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Firstly I want to apologize for not updating this blog more often. I intended to, but came to the realization that time spent blogging was time spent not playing KoF XIII. I did however try to update the blog the night prior to the event, but a certain Shadow (who will remain nameless) toppled the rfgen empire that day. Anyway....
When we last left our hero (me  ) he was giving serious thought regarding his choice of team members. Kyo was on his way out, with a few people sitting in the shadows waiting to claim his spot. Fast forward to Nov.22nd and I was finally able to grab a copy of KoFXIII after salivating over youtube videos and fighting forums for weeks. After playing around with many ideas for teams I ended up playing Joe, Robert and Yuri. I was happy enough to take that team online and start challenging real players. I was quite confident going in, but quickly found myself getting destroyed game after game. I chalked it up to being unfamiliar with the genre and still learning my characters. But.... before I knew it I had played 80 games and had a win ratio of 10%. Things were not looking good and time was running out.
I gave some serious thought as to why I was losing so much. Control method, lack of experience, missing combos/drive cancels/ etc. and character choices. I noticed that Robert was holding me back and Yuri wasnt delivering like I'd hoped she would. I spent more time in practice mode exploring my options and was delighted with what I found. Two characters I previously overlooked seemed right up my alley. Robert and Yuri were tossed aside for King and Andy.
I also had to change my play style to accomodate my new characters and the 360 pad. I scrapped the idea of impressive combo chains and focused soley on short and consistant combos that had a bit of knockback. Also on single powerful hits and ranged attacks.
After taking this new team and strategy online I was immediately succesful. After nearly 200 more matches I was able to rise my win percentage from the pitiful 10% well above 40%. With more time I have no doubt I could have gotten it above 60-70% even.
I was able to get the achievements for 100 matches won (I was ranked 8 out of thousands of players for numbers of victories), another achievement for 10 ranked victories in a row and peaked at number 13 on the leaderboards. My confidence was back and I was winning more than ever.
Now onto the tournament!
Got off work at 7am (event was at 11:00am) on game day. Snuck a quick nap in until 09:30 since sleep seemed more important than a couple more hours of practice. Woke up and had a quick meal, shower, prepared a lunch/drink/snacks for myself to bring along and then knocked out 3 more battles online. My parents arrived to take my son during the event. Dropped my wife off at her cousins house and made my way to EB Games were the tournament was taking place.
I got there about 10 minutes early and there were a few others already there playing practice rounds on the 360 kiosk in the store. I played a warm up match against the youngest competitor (12 years old, all the other contestants were my own age). With all my practice I found my best order was King followed by Andy with Joe being my tail. I went with that and was able to win my warm up with little trouble. The boy had little experience with the series and I gave him a few pointers on the gameplay (he wasnt quite sure how the drive meter worked for instance). After that I watched several others play a few games. It was quite obvious who the 2 best players to watch for were. There was a lot of names on the sign up sheet for the tournament, but after waiting until about 11:30 we started the event with only about 10 players.
I was up first against one of the stronger players I saw during practice rounds. He plugged himself into his Ipod so I couldnt trash talk him mercilessly during the round. He choose Kensou (who I dont like being matched against), Andy and another character that slips my mind. Match started and after a fairly slow battle he took out King with his first character Kensou. We started the next round with his Kensou at half health and me a little flustered that the first round didnt go so well. Must have been performace anxiety or adjusting to the play area. Whatever it was I was able to do fairly well with Andy (easily my strongest character) and pull a close win out. The matches were best 2 of 3 so I still had to repeat my win again to move on. This time around went much better and I was able to nearly defeat his first 2 characters with King. Andy finished up the scraps and we didnt get to Joe this time.
1 down and he was 1 of the 2 I had to worry about. Definitely feeling good so far. Watched the others play for a bit and learned my next match was going to be against who I felt was going to be my toughest match up. Went to the washroom and made sure to eat and drink.
Next match started. He was playing King, Leona, and Kim. First round went by and his King destroyed mine. He had nearly a full meter going into the next round. Ouch! Luckily Andy was able to earn his keep and took out King and most of Leona. Joe finished Leona and we entered the final round at close to even meters. He started off a lot better than myself and I was struggling at under half my health while he was comfortable with nearly three quaters of his. One of the reasons I like keeping Joe at the end is that his Neo Max is quite easy to do and with a little practice is fairly easy to connect with . I was able to blast him with one and drop his life to nearly nothing. A couple pokes and a Flying Knee finished the deal. At the end I had 1 or two hits of life left. It was much to close. Our second fight went surprisingly similar. I played a little better out of the gate this time though and ended it with another Joe Noe Max. Not as close as the last fight, but still uncomfortable.
Had to wait a while for my next game so I made sure to scope my competition in the meantime.
Next pairing was against a store employee. I hadnt seen him play much since he was helping customers much of the time I was there. The match started off strong with King and was finished easily with Andy. The next fight was a slaughter and really helped me feel like I was unstopable. This match was for a spot in the finals, so I was very happy to win the entire fight only using King. Thats right I was able to strike fear into my upcoming opponent by showing them the only 3 round fight that took place that day. It was very good momentem to bring with me to the last battle.
Another hiatus while people slugged it out for a chance to take me on in the final game. Not much to my surprise I was met once again by the player I had defeated in the second round. Rematch for the championship!!!
This time I made sure to take it a bit slower and did much better in our King on King mirror match. His Leona was able to deal a lot more damage to Andy than I would have liked though and once again we entered the final round on quite equal ground. Luckily for me since the only time he had seen me play as Joe I relied on Neo Max moves he hadnt really seen me play him. After several crossovers I was able to get him close to death while keeping my hyper drive meter at 4 bars. This meant that I could just spam my EX Hurricane Upper at him several times (12 hurricanes in a row!) and kill him through his block. Not the most honorable victory, but I was out to win. I apololgized for the lame victory and we moved onto our 2nd fight. Played out quite similar again, but when we reached our final round my Joe took much more of a beating this time. on the verge of death I was to once again save myself with a well placed EX Hurricane Upper juggling him across all 3 tornados for an anti-air victory.
Although there were some close calls I never actually lost a single match. The prize for my victory was a sealed copy (with the pre-order bonus soundtrack) on my choice of system. Since I had already grabbed it on the 360 I snagged a PS3 copy for my collection. I'll likely keep it sealed as a trophy since I've got another copy to play. Got my picture taken for the EBgames website also.
Other than my hard work paying off in a victory the best part was just chatting with fellow gamers my own age. I learned through my first match that there is actually a Street Fighter Club in town that meets each Sunday for league play! Cant wait to go check it out now!
Who wants to read another fighting blog, but about Street Fighter IV now? What? Nobody?
I was finally able to find someone online to play with yesterday! I fought the same guy 3 times in a row (after waiting for 35 minutes to get matched with someone). I won the first of our 3 matches. I could have loved to play more, but I guess he wanted to get a little more variety and took off after our 3rd battle.
A great feature in KoF XII though is that I was able to record all 3 fights and review them as many times as I wanted. It was painfully obvious in the 2 matches that I lost that I need to slow it down and be able to react to his moves. He was quite obvious a few times and I completely missed the cues and got punished for it. I also need to learn how to better exploit my opponents openings.
Last night I also spent several hours researching KoFXIII combos. After reading through many pages of character bios and watching tons of youtube videos I'm happy to stick with Joe and Robert. Since I'm going to be using a standard Xbox 360 pad and not an arcade stick I need to be able to execute simple, high damage combos. Both of those characters can delivery.
I am going to be swapping Kyo out of the rotation though. After last nights cram session here are the current candidates for his replacement: K', Shen, Iori, Maxima, Yuri. I'll dig into those 5 a little closer tonight and make sure I have one locked down today since XIII launches tomorrow and I want to get started on them asap.
Had a bit of a setback yesterday which cut significantly into my KoF time. We had a pretty big snowfall and when I went out to snow blow (this is my first year with one so I was pretty psyched) I couldnt get the auger to spin. After a few hours of tinkering with my snow blower and finally shovelling snow, I found some time to relax.
Once again I couldnt find any online games so I after finishing arcade mode on Hard again (started with Kyo to get in some more practice with him) I jumped into practice mode. With all 3 of my characters I set out to practice executing moves from the 2P position. Quarter circles and Fireballs were no problem. I could get 10 or more off in a row without mistake. Moves that required a reverse dragon punch motion though gave me a lot more inconsistancies.
I'm also starting to doubt my choice in Kyo. I have definitely spent the least amount of time with him, but I'm kind of leaning towards swapping him out for someone else when XIII launches. I'll surely stick with Joe and Robert, but I may leave Kyo out for someone like Mai or Yuri when the new game arrives. This wont leave me with as much practice time with a new character, but it will allow me to narrow my focus before XIII launches to the 2 guys I'm happy with.
Since my efforts to capture more NES games failed tonight, I found myself with lots of time on my hands and no games to play. I used that time to do some more KoF research and I've come up with a team that I'm happy with and even the order in which I'll be using them for most match ups.
My first fighter will generally be Joe. His fireball is fantastic for me to keep people at bay (it hits low AND mid areas as opposed to just one of them), and I am competent enough to use him without his desperation attacks. I'll be using him to keep enemies at a distance and at the same time build my special attack meters in case I need to fall back onto my other teammates. He also has pretty decent speed and anti-air attacks should they be able to dodge my fireballs. It'll probably come of as a little cheap, but I'm out to win so I'll fight dirty if need be.
Next up will be Robert. Like Joe I find him to be fairly strong even without his desperation attacks, so if the first round doesnt go my way he is still a solid fighter. I'm not very knowledgable regarding bad matchups yet, but so far it seems like he is a good match against most, so having him in the second spot should mean he is more likely to fight 2 opponents while 3rd spot would likely fight 1 in most cases.
The tail of my team is going to be Kyo. He is similar to Robert for me, but I rely a bit more on his desperations. Having him in the 3rd spot should ensure that I've always got a couple ready to dish out.
I cut Goro since I felt like I needed a strong starter and Joe seemed much more capable.
Now I'm off to practice hopping and combos.
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