Been meaning to write this for a while but didn't have chance when my PC got faulty for the longest time. It's just a continuation of my previous post on the topic of "SF4 characters that I've learned to use". The previous post included six characters, but this time I have only three more to add. Sorry I haven't actually been exploring a wide variety of characters; Yun and Yang have practically been the only two characters I touched for the past two months at the arcade... ^^;
==Yun ==
My biggest top top TOP favorite Street Fighter character ever. I was soooo uber ecstatic when they announced last year at SBO (Japan) that he'd be released along with Yang in the arcade edition of SSF4. The first time I actually sat down at the arcade and tried him out was somewhere in mid January last month. It took a while to get familiar with his combos but I think I've got most of the basic/standard stuff down now. ^w^ In a few words, Yun (happens to be) is top-tier. He's got a good variety of combos, set up/mix up and several unpunishable/abusable moves as well as a good number of free follow up attacks. Furthermore, he has 3 types of dive kicks abusable for offensive play, and a command grab to boot! I can go on and on about how strong he is but it'll get somewhat technical and long-winded so lemme just say he's extremely fun (not being biased!) and I highly recommend him! Even Umehara Daigo switched from Ryu to Yun now! XD Match footage:Yun (Daigo) vs Sagat
==Yang ==
To me, Yang comes as a 'package' together with Yun. Where there's Yun, there's Yang. That's how it works for me, so there's no excuse not to pick him up =P When SSF4 Arcade Edition was first released in Singapore, everyone felt and concluded that Yang is highly inferior to Yun hence considered low-tier. However, recently they say that the Japanese masters seem to be calling Yang top-tier so uh... whatever yeah? LOL. The way I see it, I don't think Yang's weak as long as he's held by the right hands/player, but personally I find Yun easier to handle/work with. Similarly, Yang has 3 types of dive kicks and a command grab as well but they're slower and has lower priority than Yun. His moves/combos also do less damage in general and he lacks a proper uppercut. Despite all that, Yang is still fun to play with. It just means that it takes a much more skilled player to use him at the same level as Yun and whoever can do that immediately goes on my list of 'respected players'. =) Match footage: Yang vs Ryu
==Guy ==
I actually touched on him for the first time ever only about a week ago and only on the PS3. I haven't tried using him in a real battle (against a human opponent) but he feels pretty fun so far. He's a liiiittle different in the way his moves/combos work but it's not as different as El Fuerte. Guy doesn't really have many combos. He seems to rely on mind games and feints as well as fast/good reaction skills (against a human opponent). I can't say I know how to use him just yet but I do enjoy using him againt the CPU =P He has fancy-looking Ultras and a pretty moveset too. Match footage:Guy vs Dudley
25th
Feb 2011, Friday
Game rant: DJ Max Next 10 (Top 20) Favorite Tracks (Part 2)
I'm still addicted to DJ Max and constantly playing it on the road so here's another list of 10 favorites. For those interested, click here to view the first 10 (Top 10) I previously listed. =)
A big BIG favorite of mine. Actually this song falls under my Top 10 favorites (replacing Higher by Supbaby), but I only realized it after I've posted the first Top 10 so I'm listing it here instead in case anyone misses it. I don't really know how to describe this song (as with many other songs LOL). It's not happy, sad, mysterious or dramatic. The closest word I can think of is "pretty" but I know it's odd to describe music like that, so I'm just gonna say I love the melody and the singer's voice. I've been listening to it over and over and over for the past week. XD
This is a nice song to listen and sing along to, but what first caught my attention was the video (of a boy and girl) instead of the song itself. Also, this is very rare of me but my brain actually processed the meaning of the lyrics while listening/singing to it. (Cos most of the time I dunno/don't realize what I'm singing and what the lyrics mean even though I understand the language it's in.) Hence the fact that I actually know what I'm singing for this song makes it considerably special.
Cute and fun to sing to. Caught my attention immediately. LOL (I have a feeling it's too cute for most people though, especially those who are fatally allergic to Pop. >_>;)
It's awesome that REX is really good at composing really dramatic music. (Both Proposed, Flower, Wolf pieces are by them) I don't think I need to comment much on this. I'm pretty confident most DJ Max/music game fans will like it in a single hearing. =)
The very first time I heard/played this song on DJ Max Clazziquai, I thought of Metal Gear Solid. LOL. The style feels very "game background music" and all those mechas in the video instantly remind me of Metal Gear. Of course, it's a great piece by itself without associating it with Metal Gear.
A nice song despite the almost-impossible-to-understand Korean-English. LOL. Random note: Even until today, I can't stop thinking of Kusanagi Kyo (from KOF) and Kagami Kyosuke (from Rival School) everytime I see the above title pic. >_<!!
SIN is always one of the hardest songs in every DJ Max game it's featured in, but it's fun. In most cases, normal style is moderately hard, but hard style is typically unpassable for me. LOL. In fact, if the game only has one style for this song, it's usually set to an insanely high difficulty (difficulty lv13 and above). x_X Random note: The girl with the sword always reminds me of Saya from Blood+)
My first DJ Max song ever, and practically the easiest song in DJ Max Clazziquai. You know how first impressions are often very important? Well, I'm glad this was the first song that welcomed me to DJ Max. Had it been some other song I can't appreciate I wouldn't have continued playing and become a fan. XD Random note: I really like both the girl and guy's voices.
A pretty cute and 'poppy' song that's always fun but not too hard to play. It was the first three songs (along with Love Mode and Coastal Tempo) I especially liked in DJ Max Clazziquai. The girl in the pic always makes me think of Cardcaptor Sakura though. Haha.
The first song I liked on DJ Max Portable (the first game). Basically a bright, cute and happy song. (Don't forget I'm a sucker for happy stuff =P) Also fun to play in all 4B, 6B and 8B modes.
24th Feb 2011, Thursday
Game rant: Street Fighter 4 Vs King of Fighters
I don’t get it. I don’t get why some people are so biased they are so blind and unbelievably one sided it makes me cringe. I mean hey, who isn’t biased about some things in life at one point or another? I’m biased towards One Piece, hell yeah, but I don’t trash or disrespect everything else just cos I think One Piece is the best.
Now why am I talking about this? Cos I’ve got a friend who dislikes SF4 and its community almost with a passion cos he’s convinced it’s donkey shit compared to the one and only good fighting game in the world known as KOF. *Gaaasssp* Alright you guys, gimme a show of hands how many of you actually know KOF prior to reading my blog posts on it last year? For those who do, pat yourself on the back and treat yourself to some cake! Now how bout Street Fighter? Were you still learning to walk when you first played or saw it? Heh.
Before we go on, I’d like to disclaim that I’m not biased towards either game. I have a bit of an odd history when it comes to fighting games but truth be told, I’m considered having come from the KOF side despite starting with Street Fighter. Still, that doesn’t stop me from opening myself to other games of the same genre and understanding/respecting the different styles/systems.
So back to the argument. My friend has given me many reasons (excuses) why he thinks SF4 sucks and isn’t for him. Here’s the list that I can remember, and my personal thoughts on them:
Character design is unappealing.
This is a valid reason… mostly only for fangirls (especially those who play games only to enjoy watching hot virtual guys). I don’t think fighting games are made to target the female market, and Street Fighter of all fighting games has been established since its birth in the 80s that it lacks ‘pretty people’ when compared to other fighters. I know the characters also tend to be overly-muscular even for 17-year old Yun and Yang, and Chun-Li has monster thighs. But a true fighting gamer would not let such fangirly reasons be a deciding factor for whether it’s a good/worthy game, especially when you’re a dude. =_=
Only one standard jump (excluding C.Viper, Ibuki and Zangief)
His emphasis is on the demand for ‘shadow/low jump’. He thinks it’s necessary to bait or trick the enemy, and to catch them by surprise. (KOF has high and shadow/low jump) SF4’s jump is also relatively slow hence allowing the opponent enough time to react/counter. I guess what this means is that he can’t think of any other way/tactic to bait or surprise the opponent with just a regular jump? No other way to pressure the opponent? No way around this? Lol.
No AB roll (KOF system)
In KOF, pressing A+B buttons together results in a roll. A roll grants you several invincibility frames (I-frames) which you can use to avoid projectiles and other attacks (grapples excluded), or to switch sides with the opponent. But this AB roll, my friend, exists only in SNK games. If your favorite game is Prince of Persia, do you really expect to rewind time in every other action game?? There’s no AB roll in SF4, but there’s always jump. Yar. And Focus-Attack-Dash-Cancel (FADC), which requires more skill and experience to utilize. AB roll is the easier way out, but don’t expect to rely on it and call it a must in all fighting games unless you mean to portray yourself as a pussy.
No CD counter (KOF system)
I dunno if any other fighting games feature this, but a CD counter allows the player to forcefully push away an attacking opponent upon guard-hit, using up one power gauge. This is to allow the player to temporarily break off a continuously-attacking offensive opponent and to take a breather from all the defending. This is useful against very offensive opponents who won’t stop attacking and give you any room to fight back cos you're forced to keep guarding, but again, it’s not available in SF4. If an opponent rushes you, you have no choice but to either learn how to defend or counter.
Learning how to defend, in my humble opinion, is one of the hardest things to do and be good at. To keep attacking, you simply execute a long string of moves, punches and kicks as and when you like, but to keep defending you have to guard in accordance to the opponent’s attacks and that requires good match-up knowledge, reaction and yomi (prediction) skills. It says a lot about a player if he only knows and relies solely on offensive play to ‘seal’ the opponent.
This is prolly when such a player would defend himself by saying “But it’s not fun playing defensive!” Ya right, I know he isn't playing for fun. He plays to win. Winning is the only way it’s fun for him, but it's not like he'll ever admit it.
Moves/attacks are not pretty/fancy enough.
Another graphical complaint that doesn’t even make much sense considering SF4 uses 3D models (you gotta admit the Ultras are fancy) while KOF still uses sprites and still looks more pixelated than other this-gen 2D fighters. But fine, I know he’s only referring to the style of each character’s moves, so let’s just pretend we agree on this. So, based on such a preference I recommended him Guilty Gear and BlazBlue considering their stylish and original moves, but his answer was “I don’t like those games. They’ve got air dash.” LOL. Great. Now he’s afraid he can’t predict when an opponent would land, in case it screws up his almighty ground-only setups and things don’t go according to plan?
Oh yeah, which reminds me, I recommended him the MVC (Marvel vs Capcom) series as well for visually flashy attacks, and he said “No, I don’t like air combos.” LOL Basically he doesn’t like anything but KOF, and no one’s even badmouthing it. But he on the other hand finds it ok to badmouth SF4, calling its system, characters and moves lame or inferior when no one’s even comparing them. I understand that he's envious that this so-called inferior game is in fact currently the world’s most popular fighting game with tens of thousands of active players and dozens of annual international tournaments all over the globe and he's wondering why it isn’t the same for KOF. Well, regardless of how awesome you think KOF is, it is a fact that its fanbase is dying (for valid reasons). The SF4 fanbase is huge for a reason – many like the game a shit lot (for valid reasons), and you can’t reason with it.
Combos are not long enough.
I told him to play the MVC series with combo hit counts going above 100, but he tells me “No air combos, and I want rotational input commands, not singular button presses.” There’s also Tekken where you can keep rebounding the enemy off the ground/wall for long combos, but he tells me “I don’t like 3D fighters.” Question, why are combos better the longer they are anyway? Cos they do more damage (KOF has little damage scaling)? So you can easily kill off the opponent in a single chance/opening, or turn the tables around even if you’ve just 1 pixel of health left? If it’s really all about making the game easier for you, then aren’t you embarrassed to be showing everyone just how scared of challenges you are?
Anyway, here's a comparison for your viewing pleasure:
(Longest combo in SF4 history, with MAJOR damage scaling. It's impractical and unrecommended in a real match btw.)
(Refer to 0:20 to 1:05 for the longest combo in KOF13 history.
Combo created and executed by my friend himself.)
Anyway, I was so frustrated talking to him the other day, but I was at work and there was no one to rant about it to so the only option I had was to write it out like this. I would have posted this the very day I wrote it, but my PC was dead and I had to wait for my new PC to arrive etc... so I only got the chance to update this today.
The conversation that got me frustrated that day involved the topic of "defensive characters" in fighting games. I know he hates it when people play defensive, but some characters are just made to be that way, and that's how Guile came into the picture. We were casually talking about Guile, and then suddenly he brought Athena (from KOF) into the picture and said that if the two were to fight it out, basically Athena would crush Guile like a nut, and somehow that's supposed to explain why KOF is the better series. =_=;;; There're only two words to describe this - fan wankery.
But! Let's just say that's how fighting games should be rated. Then does that mean that Mugen is the best fighting game of all since Lightkills everyone and everything in one second? Don't believe me? Check this out.
(Just watch for 1 minute. LOL)
OK, I've ranted enough. Time to close the topic and think of happy thoughts. In the end my friend is still my friend and I still like him. We can't possibly really quarrel over a conversation about fighting games of all things in life. People's opinions and stubbornness clash sometimes, that's all. It's no big deal once I have it vented it out. Hopefully my rant has been entertaining enough for your reading pleasure. =P
23rd Feb 2011, Wednesday
Pointless life rant
Life hasn't been as well as it had been 3 years ago, not for this past year. Things change, people change, but life must go on. Still, I'm glad and grateful that I'm still very fortunate and I'm nowhere near the worst case scenario in life. At least I still have my health, at least I still have my family, at least I still have a roof over my head, a job (thank you Guan Yin), a bed, a PC and all these other little luxuries in life and I really appreciate that.
But life really hasn't been simple these days. Frankly speaking it sucks. I dunno what and where the fuck I could have done wrong but there's just too much shit that I've been getting in return and it's not something I had wanted to deal with in my life. I am not willing. No. I had liked life simple and easy like it used to be, where my I had full freedom, zero worries and the only responsibility that's mine is me. Things were so much easier to handle. I was always in control and things always went my way.
I always made it a point not to write anything sad/depressing on my blog and I've upheld that for 5 years, but today's gonna be the first exception. I may not include any details, but I know what I'm talking about and I have to let it out somewhere cos I've got no one. Not my friends, not my colleagues. I know my family would listen but it wouldn't end well. I'm alone. I've got this load of frustration inside waiting to be settled but there's nothing that can be done to fix this at this very moment, not today anyway. There's no choice but to simply endure it for the next 24 hours or so. But I'm not that kind of person. I can't deal with shit alone. I'm not the lonewolf type. I must vent it out, let someone or something know. That's why this is an exception. Cos my blog's my only listening ear.
I dunno who reads my blog or who's reading this right now. And to be honest it doesn't matter. All I know is that life has gone downhill for a while and I'm bloody sick of this descent. Just one message to you, Mr/Ms Life, hope you don't take it personally and strike me with lightning cos I'm just really emo today, but please allow me to say this just once so that I can at least fall sleep tonight.
I HATE YOU.
20th
Jan 2011, Thursday
Birthday Outing (8th January 2011)
I wanted to post this entry 2 days after this event itself but my PC fuckin' died on me and I wasn't able to update my blog till... not even now! Long story short, the reformat still had some problems, plus I was sooooo stupid enough (despite knowing it) to open a stupid file which was a virus and so this very PC this very moment is still virus'ed. To top it off, something went wrong with the authorization code for my Adobe suite installation and now I don't have photoshop which I need to edit photos and the such. UURRGGHH!! I have SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP BAD LUCK this year!! (I lost a lot of stuff and lots of things broke on me.)
But I really don't want to post this after January cos it won't feel/mean the same when posted only so late after my actual birthday. And so here I am struggling with this open-source image editing program called GIMP (my god it's so user unfriendly!) to resize and compress these photos (I can't do anything more complex than that with it!). Thank god Dreamweaver still works for me although sshhhh I don't wanna jinx it!!! >_<!!
So anyway, here's the post =)
For the first time in 10 years I decided to check out the one and only theme park in Singapore (until Universal Studios Singapore opened last year), Escape theme park @ Downtown East Pasir Ris. It’s a really small theme park with very few rides but I guess that’s what you get for an 18 bucks entry fee.
We got there at around 3.30pm and I’m glad to see that there were very few people it actually didn’t feel like a theme park lol. But the moment I got in, I was very disappointed to see that two of the best rides that I remember from 10 years ago were gone (like, poof! Gone), and the already-closed indoor rollercoaster ride hasn’t been replaced with something new. I guess they really don’t give a shit about reviving this place.
Anyway, first thing we decided to try was the only good thing left in there – Viking. It’s been 10 years since I rode on one but I remember the last row being rather scary back then as I didn’t know how to sit/position myself securely so I actually felt my butt lifting off x_X For this first try, me and my boy sat on the last third row while my other two friends sat on the last second row on the other end. I still didn’t know how to sit “properly” this time so even though we were only on the last third row it was quite scary for me. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s no fun, especially when the guy sitting beside me is scared somewhat shitless =P Still, I’m very proud of him for conquering his own phobia. ^_^ *hugs*
Next we tried the baby rollercoaster, which really is more like an infant coaster. >_>; It’s really small and short but surprisingly violent. LOL. It flings you left and right and my back keeps hitting the tough plastic seat that it kinda hurts lol. My boy seemed to kind of enjoy it tho. XD
After that, we decided to take on the water splash ride. It’s the only ride in the entire park that has a rollercoaster-like drop, but it’s a wet ride. At one point we almost decided to back out but I’m glad we didn’t, or there’s really nothing left to ride. LOL. We studied the people who just finished their ride and man they’re soaked. In fact, you get wet the moment you even sit on the boat. >_o! Also, there’re two drops to this ride, one small one big. I got half wet by the small one and soaked by the big, all cos I made the decision to sit on the back. XD Hurray to my guy friend wearing white pants who sat on the back too. Wahahahaa!
Now that we’re all wet, it’s time for something drier – Daytona go-kart. The advanced course version of this go-kart attraction is practically the only thing in the park with a queue that’s longer than 5 minutes, and we prolly waited around half an hour. Well, it was fun but the course is still too short IMO, and my go-kart was slow. I was the first to take off but eventually two people caught up and overtook me even though I stepped on the ‘gas pedal’ all the way in. Grrr.
I forgot which one ride we retook first after the go-karts but we did ride on the baby coaster one more time and the Viking two more times. I moved one row back with each Viking retry and eventually I was able to conquer the last row again, thanks to a friend’s tip on ‘how to sit securely’ XD!! This makes me wonder how I used to sit on the last row without ‘sitting securely’ 10 years ago. I remember pretty clearly that I was considerably scared. X_x! Also, a good pat to the back for my boy for clearing the last second row despite his fear of height. ^_^!!
We tried the ‘haunted house’ after that, which I don’t really have any comments on, lol. The last thing we rode was this relaxing…flying… thing. Sorry I don’t have better words for it. ^^; It’s a good ride to ‘hang dry’, especially if you’re wet from that other ride. XD
Overall, it’s a good day. Sure there weren’t a lot of rides and several good ones from the past are gone but it’s my first revisit in 10 years so it ain’t that bad, especially when the queues are short and my friends accommodating. ^_^ In fact most of the time there is no queue lol, and it didn’t rain! Phew…!
For dinner, we ate at Shokudo at Raffles City. I’m glad Michelle was able to join us. After that we went back to none other than the arcade at Bugis where we met up with more friends, and then the usual Macdonald’s after the arcade closed. That’s where the gang randomly decided they’re gonna play mahjong at one of the guys’ place.
I was actually already tired by 11pm cos I didn’t get to sleep enough the night before, so I ended up knocking out at around 5am (I think) after playing some SSF4 and slept till 8am when the mahjong people finally finished their game. Crazy people… lol.
Anyway, it was tiring but it was a good day. Thanks to Skye and Yuki for going to the theme park with me, and the rest for hanging out at night. Last but not least, thanks to my boy for always being there for me. ^_^ *hug*
