Rant time.

I love BlazBlue, I love it to pieces, its one of my favorite all time fighting games next to Soul Calibur 4... its got nice hand drawn animation, incredible pacing. Some of the best line up of characters since any fighting game. I gotta say, it places up there...

But like all fighting games.. there is a huge downside to it:

Online Play and the people who play it.


In my life since the I started playing fighting games, any Japanese developer will make a incredible game.. then place one or two characters that'll ruin vs. mode any time you see them. Street Fighter has the Ryu/Ken/Sagat syndrome. Guilty Gear has Sol Badguy. Soul Calibur has Maxi. The characters that take absolutely no skill to play, yet everyone plays them because they are so noob friendly and easy to win with. BlazBlue is no exception with two characters in particular that, no matter how good I practice on a character in training, read up on strats, learn combos. I will always seem to lose to them. Even right now, I love playing Litchi, I love her combos, she's slow to start, but when she gets going she does good damage and her moves (Aside from All Green... which is purely defensive.) I enjoy pulling. BUT I have to switch to someone faster every time I see these two characters and even then its rare that I win.

The two characters I despise online are as following, hating them in this order:

Noel Vermillion
V-13

Noel takes absolutely no skill to play. You press D.. and do the same three combos over and over again until you get enough of a heat meter fill that next time you hit them.. you pull out the Gatling gun and blow em away. I have YET to see a Noel player that does normal combos. Yet to see one that is good. How they could make her a bit more balanced is giving her a freakin' bullet count like Bangs' Nail count.. it is just that annoying.

V-13 is another issue. Yes.. she's a boss. Yes.. she takes tons more damage than any other character. No. You can't reach her cause the player is spamming ground and anti-air attacks the entire time with the occasional distortion field, followed by Sword Portal attack and a throw. Again, no skill to play her.. just spam D and you'll win. But.. she IS a boss character, and like Blue Boy from Street Fighter, she can be abused unless you have another cheap character to counter her.

Now.. I did not add Taokaka to this list nor Hakuman.. both are very fast, very strong characters.. with Tao, she's all about the air combo, and most of the time when someone Spams D, you can counter it pretty easily cause she flies right at you. Haku relies a lot on counters.... which can be easily dealt with as well. Both characters 'I' personally think are pretty balanced enough to deal with. I guess any fighting game we'll have to deal with cheap characters being put into play, and I know GREAT players will destroy them. But I'm not a great player. I don't have enough time in the day to master it.. I have enough time to have fun.. and anyone playing these characters without some sort of SKILL makes it less fun.

Meet Mature, Rugal, and Vice.... they look EXACTLY like them don't they!

http://kotaku.com/5286754/king-of-fighters-movie-promotional-images

So... here we are, we have the cast of the soon to fail KoF movie. We have Sean Faris (Pearl Harbor) as Kyo Kusanagi, Wii Yun Lee (Witchblade) as Iori Yagami, Ray Park (Darth Maul) as boss Rugal, Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard) as Mai, Françoise Yip (Rumble in the Bronx).

Okkkayy.. so - a actor from Texas playing Kyo. (White.. incredibly white...), Ray Park playing evil bastard Rugal. (Black hair, short, completely the other direction from the tall, handsome, gentleman), and Flat-Chested Maggie Q as Mai.... (woo.. FLAT, not hanging out of the Kimono there are we?).

The only good thing backing this film is Gordan Chan, who HAS made epic films before.. but deal lord, who did he hired to do the costumes, the casting, and all of this!? Are they TRYING to make it fail, cause from the way things are going right now. It's going to fail worse then Legend of Chun Li did.. maybe even further then DragonBall Evolution.

http://therewillbebrawl.com/

This nice little movie follows the path of Luigi as he tries to track down Princess Peach after she is kidnapped. Mario turns to the bottle, other characters show up either to hinder his search making note he is always the 'second player.' to Mario.

This is epic at its finest... go WATCH. There are three episodes all together, and more in the making.
Here is the first one for you all to enjoy!




OH! And by the way...

HAPPY B-DAY DESTRUCTIOD!

Image related. (Awesome pic Shin Oni! I had to use it.)

Well. The game has been out for a few days now. In the practice mode, I'm able to pull off Combos, EX Cancels, Dash Cancels and many other wonderful things that you'll see in a tournament. However.. I go online and the large amounts of spamming resorts to me having to do the same or resort to tactical blocking even spam of my own to beat them. Now..I cant seem to get past the 800-1000 battle point range due to the large amounts of spammers, mostly Ken, online. Let me list some examples, then get into how 'I' specifically counter those problems now and again.
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The Characters.

Ryu - Fireball Fireball Fireball, and if that doesn't work... Hurricane kick followed by a Shoryuken. I usually end up going up against mostly the earlier instead of the latter, his Ultra is also one of the best in the game so if he gets a few fireball hits in... its over if the ultra hits.

Ken - SHO-RYU-KEN. It is no god damned wonder his (and Ryu's) name are in that attack. They'll get in, Sweep, then toss in a fierce Shoryuken as wake-up game. It has damage as well as MASSIVE priority to most of the attacks in the game.

Zangief/Blanka/Chun-li - The Anti-Ken/Close Range game. Blanka worse than most due to the electric attack doing quite a bit of damage as well as some massive knock back. He's also got some nasty charge attacks if you go about playing defensively/projectile. Zangief, who I consider a awesome character, I won't get angry if you do his throws.. Pile Driver in particular. However, to those who spam Double Clothesline, and Running Powerbomb.... Chun-li is the weakest in this group, her anti-close range game being the lightning kick.

Akuma - I honestly, never had any issue with Akuma due to his low Hit Point/Stun Values. He takes tons of damage when hit, even by Sakura. But I'm getting tired of him being played like a Ryu character. The orange fireball in particular is annoying when spammed due to the multiple hits.

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The Counters.
Note: Done with Sakura

Ryu - If you know how to Focus Attack/Dash Cancel, you are set.. and you won't lose any life unless a fireball sneaks in between one. I have only lost of a few Ryu's online and that is due to a lucky Ultra Combo hit while I'm charge up Sakura's fireball, or running in with a Shoryuken. But if he keeps spamming fireball, your Ultra Combo is gonna be set and you'll still be at full life. As for the sweep/Shoryuken - See Ken.

Ken - He was a bit problematic for me until I figured out something. Ken's Fierce Shoryuken has so many frames where he is left wide-open. So wide open that a ultra will almost always hit or a EX. With Ken. I played rather offensively. MAKE him use his Shoryuken, Run in with a Jumping Sweep, following usually a projectile attack so he has to block or take the hit, or run in with a normal sweep. It depends on how gutsy you are and how the Ken is playing. He will usually follow with his own sweep, or a the Fierce Shoryuken. By then.. I am already pressing back and blocking like crazy. On the way down, you can hit him with whatever, I usually go with my own Shoryuken(EX). If he's a bit fireball heavy.. well, the same with Ryu, Focus Attack with Dash Cancel.

Zangief/Blanka/Chun-li - These are pretty straight forward. Blanka first. That lightning is annoying. But it is easy to block as well as see when coming. I usually go offensive as well, running in for a single attack and block when he begins to spam. To be honest... the same could be said for the rest of the characters in this bracket. Zangief requires more jumping game however, to avoid his throws.

Akuma - See Ryu/Ken.

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Anyways. Those are the 'main' troublemakers I run into online. Actually Ken mainly.
However, I am interested in how others deal with the spammers. My tactics on occasion do fail. And most of the time I have to resort to spamming my own attacks instead of actually playing the game with combos, cancels and strategy. But in the end I usually end up spamming Sakura's EX Shoryuken... much to my dismay.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172704

As rumored from Mr. Jim Sterlings rumortoid post it has NOW BEEN officially confirmed by both Namco-Bandai and Bottlerocket.

....Son-of-a-BITCH.

Yeah.... it's confirmed that Namco-Bandai has pulled the game completely from Bottlerocket and has given it to the Afro Samurai team.

Namco, you guys better not destroy this game or I'm gonna be SOOOOOOO pissed. You could of at least let them finish the game, and you all better put them in the credits.

As for Bottlerocket, nothing has been confirmed on their end that it might be the end of them as they know it... hope not, they produced some pretty good games over the last few years in my own opinion.

http://shoryuken.com/?p=885#more-885

I think Mad Catz finally found their niche. Apparently, as according to the article, some of the higher ups at the company were finally getting tired of being that 'Company that makes the crappy controllers.' And for the most part, I would agree that they were. I never EVER had bought a Mad Catz product that didn't break within the first few uses.

However.. it seems that they put their heart and soul into this project, and it looks like.. noted from the picture above, they won some awards for the thing. I'm impressed, and very VERY glad, as I had taken a chance and invested a pre-order into the product hoping it would turn out alright. I cannot wait to try this sucker out.