A hero of Russia who is aptly named the Red Cyclone. His love for his country outstrips anyone else, and to show the world the strength of his motherland, he fights day in and day out. He is a man with a finely honed body of muscle and power.
So, who’s looking forward to SPDing Kuma?
Movelist:
Banishing Flat (aka Banishing Fist aka Green Hand) :dp::p:: Zangief pivots forward and hits with his now green hand. EX version floor bounces for combo follow-up options, but does not have any of its SF4 invulnerability
Spinning Piledriver (aka SPD) :360::p:: Zangief’s iconic move, the Spinning Piledriver, is a command grab which appears to still lead to the same old untechable knockdown into scary Russian mixups. Presumably still 2 frames. Doesn’t do nearly as much damage as it did in early videos, so perhaps it’ll make way for the RBG to be his most used command grab?
Double Lariat :3p:/Quick Lariat :3k:: Both seem to knock the opponent away quite far, but this doesn’t always happen consistently, will require testing. Probably used in his juggles after EX GH
Running Bear Grab :360::k:: Has one hit of super armour while charging, opening up a world of possibilities for using it during footsies, as mixup, etc… Also has much faster movement speed than SF4. This is also Zangief’s ‘charge’ move, so you can hold the button to charge it up to EX or super.
Super Combo: Final Atomic Buster :360::3k:: Still actually a command grab, as opposed to Hugo’s super, which got changed into a hit move. Now done in ‘Running Bear Grab’ style as Seth Killian puts it, as Gief dashes forward exactly like RBG if not in range for the grab. This is not to dissuade you from using it, however, as he dashes forward quite quickly, not the SF4 style ‘hands up in the air, walk slowly towards them’.
Zangief also has access to a lot more links than he had in SF4, including some like cl.MK to s.MP, cl.HP to s.LP, cl.LK to s.LK, cl.MP to s.MP, c.HP to s.MK all work! Which of these are actually useful links remains to be seen, but with a bit of day 1 lab time I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
I’m delighted he made it in. I was getting worried about people saying that the game already had enough grapplers but really, they’re all pretenders to the throne.
I’ve gotten the impression that they’ve tuned Hugo so doesn’t have such a strong focus on his throws so I’m looking forward to trying both of them on the same team. Not sure about his canon partner, though.
I wonder whether they’ll make Final Atomic Buster into a hit so he can combo into it like Hugo, or leave it a grab because Zangief wouldn’t settle for a hit.
So apparently RBG is his Super Charge move… that’s a little more interesting to be honest. And that probably means his super is 360+KKK.
EDIT: Also, EX SPD still seems to have the spinny animation on the opponent when they land. That animation was hittable in SFIV (as you could see with El Fuerte’s Propeller tortilla), so it’s possible that you can tag cancel it and combo from it.
Also the combo from clp to chp and canceling the chp to a tag is going to be a good braindead hitconfirm. The aa lariet being able to plain gh after on hit not trade is new. Rbg is faster now. He looks really good hopefully lariet still works as an anti air and he will be good.
