SFxT First Look write-up/character & gameplay impressions

Hopefully my fellow mods will let this fly :wgrin:
First Look write up/impressions:

Last weekend I visited the First Look event in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Among other things, Capcom’s booth featured 6 PS3 pods (with pads on a strange default button setting) with the latest build of SFxT (and no UMvC3, shame on you Capcom!!)

Let’s run things down, remember I’m still Dutch and this write-up was done fairly quickly so don’t expect a grammar/spelling winner here.

Graphics

Visually the game looks fine, the backgrounds are colorful and full of life, small touches entertaining to watch like Mech-Zangief holding on for dear life and tapping the glass on the space shuttle stage.

Animation is what you would expect not much to complain about.

On the flip side, some background character models look clearly unfinished.

Controls

Even though the PS3 pods at the event featured pads on some weird default button config, controlling the characters was a breeze, nothing wrong with the controls what so ever.

Cross Rush

The A, B, C, C combo, strangely (as said repeatedly before) the ability to cancel from cross rush into a special was gone in this build.

Therefore it felt somewhat limited, some creativity could be made after the tag for example:

Ryu; A B C C xx Ken; C xx Dragon Punch

But whenever you went into the Cross Rush you couldn’t cancel into anything, besides finishing it.

Reversals

Clearly in this game, whenever a move is done as a reversal it does a lot more damage.

Making the focus on punishing whiffed moves heavy.

Charge moves

Each character has one move the can charge up, i.e. Ryu’s Hadoken.

QCF and hold P, after the first red flash (level 1), if released, the hadoken is now an EX version thus 2 hits without costing meter, after a full charge the hadoken will auto-release and will now be a shinkuu hadoken complete with super animation and all.

Tagging

Tagging was strange, during the first few frames of the tag animation you are vulnerable, after those frames you seemingly have no hitbox and can’t be hit.

(I can confirm this personally because all moves just whiff through the opponent even though they were in range)

The partner running in however can be hit.

Tag Cancels

The ideal way to extend combo’s at the cost of 1/3 bar.

Dutch player Pr3Y was very creative with some Kazuya/Ken mixups

However unsafe use of this cancel can lead into an infamous “happy birthday” (MvC3)

Resulting in both characters being wide open.

Cross Arts

By far the most damaging tool in this build imho, sometimes resulting in 75%-80% damage.

The fact that you’re able to combo into these makes them very dangerous to say the least.

Being able to punish moves with (for example) a crouching forward into cross art is a gamechanger, I used it a lot and imho it’s too easy to score so much damage.

For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_5k-8qlQ4Y&feature=player_detailpage#t=86s

Cross Assault

The biggest flaw in this build, the cpu controls your tag partner (no more neutral positioned stick to switch).

It was more a factor of luck in hoping what your cpu partner would do that being able to combo into something useful.

(In 4 player tag matches this complain would be obsolete, but those weren’t in this build)

Pandora

By far the strangest mechanic of the whole build, which everyone agreed on.

7 seconds isn’t really enough to do anything.

I’ve seen only 3 Pandora finishes over the whole 2 days and those were against opponents who were already on very low health

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsE9FQtUGCo&feature=player_detailpage#t=126s

On a side note (sadly no footage), Pandora Zangief did 80-85% damage on Lili with his Fierce SPD.

Like I said so far Pandora doesn’t really seem useful, it’s an extreme gamble.

If that’s what it is intended to be, fine imo, no one wants another Lvl 3 X-Factor.

Overall

The game is flashy and fun to play.

At this stage it feels like the game heavily revolves around punishing whiffed/blocked moves, due to reversals getting a big damage bonus

The damage is pretty high, imo opinion certain setups like: simple tag combo xx Fierce xx Super or combo xx Cross Art are too damaging.

Don’t get me wrong I’m the last person who wants a low damage fest like SSF4AE.

It doesn’t feel super polished and complete, gameplay wise everything feels very easy to do

(I know Ono said that they weren’t going to make the next game as “deep” as SF4, but right now it feels a bit too easy to come back with massive damage punishes)

The game however is still in development without release date so I’ll cut some slack, right now it feels like SF4 with more juggles and somewhat glitchier.

Now for some character specifics, because some characters felt better than others.

I only listed the characters who I played a lot as or against.

Ryu

Pretty solid as always, zoning worked pretty good for him, since reversal DP’s did tons of damage.

Jumping Hurricane Kicks arced to insane heights only to come down on almost 45 degree angles with pretty good priority.

Ken

See Ryu, only with lots more combo potential.

Chun Li

Fought her a lot thanks to BakaNoobSama, she’s pretty good and her Spinning Bird Kick is a great tool for setting up tag cancels

Cammy

Another character repped repeatedly by BakaNoob, her Cannon Spike was an extremely good anti-air.

Her Super had invincibility on the whole Cannon Drill segment, ideal to punish ranged projectiles.

EX-Cannon strike was very tough to handle, making it a great pressure tool to be followed by mixups.

Zangief

At the start he seemed really good, due to his high damage on his SPD’s and 360+K.

His super being able to go half screen makes him scary.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbsUqb2SIfA&feature=player_detailpage#t=126s

However after some experience, he needs his damage (maybe not all lol) because he has some bad matchups against zoning characters.

Sagat

King of zoning in this game as well, reversal Tiger uppercuts did good damage similar to Ryu/Ken.

EX Tiger Knee causes wallbounce

Poison

I used her a lot, although fun I feel she needs some work.

Her Upward Kick (DP + K) didn’t work as a anti air, because she goes slightly forward before going up, resulting in ending up behind the jumping opponent and easily punished.

On hit this move does multiple hits, however half the time the opponent would drop out after the first hit for no apparent reason, making her suspect for punishes.

Her fireball was usefull for setups and/or zoning, it won’t win you fireball wars though because the move has some recovery.

Her 3K Backflip, has almost the same properties as SF4’s Claw 3p backflip

Rolento

He seemed Rolento like I remember him but somewhat slower.

I used him a lot.

His slide is a decent punish, but ofc unsafe on block.

Strangely enough a lot of character had problems punishing his Patriot Circle on block in this build.

His knife throw is now dragon punch + K and then P to throw the knife, he doesn’t jump as high in the earlier games thus cutting the knife trajectory short, hurting it as a zoning tool.

His Wall Jump (qcb+k) also doesn’t go as high as it used to, making it easier for the opponent to punish him after he jumped the edge of the screen.

His hopback into roll attack (3P then P), came out surprisingly fast, making it useful for random attacks and felt somewhat unnatural when compared to his other (slower) movements.

His quick jump (down-up fast) from the old games was nowhere to be found!

Imo he needs to be a bit faster, as he (currently) easily falls victim to pressure games

Kazuya

I picked him up on the start of day 2, he has A LOT of mixup potential and felt like a solid character.

His wavedash is insanely good.

His EX qcf +p (or level 1 charged version) had 3 hits of super armor on the first punch of the animation.

Steve

Played some matches against :034: using him, he seems to have a lot of potential with his dodges and counters.

He also had a “projectile” punch that goes about ¾ screen.

Maybe I forgot some small things, if so I’ll add them later.

If you guys have any question fire away and I’ll see what I can do.

MARDUK. I DESIRE INFORMATION REGARDING MARDUK.

…ahem… But yes, any and all info regarding the awesome Aussie would be greatly appreciated. Of all the characters, he seems to get the least love in streams and videos, which sucks for me since I love me some Marduk.

How good are his command grabs?

Any noticeably good normals?

What are his non-grappling specials?

Is his super a grab or a hit?

Thanks in advance Diek!!!

Marduk did saw some gameplay at First Look, my buddies Prime and RCR rocked him a bit

(looks up vids)

His command grabs seem to have decent priority (see vids)

His super is a technicly a grab, it’s his spear knockdown (see vid #3)

His Cross art starter is a hit which you can see in vid #2

EX Spear causes wall bounce

I can’t say much about his normals and other specials because I didn’t play him myself

Marduk vids for you viewing pleasure:

Marduk vids

Spoiler

[media=youtube]tVi9-cJEb3E[/media]

[media=youtube]RWsmz3akkEg[/media]

[media=youtube]ZsE9FQtUGCo[/media]

We should’ve recorded my godlike Steve imo :wink:

Diek, thanknyou very much for the info. It was very appreciated.

Hyped to finally hear Marduk’s super is a grab! A’right!!!

I must say, SFxT is turning out to be a gold mine for grappler fans! I love it!

Can someone talk about Nina? I saw some videos of her but is horrible and she have so few moves.

Any good news about sim?

The only thing I know about Nina (spend half a match playing as her lol) is that she can’t chain her crouching jabs/light kicks. So she can’t hitconfirm as well as the rest of the cast

Not much, the only thing I can tell you is that her Super has full invincibility on the start-up dash

As already known his stretch moves are used with forward and attack, none forward attacks will be short range.
Dhalsim is pretty funky in a game with juggle with the range he has on his normals from the small bit I’ve seen of him, he seemed pretty decent to me.
Not much to report besides that, sorry (there should be one match of him in my youtube channel btw).

You got any idea about motions for Lilis moves?

From the videos this i what they said about lili’s move motions.

Knee:
Srk+punch

Counter:
Qcb+punch

Cartwheel thingy rekka (I forgot the name…)
Qcb or Qcf+K and follow up with another kick to continue to combo.

Spin:
Qcb+K

Thanks for the write up bro, whats the word on king if you don’t mind me asking? Does he have any chain throws(doubt it)? Overall how is he and you wouldn’t happen to have any high level king play.

Np, man
Sorry I hardly saw/did any King play.
One thing I can say, one of his ground command throws can grab jumping opponents as well (just like he can in Tekken) turning it into a running powerbomb.
I dunno if he has chain throws, one of his EX command throws was an auto-chain throw into a sharpshooter.

Thanks man, king gameplay seems a little hard to find, hopefully he isn’t ass, he is probably just really technical or something. He is probably my favorite tekken character and Im hoping he does well in the sfxt as well.

Nooooooooooooo!!!

Have you try doing it with 2k or 3k?

this was the command in cvs2.

I tried everything, it wasn’t there (unless it is mapped to some unknown new command)

He has chain throws but it can be broken.

damn, we need to bug seth killan and ono about this.

How is the control set up? I heard it was odd on hori sticks for some reason.