I love fighting games. I don't think any other genre can be as competitive as fighting games. It's a true spectacle to see two people who are really good at Street Fighter III go at it. It's awe inspiring to watch the pro's of Guilty Gear kick the crap out of each other. It's hilarious to watch me and the FNF crew slap each other around in BlazBlue. To get to the level that the higher players are at, it takes a great amount of disipline and ability. It takes hours in practice mode and getting to know what your character can do. It takes time to memorize combos that you need in X situation against Y character. And this is the wall I hit when it comes to fighting games: combos.
Like I said, I love fighting games, but getting to the point where I know combos and can execute them on the fly, under pressure, is near impossible for me. I can get to know a character and how their normal moves work and use them to their full advantage, but looking at a list of combos from SRK, Dustloop, or any other informative fighting game website is...intimidating. I can hardly memorize test material for my college classes. How am I suppose to keep up with this stuff?
Yeah...no.
And you can't escape combos. They come in every fighting game. Sometimes they are actually really simple, like STHD doesn't have anything too complicated. Or they can be completely off the wall piss fuck insane, like Guilty Gear. The thing is, I have problems no matter what the game. My brain just doesn't work like that, and it holds me back in every fighting game I play.
I once had the notion to go to Evo about two years ago and backed out. I wanted to play Guilty Gear and Street Fighter III. I backed out because of the realization that I can't fucking do combos. I also used to play in a lot of tournaments locally, and stopped because I was getting handed by the people who had the ability. It was pretty hard on me, not just because my confidence can be shattered at a moments notice. Now a days I only play with people from Dtoid, because all we do is kick the shit and have fun. That's awesome and all, but I can't help but think that I somehow want to get better and be a competitor, not just someone who plays casually and "stinks up the scene" (as the assholes on SRK would put it).
Possibly the worst part is seeing the people who I play with advance past me. I know AoBRA is getting good real quick with Ragna. JackofNoTrades' Tager is fucking tough. Back in college when I played Guilty Gear obsessively, a handful of my friends started playing a bit more serious and I got left behind. I like to try to stay on par but not knowing combos, or even the basic memorization of combos, just keeps me at the bottom.
Fuck that shit.
That is why I suck at games. I suck at the purest fundamental of all fighting games: combos.
I used to be decent at combos in guilty gear XX, could do ground to air combos for most characters, knew Sol and Baiken's dust loops. I was working on a pad then, then went on a bit of a fighting game hiatus for a while, then picked up a ps3 and a stick and have been struggling ever since. But like with most fighting game stuff it just takes practice, I've just recently discovered dash cancelling in blazblue...now if only I could put it together with something so I won't get spanked by the Jin and Rachel combomasters out there.
Yea, I have a bit of the same problem as well. Lately, I've been using Balrog and trying to practice some his more advanced combos during matches but the pressure of a real match throws my timing off. Good read Tewdee!
Now that I think about it one thing that helped with practicing combos in combat was the mission mode in the guilty gear games, it would be nice if it became common practice to have mission/trial modes in fighting games. I hadn't gotten around to seeing the arakune portion of the blazblue strategy disc, first time actually paying attention to one of his combo vids. That's a crapload of negative edge.
Fighting games take so much practice. Its even worse when you have multiple fighting games your trying to master. You have been getting good with Arakune, but why did you stop playing Bang?
I can memorize combos but I find them difficult to execute and, often, too difficult to rely on in a game. I tend to find simple, effective combos and use those along with normals and some mind games to succeed. Long, intense combo strings look good but are often nerfed by damage scaling.
But if you want to compete in fighting games without having to learn complicated combos, do what I do and pick up the grapplers. Even in GGXX, some of Potemkin's most powerful combos are only 3-4 moves in succession, and you do like 1/2 to 3/4 health most of the time. He's a little more complex in AC, but not by much. I can tell you right now that Tager's not much harder to learn, although his Magnetism still baffles me.
If you're not good at combos, learn the characters that don't need them.
I've been trying to learn and use some combos with Arakune too, and it seems like it's only made me worse at the game. Other people are practicing more than I do to, which isn't very hard because I don't practice at all, but getting distracted trying to do something fancy instead of just hurting the other guy isn't helping me. Also what Nilcam said.
If you really have this problem then avoid arakune. Not only combos are hard, you are always under pressure of losing your curse.
Try a "normal" character. Ragna, Jin, Bang and so on. Ragna air combo is so easy you will have it running in minutes. After you get used to the timing move to the character of your choice.
Yeah, that's why I'm mediocre at games like SF and KOF and awful at games like BB and MVC2. I'm ok with really basic combos, but when you get games where everyone has specials that link into other specials and at least 10 hit strings to memorize I just don't have the time or the patience to learn that stuff.
Combos drive me insane. Once you get past the third hit, I just don't care, unless it's a "super combo" or something you can fire up with a simpler button input and just hope it hits, a la many a Capcom game.
One thing I always wondered is whether they seriously premeditate the combo system before going into making a combo-heavy game, or work out a list just by tinkering with the default moveset afterwards by seeing what cancels into what.
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about me
'Sup. I'm Marc, also known as TewDee (on here at least). I'm 21 and F'KING LOVE video games. I'm in college for a buisness degree and I live in Colorado. Besides video games I bike and ski.
Systems PC
PS3
360
PSP (3000, God of War red)
DSi
Game Boy Advance (and all incarnations of [except the Micro]) (dormant)
Game Boy Color (dormant)
Game Boy (dormant)
PS2 (dormant)
Gamecube (dormant)
N64 (dormant)
Now Playing PC: Dragon Age: Origins
PS3: Nothing
360: Street Fighter 4
DS: Nothing
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Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
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I used to be decent at combos in guilty gear XX, could do ground to air combos for most characters, knew Sol and Baiken's dust loops. I was working on a pad then, then went on a bit of a fighting game hiatus for a while, then picked up a ps3 and a stick and have been struggling ever since. But like with most fighting game stuff it just takes practice, I've just recently discovered dash cancelling in blazblue...now if only I could put it together with something so I won't get spanked by the Jin and Rachel combomasters out there.
Yea, I have a bit of the same problem as well. Lately, I've been using Balrog and trying to practice some his more advanced combos during matches but the pressure of a real match throws my timing off. Good read Tewdee!
Hours and hours and hours and hours in practice mode, man.
Now that I think about it one thing that helped with practicing combos in combat was the mission mode in the guilty gear games, it would be nice if it became common practice to have mission/trial modes in fighting games. I hadn't gotten around to seeing the arakune portion of the blazblue strategy disc, first time actually paying attention to one of his combo vids. That's a crapload of negative edge.
Fighting games take so much practice. Its even worse when you have multiple fighting games your trying to master. You have been getting good with Arakune, but why did you stop playing Bang?
I can memorize combos but I find them difficult to execute and, often, too difficult to rely on in a game. I tend to find simple, effective combos and use those along with normals and some mind games to succeed. Long, intense combo strings look good but are often nerfed by damage scaling.
What Nilcam said.
Nilcam has a strong point.
But if you want to compete in fighting games without having to learn complicated combos, do what I do and pick up the grapplers. Even in GGXX, some of Potemkin's most powerful combos are only 3-4 moves in succession, and you do like 1/2 to 3/4 health most of the time. He's a little more complex in AC, but not by much. I can tell you right now that Tager's not much harder to learn, although his Magnetism still baffles me.
If you're not good at combos, learn the characters that don't need them.
I've been trying to learn and use some combos with Arakune too, and it seems like it's only made me worse at the game. Other people are practicing more than I do to, which isn't very hard because I don't practice at all, but getting distracted trying to do something fancy instead of just hurting the other guy isn't helping me. Also what Nilcam said.
If you really have this problem then avoid arakune. Not only combos are hard, you are always under pressure of losing your curse.
Try a "normal" character. Ragna, Jin, Bang and so on. Ragna air combo is so easy you will have it running in minutes. After you get used to the timing move to the character of your choice.
Yeah, that's why I'm mediocre at games like SF and KOF and awful at games like BB and MVC2. I'm ok with really basic combos, but when you get games where everyone has specials that link into other specials and at least 10 hit strings to memorize I just don't have the time or the patience to learn that stuff.
Combos drive me insane. Once you get past the third hit, I just don't care, unless it's a "super combo" or something you can fire up with a simpler button input and just hope it hits, a la many a Capcom game.
One thing I always wondered is whether they seriously premeditate the combo system before going into making a combo-heavy game, or work out a list just by tinkering with the default moveset afterwards by seeing what cancels into what.
Good read.
what bulkmailer said