Charge: The majority of this character’s special move arsenal consists of charge-based moves, which means that the person playing tihs character has to use a level of anticipation if he wants to use the charatcer’s special moves.
Examples: Guile, Charlie, Blanka, Honda, Remy, etc.
Traditional Grappler: This is a character who’s entire game plan revolves around landing throws and throw specials. Generally, if this charatcer can’t land ihs/her throws often, he ha difficulty in winning.
Examples: Zangief, T.Hawk, CvS2 Raiden, Hugo
Semi-grappler: Semi-grapplers are characters who have throw-based moves and who like to use them, but who also have other means of doing damage. They don’t live and die by their grabs, but perform better when they can grab their opponents often.
Examples: Alex, Sodom, most SNK grapplers (see below)
SNK Grappler: SNK grapplers are diferent from Capcom grapplers since SNK grapplers tend to be able to combo their command grabs (mainly in the King of Fighters series). This means that they get the benefit of having unblockable, untechable special moves, but also are guaranteed to land them if they hit their opponents. SKN’s philospohy differs from that of Capcoms when it comes to command grab - in SNK’s point of view, command grabs are just another type of special move, and should be comboable like any other special move. Capcom, on the other hand, is of the view that if a move is unblockable, you shouldn’t be able to combo into it. This is why Capcom grapplers have to “tick” into their grabs to land them, rather than being able to use them in combos like SNK grapplers can.
Examples: Goro, Clark, Vice, and a ton of others.
Zoning: A zoning character is a character who’s goal is to get his opponent in a certain part of the screen where his character can inflict damage while his opponent can not retaliate. It usually involves the use of a projectile attack.
Examples: Dhalsim, Guile, all shotos, Dr. Doom, Cable
Turtle: A turtle charatcer is one whose mindset is as follows: My defense is better than my opponent’ offense. A turtle character is one who plays very defensively, always blocking and countering his opponent’s attacks, and seldom mounting an offense of his own.
Examples: Dhalsim, Honda, Oro
Rushdown: This is a character who is constantly attacking, who eschews defense in favour of offense. This is a character who’s constantly moving forward, trying to smother his opponent, and doesn’t let up. It can involve the use of projectiles, though it usually doesn’t.
Examples: Magneto, Storm, Strider, Guy, Rolento, Cammy
Poking: This is a character who constantly sticks out high priority normal moves, trying to crack his opponent’s defense or stuff his opponent’s offense. The character is usually in a defensive position when not attacking thus.
Examples: Vega, Rolento, CvS2 Haohmaru
Runaway: A character that utlizes runaway tries to frustrate the opponent by constantly moving away from him, forcing the opponent to come after him, thus leaving the oppnent wide-open to counter-attack. Runaway is often used as a set-up for other playing styles (example: runaway into rushdown), but some characters run for the sake of running.
Examples: A3 Vega, Rolento, Storm, Twelve
Counter-based: This one I’m listing tentatively. In theory, this is a character whose gameplan is to land counter attacks (i.e. moves that are specifically designed to intercept an incoming attack and counter it, not moves that can be used as a counter but are designed to be something else - projectile, anti-air, etc.), much like a traditoinal grappler’s gameplan is to land throws. I list this temporarily because there are so few true characters of this type, at leat in 2D fighters.
Examples: Geese, Baiken
These are the main types of characters that I’ve identified. However, few characters are only of one type of the other. Main characters are hybrids, like Dhalsim (zoning/turtle), Storm (runaway/rushdown), Rlento (poking/runaway/rushdown), etc. Furthermore, a charatcer may be played in ways that they weren’t necessarily designed, depending on how the game itself plays. For example, many of the characters in the Vs. games can be played with rushdown due to the game’s various offensive-based systems. Likewise, most of the characters in CvS2 tend to be played with a poking/turtle mindset (not coiunting roll-cancels) because it’s much more rewarding than other styles of play. So note that how a character plays may be different than how the game at large is designed to play.
While on the topic of playing styles, I’d like to point out that I find it very stupid when the way that a character is designed is undermined by the way the game plays. I can think of no better example of tihs than the shotos - post SF2, it seems like Capcom has gone out of their way to reduce the effectiveness of the tradiitional shoto strategy, to the point where the shotos don’t even remotely play like shotos any more.
