More Marvel! This Time Featuring Commentary and A New Team Lineup!

Wolverine on point has been realized in today’s video. It feels good. It feels right. It feels like the sort of thing that I should have done months ago. Does this mean that I’m done with Zero? Nah. My dropping Zero permanently would be on par with Josh dropping Wesker permanently.

I mean, the first arcade stick that I ever owned was one that I built [Note to self: make a post about building arcade sticks]. I finished putting it together a couple of months before Marvel released and I said, “man, I really should put Zero on this thing.” So I was locked into maining Zero before I had even seen someone play him. Luckily, he ended up being exactly my playstyle: Low risk mixups, decent damage (incredible damage at high levels of execution) and tools to control any part of the screen when applied properly, which, oddly enough, doubles as a fair description of Ibuki.

I decided to try yet another angle on commentary in this video. Though I’m playing in the matches, I tried to keep everything third person. It just sounds better that way. Instead of having to worry about what I was thinking at any moment during the matches, I was able to–more easily–just look at the match objectively and say what I thought was going on and why I thought it was going on.

My recent poll about future video content closes in just four short days! Get your votes in while you still can!

Week of… WHEN’S MAHVEL?

Get hype! It’s time for me to break away from Street Fighter for a little bit and get some Marvel back in my system. In complete honesty, I haven’t played this game for more than half an hour per month since… well, I don’t even remember when. Thankfully, those little bursts of play have left my combos mostly intact; my movement and blocking, on the other hand, have suffered greatly.

I can’t really do any of the fancy touch of death Zero combos that Flocker and all those other popular Zeroes can, but I’ve still got a decent BNB that is so easy to execute that I (almost) never drop it. Wolverine is simple enough for a toddler to pick up and do what I’m doing, so he’s golden, and Doom is Doom. If his foot touches you, you’re as good as dead. The team that I currently run is incredibly high tier, which is something uncommon for me (Ibuki has only pretty recently been accepted as above a solid C tier character). At one point, I even had Vergil instead of Wolverine. I dare you to make a higher tier team than that!

Check back Friday for some more Marvel footage as I work the kinks out of my movement and blocking and maybe even brave a lightning loop attempt or two on film.

This video is just one of the many directions that future content could take. If you like it, let me know in my poll, which will remain open until January 28th!

Weekly Vortex 23: Chun-Li Ranked Matches

Today’s video is stylistically different than past videos, as I’ve decided to treat it like a standard Vlog. I chose this structure because I’m playing Chun-Li and my decision making, my neutral game, my combos, pretty much everything about my Chun-Li is borderline novice. That being the case, I didn’t feel commentary the most appropriate approach for adding voice to the video. As three matches take place in the background, I discuss my history with Chun-Li, what I like about her and what I don’t like about her in soothing baritone. Oh yes.

Also, be sure to vote in Tuesday’s poll if you haven’t already. I want to know what you guys want to see so I can make more appropriate content for future videos. Tell me what you like! The poll will be open until January 28th.

What do You Want to See From Weekly Vortex Videos in the Coming Months?

I play a lot of Street Fighter IV, but I also play other things. I’ve had a couple of friends who follow the blog ask me, “man, why haven’t you finished your Dark Souls level 1 run?” or, “what happened to the Injustice ranked matches?” I don’t know, honestly. I just really like playing Ibuki, I really like learning new characters in Street Fighter IV  and I end up doing a lot of that and using it as the sole source of footage for my weekly videos, but I’m more than willing to record some different stuff as requested.

What I want to know is, what do you, oh denizens of the internet, want to see in future video content? I’m open to pretty much anything. I’d like to do a few fighting game videos per month, but those don’t all have to be Street Fighter. I have access to most current generation fighting games (no Killer Instinct, no recent BlazBlue, but I will be getting Chrono Phantasm when it drops). I’m also toying with PC game capture at the moment and could use all sorts of different Steam games.

I’ve included a poll with the options that seem most apparent to me. If you have an idea for something that you’d like to see, or even a method for employing things on the list (ranked with a new character, for example) leave the suggestion in the comments!

 

 

Ranked Matches and a Brief Bison Match-up Lecture

That’s right, I shoved a mini lecture into today’s video. I’m very passionate about the Bison match-up as an Ibuki player, because it’s her worst. She has other bad ones–most grapplers come to mind–but none quite so bad as Dictator. The problems with the match-up, as I mention in great detail mid-video, stem from his vastly superior mid range tools and his ability to turn Ibuki’s vortex game on its head. Ibuki players seriously have to consider just not bothering with vortexing him at all, as he can, given the right circumstances, punish Ibuki when she feels safest, or reset the situation entirely, forcing her to find a way in again.

It’s not quite like Dee Jay or Zangief who can escape kunai-related setups for free–via upkicks and lariat, respectively–it’s a different sort of thing. It’s like rock paper scissors: Bison’s wakeup choice dictates (I’m so sorry, I had to say it) what will happen and forces Ibuki, as the aggressor, to guess while Bison is also guessing. It’s very strange, and the match featured includes this situation multiple times as I get knockdown after knockdown and am faced with a choice that I rarely make correctly.

I also fight a Cammy and a Fei-Long, but nothing really stands up to the hype of the Bison match included.

 

Ibuki and the Tale of Audio Desynchronization

Today I decided to try my hand at “live” commentary. I’ve done plenty of live commentary before, but today was different. In the past, I’ve always done my commentary while playing the match, which puts serious limitations on both the ability to deliver quality commentary and the ability to deliver quality play, due to the inability to give full attention to either. As a third party to these matches, I was able to devote my full attention to exactly what was happening on the screen instead of also having to focus on making things happen on the screen. Granted, since I had played the matches (they were all previously recorded), I knew, more or less, how everything would play out, so the element of surprise wasn’t really there for me. I did, however, go in without having previously watched the footage for any sort of refresher.

I chose to do this type of video today because while Josh and I were recording on Thursday of last week, the audio ended up getting completely out of whack. I think it has something to do with the setting on my capture device to auto-adjust game volume when sound comes in from the headset microphone, but I’m not sure. This is one of those post-reformat kinks that I’ve yet to iron out completely, but hope to have fixed by the time we record another massive chunk of matches.

Having completed this video, I think that there’s something good to be said about looking at your own match videos with the eye of a commentator. It requires quick thinking–do you address that whiffed jab, or do you keep talking about how the focus attack that got broken three seconds prior was a bad idea? Do you keep talking about the match up and how it should be played, or do you move on to talk about how the match is already half over due to Cody’s sheer damage output? It’s kind of like taking a really intense test on game knowledge. Here: talk for about ten minutes about these matches that run, basically, non-stop for the entire ten minutes and have something technical or otherwise meaningful to say for the entire period. It’s not easy at all. I already had serious respect for FGC commentators–the UltraChen duo being my personal favorite–but this brings things into a new light.

I highly suggest giving it a try if you haven’t–even if you have to go in manually and play back old matches held in storage on  your game system of choice and yell at the TV.

Ibuki in the Train Station

It’s been an interesting few days. The other night, Josh beat me so badly in a round of King of Fighters that my computer completely locked up, which required me to hard boot it. After reaching the Windows log in screen from the hard boot, ol’ compy locked up again. This happened three times, so I booted in safe mode, moved all my important documents over to my secondary hard drive and just reformatted the thing. I reformat about 1-2 times per year and I was due anyway, so what the hell, why not?

The reformat caused me to lose my settings in, well, pretty much everything, so the recording process for this video ended up a little wonky. Things are still getting tweaked back to where they used to be, but, overall, it went fine. The sound echos just a bit and the game audio gets just slightly out of sync, but it’s really not that noticeable. We also recorded in a different location this week–see if you can hear the train!

I got back into Ibuki this week after a few weeks playing Evil Ryu and I have to say, there’s just something about Ibuki that makes me enjoy playing her more than any other character. After about two rounds of reorientation, my execution with her was right where it always is, if not a little better, and I was playing the neutral game smarter. I think Evil Ryu is to blame for my new appreciation of footsies.

 

A Dark Hado New Year

Now that we’re on the other side of Christmas, it’s time to get some more match videos uploaded! This is my first official Tuesday video post and what better way to kick off the post-holiday season than with some more Evil Ryu ranked matches? If you’ve seen my other Evil Ryu video, you may notice that my footsies and neutral game have drastically improved in this week’s video. They aren’t perfect, mind you, but the improvements are definitely there. I make use of s.HP multiple times and with much success, as well as overall better fireball spacing and general poking with c.MK. Things are really starting to come together.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s easy to get in the habit of avoiding the neutral game altogether when you play a cahracter like Ibuki that relies so heavily on setups to keep her pressure going. Though Ibuki does have a couple of good buttons–f+LK, c.MP–and a decent spacing tool from LK Tsumuji, there’s a lot left to be desired. Having very little setup knowledge with Evil Ryu, besides one very specific safe jump, has forced me to keep my feet on the ground and keep the fireballs flying–from a safe distance, of course.

Dark Hado Rising

Balrog hit him in the head so hard that a hole appeared in his chest. Gross.

I’ve been preparing for the release of Ultra behind closed doors. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m terrified of delayed wakeup in its current state (and I doubt it’ll change), so I’m exploring other characters in the event that Ibuki becomes far too weak in the update. This week, I’m playing Evil Ryu. I’ve taken Evil Ryu online on two other occasions–once on XBL, once on PC–without the prying eyes of my game capture device upon me. I don’t play as nervously when I know no one but the guy I’m spamming SRKs at can see me. It’s nice. But the time has come to reveal my incredibly basic Evil Ryu to the YouTubes and the Blogosphere (if that’s still even a word).

It’s a long set. I actually put six matches on the reel. Why? Well, they were all pretty quick, honestly. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that I fought the same guy three times. He really wanted to run it back, so I nearly let him with needless shoryuken spam at the end of our final confrontation–the seed of bad shoto habits is sewn. Overall, I did much better than I’ve been doing with this character privately. I actually landed some (really basic) long-ish shoto combos that I’m proud of and was able to keep the fireball pressure up at safe distances, and move on to other options when fireballs weren’t safe.

I’m also very excited to announce that I got a weekend blogging spot at shoryuken.com! This means that I will be trying to shift my longer fighting game posts over to their site to provide large chunks of content for their weekend viewers. Obviously, I’ll not be doing a direct transfer of the work already present on my site, but my future content of that nature will likely be on their front page instead of my own. This means that I’ll (again, likely) be shifting to a two video per week setup here on kunaivortex–one on Tuesday, one on Friday. At least that’s the plan for the next couple of weeks. So be sure to keep an eye on SRK this weekend for my upcoming content!

Weekly Vortex 17: A Cornered Tanuki

Sometimes when you play ranked matches, you pull from the same group of five or so people for an extended period of time. Sometimes, you fight the same guy a couple of times in a row. This week’s video has a good deal of that. Today, Josh and I open with an Ibuki mirror (his personal favorite, especially when I get vortexed), followed by C. Viper twice and we wrap things up with a couple of matches against the 43rd Gief on XBox Live. Most Ibuki players hate the Zangief matchup, but I don’t. It’s the kind of match that forces me into a ground game that I tend not to play (that I need to play more). I tend to jump around and derp through the skies tossing handful of kunai after glorious handful of kunai. Gief shuts that shit down. He protects the skies from that kind of thing with his Siberian Blizzard Ultra. Once his Ultra pops, jumping near him is a terrible idea–so is backdashing, especially if your backdash has as many aerial frames as Ibuki’s. Over all, the matches featured in this video show off the sort of Ibuki that I need to be playing more often–the sort of Ibuki that I don’t bother playing when I think that I’ve got the upper hand from the onset of the match. There’s something about staring down incredibly high PP and BP that makes me play better.