I’d like to begin by saying that I will not be discussing combos much in the near future as the detail has become excruciating. No, this has nothing to do with Dan’s comment, I was thinking the exact same thing right after my last post. For now on I will forgo the minutiae and only bring up the subject when there is something substantial to talk about.

To talk about combos on a higher level for a second, I don’t particularly enjoy learning them. In fact, I kind of view combos as the bullshit you must wade through in order to enjoy the more meaningful parts of the game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is some enjoyment in pulling out a combo in a match. It’s like an extremely small minigame in which your movements and timing dictate your success. I know that there are people who LOVE these microchallenges and thoroughly enjoy practicing the secret handshakes you must do with the controller to pull off some impressive moves. But I don’t much. I mostly view it as something that, somewhat artificially, makes one player a lot better than another based not on reactions or strategy, but skills that are less interesting to me. But the good news is that they are not strictly necessary at intermediate levels of play and they are something that can be slowly worked into your game plan as you progress.

Since my last post, I’ve played quite a bit of Fei Long. And I’m just about ready to stop doing that. As much as I like him as a character (which is to say, I like Bruce Lee) and his flame kick just looks so damn awesome, he really sucks badly. It’s like Capcom went out of their way to make him as awkward and difficult as possible. As I mentioned earlier, one of his basic specials is 3 consecutive QC’s. Why 3? It’s not like it’s such a great move when correctly inputted, why make it so difficult to pull of his plain special moves? Then there’s the chicken wing. You do a half circle forward. Plus up-forward. As far as I know, there’s not another character in the history of video games that has the same input for a special move. Again, it just makes it more difficult to pull off basic specials. Charge characters usually receive benefits for their complexity. For instance, it’s easier to pull off a hadoken than a sonic boom, but SB’s have godlike recovery times in exchange. Fei Long has difficult moves with no apparent benefits. Even if I did put in tons of practice with him and got him to be a really good Fei Long, he’s still low tier and would lose out to decent players playing decent characters. So, it’s reached a point where I have to ask myself, what’s the point? It’s much more enjoyable to use a character that’s responsive to your controls and usually does what you want him to do.

Since this has turned out to be a pretty whiny post, I’ll add one more thing: I still don’t like ultras. It’s not enough that they take 1/3 of your life bar away, they also usually have invincibility on startup or other such special properties. Supers are much more reasonable I find. They take a while to build up, they come at the expense of EX moves and they’re only super, not ultra. I’d say I eat wakeup ultras about once per round. No doubt I have to get used to watching my opponents’ meters and expecting those wakeups whenever the meter exists.

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