While Injustice: Gods Among Us might be the new hotness, it doesn’t mean that Street Fighter X Tekken is chopped liver. Heck, after the major balance patch earlier this year, it is more worthy of your time now than it ever has been. If you’re looking to get into the genre’s ultimate mash-up, may I suggest you take a look at my
Check Out The Kickstart Guide to Street Fighter X Tekken At Splitkick.com!
Injustice: Gods Among Us is the latest high-profile fighting game to hit the market. Starring DC Comics’ finest, every battle is larger than life. If you’re still learning the ropes, check out my guide for some helpful pro-tips!
Click here to read Kickstart Guide to Injustice: Gods Among Us at Splitkick
Striking while the iron is hot, here’s my Kickstart Guide to Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition! Unlike my Universal Fighting Game Guide stuff, this is game-specific and a bit more simplified so that even beginners can gain a quick knowledge boost. Definitely worth a read if you’re looking to level up in the world’s hottest fighting game.
Check out my Kickstart Guide to Super Street IV: Arcade Edition on Splitkick!
Gimmicky fighting game techniques are about as old as fighting games themselves. When I first stepped up to a Street Fighter II machine back in 1991, the first character I ever chose was Blanka, as I thought I could cheat the system by simply mashing the punch buttons to trigger Blanka’s electricity move. At the time, I thought it was a fool-proof tactic…for about 5 seconds. Instead, the computer systematically picked me apart as I wailed on those punch buttons, thinking the electricity move was bound to save me eventually.
While gimmicks may have their place in extremely specific situations, they’re not a substitute for solid and intelligent play. In this month’s Universal Fighting Game Guide post, we’ll talk about the difference between gimmicky and intelligent tactics.
Back in the old days of fighting games, you only had to worry about one meter: the life meter. As long as that meter didn’t run out, you were golden. However, as the genre progressed, so to did the number of meters you were required to manage. Today, almost every fighting game has some sort of super/EX/resource meter that grants you additional moves at the cost of the resources in your meter. In this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we’re going to cover resource meters and how to leverage them to your advantage.
Since the hey day of fighting games, the throw as a maneuver has received a lot more heat than it deserves. In the early days of Street Fighter II, I remember going to the arcades and hearing other kids talk about how the throw as a move was ‘cheap’ and that people shouldn’t use it in fights. Even now, I still get hate messages on XBOX Live and PSN about my use of throws in a fighting game, regardless of what game I’m playing.
Particularly around entry-level fighting game players, there’s a weird dichotomy at work where there’s a group of players who think throws are super awesome and will exploit them at every turn, and another group of players who actively handicap themselves by not using throws because of some phony gentleman’s rule that’s reached urban legend status. In this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we tackle the art of the throw, which is a key element to almost every fighting game ever made.
The fighting game genre is defined by the process of at least two competing parties fighting each other to determine a winner and loser. As someone who has been playing fighting games seriously for the past few years, I’ve lost thousands of matches in virtually every way imaginable. I almost beat Arturo Sanchez in AE 2012 until I choked at the very end of the final round. I’ve been destroyed by Marlinpie at Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in a tournament. Most recently, I lost a match in Street Fighter X Tekken to an opponent who beat me by pressing only one button. Regardless of the circumstances around any given loss, the feeling that came with losing sucked every time.
In this installment of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we’re going to focus on the least desirable outcome of any given match. Though the act of losing always spawns some level of anger, sadness and frustration (or in fighting game community terms, ‘salt’), it doesn’t have to end there. Losses today can be leveraged to help you gain wins tomorrow. Instead of simply getting mad, let’s talk about how to use losing as a means of getting better.
When it comes to fighting games, your ability to input the right buttons at the right time is critical to success. If you’re an amateur fighting another amateur, the person who can more consistently pull off their special moves is going to have the edge. As you get better, the importance of execution continues to be a factor, as your opponent’s ability to hit you with a big combo in a crucial situation (or any situation for that matter) could put you in a really bad spot.
With that said, I think that execution is generally considered the most boring and tedious aspect of your skill-set to practice and improve upon. Because of how monotonous it may seem, it’s easy to just stick with what you’ve got and never make an honest effort to improve your execution. In this post, we talk about what execution is, different types of execution ‘concepts’ and a few different ways to approach improving your execution without boring yourself to tears.
(UPDATE: Part 2 of the frame data sub-series of posts is now live. Click here to learn more about frame advantage!)
When most people play fighting games, they don’t think about the underlying mechanics that drive the on-screen action. Odds are, all they care about is whether or not they’re beating their opponent to a pulp. That’s all well and good. However, competitive fighting game players will go to great lengths to find any sort of advantage on their opponents. This can include learning advanced combos, specific tactics, or as deep as understanding the raw mathematics that drives how a fighting game works.
Yes, I did say mathematics. You see, behind the action are a series of mathematical constants, variables and calculations that drive how everything works. Most people never think about this side of a fighting game (or any game for that matter), but the math is there, whether you actively recognize it or not.
In this entry into the Universal Fighting Game Guide, let’s take a high-level stab at talking about one element of the math that drives a fighting game, which is frame data. Certain off-the-shelf guides will contain frame data for your game of choice, though online sites will likely be your best bet to find this type of information. To the untrained eye, frame data charts look like rocket science. If you’ve never tried to read frame data (or have attempted it and failed), this crash course in the basics may help.
In this installment of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, let’s talk about the comebacks in fighting games. More specifically, tips to help you come back from a huge life deficit. We’ll use the classic EVO moment #37 video and the full match video to break down some overarching tips that you can use to turn the tides like Daigo did years ago.
In Third Person 
