Replay Overview: "Mayonnaise moves," - AE2012, KOFXIII

Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition 2012
Coming back to AE has been nothing less than awesome. I was afraid initially that SFxT would have overpowered the AE scene. However, the lagging response to improve SFxT has re-stoked our enjoyment of AE to a point that SFxT feels like a bad fanfic attempt at a game. Boshadro put it best when he said "Playing AE felt like going home."
We did some player matches last week and here are some of the funnier replays we ended up with. A term I heard in '93 from a friend called "Mayonnaise Moves," comes to mind when watching these. It was explained to me when characters slip out of a corner randomly or other odd "not-in-this-realm-of-physics," collisions happen in game. Think of the characters as slippery and "being covered in mayonnaise."

Eienhikaru (Chun-Li) vs TimeAppl3 (Dan) Player Match 05/17/2012

SF4 laughs in the face of gravity and momentum at ~2:26 as I attempt an EX Bird Kick, and TimeAppl3 gets his arm gets caught in the calamity. It's moments like this I wish we had player cams to get our reactions.

Eienhikaru (Chun-Li) vs Boshadro (Zangief) Player Match 05/17/2012

Another incident of unintended priority testing at ~1:48. The setup is hilarious and while we weren't questioning 'Geif's strength, I wasn't sure that his AGI stats were capped out like that too! I thought it would have been hilarious if he stayed airborne and we spin away from each other like repelled magnets. Yet, hurt boxes are hurt boxes and we all get blown up.

King of Fighters XIII

Eienhikaru (Athena, King, Mai) vs R1OMA (Mai, Elizabeth, Chin) Ranked Match 05/09/2012

Huge huge props to R1OMA's Mai in this ranked match for KOF13. Streams blow up Mai all day saying she "has no combos," or "has no options," it's good to see players kicking tier lists to the curb. I was glad to see his Mai in action, had he chosen Elizabeth or Chin to roll first I wouldn't have seen her at all given how this went down. As of now, it's super overdue that I work on my HD combos. Even if I don't have a clean mid-combo opening for one, getting just the rhythm and basics down would be a huge leap for me.

Edit: Also props for the custom colors on Mai, I'm pretty sure they're in homage to Mina from Samurai Shodown:

Overall the new schedule has been really nice to break off the rust for stuff like KoF and Blazblue. If anything else it's been a great rehabilitating step away from SFxT. I'm not putting the game on blast, but the "shiny," factor of the game has worn off and it's a good time to refocus my efforts to games that aren't going to make me insta-rage.

Replay Overview: "What you need is: ORGANIZATION~," -- SC5, SFxT

Soul Calibur V
Due to some inspiration and a heavier dose of impatience I have uploaded some CPU vs CPU matches that have some my favorite Create-a-Characters.

Street Fighter x Tekken
The ups and down downs continue with this game. Seriously it's 'top of the world,' one day and 'I'm selling this game back for Pokemon or something,' the next couple days.

Eienhikaru (Chun-LI x Lili) vs Supe12man23 (M Bision x Vega) Ranked Match 04/28/2012

This is considered a "call for help video," in that, the characters that jump the highest seem to be un-challengable in the air. Very seriously if anyone is running into this and has a good answer / approach to breaking the high level jumps please comment here. I'm running out of ideas.

You see Bison just pound my face in with the j.FP from ~1:13 to ~1:17, and I'm trying different buttons to see what gets priority. I might try airthrows in the lab, but to have just a high angled j.FP be totally OP like that just grates on me. You don't see it in this video, but I've been seeing a lot of Vega tech where they'll spam his wall dives. I consider it the same level of annoying as the j.FP we saw from Bison in this match.

Eienhikaru / Boshadro (Lili x Julia) vs cartoon123 (Heihachi x Hugo) Ranked 04/28/30

Also a "call for help," replay. I've looked over this replay multiple times, and for the sake of our team and my life bar, I cannot figure out the style and play differences between Bosh and I. It's been said that SFxT is a "3v1 game," and this game makes me look like the handicap. Very seriously I would love some speculation, suggestions, full out disses, something. Something I can work on with regards to how this match ended, or even the Heihachi matchup, I'm at a loss about it.
Speaking of...DAT HEIHACHI. I'm somewhat used to the high/low/high mixups I've seen online before, but I just cannot avoid them in this at all. It's like they were just getting snuck in, like candy to the movie theatre. I'm also going to cry "nerfbat," because Heihachi having multiple OTG options off of normals is too OP.

str8harlem (Raven x Vega) vs Eienhikaru (Chun-Li x Lili) Ranked Match 0428/2012

This is a match where I'm doing singles to pull up my points and avoid ranking down again. I've said it in different places but the matchmaking is pure ass, at least it seems so for PSN. Boshadro and I both hit C rank 1K+ points early last week and took a couple days off so it would stay there. Once you break that threshold they just open up the flood gates of monsters and makes me look like I just got this game yesterday.

fireheart26 (Kazuya x Jin) vs Eienhikaru / Boshadro (Lili x Julia) Ranked Match 04/29/2012

This is a great example of two very glaringly obvious problems I have. 1) Incorrectly punishing / defending crossups, and 2) Spamming for an Ukemi / Fast getup out of sheer frustration. I ended up letting 7 successful crossups blow me up, and I don't even start trying to prevent them until 3rd match when I suddenly remember I have an anti-air to blow up jumping pressure. It will require labwork, but I need to figure out where I keep trying to throw punish from a defended cross up too. I've never seen it work in SFxT, I'm not trying anything crazy after the throw, it's just my hands just immediately want to throw punish and I'm paying for my autopiloting dearly. You see the attempted Tech spam most of 2nd match while I eat that huge Cross Arts, and again when the random super comes out at ~3:20.

Eienhikaru / Boshadro (Chun-Li x Marduck) vs RamboStorm / devilkg (Raven x Rolento) Ranked Match 04/29/2012

Juggling was meant to happen in this game, but IMO, it shouldn't be happening off of the same move more than like twice. Having Raven's 214FP (like at ~0:43) be a valid juggle for four times is just madness. Straight forward match for me, I wish I'd punished that Rolento harder, I was seriously expecting him to just "turn it on," at some point, and really the only thing that blew me up here was waiting for "a better punish," rather than just rolling with it.

clockiller (Ryu x Ken) vs Eienhikaru / Boshadro (Lili x Marduk) Ranked Match 04/29/2012

The purpose of this replay is to teach me to stop relying on Lili's 214.K move. You see this at ~2:48 and again at ~3:02. The second one that didn't end up punishing is heartbreaking. Bosh had mentioned this (and has mentioned before) that those moves are unreliable without the proper distancing. Before reviewing this I was convinced that clockiller had some how recovered stupid quick to block my follow ups, but nope, I would have been better off with a neutral jump >  punish. That would have punished easier than what I chose. Unlearning this approach will be difficult.

The Plan
So SFxT's newness has worn off quite a bit. To say that it's been dominating what I've been playing lately is understatement of the year. Blazblue's fallen off the wayside, so has KoFXIII. I'm looking to start a more regimented approach to the games / and other stuff I want to keep up with:
Monday: Blazblue / KoF13
Tuesday: SC5 / UMvC3
Wednesday: SFxT / SSF4AE
Thursday: Blog Maintenance.
Fri-Sun: Open.
I have a great deal to catch up with, and I have managed expectations for the games I don't play much at all ( *cough* Marvel *cough* ). But I really need to follow up on what I "want," to do like when I watch replays of the other games and "need to play them again now!" and yet nothing comes of it. As much as I enjoy, and need to improve on SFxT, it's really bled into my time and desire for the other games I like. Obviously, updates on that progress to be posted here.

~Eienhikaru