The PC gaming Thread. Steam/GOG/Origin/Etc. Game/Software/Hardware talk

I blame the two worst conceived characters ever devised for that joke of a game’s existence…Yun & Yang.
They go against everything that’s good in a fighting game.
Their divekicks are impossible to punish consistently with normal anti-airs.
And one thing I learned, one of the lessons taught to me by SF2 and all the good fighters of the early to mid 90s is…
learn all your characters anti-airs…and learn the spacing and timing of your anti-airs and punish all jump ins accordingly.

These two fuckers created by I suppose mentally challenged Capcom staff members contradict that lesson, and the entire philosophy of fighters.
Because if your character doesn’t have a great anti-air reversal or a command grab…Yun & Yang can jump in on you for free coz its impossible to anti-air them with your normals.

They are sincerely, abominations on the fighting game genre.

I can’t stand them.
I don’t know whats worse.
The fact they can dive in at an acute angle that’s nearly right on the top of your character’s forehead that makes it impossible to anti-air punish or the fact their recovery is too good from the move if you block it.

Not every character can punish it either in the air or on the ground once they land.
I know my character can’t.

And that philosophy of making jump ins impossible to punish with anti-air normals led to Rufus, another fighting game abomination, and Seth’s and Cammy’s dive kicks.

Not to mention how other games got influenced by the whole “its a new fighting game so jump ins are free” philosophy.
Aka KOFXIII where anti-airs are non-existent.
In KoFXIII its pointless to dp or do anti-air reversals let alone anti-air normals.

Play KoF98.
Try to jump in recklessly like a mad man in that game against a good player.
See what happens if you try.
Then go play KoF13.
Jump around like a Mexican bean in that game and see if the reward for nutty jump ins doesn’t vastly outweigh the risk.

See the difference?

Before Yun and Yang fighting games were about footsie’ing and spacing. Punishing predictable and reckless jump ins with appropriate anti-air normals.
That’s true for every fighter Pre Y&Y.
Post Y&Y its all about jump in not giving a fuck, watch as your jump in beats their anti-air normal clean, and commence your long high damage high hit count combo as a reward for not doing the right thing which is…

To Play Cautiously!!!

The lesson that was taught to me by old school fighters is,
playing cautiously is the way to win.
Like anything else in life.

Don’t believe me?
Play Kasparov’s chess.
How did Garry Kasparov beat the computer?
Know how fuckers?
By coming up with the most defensively minded strategy to chess ever thought up. that’s how.
Every piece protects every other piece.

That’s why you can’t beat the computer at chess when the computer implements Kasparov’s strategy!!!
Its impossible!
And with good reason!

The most you can do is tie.
And the only way to do that is by mimicking the computer’s every single move.
that’s it.
You do anything else.
You lose!

When I was a kid I learned "hey, jump ins hurt. Gotta block them"
then I learned "hey, why block when I can dragon punch and punish them."
Then I finally learned "Hey, don’t dp unless I absolutely have to and have no other choice since the reversal has invincibility and does good damage, but if I fail and whiff it I am left wide open for big damage on its abysmal recovery. If I need to anti-air, i’ll use my character’s anti-air normals."
At the same time I was learning. "hey jump ins hurt. i’m gonna jump in every chance I can like a reckless retard."
Then I learned, "h…heyyyyy. Dragon punches really hurt."
Then I learned "wait, I can empty jump or bait dragon punches and punish their recovery badly."
Then I learned “hey, my opponent never dragon punches. He keeps anti-airing me with his character’s anti-air normals…maybe…just maybe I should minimize my jump ins unless i’m very sure it won’t get punished do to my timing and spacing with regards to my opponent’s actions and the ebb and flow of our footsie dance.”

That kids…is what fighting games are about.
Hell, what am I saying?
That is what LIFE is all about.
ie., not being stupid and reckless and foolish and not giving a fuck about the actions you take because the actions you take will mostly likely have negative consequences for you if you try to go down that road.

Its NOT about jumping around like a retard not giving a fuck because you have nothing to worry about due to the fact your opponent’s anti-air normals will mostly lose out to your brazenly reckless jump in attacks that have insane unpunishable hitbox/hurtboxes.
SMH.

F U Y & Y 4EVA.

THE END

Are you Akuma-hax?

just to reiterate my point some quotes taken from the KOFXIII GD board.

Lord_Raptor wrote:

YOu have a very optimistic view of XIII, are you really gonna say the top tier characters in this game don’t dominate as hard as older ones? They really do, Takuma, Karate, EX Iori, and the rest of the top tiers all have dumb ass good tools in this game which wouldn’t be too big a deal if the defense options weren’t lacking. You get AA’d by a Kyo Cr. C in 2k2 or 98 you know it and it really makes you not wanna jump, you anti air with that in this game and he damage is low enough it’s not enough to dissuade you from jumping in more than you would in an older game. XIII doesn’t punish bad decisions enough but too much at the same time. Hopping in like a fucking idiot gets relatively unpunished but making one bad read on a whiffed ground normal can lead to death due to HD Mode system.

Spend a significant time playing 98 or 2k2UM and you’ll notice the disparity between playing smart in those games and how it influences your decisions vs how it does in XIII.

AAAAAAAAAAND THIS.

Mr. Warzard wrote: »

Thought I’d repost a thought-provoking post DandyJ made about KOF XIII on Dream Cancel here:

http://dreamcancel.com/forum/index.php?topic=2984.msg66239#msg66239

I found it interesting, though I don’t agree with everything he said.

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The combo grind really only matters at the highest levels of the game, where, frankly, players should be expected to grind and optimize combos. If you can’t beat a player in KOF XIII who can do combos, but has worse fundamentals/neutral than you, that’s on you as a player IMO, not the game.

» show previous quotes

This is an ADVANTAGE for KOF XIII compared to old KOFs. Being inclusive of a wider variety of players is a GOOD thing for a game, not a bad thing. Now players whose strength is their execution can compete in KOF, whereas before, those players were at a relative disadvantage, and their talents were wasted. The best fighting games do not force or reward only one style of play, which is what he implies that the old KOFs did.

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Strongly DISAGREE, with everything here.

-Dumbing down combos DOES NOT impact the importance of the neutral game. Those are COMPLETELY independent factors. The best games emphasize strong neutral games AND combo-grinding aspects.

-Again, combo grinding really matters only at the highest level, which should NOT be so easily accessible to new players. It SHOULD be difficult to play at the highest level of a game. That is what KOF XIII does better than most every modern fighter, and conversely, is why SF4 is such a failure to me as a competitive game.

-How does KOF XIII not do a good job of “favor[ing] more experienced, intelligent players?” Seriously, show me one great KOF player who does not play intelligently in the neutral game.

Laban wrote:

I agree with DandyJ and disagree with you. Outside of like Kaoru and a few other players, I feel that even “top” KOFXIII players make sloppy decisions that would have gotten them killed in older KOF games. When I generally watch KOF XIII footage on Nico, I find it really boring neutral game wise since it just looks bad with unpunished jump-ins that could have been trip anti-aired, certain jump-ins get away scott free because I knew how shitty grounded normal anti-airs are that “should” have worked in older games so I see more stupid jumps and hops, I see HD conversions that come from grounded overheads or lows that can do 70-100%, much better than Vanessa in 02 and she was bust, I see damage output disparities that make tier stratification wider than other KOF games, and more. All I have to do is go over to watch 02um on Nico and see better play right off the bat. XIII has SFIV syndrome, what constituted as bad Defense (or in this case with KOF and XIII, bad Offense) in old SF games are a legitimate threat.

Like for me being a KOF player that has played 98 for about 3 years to grind fundamentals, XIII has told me that almost all the good spacings and habits I learned are for naught. In situations I try to anti-air I either lose, or I hit but don’t do any sort of damage to dissuade anyone from trying to jump at me again and if they can convert better than I can I lose. Many times I fuck people up through sheer Oki and some spacing and force 4-6 errors, but then because characters actually “gain” more meter on block than on their own offense/hitconfirms, Takuma or whoever can come back and bite me in the ass from a random conversion.

To be honest, although SFIV series does a bunch of things that I don’t like (like Seth or Viper), I know for a fact that it does better damage distribution than KOF XIII. And I’m coming from a KOF 98 background. Ironically in the short time I went back to SFIV, I had more Ryu “cl.HPs” work better than they do in KOF XIII and I don’t have to worry about some stupid unbeatable jump-in that should have been beatable or lol guard break (which how it works in XIII for the kinds of damage conversions is really, really stupid) taking a round from me from full health through meter conversions. Instead I have to worry about guessing games and trudge through slow walk speeds.

But yeah, I don’t see KOF XIII encourage as smart of play as the older games. Like absolutely no offense to Reynald, I think he’s a great KOF XIII player and perhaps one of the best due to his ability to not choke under pressure like I do, but by watching his game play I don’t think he’s a great “KOF” player by the kind of neutral game decisions he makes. But think of this, he started with XII and XIII where as about the same time he learned XII, I learned 98. He pretty much focused on the game of the time and I played all that I could only ever play due to no scene and relying on online. So, he’s really good at the games he plays because he gets to play them and often, but then when I watched him like a year or 2 ago (where he was already a really solid XIII player) hop onto GGPO to dabble in 98, his basics looked horrendous. Most probably if he picked up and grinded 98 he could learn it pretty fast and get better at it; but simply with the knowledge he acquired from XII and XIII and going straight into 98 was just bad. But I guess me going into XIII looks stupid too since I can’t convert into optimized 1/2 stock Drive/HD combos, do no damage, and look like a fool. All of Socal at NCR this year thought I’d body KaneBlueRiver free in my pool match, I bodied him the first game and almost the second game, but then he reversed everything with one touch combos with Takuma and the third game got to me with a Raiden combo and more Takuma shit and made off more off of one mistake than I can force.

So I don’t know. I guess you can tell me otherwise and say KOF XIII favors “more intelligent players” and combos do not matter that much unless at the higher level. And if you’re right and most probably you are, I’m just a shitty player and I shouldn’t have even bothered learning KOF, especially KOF 98 at all.

Don’t use my argument about KOFXIII to make your dumb points about how Y&Y killed fighting games kthxbai

FYI- LA Noire is $5, Bioshock Infinite is $10. But I figure if you want these games you probably already have them.

Since the Souls games are made to work with 30 FPS in mind, to a point where 60 FPS doesn’t do anything to help the games themselves, I am going to get the PS3 version of Dark Souls II eventually since I own all the Souls games on console. That and, DSII is promised to be locked at 30 FPS on consoles.

Plus, you know DSII is probably going to need an assload of fixes to work properly on PC again if From Soft didn’t learn their lesson this time(GFWL, framerate cap to not fuck the game up, resolution caps. SMH.)

@Gnalvl **Most games that use GFWL are getting patched to remove GFWL from being tied to the game(most recently, BioShock 2 and the Batman Arkham games.)

Msoft is keeping up GFWL services up, so even though GFWL is being “shut down” games that require it will still work.**

There’s an interview with a rep for either From Software or Namco acknowledging the PC port of DS was ass and his team will do better next time.

Why?
Isn’t it true that Capcom has made the active frames and hitboxes of well known anti-air normals smaller and smaller with each of their SF games while jump in attacks and their active frames + hitboxes have remained relatively the same since SF2?

and Y&Y’s dive kick did kill fighting games because they take that idea that jump ins shouldn’t be punishable to a whole other level.

There’s nothing dumb about notating the fact that SF and KOF anti-airs being diminished while jump ins and aerial attacks whatever their form become more and more unpunishable throughout the years.

Because even in 3S you have tons of ways to punish sloppy and repeated Dive Kicks. If you spent more than five minutes playing the game you’d know. I love catching bad DKs with parries to 30% with Akuma. And even in SSFIV you can still punish bad DKs pretty hard because they don’t have much blockstun when not properly spaced.

I think the dude plays a little too much online to think Divekicks are that annoying.

Have you ever divekicked the devil in the pale moonlight?

Divekicks aren’t that bad. Shit, in most games, that aren’t even safe on block most of the time depending on their angles. Divekick pressure is easy to get out of. In some cases you can even dash under that shit.

I honestly think Blanka Balls are more annoying then Dive Kicks. At least with Dive Kicks (depending on the game) you can hit them out of it or in 3S buffer-parry it. Blanka Balls are just obnoxious and hard to punish in too many games.

punished with a normal while they are in the act of divekicking?
show me.
with vid evidence.
por favor.
thx.

standing jab?

Not sure if that was a temporary flash sale you were talking about, but I’ve been watching Bioshock Infinite all week since my gf wanted it, and it’s been $15 on steam.

Amazon has a better deal - it’s $10 through monday for Infinite by itself, and $15 for Infinite + Bioshock 1&2.

Anyone tried Contagion yet? It was on sale and I bought it because I thought it looked cool. Seems like a good game to play with friends.

Must have been a flash, thing, it was definitely $10 for a little while. Actually, it still is, unless there’s some shenanigans going on.

http://imageshack.us/a/img837/7528/6lrs.gif

On that note, Arkham City (GOTY edition) is $7.50.

This years Black Friday sale is ass compared to last year where nearly everything was 75% off. Better to wait till Christmas sale where everything will be even cheaper.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is $10 in a flash sale right now. It’s so tempting.

I bought copies for myself and a couple friends, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. It definitely looks better than the average zombie game.

I’m very on the fence about Lords of Shadow…if it was a full 75% off I’d be on it.