ALSO, MORE REASON TO OGLE- I MEAN, POST
PICTURES OF LILI!
Street Fighter x (cross) Tekken (SFxT), for me, has been an extremely fun game, and scratches that Fighting Game itch really really good. Last time I talked about it, I had some points I mentioned that I would like to follow up on when I had actually clocked more hours playing the game, and now that I've done that, my opinions about the game had slightly (and by slightly I mean, completely) changed.
It may have even been completely reversed.
As in, Chun Li doing a Tenshin Shuu Kaku reversed...
(Hooray to obscure foreshadowing! Dun dun dunnnn...)
A new challenger has arrived...
In PART 1 of this absolutely amazing blog series, I mentioned how I wasn't using Chun Li as my main because of how off-putting the replacement of the piano/spam button inputs were. Turns out, this was one of the biggest, genius moves Capcom has done with Chun Li, and one that might never be repeated ever again.
See, in case you hadn't read PART 1 of this, the spam inputs for Chun Li's Hyakuretsu Kyaku (fun fact: I almost spelled that right the first time I typed it, goes to show my love for Chun Li isn't superficial and based only on her cute cute smile) had been replaced with a half circle forward motion. The reason behind this is that the Cross Rush mechanic required you to press a Light attack button followed by a Medium one then a Hard one followed by another Hard one; all in rapid succession. If you know your fighting games, you'd note that the first part of the Cross Rush input (Light followed by Medium followed by Hard) invalidates most, if not all, means of piano inputting, which entails you to press buttons as if you were pressing keys in a piano when you're playing a Major Scale (hey, I know a bit of music too!) The second part (two Hard buttons in rapid succession) invalidates button spam, as this means you can't spam out a Hard Lightning Legs (which would be bad, as the Hard version of Special Moves often have special properties or do significantly more damage).
I had felt this change was detrimental to the Chun Li play experience, especially the guttural feeling of mashing the heck out of them kick buttons, but I was wrong. And sad as it was to lose that spam kicking and a bit of my pride by admitting I'm wrong, for once I'm glad I was wrong. The HCF (half circle forward) motion input for the Lightning Legs (which, because of input tolerance, actually only requires you to hit 4 directions on your D-Pad or stick, as opposed to 5) allows her to combo into one of her most devastating special moves with relative ease. Because of the aforementioned input leniency, you can actually combo her Hard Lightning Legs from a crouching Hard Punch without much difficulty. This combo was also possible in the previous versions of Chun Li, but it was really difficult, as it required you to slide your finger from the Hard Punch down to the Hard Kick, all the way back to Light Kick then back to Hard Kick, making sure you nail all the buttons accurately.
What this means is that Chun Li's already formidable punish game has been made even more formidable, as any move that can be punished on block or whiff by a crouching Hard Punch (or a crouching Medium Kick) could mean having the opponent eat a nasty amount of damage, and be susceptible to Chun Li's post Lightning Legs mixup game.
IMAGINE HAVING THIS HIT YOU, EVERY TIME
YOU ABSENTMINDEDLY GET YOUR
SHORYUKEN BLOCKED
Incredibly technical, for the uninitiated, but daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn fun I can tell you that.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Let the madness begin... Fight!
Side note, and a nifty little trick to do, if you're playing as Chun Li: at the start of the round, before the Fight splash text could even leave the screen, walk a few steps towards your opponent then press either a Hard Punch or a Hard Kick, depending on how tall the opponent you're fighting against is (for taller characters like Sagat or Marduk, Hard Kick might work, for smaller ones like Xiao Yu or Cammy, Hard Punch should do the trick). The Fight splash text would cover your tracks, and if your opponent is not in the know, is not cautious or likes to open with an unsafe move, you'd tag them with a sneaky and rather damaging move.
Fun.
That aside, there are lots and lots of neat little things the SFxT engine allows you to do, especially with the Cross Rush and Cross Cancels. Cross Cancel is cancelling the rest of the animation of your move by inputting the Tag command (Medium kick plus Medium punch) as your move hits, or as soon as is allowed. This tags in your partner, which would either continue the combo or block, if the technique was used as a safe way to tag out. This also spends one stock of your Super meter, so you don't end up with unblockable and unstoppable infinites (most of the time anyway). This is one of the fun mechanics of SFxT, and by fun I mean excruciating for your opponents.
While combos done off of Cross Cancels won't really do a lot of damage, especially if it involves more than one Cross Cancel, having three stocks of meter and a synergistic team can lead to long and flashy combos that can really frustrate your opponent.
My personal best is a 35 hit combo I devised with Chun Li and Ken. Chun Li starts with her Jumping Hard Punch target combo, linking to her Crouching Hard Punch, canceling into Hard Spinning Bird Kick, Cross Canceling into Ken's Target Combo (Medium Punch plus Hard Punch), canceling that into his Hard Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku, Cross Canceling early into Chun Li's Crouching Hard Punch, canceling that into another Hard Spinning Bird Kick then finally Cross Canceling that again into Ken's Target Combo, which finally gets canceled into another Hard Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku and into a very very inappropriately long and boring sentence. That might have been the ultimate downfall of this blog post, because of how incredibly boring that is, but trust me, it's the most fun thing to do when you're playing.
HERE'S AN IMAGE OF POISON BEATING THE CRAP
OUT OF STEVE TO MAKE UP FOR THAT
BORING PARAGRAPH
The look on my opponent's face when I first perform this combo on them makes me smile each time.
Are you ready? Fight!
Finally being able to play this game with friends actually made me like this game even more, if that's even possible. See, I have a friend who's been a persistent opponent of mine in Tekken 6, right before I lost my PSP (still makes me sad to this day... Tekken 6 Lili, I miss you...). He transitioned into SFxT by playing as Bob and Julia, Tekken characters whose movesets are kind of reminiscent of their Tekken 6 counterparts. Other characters whose movesets have the same general feel as their Tekken 6 selves are Asuka and Xiao Yu, and I also have friends who were more adept at playing Tekken 6 play these characters with a fair amount of proficiency. I say, props to Capcom for making a game that I think caters to both Tekken and Street Fighter players, and making a game that (at least to me) straddles the line between the two games rather perfectly (of course, erring more towards the Street Fighter side, as the game used the Street Fighter engine after all).
Of course, this is heavily contested, and had I posted this blog someplace where it will be read by a lot of hardcore Fighting Game players, I'm sure to get a lot of flack. The game has this notoriety of being extremely boring to watch at the tournament level, though I'm not exactly sure why. At a more casual level however, I still think it's one of the most fun 2D Fighters out there to play; I still stand by my opinion that it's one of the easier 2D Fighters to pick up and learn (probably not the best game to start with however, if you are planning on playing 2D Fighters seriously in the future - you might end up being too lazy and complacent because of all the easy combos).
What takes the fun to the next level however is the Scramble mode matches. Now that is where the fun is at!
IBUKI APPROVED FUN!
Scramble Mode is a game type in SFxT that allows up to four players to play SIMULTANEOUSLY. That's right, all four AT THE SAME TIME. Playing as two teams of two, your goal is to whittle down your opponent's combined life total, and eventually emerge with the V. Strategy is thrown out the window, and all hell breaks loose as you try to pound the living daylights out of the other team, all while avoiding getting yourself pounded at the same time.
I cannot do it justice with mere words. All the screaming and laughing and occasional cursing (okay, maybe not so occasional) is just so extremely primal-ly fun; taking the game type too seriously is a sin. I even had to invent a new word for it, just to describe how fun it is. Imagine Zangief and Yoshimitsu teaming up and spinning their way to victory like Beyblade tops, or a team of Ryu and Ken dishing out judicious amounts of Hadoukens and Shoryukens and Tatsumakis as they tear their opponents apart.
And if you don't think that's fun, then maybe Farmville is a better game for you.
In the immortal words of Guile: "Go home and be a family man!"
All jokes aside though, it's a really great way to bond with friends you love to hate. There's nothing more satisfying as the mutual panic that ensues as soon as the Fight splash text disappears, signalling the start of a frantic skirmish of epic proportions. For added fun, have one team be exclusively Street Fighter characters and the other exclusively Tekken, and see which side truly rules in this epic game (Street Fighter of course, because that's where Chun is- oh wait, no, ack, Lili, stop kicking me!)
"YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME" - NINA, WHEN
KAZUYA FORGETS HER SALARY
Oh hilarity...
Chun Li wins! Perfect!
I could go on and on about this game, but then I'd definitely run out of readers, if I had any, on account of all the geek drools dripping all over their monitors. So I'd probably end it here. SFxT definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, gets fifthStitch's seal of approval; I highly recommend this game to casual players of the Fighting Game genre, regardless of whether you're a Tekken fan or a Street Fighter fan. As one of the first, if not the first, crossover game between the two franchises, SFxT can really hold its own, while still having enough of both games to be at least equally satisfying to fans of either genre. It has it's weak points, and is definitely not a favorite among the hardcore fighting game circles (from what I read), but the awesome feeling of getting to play as your favorite characters from either game, and even having them together in a team, makes up for any of that.
Overall, it's just a really fun game to play.
BUT THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN
THE DLC ATTACKED...
The greatest war in the history of fighting games is about to commence!
The question now is...
Do you have what it takes?
No comments:
Post a Comment