When you first get into a deep game like this it’s a little paradoxical from a journaling perspective. Everything is so new and interesting to me, I have a lot I could talk about; on the other hand, all I can speak of is the most basic stuff. Let’s start with a quick recap of my fighting career to remind you where I’m coming from. Played SF2 a lot right when it came out. I was just a kid, I learned a lot of good basics, but also picked up a shitload of bad habits in the name of playing honorably. I also didn’t even look at combos for a second, although I was aware of their existence. After that, and I’m talking SF2:WW, I played most major fighters a bit here and there as they came out, but never put in much time with any of them. That was all until I got TvC:UAS a few months back and really, REALLY, got into it (thank you online play). My point here is just that I want to give you an understanding of where I’m coming from. Even though I’m always talking about fighters, I am, in the scheme of things, pretty new and a lot of things don’t come easily to me (i.e. combos).

I’ve been mostly (and I mean 85%+ of the time) playing Guile and Balrog (“Boxer” if you wanna sound cool). I’ll talk about them more some other time, but let’s start the combo discussion. I think I’ve mentioned before that I seem to always be talking about combos here, which would seem to elevate their importance (and interest as a topic) in the games. Well, the reason for this is a) it’s really my bottleneck right now and b) it’s very easy to discuss since it’s so mechanical.

For those of you who don’t know, combos consist of three different types of connectors: chains, links, and cancels. Chains are easy as hell, but extremely weak on their own. Cancels are almost always easy and are generally
normal->special moves. Links are tough as hell for me and are generally
normal->normals. When I say links are tough as hell, I mean it. I more-or-less don’t attempt them at all in matches. They require the strictest of timing. I’m sure this will be a source of conversation and depression for quite a while. But for now, let’s talk about the simple combos I AM attempting.

For Guile, I’m using a simple c.mp xx hk flashkick combo. (I know most of you don’t come from a fighting background, “xx” means cancel). Just a simple 2-hit combo, but it’s pretty decent for punishing vulnerabilities with nothing but a charge. The main downside to it is that you cannot hit-confirm before going into the FK, so it leaves you extremely vulnerable if blocked. The end result is that it’s a decent combo, but only suitable for nearly guaranteed openings. A more versatile combo would be c.lk > c.lp > c.mp xx hk flashkick. This actually does ever-so-slightly LESS damage than my combo, but has the added benefit of time to confirm the combo is working before going into the flashkick or aborting the combo if it’s not. The problem here is those “>” in the combo mean link, which means it’s a lot more difficult.

With Balrog, I’ve been doing c.mp xx hp headbutt. It has all the same benefits and drawbacks as the guile combo, so I won’t reiterate it. It’s basically the exact same thing. The last thing I’ve been trying is Balrog’s hp headbutt to ultra(1)(PPKKK). This is an extremely effective combo given that it results in an ultra landing. There is time to hitconfirm the headbutt before committing to the ultra, however the headbutt itself is unsafe on block. Therefore, it’s a pretty high-risk high-reward combo. At my present skill level, this type of thing is well worth doing once in a while for winning and worth doing quite often for practice. Again, once I can get a handle on links, I’d be able to extend this combo a bit to hit-confirm it before committing to the headbutt. Right now I can pull it off maybe 25% of the time or so. The most difficult thing, by far, is the timing of when to start the ultra. The timing is very strict to land it. So this one is my main focus for now. The other two I mentioned are pretty easy and I only have to get used to doing them reflexively on opportunity. This one is slightly difficult, but I’d say I’ve already done the hardest part (the first 25% accuracy), so I will be practicing this for a bit. Links are very important, but will have to wait for a bit as I address lower hanging fruits of victory.