3rd Strike, above HDR, is the game that I want to be good at the most. Maybe it’s just my Dreamcast nostalgia sinking in (read my post about Shenmue), but something about 3rd Strike just seems so cool. Note: My 3rd Strike knowledge consists of playing against the computer for a few months. I have absolutely no idea how technical the game is and I consider myself a below-noob level player; but still.
Not that I’m good at 3S, but I bet you could get by somewhat OK based on your ST/HDR knowledge of Ken. I used to play it online on XBox as Akuma, I managed to average around a C+ in my very limited time playing the game. Its HDR but with parrys, juggles, and much easier linking and cancelling. It would be a perfect fighter if it had a better cast of characters, it probably has the worst SF roster. I mean, Sean, Elena, Hugo, and Twelve were pretty awful characters even if they had unique play-styles. Then again, 3rd Strike is responsible for Dudley and GUTTER TRASH <3.
I played Ken out of obligation in 3rd Strike. However, I fooled around with Akuma whom I liked better than Ken. I also love Dudley because he’s a gentleman - I love everything about him from a character standpoint. Thinking about non-HDR Street Fighter games has really made me grateful for Ken’s knee-bash loop. It is such a ridiculously advantageous position to be in when attacking that I feel my non-HDR SF, and fighting games in general, abilities are diminished. I rely on that move for so much of my offense that I’m pretty much lost without it. Also, my inability to combo multiple normals into specials/super would probably shine through in 3rd Strike.
Edit: I forgot to mention Q. I hear he’s bottom-tier, but I would love to learn him as well.
Uhh… and REMY!!! 
I actually love the characters in 3S. I’m the opposite to most people in that it actually has my favourite roster of characters of any SF game by a large margin.
I also think it’s a really fun casual game played by people getting by with their ST/HDR knowledge and a few parries and EX’s going around. But it starts to break down horribly the better the competitors get; the more boring it gets. It’s much further from being a ‘perfect fighter’ than SF2 is for me. But it depends what you want in a fighting game. Even SF4 has zoning and at least not-useless fireballs and more character playstyle variety.
Incidentally how I feel about 3S is pretty much exactly how I feel about SSF4 in terms of how as your skill & competition increases it gets less fun. I had a great session of SSF4 last night, even in nasty input lag against a friend from Canada - but the reason it was so much fun was that we were both around the same level (<1000 PP) and are really pretty basic with all the characters… and when you see some dumb shit happen it was just “lol” as we weren’t taking it too seriously. If I was really competitive, some of it would’ve really wound me up (In this case I’m talking about wonky hitboxes and comedy Ultra hits and such).
Remy is excactly right, 3S is fun when played in a non-serious manner. But at high levels I find it boring, lots of Kens and Chuns moving back and forth, occasionally sticking out a low forward trying to hit confirm into a Super, then running away to build meter and do it all over again. Or Yuns running away all round until they have enough Super to use Geneijin. IDK, lots of people think it’s the greatest, I could just never get into it.
Doesn’t help that the only characters I liked to use where Hugo and Q, bottom tier scrubs, LOL.
Played SSF4 for about 4 hours Sunday afternoon, played some good players. It was OK, kinda fun. I really like T.Hawk, don’t think he’s really that good in the game but he’s fun. Still a lot of turtling, though. When you play against Ryu’s and all they do is sit in a crouch all round, waiting for you to do something, and that’s a very good, viable strategy, then that says something about the game. Contrast with playing someone like DGV on HDR, where his Ryu is a whirlwind of fireballs, hurricane kicks, and Super combos. Much more exciting (I’d rather lose to that than to someone who just stares at me all round, LOL).
Too many time-out wins in SSF4, they need to up the speed a little bit more and reduce the size of the stages by at least 25%.
Yeah… talk about low tier scrubbing… I play Cammy and Makoto in Super… Makoto is not even a shell of her 3S self… WHAT IS UP WITH MY LOW TIER ADDICTION? WHY DIDN’T I PLAY CVS2? I could have had Cammy, Sakura, and Blanka and had a real top tier team but no… I never played CvS2…
What can I say, I’m a total low tier addict I guess…
Also on a really positive note. At MWC, HDR ranked fourth in entries behind Super (obviously), the mystery game tournmanet (i’m sorry who at MWC wouldn’t enter this just for the hell of it? I mean they had Powerstone 2, Tekken Ball, Fighter’s Destiny… just too much damn fun…), T6 (But only by about 10 entries) and then HDR.
So for the EVO games that puts HDR at the third most entries behind the big two Super and T6. But HDR beat out Melty, TvC, MvC2, and every other entry so good stuff to all the HDR players
Oh and a special shoutout to Brent who did a hell of a job on ST Cabinet, taking second place! Gooooo Hoosier State!
Other HDR worthy shoutouts: Damdai, you are beastly, a couple bad breaks, you know what’s gonna happen at EVO though. And RoyalPhlush! DUDE! Coming back from Loser’s EARLY! To win the whole damn thing… now if we can only stop the Shoto HDR Express!
CvS2 was great, I’d much rather see CvS3 than MvC3. Only time I played a lot of Cammy was CvS2, LOL. I’m actually suprised T6 beat out HDR, didn’t think T6 was pulling a lot of players at tournies.
Congrats to Phlush, he’s been winning everything up in the Chicago area lately from what I hear.
Hey Rain, I’ll give you $5 if you go take the battery out of Brent’s car, then I won’t have to worry about him next weekend, LOL. JK Brent, looking forward to trying to get Chun and Vega to file restraining orders against Honda from the hugs he’ll be trying to give them (though I think Vega might actually like that sort of thing, LOL).
Now, in fairness, he’s in Ft. Wayne, and I’m in Indy so I’m going to at least need 10 dollars…
I don’t know about the 'Nati, but I think Chicago and St. Louis have some pretty active Tekken Cells. I know its not huge here in Indianapolis, but there are some players…
Nah, Brent is actually a really cool guy, quality guy. He even let me borrow his stick at Naptown Clash a couple months back. The trick to beating his Vega, and this is straight truth, stay on offense, make him guess. When he dictates the tempo, especially with Vega… he’s hard to beat, but if you can get in his face, make him guess and trick him once or twice, you can get to him, but that’s the real trick. The way I play Cammy, I do pretty well against him because I’m always on offense and I can sometimes I can mix him up a little bit… I don’t know how that’ll go with Honda…
It has less with them being low tier and more with you being a girly man and therefore picking girl characters.
Incidentally Vega is extremely manly.
And is also clearly the Ideal man.
He demonstrates this within the span of a single animated episode.
Firstly he is clearly badass:
[media=youtube]5w3dZX65g98#t=1m59s"[/media]
He fights bulls.
Do you fight bulls ?
I think not cause you are clearly not as manly as him.
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Clearly has his ways with girls:
[media=youtube]vAPB6iEtooc#t=2m36s"[/media]
And is quite the benevolent fellow.
Watch as a man of inferior testicular fortitude known as Ken Masters gets his ass handed to him until Vega the kind soul that he is elects to advice him.
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Vega.
Making you question your masculinity in more ways than one.
Man all of your links were shot down for US Copyright protections… Oh well. Even Vega can’t overcome lawyers!
Incidentally it is all from episode 14 of Street Fighter 2 V.
hint hint
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Silver - I know all about playing him, he plays in all the bigger tournies over here so we’ve matched up quite a bit. He’s actually the one that got me back into playing in tournies, we played online a bunch and he let me know about some ST tournies in the Nati. Very cool guy and very good player. We have a lot of good guys and good players that show up at the tournies around here, it’s a pretty nice community.
Hey Silver Rain, don’t forget if you have any stories-in-videogames recommendations from the last page dicussion. 
(It was a serious query, not trying to put down anyone’s taste!)
That’s just too damn funny…
Oh yeah. I’d love to go to Cincinnati for Power Up but not this time. Although next time I see you on, lets get some games in! I need to keep practicing with this stick in match situations.
On stories in Videogames… I mean I’m a sucker for classics. So I really enjoyed FF4, Lunar, Lunar 2. I actually went back and reread the script from FF12, its better than I remember. (Shari gets credit for that one).
More recently, I actually got a kick out of the Dragon Age Origins story and I think Mass Effect has always told its story well. Although ME 2 was clearly about developing characters for a sequel, but it really gives you insight into the characters so…
The moral of the story… the story writers at Bioware = Top notch. Story Writers at Square = Best at recycling classic story in new flashy way that doesn’t get old.
At post below: Yeah, KoTOR 1 had a pretty good story indeed! Best Star Wars game ever made, without equal. I’ll admit I’m curious about the Old Republic MMO, but I don’t have time to put into an MMO.
KOTOR1 had a pretty good story, lots of interesting side quest stories, a nice twist at the end.
It’s also backwards compatible on 360.
Thanks guys. Cool, well I still have my copy of Mass Effect sitting gathering dust, so that looks like my best bet out of the above. One day I will fire it up and TRY to switch off my brain from the game engine, which I didn’t like one bit in the tiny bit of play I did on it when it came out. (Although mainly I gave up on it at the time due to trying to read the text on an SD-TV making my eyeballs bleed)
I still would like to submit Bioshock as a game with a fantastic story. The world, the story and the ideas work so well together that it’s almost ridiculous. I can’t say enough great things about it; it is truly an exemplar of what a “next-gen” should be.
No that would be Star Wars : Jedi Knight Jedi Academy.
[media=youtube]Kkv_5yGXwHA[/media] <-- Music Muted but still remains the best frag movie made for it.
I was lucky to actually get to play that game with really good players including the maker of that movie.
On a different note.
[media=youtube]wI7twbLmEoQ[/media]
The Swedish version of Hellfire is clearly superior to all other versions.
Stefan Allan Ljungqvist > Tony Jay.