB event like...ever. I'd never be able to forgive myself for placing so low, knowing I'm capable of at least getting top 16...I dunno, maybe I'm just expecting way too much out of myself this time around. My friends keep telling me that I'll do just fine just like how I did at Final Round, but I keep having thoughts in my head about placing horribly or just choking during a critical moment in a match and losing because of it. I already did that at Final Round and I still got away with getting 3rd. I know that will not fly at Evolution so I have to make sure I'm at 110% at EVO.
I'm also having thoughts about switching off of F-Ciel and possibly picking up C-Ciel for EVO. Reason being is that sometimes whenever I play I get the feeling that F-Ciel is really holding me back in some match-ups. What people don't realize about my character is that despite how great her rushdown seems to be...the only thing you really have to be scared of is her guard crushing ability and that's ONLY if I have more than 200% meter. Outside of her rushdown...she really doesn't have anything else that makes her scary. Her rushdown loses mostly to down/back, her overheads are terrible. They're blockable on reaction, you can toss her out of them if she's close enough which is a problem because no matter how you space them out you ALWAYS have the threat of someone mashing you out of them. Also her mixup game is just plain pitiful. F-Ciel's biggest problem is that she has no way to make you afraid of her...no way to open people up their defense. Overall the only thing that F-Ciel has going for her is her rushdown and once you figure that out she's pretty easy to lame out and beat. A friend of mine was telling me that it would probably be better if I switched to C-Ciel if I truly felt that way and I may just have to do that. Now you ask why don't I just play the top tier and be done with it. Well...to answer that question...none of the top tier fits my playstyle at all and they don't interest me in anyway. Also I really don't feel as though I have to do that to myself. Even if I wanted to pick a top tier I don't think I'd have it in me to learn a top tier character in 5 weeks so I really don't have a choice except to stick to what I know which just so happens to be the character I hate sometimes...Ciel :\.
The only other thing I can really talk about is the comp that's going to be there. To be honest the only people and characters I'm worried about are Zar (F-Mech) and XAQshinor (C-W.Len). Everyone else I'm actually feeling pretty confident that I can beat. Yeah yeah I know what and what about Lordknight? To tell you the truth...I'm not really worried about losing to him and if I do happen to lose to him I can assure you that it'll be a closer game as opposed to what it was at Final Round. Everyone else in the country I honestly feel as though I'm either better than them (at best) or even with them (at worst). I really don't see anyone in the US completely dominating me even though I'm playing F-Ciel. I don't see myself as the best player in the country obviously, but I know how good I am and I proved multiple times that I can hang with the best and if ECT2 vids are anything to go by...well I can just say that I can rest a bit easier knowing that EC isn't as godlike as everyone makes them out to be. IMHO, EC as a whole isn't TOO far ahead from the top players from other regions. Mind you I've always thought of the EC players as just another group of players...nothing too special. Their players drop combos/setups just like everyone else. It just sort of bothers me that everyone else loves to make EC as the greatest thing since sliced bread for MB and IMO they're not that much better than everyone else. Hopefully at EVO everyone else will decide to step it up instead of constantly sucking off EC and their top players as if they're the only region to have top players...which couldn't be anymore wrong.
I figured I may as well make this a bi-weekly deal since that's what I've been doing since the beginning and it's a bit easier on me. Well with nothing major happening at the moment outside of a local tournament last week (which I placed 4th in...<__<) and a East Coast major happening next week; East Coast Throwdown 2. It just so happens that the top 2 in each EVO featured game will be getting a seed at EVO World. Well, as much as I would love to try and aim for a seed I'm planning on saving up for the US Tougeki Qualifiers in Austin, Texas for Blazblue: Continuum Shift. No, I do not play Blazblue: CS, but I am going there to hang out with some of the Houston and Louisiana players and supporting Fubarduck by entering his Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code tournament...since I wasn't able to make it to his major last year. I feel as though hanging out with friends at a lax-free major (for me at least) is more important than stressing myself over *another* major tournament just because of a EVO seed. As if I'm not stressed enough over EVO....anyways, before I get off top I plan on going into detail as to why I decided to pick up such a niche game as supposed to something more mainstream such as Street Fighter, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Tekken, or Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
Well if you've been keep up with my blog for the past month you'd remember my first entry where I showed you my 1st match exposure to Melty Blood and what got me hook. Well I really didn't go into great detail as to why I started playing and why I'm still playing to this day. Well I guess I could start way back to 2006 when I was first exposed and jump right into the fray. Well I started playing with Melty Blood Act Cadenza on the PS2 when it first came out in August of 2006. This was right after I finished watching the Tsukihime anime (there's no Tsukihime hur hur) and went on a MB binge with watching match videos. Needless to say I didn't start out playing Ciel. I actually started out playing Arcueid Brunestud for the first week of playing MBAC. I was just starting out *seriously* learning 2D fighters at the time and I'll be honest....I was just simply mashing buttons and hoping for the best. I had no clue on how to a SRK or even a simple QCF so I knew that I had a long road ahead of me if I ever wanted to even be competent in this game. Which is sort of funny considering that I had no intention on ever being a tournament player. I just wanted to play this game because it was so fast-paced and at the time it was something I had never experienced at the time. Mind you, I was completely new to 2D fighters and had no clue what Guilty Gear or even games like Immaterial and Missing Power or Eternal Fighter Zero was so MB looked completely new to me. I really didn't have the drive to become a player good enough to compete on at least a national level until I saw SBO footage of this game the following month. Everything looked so fast-paced and exciting. The way the players the moved, executed long and devastating combos, tricked their opponent into blocking a wrong way, but what got me the most was the SBO stage. It was a huge platform with MB cabs for the finalist with a huge crowd cheering for Tales of the Ils and Team Kubo/Satoken (The finalist for MBAC in 2006). I said to myself that I wanted to be as good as those guys and win my own major tournament for this game. I thought "I wanted to become the best I could be at this game". I didn't care for the recognition for winning tournaments (and still don't) or I didn't care about the prize money...although that's a bonus :). I just wanted to prove to myself that I could compete with the best of the best in the US and hopefully the world...but first I had to learn how to play first lol.
So after weeks and a couple of months of getting completely scraped by the guy who told me about this game and after months and months of playing online (which I will get into detail later) I was finally able to get my feet a little wet by attending a small local ( house ) tournament in Ann Harbor, MI. This tournament was primarily a Soul Calibur 2 tournament, but the T.O. TL_Crow decided to hold MBAC Ver.B2 on the PC. I decided to make the 45 minute drive with a friend of mine and I had fun. The tournament itself was very small...only about 7 people entered :V. I ended up taking it and winning back gas money and free food lol.
If you're interested in watching me from my very first MBAC tournament:
Hey what can I say? It was my first tournament and I was nowhere near as good as people claim I am now...man I sucked back then.
Anyways, I also ended up meeting people like ShardZ and Josh-TheFunkDoc who would have a huge impact on my life and neither of us would've known at the time. If it wasn't for me meeting Josh and ultimately going to NEC8 with him I never would've known about the fun and experience known as tournaments. When I went to NEC8 back then I was ultimately nervous, but I was also having a loads of fun hanging out and playing some of the best players during that time (Arlieth, Choco, LordKnight, Zar, Spooky, Sphyra, Heartnana, etc.) I didn't expect to win, nor did I care all that much. Yes I was happy about winning, but I was more happy of just getting out there and having that experience. After that experience I made a promise to myself that I would keep enjoying MB and tournaments no matter how popular or unpopular the game will get. As long as I have fun and try my hardest I can't say the experience was wasted. Even now with Actress Again and living in North Carolina...3 years later I still have fun going to the local tournaments in the area and majors such as Final Round. Because of these tournaments I was able to meet some great people that I'm so grateful to know and I'm able to continue growing as player learning and going through all these experiences as both winning and losing. Yes I do expect a lot coming from me considering my skill, knowledge, and past experience in tournaments. I know I'm capable of placing as high as top 3 in majors so I expect myself to play as well so if I so happen to not place high at a tournament then I do tend to beat myself up over it...especially if I lose to someone I know I can personally beat. I don't ever get mad at the player I'm playing against, I tend to get angry at myself for whatever mistake I made and well...ultimately losing. Regardless if it was a close match from both sides I don't exactly feel great about losing, especially if it's by someone I know I can beat.
Anyways, to close this out I really don't play Melty Blood because it's *finally* in the EVO line-up or to gain recognition or anything like that. If I wanted stuff like that I'd play a more mainstream game like Tekken 6 or Super Street Fighter 4. I play Melty Blood as my main game because I enjoy it more than any other fighter out right now and because well...I love the game. It sort of annoy me to see people say "Well, no one cares about Melty Blood or XXX game" whenever they see a major tournament result for the game. Honestly if no one cared for the game...no one would travel for it or play it as long as they have. Yeah, it doesn't get the numbers as SSF4 or T6. Yeah, it doesn't get as much attention as those games. Yeah, it isn't as mainstream as those games either. But to just discredit or downplay someone's accomplishment in a game just because it isn't popular is just plain dumb. Despite how big or small the scene is there will always be good players, bad players, and specialist in XXX game. People who have been playing XXX game for so long as their main game that it's just 2nd nature to them well...they're going to know more than the people who just started playing or someone who doesn't take it as seriously. You don't need to play a game that has over 1000 entrants to see that.
Which will probably be one of my shorter entries I'm just going to talk about my experience with Super Street Fighter 4. Now I won't go onto the history of SF since it goes without saying, but I will go over my opinion on the game.
First of all I will say that I did get on the hype train when SF4 was coming out and I thought it would be a SF game I could enjoy with the rest of the community....boy was I wrong. All SF4 showed me was that the standard SF engine just doesn't cut it for me. I could get past all the dumb shit everyone bitched about (lack of blockstun, mashable jabs, FADC Ultra, Sagat, DP trade ultra, Sagat, character design, Sagat,slow paced, Sagat, overall scrubiness, and Sagat.) in SF4 because lets face it...every fighter has dumb shit. I honestly didn't have any fun outside of playing Viper and she was too hard for me to have fun in a game I honestly didn't care about. I also found it to be pointless to try to get into a game I didn't have fun with for the sake of it being popular...which is funny because just about everyone in my scene hated SF4 in the grand scheme of things. Now with that said....most of them are back on the hype train for Super Street Fighter 4. Now with that you think I got on the hype train and leave MB in the back burner? Nope, MBAA is still my main game and I'm still 100% focused on that.
Now onto SSF4. To tell you the truth I really didn't give this game the time of day. With SF4 leaving a very bad taste in my mouth and MBAA already out I really didn't have a reason to play this game...until Ibuki was announced. At that point I decided to follow her and see how she turned out. Well when it turned out she was shaping up to be good I actually though "Hmm ok...I guess I could give it another shot. I mean I enjoyed Ibuki in 3rd Strike and she seems to be so good. She could possibly make a ultimately boring game...exciting? huzah!?" As the days got closer and as more info came out I was actually getting ready to board the hype train. Everyone and their mothers were getting excited, checking out new info on the game...it was as if the hate for SF4 went away. I got skeptical when multiple people were saying "If you didn't enjoy SF4 then you will not enjoy SSF4." Well a couple of days ago I was actually CONSIDERING BUYING SSF4 based on the hype it was getting from friends and wel...everyone else was playing it so why not? Well I also considered that if I didn't have fun with the game it was ultimately pointless to try and force myself to like it like 75% of the SF4/SSF4 community so I was going to hold out until I played it. Well Tuesday I got went to a session at Frank's place and he was having SSF4 there. Well I figured...what the hell, may as well give it a shot now before I chuck $40 down the drain. Well I'm GRATEFUL that I went to his place and played it before I decided to buy it because I was NOT having any fun and every time I played a set I just thought "why am I not playing MB?"
One of my biggest problems I have with the game is the speed. EVERYONE says that the game is undoubtedly faster. Well when I was watching match vids and watching people play in person, and even PLAYING the game it didn't seem faster at all. To me the game speed was EXACTLY the same and my character Ibuki just seemed like she was walking in mud. I know it's SSF4 and not 3S, but I expected her to be agile like she was in 3rd. Like she has all the HJCs and momentum shifts with Kunai (sans EX version), but it just seemed...so restricted. Like I'm told Ibuki and Guy are some of the faster, if not fastest characters in the game, but they just seem to be turtles in a pack of snails. Yeah they MAY move faster than the rest of the cast, but it doesn't say much. My biggest problems with it is...to me, it just seem like SF4 with more characters and ultras. I know people are going to find dumber shit that'll just replace the dumb shit in SF4 and all that good stuff, but none of the stuff they "fixed" seemed to make the game funner for me. I dunno, I guess the standard SF engine (games like CvS2, ST, and 3S sans Ibuki) just don't really interests me or suit me. Yes, I can respect high level games for A3, CvS2, ST, 3rd, even SF4 for what they are...but none of those games just really aren't my cup of tea and I can not bring myself to force myself to like or enjoy a fighter just because it's whats popular. Just like what 75% of what the community has done and what they're doing now with (S)SF4.
Anyways, just a litte rant. Will probably write up my thoughts on something like the MB scene or something since I'm not going to ECT2 and saving up for SBO qualifiers at ArcadeUFO. No I don't plan on entering BBCS (SBO qualifier), but I want to support Fubarduck and his arcade by entering Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code.
Ok, it's been what...2 weeks since I made a new entry? Yup, long over due for another one. Well with that said, I should *FINALLY* get to my experience at Final Round XIII.
Final Round XIII took place in Atlanta, GA during Mar. 12th-14th. This was my first major in a bit over a year and it was my first MBAA major since the game came out. Due to reasons beyond my control I was -unfortunately- missing out on Northeast Championships X. Well anyways...after a long 6 1/2 hour drive from Raleigh and getting stopped by police for speeding (don't ask :P) I finally made it to the hotel that was housing Final Round. Well the first thing I did was setup my two hotel rooms for MBAA. Yes, I really needed to buy 2 rooms for this weekend because so many people decided not to reserve a room and/or the people who were reserving a room ended up not showing up for one reason or another. Well after setting my rooms up I called over Silent Shinobi and told him to tell everyone I was at the hotel and if people wanted to play some games just stop by. Well...it started out small at first with only a handful of people stopping by (Choco, Doren2K, and Shinobi to name a few) and we only had one setup at the time so rotation was taking a while.
Remember my last post where I was talking about performance anxiety, yeah? Well it hit me HARD. I was feeling so anxious that I really was afraid of playing against people that REALLY wanted to play my F-Ciel. Like, I sort of had this feeling that the people who were entering the tournament had this super high expectation of me. Whether that may or may not have been true...I don't know. Well anyways, after my casual matches with Shinobi, Choco, Doren, and the other 8 people in there I was feeling a bit better about myself...although not 100%. Which was bad for me considering I had a team tournament the next day.
Well after a afternoon of casuals it was the team tournament. I ended up teaming with Cajunstrike and P-Soul (C-Mech player I talked about in my last post). I was sort of glad that they had me playing anchor position because I was feeling anxious all over again now that the tournament pressure was on. It was me trying to get back into the groove of things since I was just getting back into the tournament scene...although it didn't happen till much later. Well after a couple of sets where I didn't have to play, I decided to step up and play out my first match. I forget who's team we were playing against and granted I ended up winning, it was not a pretty site. My movement was all sorts of janky, my blocking was weak, dropped a couple of combos I shouldn't have dropped, and overall...I just felt so flustered. Granted to say I was NOT going to live that down so for our next match I decided to play first. I can't really explain it, but at this point it sort of just came back to me. I felt as though my movement was as it should've been, I was hitting all my combos, blocked what I knew what was coming, and just felt relaxed. At this point we were playing team 'Bama (Solidplay, Silent Shinobi, and Doren2K). I ended up beating Solidplay pretty convincingly with overwhelming my Ciel pressure. I was barely able to scrape out a win against Silent Shinobi's H-Arc. We kept going back and forth to the final round and I managed to pull the win. Started getting into trouble with Doren2K and F-Miyako. I don't know what it was about it, but I just couldn't get a good read on it. Like when we played last night during casuals I was able to break his defenses and start my rushdown, but this time I could hardly hit him and if I did it wasn't a hit I was able to capitalize on. So instead I ended up losing that match and eventually out team got reverse OCV'd into losers.
IIRC at that point we had to play team "Live to Win" which consisted of B.Z.B, Frank the Tank, and Pacstrife. I decided to go first again fighting Pacstrife first. At this point I was just in the zone. Everything was clicking with my mind and what I was doing on the screen. He was using H-Tohno which took me by surprise considering I've never seen his H-Tohno before that moment. It really didn't matter because I was able to pull out the win. My match after that was against Frank the Tank's C-Warc. Now I won't lie...if I thought I was going to lose at this point it was to this guy. See when I got back I played him before the Lucky's tournament in February and it was pretty bad. I really had no idea how to fight his C-Warc and he was steamrolling me badly. Well it was different this tournament. I actually beat his C-Warc 2-0 by just staying patient and trying to stay away from the corner and blood rings. It also helped that I didn't try and challenge his J.B since that pretty much beats whatever F-Ciel is doing in the air for free...and I shielded him...a lot. After that match I had to go up against B.Z.B's H-Roa. Now this match I KNEW I was going to lose. I still wasn't able to exactly read his H-Roa, even after playing him countless times before this tournament. It also didn't help that this character is just lame. Great pressure strings, air control, ground control with lightning and SOKU DAROU! ETC. He's also one of those characters that forces you to block EVERYTHING until you can just see a opening in his pressure...now if the H-Roa is solid that isn't going to come around anytime soon and by the time you realize it you're about ready to be guard crashed so you're stuck with making a risky decision that could possibly cost you.
Now onto the match...it actually went closer than I expected. Granted I still lost...I didn't get *completely* scraped. I ended up losing the match 1-2 with it being pretty close from what I remember. We still ended up winning the round with Cajunstrike taking him out and ultimately eliminating Live to Win. Our next and ultimately final match would be battle for Grand Finals. We had to play against team 'Bama again. I decided to go first again and I had to play Solidplay again. This time the match was MUCH closer. It went 2-1 with me almost losing. My next match against Silent Shinobi however did a complete 180. I ended up getting outplayed and losing the match. Although P-Soul was able to keep us alive by beating him Doren2K sent us out of the tournament by beating both P-Soul and Cajunstrike. So...with all that said...we finished 3rd out of 11 teams. Not too bad, although I wished we could've at least got 2nd and played on stage <_<.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand if you think that's all...boy you couldn't be anymore wrong. That was only day 1! We still haven't gotten to day 2.....SINGLES!
*Sigh*
Well at this point I was *completely* feeling it. I knew I could at least make top 3 and no one was going to stand in my way. Now...I could be productive and talk about EVERY match I played in singles, but I really don't feel like typing that much and I really doubt you guys feel like reading all that much longer so instead I'm going to talk about my two biggest matches...Winners and Losers Finals.
First up...Winners!
I had to play Doren2K in Winners Finals and man I was a bit upset, because I KNEW I was going to lose this match. After what happened in the teams tournament I sort of convinced myself that I wasn't beating Doren2K and that's exactly what happened...I didn't beat him.
Now what took me off guard was that he didn't use F-Miyako against me...instead he used Crescent. I played a little bit of his C-Miyako Friday before teams and I'd like to say I did alright considering I've never played it before. Now in that video...well let's just say he was able to keep me off of him EVERYTIME I tried to get in on him. Also her mixup game is much more dangerous in C as opposed to F so that also took me getting used to. I was almost able to take him a couple of rounds, but as you can see I just got outplayed.
Now onto my next and *spoiler SHOCK!!!* final match. LordKnight vs. Myself in Loser Finals.
Now oddly enough...this match I had a feeling that I could win. Like I could honestly say I wasn't afraid of LK's H-Kohaku. Not saying it was bad, because his H-Kohaku is great, but IMO playing that made me realize just how *not* threatening her offense is outside of her command grab and even then it's not really that because after all the Reverse Beats and proration the damage she gets off of it is pretty weak...although what's threatening is the mixup she gets afterwards. The only other thing that's a threat is her overhead sword swipe that looks like a low :| . Outside of those two things whenever he got on the offense I just held down-back and just waited it out...except there were times I waited for TOO long and ate a command grab. Now even though I still lost, I would say my lost was more so due to me missing out on punishes I *knew* I had, but for some reason or another just dropped them as opposed to just outright getting beat. Now what really annoyed me in this match was the fact that if LK had 100% meter he would CONSTANTLY bunker out instead of just waiting it out. Although it's very well a viable tactic and he was smart for doing that instead of just taking the pressure and taking the risk of getting hit...doesn't change the fact it was a bitch to deal with. Also, another I have to note on is his habits. Now not to say he's a bad player or anything like that because he isn't...that couldn't be anymore wrong, but I did talk to Kensou and Kidviper about this (Two US SBO qualifiers for Blazblue CS). While he's very damn good on his offense and his neutral game is also very strong...it seems like he plays the game in the air a lot using the most safest air normal that character has (H-Kohaku...J.B. Litchi...J.C (staff) ). Also the fact that his defense is probably his weakest area. Now again...not talking down on him...especially about BBCS because I have yet to see him play BBCS, but if he's placing 2nd at SBO quals then he isn't obviously bad...now with that said, the reason why I brought up Kensou and Kidviper was because...he plays the EXACT same way in both BBCS and MB. Now speaking in terms of MB...I was able to see that going back and watching our matches. Whenever he didn't have meter to bunker out I was pretty much getting some type of BNB or throw to open his defense and he would most likely stay in the air using J.B as his air to air as expected considering that's H-Kohaku's strongest air to air normal. I can't exactly knock him for it because it obviously works for him and his character, but if I ever had to play him again in a future I would definitely say I would be able to take it to the last game (like I should've IF I didn't miss the final punish in game 4 <_< ) and *possibly* beat him.
Now with all that said...I think it would be best to say that me placing 3rd at FR reminded the MB community that I still played MB and knew how to play. I know that after a year + some months I sort of fell off the radar without going to tourneys ( thanks to real life) and it was honestly great meeting up with new faces and faces I haven't seen in 2 years. The ride to Gladys and Ron's was nothing but epic moments there and back, me sporting the pac-man hat was hype and just the overall tournament experience reminded me why I love playing Melty Blood and why I love travelling out to these tournaments. Even though I didn't get 1st or even 2nd I was satisfied with myself knowing that I can still hang with some of the top players and even with a lot of the new up and comers in this game.
Well...that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll do another write-up sometime this week. Although I don't know if it'll be anime or the upcoming East Coast Throwdown 2 tournament next month.
