In Third Person

The recent release of Injustice: Gods Among Us has brought forth a new wave of players immediately flocking towards characters and tactics that some may define as ‘cheap’. As of writing, Deathstroke is a wildly popular character because his gun special moves seem to do a great job at keeping others at bay. Sinestro is also a popular choice, as players early on are struggling to get away from his boulder drop. This has sparked a lot of whining and complaining from others whose only defence is to cry foul.

Yes, I’ve lost to my fair share of Deathstroke and Sinestro players, but this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide is not here to chastise these supposed cheapskates. Instead, I want to talk about the phenomenon of day one tactics and why players should spend more time playing instead of whining.

What are day one tactics?

The term ‘day one tactics’ is often used to refer to tactics that work upon the initial release of a fighting game. At the time of this writing, an example of this is Deathstroke’s gun spam. Early on in Injustice’s lifecycle, Deathstroke players are winning a lot of games by simply mashing out those gun special moves repeatedly. There are no shortage of day one examples like this across every fighting game ever.

Why do they matter?

These tactics matter early on because they work really well, plain and simple. There are going to be no shortage of players trying to exploit these tactics, players whining about the use of these tactics, and others who are actually putting in the work to find counters.

Will tactics that are good now always be good?

No.

Fighting games are fluid in nature. The way people play these games will always evolve as better strategies and tactics are formulated. If you hate facing off against Deathstroke, there’s already viable tactics against gun spam. For one, block the initial shots and dash in. Most characters should be able to get right in his face after repeating this 2 or 3 times while taking minimum chip damage. There are many others if you’re either willing to do the research or figure things out in training mode.

One other notable example of day one tactics falling apart is Sentinel in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In the first few weeks of the game, he infuriated many players with his moves that seemed overpowered. However, it didn’t take long for the community to find counters to all of his tactics and render him mostly useless.

But won’t the developers just patch it?

In the modern era of fighting games, we as players lean on this mentality way too often. Odds are developers will patch their fighting games to address things that are overpowered or underpowered, though this isn’t an excuse for not learning how to play the game. Instead of waiting or hoping for a patch, find ways to adjust how you play to in order to topple your foes. There’s virtually nothing in any modern fighting game that is flat-out insurmountable. Virtually everything has a counter, and it’s up to you to exploit those counters to their fullest.

The cheapskates win if you don’t evolve

Fighting games are about fighting. Not about whining to the opponent that exploited your lack of knowledge towards countering a particular tactic. Not about crying on the developer’s message boards in hopes for a patch. Especially during the initial launch of the game, it’s way too early to be doing any of that. The day one tactics won’t be as effective down the road and the cheapskates will get what’s coming to them. As for you, don’t let some tactics that initially seem overpowered get in the way of you learning the game and having fun. Instead, have fun figuring out implementing the solutions to these tactics into your overall gameplan.

Buy Injustice: Gods Among Us Now on Amazon.com

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