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About




Fresh outta college, one of those stereotypical, bumbling jobless "journalists" wanting to become a "vidya gaems jarnalist". And so the hunt for a job he likes begins! And no, he's not going back to school to become a pharmacist technician, like his mom nags him to be.



I also have a YouTube channel (above image). Self-taught video editing! I'm still unemployed you know, potential hirers!

~ Favorite games
- Red Dead Redemption
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Psychonauts
- Mass Effect 2
- Yoshi's Island
- Pokemon
- Monday Night Combat
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Super Mario World

Also, twitter


Introduction post

10 things about me

~Front Paged
- Downloadables: Every night is Monday Night Combat!
- eSports: Someone you know is hype
- Relaxation: Secretly training
- I calls dibs on Gaige!

~FAP Approved!
- A discussion about Catherine with my girlfriend
- So I applied for an internship at X-Play...
- Being Social: Cal State Long Beach's Gaming Club
- Persona 4: Ultimate and 4 other fighting games you probably don't know
- A new return to 3rd Strike Online part 1: Picking a main
- Top 6 somewhat natural disasters in gaming
- Villains: For me my dear, it was merely a Tuesday
- Let's talk about Phoenix Wright and Nova in UMvC3
- How I gave my girlfriend Tetris DS and loved every minute of it
- Let's talk about Rocket Raccoon and Frank West in UMvC3
- Xenophilia: The Universal Language of Mecha
- Asura's Wrath might get panned and I'm ok with that
- Acquisition: Solid Snake signed your what?
- A Valentine's Day reflection: two great loves
- Skullgirls and the art of combos
- 6 reasons why you should check out Legend of Korra
- Today, I thought about oversexualization
- Hype: Japan Time
- Objection! The story of an impossible gift for that special someone
- Cultural identity and Sleeping Dogs
- Finn and Flame Princess' big Disney Adventure Picspam
- FTL: Recovered diaries from a derelict spaceship
- Retaliation: Your guide to fighting the Collectors
-Handsome Jack, the father, the hero, the asshole
- Before StriderHoang, there was Marcel Hoang
- Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! You're not all that mathmatical
- Ralph wrecked his way into my heart
- The sixth generation wishlist from five time Pokemon Champion, Marcel
- Strider's big, fat, ride through 2012
- Being the best predator you can be

~Friday Night Fight Replays!
- 09/02/11
- 09/09/11
- 09/23/11
- 09/30/11
- 02/07/12
- 02/12/12



~The Write Stuff! Get to writing!
- 06/30 - The Beginning!
- 07/06 - Line breaks
- 07/13 - Tone
- 07/20 - Commas
- 08/06 - Balance
- 09/03 - Crossposting
- Write Stuff of September - Pride

~ The Cblog Fapcast!
- XCOM or bust!
- The show must Smurf on!
- ScottyG is on the line
- Hobo extraordinaire, Manchild
- The sorry game
- Girlfriend caps
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- My Hairy, Downstairs Fapcast
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- Strider alone
- Oh the Injustice!



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There are two people who play 3rd Strike Online: those who played the game for years in arcades and those who didn’t. I fall into the latter because there were never any cabinets near where I grew up. However, during my first 3 years at Cal State Long Beach, there was a cabinet of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.

But I could never get comfortable at the cabinet to pick a main. On the arcade cabinet, I always felt pressured to play quickly because I was playing on a quarter which was limited. 1 quarter will either carry me to the end of arcade mode, 3 matches against the CPU, or 3 CPU fights plus a human challenger. So I could never get comfortable with picking a character to thoroughly learn and understand.

Now I finally have the time to take my time and play an optimized version of 3rd Strike (as opposed to the Xbox original Street Fighter Anniversary Edition version which was plagued by framerate problems).
So who did I pick? Place your bets now and skip to the end!



1. Q – I loved watching Kuroda’s Q. It was a masterful display of parrying, mindgames, and footsies. While there’s already been many discussions on tiers (and there’s also the phrase “tires don exits” to live by), Q does lack some tools and have certain qualities that make it hard for me to play him.

Right away is that Q’s main special attack is a charge input. I’ve never been particularly good with charge characters. My only experience is SFIV’s Guile (who can zone all day) and Balrog (who is actually good). But Q is neither a zoner nor particularly good. The biggest problem to overcome as Q is that he only has one special cancellable normal: close forward kick (MK for those big on arcade notation).

This is kind of difficult to achieve as it is close MK. So anytime Q is further away, you’ll get far MK, which is not special cancellable. Q has a great character design and he’s extremely tough when you figure out his strategy to taunt 3 times in order to bring up his stamina but he’s too much for a newbie like me to pick up.



2. Alex – The supposed main character, Alex is popularly referred to as the other half of Hugo. He’s a faster grappler than Hugo with more flexible specials and normals but his command grabs suffer from fatally long startup animation. His SA1, Hyper Bomb, has an abnormal number of startup frames for a super grab. Essentially, instead of holding back to block when the super flash occurs, you only need to hold up to jump and avoid the grab.

After trying Alex, I couldn’t really get into him. SA1 (Hyper Bomb) and SA3 (Stun Gun Headbutt) can both be avoided unless used to punish mistakes. This all pretty much pigeon holes Alex into using SA2 (Boomerang Raid). Even then, Flash Chop can't be super cancelled but Slash Elbow can, but it's a charge input. Alex feels kind of restricted in terms of usable options.



3. Akuma – I've seen some pretty nifty stuff from Akuma in recent days. As a shoto character, his moveset is easy to understand if you've played any Street Fighter. He has a few interesting resets that would be pretty cool if applied correctly and your opponent sucks at parrying. There are still some hurdles though.

Some of Akuma's combos are awfully technical. By itself, maybe it doesn't sound all that daunting unless you remember we're of course talking about 3rd Strike, which in of itself is already fairly technical. Still, it's not like it's impossible. It's just that there are some things that aren't immediately appealing. Low stamina, low stun.

I'll need to practice more with Akuma to get any real results and he has too many tools that I can keep track of and many combos but for now, he doesn't click with me. Certainly interesting if I keep at it but I'm just not feeling compatible.



4. Hugo – LOL, maybe next time.



5. Makoto – In the past, with Street Fighter Anniversary Edition, I've played Dudley and Yang but could never get around to really meshing with their style. I decided to give Makoto a shot, who often times may be spotted nearby the other two in terms of rank and something just clicked for me about her.

One of my favorite things about Makoto are her normals. Not only does she have a lot of them which move her in different ways, but they're also really good.

Makoto also has access to an incredible dash. Combine that with some of her faster normals (like cr. Jab) and mix in Makoto's signature move, Karakusa, and you have some of the most fun I've had applying a rush down mentality in a long time.

Because of my weakness at technical ability, I was simply attracted to the power and priority of Makoto's incredible normals like HP, cr.HP, LK, cr.LP, and f.MP. Combined with the ability to trap your opponent with quick Hayate dash punches, Karakusas, and the sheer power of SA1 and SA2, Makoto just meshes well with how I wanted to play. She is fun for me to play and no amount of tier discussion has dissuaded me.

I've even gotten profecient at pulling off Karakusa and Abare Tosanami combos. I'm moving on up!
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Strider, I suck. I'll be recapping your blog and rest of Wednesday's tomorrow. Just a heads up.
Knowledge is power!
I wanted to play Q as well when I heard SFIII was coming back. But after a few matches with him my enthusiasm diminished. "No way, I'm not doing this to myself! I'm not going to subject myself to another low-tier charge character!" So I messed around with Ken, Dudley, Akuma...

Then I made the mistake of trying Remy, and goddammit, I liked playing as the little emo bastard.

If you need me I'll be holding Down-Back.
Yeah, Makoto is awesome.

I think you should reconsider Hugo though. Based on what you said you do and don't like about Q (high stamina but uses charge moves and lacks cancelable normals), doesn't Hugo sound appealing to you? Is the 720 motion to intimidating?
Actually, I've played and recorded a few matches. I actually like hipster style Hugo. In other words, I don't wanna use SA1 "Gigyas Breaker" Hugo. I kind of like SA2 or SA3 to use more EX attacks.

The thing about Hugo and 3rd Strike though is that 360s and 720s feel way stricter on 3SO compared to other fighting games, but that's just the story of 3rd Strike overall, isn't it?

He's fun as a secondary though.
I never got a chance to play 3S when it originally came out, so there has been a huge learning curve for me these past few weeks. I've been mostly sticking with Urien, though, because I love how he can cover a lot of ground with normals and moves like the knee drop. I also really enjoy cornering people and busting out the Aegis Reflector.

I used Gief a lot in SFIV, so I was kinda interested in Hugo. Holy hell, though - I just hate looking at that character on screen. I don't know if it's his sentient hair or what, but Hugo's look does not appeal to me at all. Shallow, I know, but I just don't want to look at that ugly bastard and his "hey, check out my nose hairs" portrait.
Great write up! I was just having this dilemma myself, actually. I've been trying to convert my SF4 Dudley know-how into SF3 Dudley results, with mixed success. Also toying around with Urien, but haven't gotten a hang of his weird aggro-charge style, or the Sagat-esque way a lot of his normals whiff against tinier characters. Also enjoying playing an Akuma that isn't dependent on vortex, on account of being terrible at it. Hope Makoto pans out for you!

Also, does Hugo remind anyone else of this guy?
Great writeup. If I were any good at fighting games in a competitive sense, I'd be all over this. However, I'm not. Q however just looks like a badass walking on screen. I remember trying the game and being intimidated by the new characters and I've only really gotten used to Yun.

@zug
He's supposed to be Andre the Giant, but now that you mention it, he does look an awful lot like Joe.
@manasteel
Ah, that fills in a lot of blanks, actually. I always suspected he was on the brute squad...

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