street fighter IV

Universal Fighting Game Guide: Understanding Combo Systems Part 1 – The Elements

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If you’ve ever had any sort of interest in fighting games, you’ve probably stumbled across a combo video or two. They’re very cool to watch, and you may have even taken it upon yourself to be as good as the person in the video by going to a guide and learning how to read an execute something like this from BlazBlue:

214D -> B (FC), 623D, dash, 3C xx 236236B, 214D -> C, 5C 2C 4D -> D, [j.C x n] [dj.C x n] xx j.214B – 50% Heat

While you may be tempted to learn the big fancy combos the moment you start playing a new fighting game, it’s not the best way to level yourself up. Mastering the physical execution of big combos is nice, but learning the big combos without knowing the context behind them first is like trying to run without learning how to walk. This is post 1 in a two-part mini-series about understanding combo systems. Part 1 will deal with the elements that make up most combo systems, while part 2 will discuss how to put context to those elements to shape your offensive capabilities. Let’s get moving with part 1!

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: The Problem With Only Mastering Combos

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If you’ve ever had any sort of interest in fighting games, you’ve probably stumbled across a combo video or two. They’re very cool to watch, and you may have even taken it upon yourself to be as good as the person in the video by going to a guide and learning how to read an execute something like this from BlazBlue:

214D -> B (FC), 623D, dash, 3C xx 236236B, 214D -> C, 5C 2C 4D -> D, [j.C x n] [dj.C x n] xx j.214B – 50% Heat

While you may be tempted to learn the big fancy combos the moment you start playing a new fighting game, it’s not the best way to level yourself up. Mastering the physical execution of big combos is nice, but learning the big combos without knowing the context behind them first is like trying to run without learning how to walk.

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: How to Deal With Cross-Up Attacks

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With fighting games experiencing an upswing in popularity, there are a lot of new players getting into fighting games and fighting game veterans taking on new games. With any new fighting game you take on, whether that’s a mainstream hit like Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat, or a more niche title like Arcana Heart 3, comes a learning curve that’s usually steeper than that of most other video games on the market. Playing against the computer or playing with your friends of similar skill is fine and dandy, but if your goal is to play these games on a competitive level against anyone is going to take some smart training and elbow grease.

The good news is, a lot of the knowledge you’ll learn in one game is transferable to the next, which makes learning fighting games as a whole a task that’s not as daunting as it seems on the surface. It also makes it possible for someone like me to write a somewhat-one-size-fits-all guide to fighting games that you can apply to any fighting game you play.

I’m not sure how far I’ll go with this series of posts, but for my first attempt at this, let’s talk about fighting games from a defensive perspective. More specifically, how to deal with cross-up/cross-over/cross-under attacks.

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Top 3 iPhone Games On Sale This Valentine’s Day

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With a major holiday coming up, many iPhone game publishers are once again slashing the prices on a number of their games. Before writing this feature, I went nuts and bought a ton of games myself, many of which I will write about in the near future. If you’re looking to load up on iPhone games for yourself (or gift to a loved one) and don’t know where to start, I’d say start with my recommendations in this post.

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2010 Year in Review: My Favourite iOS Games

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Whether you were playing games on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, iOS gaming was really strong this year. There were a ton of great titles that hit the iTunes store, many of which went on sale at crazy prices. I have bought dozens of iOS games, though I’m embarrassed to admit that I did not put much time into most of them.

If you’re looking for a definitive list of the best iOS games of 2010, I’m sure that sites like Slide to Play and Touch Arcade will do a much better job of that than I ever could. At the very least, I can share with you my list of favourite iOS games of 2010.

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Sagat Confirmed (and Dee Jay Leaked) for iPhone Street Fighter IV

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Capcom keeps on making one of the best iPhone games even better. Recently, they formally announced that Sagat would be making his way to the iPhone version of Street Fighter IV, along with a few system updates. As with the other major updates to this game, Sagat and the other updates will be free of charge.

In the process, they accidently released a picture of an unannounced character. That, or this is a really awesome Photoshop job for a game that people aren’t following that seriously.

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In Defense of Fighting Games

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I was planning on writing a whole post about how the entirety of Alexander Hinkley’s “Why Fighting Games Suck” post is terrible due to his ignorance and poor arguments supported with incorrect facts, but the Internet has done that for me in the comments section. Thank you, Internet.

Hori EX 2 Was An Epic Fail

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I’m not new to this whole video game hardware failure thing. It’s frustrating every single time. Going into this, I knew I was getting an entry-level arcade joystick, but the relatively positive reviews and the trusted Hori brand name led me to believe that I was getting a “good enough” joystick to start with.

So much for that thought.

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Metacritic and My Video Game Collection

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Hate it or love it, review aggregators are becoming an increasingly important service for consumers of just about anything. In the video game space, people like them because it gives them a quick and quantifiable way of knowing what games are good and what games suck. The counterpoint to those people are those who don’t feel that aggregates tell the whole story and put an emphasis on a number rather than the context from which that number is derived from.

I’m not here to choose sides. Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to take my XBOX 360 and Wii game collection, full retail games only, compile all of their Metacritic scores and see what the results say about my game stash. I must preface that this is far from scientific and that my collection has changed since I compiled these numbers.

With that said, lets hit the results.

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Pick Up Post: I Got The Magic Stick

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After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to purchase an arcade joystick. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV happening in a few days (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 having just been announced), I figured now would be the right time to finally give this arcade joystick thing a shot. As a long-time pad player who has always struggled with joysticks in the arcade, this is a bit of a risky investment. The market for joysticks varies wildly, as the prices can go as low as $30 and as high as $200 for products that do the exact same thing. All of the joysticks also vary wildly in features, build quality and the ability to fix/mod the joystick yourself.

As much as I would like to immediately jump to the top-of-the-line MadCatz TE stick, I’m not ready to invest $200 on a controller that I may never find as comfortable as a regular controller. With everything taken into consideration, I ended up putting down the money on this arcade joystick.

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