Ultra Street Fighter 4 Discussion Thread

Doctor DooM wrote: »

The usual perceived wisdom to SF4 is to pick Ryu, and then initially forget the urge to learn combos

There's several concepts you want to get down, but basically, there's two parts to the game; Neutral (when both people are standing) and pressure (When one person is knocked down, or trapped in a corner, or otherwise under attack). Nearly everything to learn in SF comes down to understanding how it fits in to one of these two positions.

So in neutral, generally, you need to understand footsies, anti airs, and zoning.
Footsies is a huge topic in and of itself, but generally it comes down to controlling your opponent by pressing your normal buttons, and stopping or avoiding him doing the same.
If you watch good Ryu players, you will see them pressing crouching medium kick (cr mk for short) when the opponent closes to under half a screen. This is the Ryu saying “if you come any closer, you will get hit”. You want your opponent to get hit, but also, if they’re too scared to come closer, you can start zoning or anti airing them…
Speaking of which, anti airs. In SF, when you’re new, the temptation is to jump. The rule we tend to tell people is “don’t jump”. Jumping is the most offensive posture one can take in SF so new people love doing it. It leaves you prone to anti airing though, so you’re vulnerable. The risk reward ratio is not great. Of course, if you get good enough, you’ll start understanding the really GOOD times to jump when your opponent won’t- or sometimes even can’t- stop it. So, with Ryu, how do you stop it?

Ryu has two great anti air options: crouching hard punch (cr hp) and medium punch dp (dragon punch- forward, down, down forward + medium punch). This is a special move with invincible start up, which means it’ll ignore an opponent’s jumping attack and blast through it.

So you’re playing footsies now, throwing out your cr mk, and your opponent gets frustrated and jumps. SHORYUKEN! He lands on his back so he backs off, frustrated. What now?

Now you start zoning. Ryu has a fast, high damage projectile move, the hadoken or fireball (down, down forward, forward + hp). With your opponent at over half screen, it’s a good idea to throw some of these to keep him under pressure. A good projectile game will control all the horizontal space on the screen, wear him down mentally, take his life, and force him to take a risk (long as he’s not better than you at it) So sooner or later, with a good zoning game, he’ll try to dash in (to your medium kick) or jump (SHORYUKEN!)

What I’ve outlined above is the basics of a defensive game, which is generally far easier imo to play as a new person. Of course, as important as being able to do the above is to know when it is being done to you.

This all takes time to learn, so don’t get disheartened. And don’t worry about losing over and over, I was playing with one of the guys here and he took 6 wins over me before I could take one. But that one was MAD rewarding when I got it because I knew I’d worked for it. That’s the joy of SF.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

It depends on the person! Generally ryu is considered the best to start with, but your strengths will eventually start attracting you to the right character (for example, I play mainly guile, but also play a bit of boxer and ryu, and am starting to enjoy some other chars too).

Some people like building up a whole repetoire of characters to deal with whatever match ups they may face; some like to optimise one character as hard as they can. There's no real right or wrong opinion on this tbh, although if you want to be winning tournaments, you should focus on the best chars more so than the lower tiers.

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Does anyone get rage mail in this any more?

Beat a 10,000BP Hugo with my ~600BP Vega including a perfect and got nothing.