When I’m poundin’ a chick I go " Yoga! Yoga! Yogaaaaa Shangrila!".
Behind the turntables I go " Yoga blast!!" as I max the fuckin’ volume.
I lurk and wait for the class bully after school and say “Got you! Shin! Shoooooryuken!”…
It has its pros and cons… I don’t really mind it. Taking up more real-estate on the screen isn’t so bad IMO… besides, if they’re trying to just feast on our hurt-box then we can brush them off with Kongo.
Was there something specific that was giving Gouken a hard time?
What are the right moments? I went into training mode and I couldn’t find any use for it.
It’s mostly that most of his best normals are surrounded by hurt boxes. He doesn’t really have the kind of normal domination you’d expect. Really just a salty night haha!
it has uses…heres a focus cancelled into dbl kongoshin…
now double kongo into armor cancel U1,U2 is what ive been searching for!
Yeah, totally agreed. Especially st.MP since it can combo to Hado…
That makes me wonder what SF4 would feel like and maybe even how character-tiers would change if hit-boxes actually matched the animations, like in 3rd Strike.
Supposedly, that’s how the game originally was until “community feedback claimed it didn’t feel like SF”.
SFA3 is controversial for its ridiculous hit-boxes, and that was in 1998, but somehow we got the same wackiness in a mainstream-targeted title 11 years later.
I mean damn, if I’m playing a racing-game then I need for the distance between my car and the environment to be accurate, and not with invisible trees and buildings in the middle of the road.
generally i’d say gouken’s size is more of a problem for him than a boon. gouken isn’t gief, he doesn’t really want to take up more space. general gameplan is to try to maintain a spot on the ground or at least a good amount of distance from an opponent.
typically large size comes with more health or stun because it comes with so many disadvantages, but gouken’s health and stun are both 1000, which is technically above average i guess, but still not great for someone so big. it’s tough to make an argument for high health on gouken because his keepaway game can be so devastating to some characters, but having 1050 stun would be pretty balanced.
gouken has a lot of matchups where small fast characters with multiple ways of passing through fireballs get in on him easily. he has defenses (good ones even) but he doesn’t have the ability to turn the tides of a fight with his defenses in the same way that better characters can. maybe we should all be doing kongo->fadc ultra or ex tatsu every time… i dunno. but he doesn’t have the ability to trade with a fast normal at close ranges and then combo into other stuff, he can’t jab to break a frame trap and then combo into fierce punch or anything like that. If you break or trade out with a jab you’re basically just getting a few jabs and then you’re still not in a range that’s comfortable for you.
it’s strange because you can point to characters that should have similar issues as gouken and are built in a similar way (guile and gouken don’t really play all that differently) but works better. why does guile work better? 2-hit fireball is one, faster recovery on his fireball is pretty important, conversion from light attacks matters. guile has more ways to safely play defensively, and is better at getting people away from him and taking momentum when they get inside. He has beefier normals, too. And he’s smaller.
and gouken isn’t rewarded that much for playing the keepaway game he’s encouraged to. fireball damage was nerfed by 15 from vanilla to 55. you need to dash forward to land a palm after a fullscreen fireball, which is pretty dangerous tbh unless you have a good read. actually taht’s kinda the thing with gouken’s zoning in general. every fireball you throw out feels pretty scary once they’ve broken into that area just outside sweep range because focus dash is such a scary and universal tool.
all these weaknesses are actually okay if he had something that made playing him worth it, but high damage when opponents make big mistakes ceases to feel like it’s that big of a deal when so many characters can do high damage from mid- or close-range hit-confirms. evil ryu can do ~373 damage for no meter off a st.HP.
Guile’s biggest perk IMO is almost instantenously covering his not only close-range but even mid-range with an EX Sonic Boom.
But Gouken also carries similarities to Zangief, because his back-throw leads to anywhere between 185 and some 400 damage.
I think it’s fair to have a bigger hurt-box, because he carries a lot of hurt with him - anti-air EX Tatsu is a clean 200, back-throw is 185 or 100 + a reset attack, an EX punish is in the 400s and a corner-juggle can reach into the 600s.
But the problem is when the opponent doesn’t allow for any of that, and we’re forced into footsies. Then we have anti-air j.MP, and his grounded normals which as we know don’t really convert to anything more than a few jabs, so the footsie-game continues rather than awarding us space in the form of a knock-down.
Everybody and their mom is such a tiger of a kitten in the way they’re just waiting for their moment to leap in on Gouken by a projectile-invincible EX move.
But FADC past our fireballs is no problem, because we can without exception sweep their dash forward, or better yet cr.LK to LP Palm/ HK Tatsuh…
I don’t think so, you’re getting jab jab short short (short), and that’s arguably Gouken’s ideal range, plus you’re at frame advantage from the short so you can basically do what you want from there. If you crouching medium punch then they’ll get tagged if they are Yun or something and try to neutral jump, you’ll beat any pokes, and you’ll be safe from any focus stuff. It’s not good and pretty weak in terms of payoff off jabs, but it still leads into a pretty solid situation.
I don’t know, I come from a Ryu/Sagat background, and there are some key strengths that you’re glossing over. Focus shenanigans are, for example, MUCH less effective against Gouken. Gouken’s fireball recovers 8 frames faster than Ryu’s, so Gouken can ignore an entire category of abuse that shotos normally put up with. As far as I can tell, you’re nearly always at frame advantage if someone decides to dash forward at anything other than point blank range with a perfectly timed focus dash. Focus dash forward is simply not an effective strategy against Gouken. There are match-ups and spacings where Gouken gets a straight up punish if you focus dash his fireball.
To me, Gouken’s zoning is about building meter and doing tiny amounts of chip very safely. I’ve played a lot of defensive characters, and more than any other - even Guile - Gouken can simply shut people out if he has meter.
You simply cannot come at Gouken aerially if he has meter. Sure jumping against shoto-types is usually a bad idea, but Gouken makes even the tricky jumps fail. You can’t do a bait empty jump outside of his anti-air range, because EX hurricane kick’s range is so huge. You can’t beat it, because its very invincible and fast. You can’t do Yun style neutral jumps and mix-up dive kick, because Gouken can literally just walk forward and EX hurricane kick a neutral jump. You can’t mix up the timing with forward jump into dive kick, like Evil Ryu or Seths love to do, because one timing of Tatsu will get full hits on either, and those characters have such low health that they can’t just gamble on eating 200 damage.
But what’s really opened up defensive play for me is discovering how strong Gouken’s light attacks are in the mid-range. They’re just so safe, and can be really irritating to deal with. You can’t focus them, they have great range and great hitboxes, and they’re special cancelable for tons of utility. Something as stupid as spamming crouching light kick can be surprisingly difficult for a lot of characters to deal with (hi Dudley). As light attacks, they’re incredibly hard to whiff punish. You can’t do it on reaction, so the only way to deal with it is to try and stick out your own normals pre-emptively, and once they’re playing non-reactionary footsies with your little light kicks you get the juicier options like standing hard kick, or making them eat a fireball, or charging focus or sweep. The only way they can deal with your shitty light attacks is to commit to bigger, unsafer options. And any of these light attacks can be canceled into a fireball to punish button pressing, or buffered into an EX tatsu.
Well thats it I’ve been real excited about Gouken lately and I had to write it all down, that’s my brain dump, ciao.
You’re right about that, buuuuuuuuut!!! Not a lot of people know about it…
At first I was discouraged to pick him up since all I read was how not so great he was and how difficult he was to pick up. But I’ve managed to actually do alright for myself with him and having fun playing him.
Just a lil’ jab on our fellow players over in the Bison camp…
who the fuck is timeghost (#7 gouken on pc/steam) and why will he play me for hours joining my room but ignore my fucking friend request.
just feels like a dick move.
Even if I claim this old man is bad , he’s still my main and if he return in SFV , he will be my main again, so even if I make an arcade for SFV , he will continue as my custom art : D
