universal fighting game guide

Enjoying Content Creation in Ways I Didn’t Expect (Charming and Open Response)

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Charming and Open is a blogging collaboration organized by Ian at Adventure Rules. Ask him a question and he’ll reply to it in a blog post. In exchange, he’ll ask you a question to answer on your blog. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, head over to Adventure Rules and shoot Ian a question! He wrote an amazing response to my question about his content creator bucket list, which you should check out here:

http://adventurerules.blog/2019/12/27/the-adventure-rules-bucket-list-charming-and-open/

His question for me is:

“What is something about your hobby as a content creator now that you really enjoy that either wasn’t possible or wasn’t something you thought you’d be interested in when you started out? Put another way, what is a new enjoyment that you have discovered about your hobby since you started blogging?”

Thank you for the question(s), Ian! When I read it back, I saw two unique questions that have their own sets of answers. I will rephrase and answer both. Let’s get it!

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10 Years of In Third Person: The Universal Fighting Game Guide

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Improving at fighting games is one of the steepest mountains to climb in all of video games. You have to contend with complex special move inputs, combos, complex gameplay systems, difficulty that changes based on who you fight against, an online player base that will take turns stomping you into the ground, and no one to blame but yourself each time you lose. Furthermore, the path to improvement usually requires help from outside resources, such as guides, video tutorials, or coaching, as even the most robust in-game teaching tools won’t prepare you for everything you’ll face in the real world.

Though I put a ton of time and effort into training, I credit Street Fighter III: Third Strike legend and one of the FGC’s pioneers in content Gootecks for helping me grow as a player. Dating all the way back to his audio-only podcast from ages ago, his tips and advice really set me down the right path. Without his indirect guidance, I don’t think I ever would have gotten to the place where I am today.

When I got to a point where I felt like I had knowledge of my own to pass down, I started the Universal Fighting Game Guide. I wanted to pay it forward like Gootecks did for me. Feeling like there wasn’t enough information out there for beginner-to-intermediate level players, I wanted to write the kind of guides I was looking for to answer very specific questions I had. On top of that, I wanted to write guides that worked for a wide swath of fighting games, as so much knowledge is transferrable from game-to-game.

I was hoping that a handful of people would find my work useful. What I didn’t expect was the massive and ongoing success it has achieved.

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BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle Ragna Tips and Tricks

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Brush up on your Ragna skills before BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle hits stores in June! I cover a few key tactics to add to your arsenal, from air-based mix-ups, to techniques you can use to extend your combos. Check it out!

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Tips for Managing Meter in Dragon Ball FighterZ

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When it comes to meter, Dragon Ball FighterZ doles it out at a very generous clip. After the first few seconds of the match, it’s pretty easy to go through an entire match while still having stocks to spare. However, I’ve run into no shortage of players that liberally burn their meter during the match, only to find themselves bankrupt when the match is in the balance.

Managing your resources is crucial to your success on the battlefield. Let’s talk about two of the most common wastes of meter that occur in a match and what can be done instead to ensure that you have meter when you need it most!

 

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: Hit Confirms

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When I first started getting into fighting games as a kid, one of my favourite things to do in Street Fighter II was to perform the classic two-hit combo of crouching heavy punch into heavy shoryuken. If it connected, it did a devastating amount of damage. However, if it missed, it left me wide open for a counter attack. For years, I simply thought that was the cost of doing business. It wasn’t until I got into the genre seriously that I learned a better way.

In this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we will cover the concept of hit confirmation, or hit confirms for short. By understanding how hit confirms work, you can maximize your offensive potential while minimizing your risk!

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Kickstart Guide to Dragon Ball FighterZ

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Want to fight like a Super Saiyan, but you lose more often than Yamcha? Then hopefully you’ve come to the right place! Dragon Ball FighterZ is a frenetic 2D tag-based fighting game that can easily overwhelm players with its anime-quality visuals and combos that can send you careening through mountains. If you’re not prepared, you will quickly end up on the wrong end of an earth-shattering Kamehameha wave. Hopefully this handful of tips will help you push your power level towards 9,000!

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Kickstart Guide to Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite

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The fate of two worlds rests on your shoulders in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite! This tag team fighter may be more streamlined compared to its predecessors, but it’s still one of the toughest fighters to learn due to its lighting pace and the complexity that comes with managing multiple characters at once. While the in-game teaching tools are awful, don’t let that stop you from enjoying a really solid fighter. Try these tips on for size!

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ARMS Tips of the Day: How to Punish Sideways Dashing

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Movement is key in ARMS. Having the ability to simultaneously weave between your opponents punches while being able to move into the perfect position to land a shot of your own is pivotal to one’s success. In particular, dashing sideways has become a popular technique for evading punches, as it becomes increasingly difficult for the attacker to land a clean punch as you weave in and out of view. Spring Man players tend to use this maneuver a lot in tandem with their parry, as they get the benefit of parrying your punches while moving into the perfect position to counter.

Strafing is a very powerful tool in the arsenal. Players who don’t know any better can easily get frustrated as their punches continually whiff against dashes. Thankfully, there’s a way to blow this tactic up, especially against players who abuse it. The trick is exploit the fixed trajectory of their dash.

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Ninjara throw spam in ARMS is easily countered. Here’s how you do it!

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As a perfect continuation about the miseducation of fighting game players post from a few days ago, a post from Kotaku perfectly highlighted my point about how misinformed opinions can take life and spread. In it, author Cecilia D’Anastasio highlights a common tactic that Ninjara players use in ARMS to score grabs. She even provides an example in the above gif.

Let’s use this as teachable moment to break down how to counter this particular tactic while breaking down the notion that throws are not cheap in ARMS.

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: How to Improve Quickly by Training Intelligently

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Learning how to become competent at fighting games was an agonizing process that was years in the making for me. In hindsight, my progress was extremely slow at the beginning, as I simply didn’t know how to get better. The biggest mistake I made during those early days, and one that I see online players fall into all the time, is having the mindset that the more you play, the better you get. That is a fallacious mentality to have, as I simply played poorly for a long time with no visible signs of improvement.

I now know that improvement in fighting games – while still a bumpy ride – doesn’t have to take nearly as long if you understand the process for improvement. In this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we cover the concept of training intelligently in order to improve at a faster rate.

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