SUPER Street Fighter 4

[Pikachu]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6avefZNvfw&feature=player_embedded#!

Cry, bitch, cry.

[Pikachu]

They gave Sakura her crossup j.mk back, as well as a faster fireball. Woot! But it doesn't seem like standing hk is monstrous like in sfa3 or cvs2.

Apparently, Cammy's standing hk might be beefed up. It's supposed to have aa properties.

[Pikachu]

Special event in LA to kick off SSF4 last night. Daigo and Justin Wong played in the grand finals to a Double KO. Pretty hype shit.

Daigo was using... wait for it... GUILE! Ryu must suck some donkey nuts with the SRK nerf (2 hits doesn't seem to be the problem.. but the lack of invincibility must be killer). There's youtube footage of the final bit of the match, and even though I know Daigo is capable of playing Guile, he was doing stuff that vanilla Guile could definitely NOT do. The lessening of the SB charge is incredible, as Daigo was firing that shit off like it was ST, maybe even faster. He was anti-airing JWong's Rufus with far standing Fierce, which I don't remember being as viable in vanilla either.

Supposedly, Guile's normals have been buffed, and this might confirm it. I wanna see for myself when I get the game in a few days, but if that is the case, along with a faster charging SB, that's all Guile needed. Incidentally, I saw some matches with Yoshiwo the other day where he started using jump straight up Fierce as air-to-air, like how Blanka did that in CvS2. This was vanilla, and it was working quite well. Hadn't seen that before in matches, but it did seem very viable. I just thought this was an interesting new option.

[Pikachu]

Hosting SSF4 at my place on Fri. If anyone wants to bring a second system, we might be able to set that up too, maybe to get more games going or to set up a training mode to mess about.

[buhwhyen]

EDIT:
Just went through trial mode. He has some pretty interesting combos...unfortunately the links are uhh..not intuitive. f+strong, st.jab, st.jab, uppercut. Pretty cool hit confirm, but I still don't know how he will ever land stuff outside of ticking, but with the abundance of mashing and spazzing, do you really want to play a character that depends on small frame traps for regular damage? I don't.

**********

Picked up SSF4 this morning, first impression of Dudley is not good.

Dudley can combo cr.rh in corner. Seems to be up to 3 b/c subsequent cr.rh don't launch as high as the previous. Can't do follow up dash punches either...he overall seems really awkward. Much slower and clumsier than 3rd strike. He can still cancel stuff into super, but not a lot of his old hit confirms into specials work anymore. And his cr.shorts are LINKS, and not easy ones at that (def not mashable), but his cr.jabs cancel wtf.

His overhead does not seem to link to anything useful, you can cancel it into super...but wtf ever, that's almost never gonna be useful. It still has the follow up mk, but the input window is actually pretty short, like all his chains in this game, you def can't delay ANY chain inputs to hit confirm, you just have to throw them out.

His st.rh has butt fucking awful range. Even his cr.rh has awful range...st.fierce and f+fierce is pretty alright...though they're still just whatever range.

There's a combo video on srk, but I lol'd at the billion hits before the ultra that scaled the damage so it wasn't even worth throwing the ultra at the end. Combos do not quite 500 damage, but involve linking into EX MGB and linking cr.rh and ultra. Granted linking cr.rh is super fucking easy in this game.

They made it so you have to gauge the distance when you hit a sweep to connect the follow up dash uppercut. You have to choose short, forward, roundhouse depending on the distance and corner or not. And the timing is less intuitive than 3rd strike, there's a pretty long delay between the sweep and the dash. And with max range sweeps, it seems like you can only connect a dash straight punch, which only gets 1 hit and does 60 less damage than a 2 hit dash uppercut. And the dash uppercut needs to be timed and spaced properly otherwise you can pretty easily only get 1 out of 2 hits, which again drops the damage from 225-200 range to 160-165ish.

They kept the cancel into super from dash punches...and it does do good damage, not quite 500? Something in the 480-490 range. Though I don't think Dudley can do without using EX moves, so how viable this is remains questionable. The execution of it is also annoying because you have to input the kick/punch input after the dash finishes or is about to finish, you can't just double tap the kick during the dash command to get the uppercut to come out automatically. So it kinda feels like I'm just mashing kick and then mashing for the super.

His ways of comboing into corkscrew seem pretty meh. Corner only cr.rh into ultra, but you have to risk throwing out cr.rh which is never safe (I think). Or random anti air jab uppercut (ala ryu).

It doesn't really seems like he'll be able to threaten any amount of damage without full super meter. Uppercut into corkscrew does 364 damage against hakkan wtf. And you can't uppercut into rolling thunder.

2x cr.rh -> corkscrew in corner does 390 damage, but is meterless. Still...that's such ass damage. Seems like corkscrew only gets full damage off non-airborne opponents, the grounded hit animation does good damage, though I have no idea how to land it outside of focus attack -> ultra.

His normals don't seem to have any amount of frame advantage. Seems like st.jab has the most, cr.jab has...ok frame advantage, but not enough to really link anything. You can do st.jab, st.strong or st.jab, st.rh, but really...with the damage scaling in the SF4 engine, hit confirming into st.rh makes any super/ultra followup just flat out awful damage, particularly since I think his only special launcher is EX machine gun blow or FADC uppercut. Though at max range, st.rh x fierce uppercut DOES NOT CONNECT. You can hit confirm 2x st.jab, st.rh x fierce uppercut, but the st.rh is at max distance it'll whiff completely.

^ combo does 216 damage.

2x st.jab, st.rh x fierce machine gun blow does 195 damage, but no knockdown

2x st.jab, st.rh x EX MGB, dash uppercut (2 hits) does 263, but knocks the opponent really far away, not sure if you can quick get up after? If you can, this combo sucks cause you lose all opportunity to continue pressuring.

His old standard no meter chain (cr.short, cr.strong, cr.fierce) does 130 damage, which I guess is pretty good for a meterless chain. They added a LOT of target combos. Some more useful than others. Seems like you can cancel the last hit into super? Were they thinking Dudley would actually use his super? They do good damage, though.

His command dash (for dash punches) don't have any amount of recovery at the end, but seem slow and pretty damn obvious when you're doing them. I think you'll be able to see them coming pretty easily once you get used to the animation. I don't think you can do any throw shennanigans (maybe?), or hit confirm supers (duh, you can't hit confirm supers this way anymore) off this move. It does go under fireballs now, though?

I guess he has alright damage off his combos...but really, how do you plan on hitting point blank jabs? I certainly can't turn off people's block like John Choi. And I doubt the old ways of baiting CH (from 3rd strike) will work in any similar regard. I don't know, I guess I'll just wait to see what other people do with him (nh), I think I'll be passing on Dudley for now.

[buhwhyen]

Thank god Guile's cr.jab, cr.strong link is doable. I can't for the life of me combo into flash kick, though. It's also pretty weird canceling into sonic booms. Nevermind, the cancel is just really fucking late, I was playing HD remix the other day, so the timing is just different. You also cannot kara into flash kick, this game sucks. Can't get more than cr.jab, cr.strong x flash kick to land. Can't do 2x cr.jab, cr.strong x flash kick?

Good change to df.rh, makes any normal/special combo afterwards. You can follow up with st.fierce, f+fierce, flash kick, etc. For pretty decent damage. Still no idea how to land it, though. Still misses on crouching opponents.

No way to combo into sonic hurricane? And by combo I mean not land a saving/focus attack. Ghetto set ups not included, I figure you'd be able to dash into it or fucking knee bazooka into it with some success.


Hate Ken's new ultra. Doesn't seem to combo from launches. Maybe it goes through fireballs? Still remains a mediocre ultra either way I think.


Tiger cannon doesn't seem to combo fully if you do a f+rh before it (in a fadc combo). TU x FADC, f+rh, tiger cannon doesn't hit fully on Juri, hope it's not character dependent. And does under 400 damage (in the combo listed), 370 to be exact. Just awful. Old TU X FADC, f+rh, tiger destruction still does 480.


Sagat gets st.jab, st.rh link? hahaha. Totally necessary. WTF...high EX tiger shot links into EX tiger uppercut. If you add in a jump in and st.strong, it does way too much damage.

......Why does cr.fierce have enough frame advantage to link tiger genocide after? Why...


Cammy's new ultra looks like it says COC, cause I don't have a HD tv.

Cammy can link cr.fierce, st.fierce. HAHAHA. Also can land ultra after spin knuckle. O herro. And she can also (in corner) spin knuckle, cannon spike x FADC, ultra.

[Pikachu]

Too bad about Dudley. I saw the same video on SRK was was disheartened.

Sagat's Tiger Cannon... well, all I know is that it never fully hits when you juggle it. Multi-hit projectiles are really just multiple projectiles piled on top of one another just like in ST, each with its own juggle potential. If you just count the juggle hits you use to launch into TC, you'll see what I mean. The damage is ass, imo, but it's juvenile how you can hit that after a deep EX Tiger Knee, and react to an EX Tiger Shot from full screen and be able to hit them with it. I'd like to see how Sagat players utilize both Ultras depending on matchups (or whether they even will at all).

Cammy has always had those juggles (but not that fierce link) AFAIK. You just never see that because... well.. you don't hit spin knuckles terribly often XD.

Sonic Hurricane is just a threatening punisher/reaction move. I traditionally don't like these kinds of moves, but I think they're more viable in the SF4 series. Cr.jab x2, cr.strong, flash kick should be doable. I landed this combo today more than once in a real game with Guile. You do have to be deep, though. And thank God low forward is usable.

EDIT - Flash Kick, FADC, Sonic Hurricane is possible.

Ken's new Ultra is more or less worthless. I guess it's anti-fireball like you said, but who the fuck cares?

Especially when Abel's new Ultra does the same thing, is a throw, and is scary fast. Abel just might be AHVB personified.

Makoto does damage. She isn't as BS as in 3rd Strike with some of the followups, but she will hit you very hard. I wanna know what is different about EX Karakusa, though, besides it seeming to have more range. I'd like to think it would have more function, especially when the developers have explicitly mentioned keeping Kara-Karakusa for Makoto.

Cody is very basic. He is everything I expected of a run-of-the-mill SF4 character in the B rank: links into low strong into specials for BnB combos, FADC into Ultra, some juggles. No explicit anti-air that I've discovered, but he's still solid.

Juri is scrubby, but can be advanced if you choose to be. Her stored fireball opens up a lot of pressure options, but I'm not sure I have the execution to pull it off and see for myself.

Ibuki is the new Viper. I wanna see Japanese Ibukis vs. Japanese Vipers. It'll be a SJC combo fest.

Akuma's new Ultra is... interesting. Jump in, fierce, teleport cancel Ultra II is about 400 dmg. I guess that's not shabby as a meterless hit confirm. It's not that he'd need it, either, but most people just wind up forgetting about Ultra I anyway.

Bison's new Ultra is blatantly better than the old one, especially since it can be hit off the same j.mpx2 setup. I used it to punish wakeup moves and fireballs. It's nice to have a tool to make people think twice about how they twitch, but I'd rather have a hit confirm into big damage for a character like Bison. Oh well, an improvement, even a moderate one, is still an improvement.

Balrog... he punches people. Let's move on.

T.Hawk should be playable. He's a more mobile, and fairly safer version of Gief. He doesn't have as much BS, however, at least not that I know of yet (outside of the obvious 360 games).

Hakan, on the other hand, is gimmicky. He needs oil to be scary. His 360 range when oiled up is exactly that. He'll slide forward quickly to cover that distance. Somewhere around 200 dmg per grab, which isn't bad in SSF4 standards. His Anti-Air Ultra is disgusting and very effective. I would not want to be forced into a ground game with a good Hakan.

Guy is just Guy. Cool tricks, just not for me. Brian, maybe you should give him a try, since you like Guys.

Blanka is the same pain in the ass. His surprise forward is definitely faster, and I think his dash has sped up a bit too. The new Ultra is cool because it looks like it can punish anything. I guess if you're ahead, you can turtle even more, and if you're behind, you use it as an excuse to take risks while the other person plays safer.

Sakura is a pipe dream. J.mk was disappointing, though it did marginally crossup. I think St.hk was sped up, and her new Ultra is great, but it's just not Alpha3/CvS2 gdlk.

Dan can uppercut, FADC, Ultra. Landing it is satisfying.

Claw is improved. Flipkicks were actually anti-airing things, and his new Ultra is quite threatening as AA as well. It can also hit after a hop kick, but the timing is tight. Rolling claws were also much more effective, similar to the speed that the gayer versions of Vega had.

Rufus does less damage off Messiah Kick, and that fixes a lot of the stupidity. Just don't get hit by j.hk, snake strike. That still rapes. I am not sure if low strong anti-air was improved, but I had an easy time with it. Hard to tell if I just learned to use it better or if it is better.

I think those were the characters I played. Not tons of depth, since I went for the more obvious aspects of each character. Makoto certainly has my attention... and oh yeah, Chun does, too. Her new standing strong makes sense to me now. So it seems I'll be picking up Makoto, Chun, and Guile at least in the short run, with Bison and Balrog still as familiar staples. There's nothing to really relearn with the Dic and lazy nig... err... Boxer, so I think I can devote some attention elsewhere in the short run. And Hakan... I'll learn some Hakan.

[Pikachu]

www.youtube.com/user/trag13

Shows off a few combos that are more impressive than the stuff shown on the SRK main page. Specifically, the stuff tragic did for Dudley changes my views on Dudley a bit. I usually like what Ben shows off because he will take openings into consideration, which means most of the stuff (aside from his occasional show-off combo) he does is pretty viable.

[buhwhyen]

I don't know why, but I still can't play Guile in this game. The sonic boom charge time doesn't seem that different. I still can't anti air with anything not cr.fierce, which I still can't get used to. The habits from all the years of having a shitty trade-at-best cr.fierce, but stupidly good st.strong have been a bitch to break. I actually don't think I AA with cr.fierce except with balrog in HD remix?

The only time I can see his df+rh used is after sonic boom? Seemed to be pretty useful last night, though I wonder if this will be hit confirmable? Probably situationally.

Ryu is actually still playable. His links are way more consistent, they either added more frame advantage to cr.jab or lowered the start up of cr.mk. His walk speed feels faster too, might just be my imagination, though. His srk is...still useable. Strong seem to have more upperbody invincibility. Jab srk seems mostly unchanged. Was only the fierce uppercut nerfed (in terms of invincibility)?

Sagat is still good. Not much to say here.

As I thought, Dudley is a scrubs wet dream. MGB is really fast and pretty damn difficult to block on reaction. Lot of random stupid mashing possibilities after too. And his jet uppercut is still useable. I still think he sucks, though.

Cammy's cannon spike damage seems to have been lowered by a lot. Not that this was totally uncalled for, but I was having trouble doing damage with her. And she is considerably less good/more annoying to play when people always mash on wake up.

Bison's new ultra is pretty...alright, surprisingly. Actually on this note, most ultras are more useable as wake ups now? I was getting hit by a lot of wake up ultras when I meatied with cr.jab/short. Sure felt like there was a less start up on a lot of them.

I think I'll probably be shopping around for a character. Seems like I'll probably just still play fireball characters. Might play a little Dudley and Cammy.

Guy...looks very aggro prone. Which is appealing (nh), though I have no idea where to start with his game play in general. He seems really awkward/non-intuitive to use.

And the main menu background is super homo. Wtf this is not an ark systems game.

EDIT:
Hmm...interesting, I guess Dudley's st.rh is really fast? Linking it off overhead is pretty impressive. And empty dash punches let you link 2 st.rh? Uhh..okay.

Interesting...it looks like dudley's dash straight might have less recovery than his dash upper? He was able to link an Ultra after a dash straight, and dash upper knocks them quite far and didn't seem to recover nearly fast enough to do anything after.

I guess the recover is deceiving on Dudley's moves...frame data plz.

By the way...why did they only take out SOME srk/dp trades into ultra/combo.

EDIT2:
All those overhead, st.rh links are 1 frame in Tragic's combo vids. You don't get free frames on crouching opponents in this game, yeah? I think you do? I could only get the link to hit on crouching opponents.

Uhh...same with the empty dash punch linking 2 st.rh. That shit is retarded. I doubt this shit is doable consistently, particularly in a match.

[buhwhyen]

So, I was writing as I played, but firefox crashes at least twice every time I watch livestream, and I lost everything that I had typed up. This has been a problem for more than the last 4 versions of firefox.

Anyhow, I was playing Dudley and Guild today.

Dudley's st.rh is absolutely amazing. Just A-Fucking-Mazing. It stuff random shit, and anti-airs really well. It'll beat shoto j.rh clean at the right angle.

Dudley has a seemingly safe hit confirm combo of cr.jab x2, cr.strong, jab MGB. And no, EX MGB does not combo off of cr.strong. The cr.jab, st.rh link is pretty doable for hit confirm, but I was looking for a meterless hit confirm off jabs. I don't think jet uppercut will connect.

His dash punches do go through fireballs, and works really well against shotos. But this does not work against Guile. When I played Guile, I played against a Dudley who was relatively intelligent, though he hit me with exactly 0 dash punches through sonic boom, despite trying the entire round x2.

His focus attack feels really slow. And by slow, I mean the start up seems shitty. I was having a lot of trouble starting it up in time to absorb an attack. I think? this was just Dudley, though Guile's didn't seem too much faster.

Comboing into corkscrew blow is pointless unless you go the full 10 yards. Uppercut, FADC, ultra does bad damage. Thankfully corkscrew blow comes out pretty quickly. On a similar note, Rolling Thunder can punish Guile's meaty jab.

Dudley has a lot of bad match ups. Way more than his good ones (shotos, I think?). The match up against Dhalsim is worse than Guile vs Dhalsim in ST. At least Guile has a small chance in ST. Dudley's match up against Blanka is also really shitty. He has nothing to punish slides and rarely has a good angle for anti air, and jet upper has a pretty substantial forward movement associated with it, so it generally doesn't work out well.

Speaking of jet uppercut, it has a LOT of start up. ANy non-EX version can be stuffed by a properly timed meaty on wake up.

Dudley has a reasonable zoning game, since that was how I was playing him. Granted, any shoto could do just as good, if not better. Dudley has some stupid block strings to catch anyone who mashes jabs or whatever. It's just unfortunate he has no way to maintain pressure (that I've found) once he lands a knockdown. His jump fierce is possible the most useless jumping move ever to be created. I think it is almost impossible to actually hit a grounded opponent with this move.

Btw. Did they really need to add so many characters with low jump or low jump type moves? It's really aggravating for Guile to deal with that shit. And why can Juri dive kick off a back jump without EX and Cammy can't? Juri doesn't even need to combo shit, it does a pretty sizeable amount of damage for a single special.

[Pikachu]

Finally went online tonight. A few things on my end:

I played against one Dudley... as Blanka. He seemed like he was at a loss on what to do, because I just did every lame thing I could think of to win. And not to jump on trag's nuts, but he usually tries to show off stuff that is reasonable. Plus, you do get an extra frame on crouch in this game, so two frames isn't too bad offline.

Anyhow, I played Blanka online just to unlock some colors (trying to get at least Color #4 on most everyone, since I like HF/ST colors). New hop is fast enough to confuse most mediocre players. Since Blanka gives a long knockdown after sweep/throw, there's enough time to double hop and really mix things up. After playing Blanka for several matches, I noticed that while everyone in the game generally has some sort of anti-air option (to varying degrees of usefulness), not everyone has the ability to deal with characters that have a good jump straight up option. I abused T.Hawks left and right by adjusting my timing, varying between dropping meaty attacks and jumping right before wakeup to avoid 360/720's, and doing simple j.rh, sweep combos, and then mixing up with hops. It was like.. well, scrubby way to play Blanka in ST.

Blanka's slide should be more punishable now. It was an explicit change. Then again, I dunno Dudley's low attacks too well, but I'd suggest you mess around with it in training mode. I'm pretty confident there's a way, and trying to punish online is always aggravating.

Juri can hit Ultra 2 off that dive kick, btw. Scrubs are just too dumb to know that. I also found some Bnb's for her that are very solid (c.short, s.short, c.forward, pinwheel kicks... or j.mp, ex dive kick, Ultra 2), so my opinion of her is quite high. She does seem to miss a solid, old school SF poke like most of the characters made in the 21st century.

Bison's Ultra 2 (hereafter called Abortion Punch) is the absolute shit. I found out that you can control the distance of it similar to El Fuerte's Ultra 1. Bison can actually fly full screen with that shit. I stomped someone full screen when they tried to "zone" me with a fireball. I lol'd. Psycho Crusher has improved. The crossup is not that hard to do, contrary to what a lot of people have been saying, but I have been very anal about learning Bison's wakeup timings since dealing with RL Zangiefs. What the bigger deal about Psycho Crusher is how safe it is when you use it like you do in ST for free chip. It's tons safer now. I still don't know how much this propels Bison upward, but new shenanigans are welcome.

Guile is more fun in this game than vanilla. I do wish he still had standing strong, but c.fierce and far fierce were working wonders. Shit, even flash kick did its job. The plus side is that he got minor damage upgrades too, so his output is more or less congruent with the majority of the cast. I am absolutely certain that if I keep playing SF4 Guile, though, I will be unable to go back to CvS2/ST.

Kikosho is cool for Chun. It's just really nice to be able to land extra damage anywhere on the screen. You have to input it faster, though, so I have to unlearn Hosenka timing. I actually sometimes input Hosenka rather than Kikosho, which is quite dumb of me. Oh, and hitting Kikosho off air to air j.hpx2 is awesome when you don't worry about charge/juggle.

If you wanna see what Guy's general gimmick is, I suggest digging up old SFA3 videos. Lots of target combos, mixups from dash moves, and that sort of thing. He was El Fuerte before El Fuerte.

I tried to play Makoto, but because I've been playing Dictator, Boxer, and Chun, the walk speed is such a rude awakening. Thank God her dash is usable, but it's gonna be a difficult process to learn her movement.

I played one Ken, and he didn't flowchart (he still sucked). No Giefs. It was actually kinda fun, and the lag wasn't nearly as bad. Hit me up sometime online and let's see if our connection is good. Otherwise, we should try Team Battle.

[buhwhyen]

You misunderstood what I said about Dudley's overhead. I meant that I could ONLY get it to link to st.rh if the opponent was crouching. The link only seems possible on crouching opponents, which is why I wondered if you got extra frames on crouching opponents. Therefore it is only a 1 frame link on crouching only characters.

EDIT:
Start up on sonic hurricane sucks.

[buhwhyen]

I guess I was right about dudley's overhead. +4 on hit, st.rh 4 frame start up. What's surprising is st.jab is +6, and st.strong is +6. And his jabs are 3 frames.

Oh. And I was right about lp MGB being pretty safe, only -2 on block. It's actually +2 on hit, pretty weird.

www.levelup-series.com/cicada/SSF4_DudleyFrames.pdf

[Pikachu]

Oic. And yeah, I noticed that I have been trading a bit on Sonic Hurricane. The startup seems to be 1+7 from what I heard, with 4 frames invincible after ching. At least it stays out on trade, and I am very willing to trade most of the time.

I think I understand Cody now. He has some tricks. More on this later.

[buhwhyen]

www.youtube.com/user/sonichurricanedotcom

Bison can combo into ultra? (see day 2 combos). Interesting to see if it's corner only or not.

Similarly Ryu can combo into shin shoryuken, though its a full meter corner only combo =/.

Day 3 shows you can do a similar combo for Bison into the old ultra.

I forget that Dudley has thunderbolt, not to be confused with thundercunt. This...would probably be somewhat useful since it's so fucking random and I still think out of place (doesn't really fit with Dudley's moveset).

And someone tell Justin to target combo more, and SJC the target combo for r-tarded mix ups. And definitely less cr.jabs -> hop kick.