Street Fighter X Tekken: "Pandora Moan Lili" (Hilarious sound bite video)
SFxT has this horrible reputation for being absolutely broken and like the video states, I seriously thought this was some kind of glitch. That the spammed inputs were accessing some sort of unused "hurt," sound. I also thought this when I accidentally triggered the quick combos within the first week of release. I really wish this had a Sound Test option to better sample, or even a gallery to collect other stuff. There's so much art / media surrounding this game, it's a shame you can't access it, besides farming arcade repeatedly or letting the menu idle.
New character progress.
I wish I could say that I had the foresight to pick up the characters that I did, when I did. With the new DLC of SFxT coming out, along with Persona being released in a matter of weeks, Tekken Tag 2, and Aqua Pazza down the road there's going to be a whole lot more "growth," both in my game library and range of available characters. One thing I figured out with this venture was that experimenting with new characters was probably overdue for me and that (thankfully) I'm not so specialized in 2-3 characters per game that I cannot improve in an overall sense.
My best improved characters by far feel like Cammy, Ryu (Both in AE and SFxT), and Pyrrha (SC5). I feel comfortable enough with these three that I can consider them counter-pick, or maybe "anti-counterpick," characters if my mains become too easy to read.
An unexpected "Why haven't I been using these characters more?" category has come up, and the characters fall into here are, Magneto, Vergil, Sentinel (UMvC3) , Noel (BB), and Ryu (AE, SFxT). I wasn't originally going to focus on Marvel, but trophy farming and more frequent sessions have renewed my interest.
Cammy has overlapping inputs with the shoto characters, but I preferred Ken's effective range and speed for the longest time until recently. Whatever I said about "you know it's casual matches when I'm picking Ryu," doesn't apply anymore.
Noel was sort of a "re-found," character who I've been trying to understand since Calamity Trigger, but now seems very intuitive this time around in CSX. Even if she's not considered "top tier," she almost feels better than Mu in some respects.
Characters that need more work would be Mu (BB), Sakura (AE, SFxT), and as of this week, all of my choices in KoF. My KoF has fallen to the rabble now, I had a session with TimeAppl3 on Monday and even my main team was just holding down back all day and couldn't make anything happen. KoF's gotten the short end of the stick for scheduling, so it's more just an extreme case of rust. It was still pretty scary to have my main team shut down.
With Mu and Sakura I don't have a good feel for an approach. I must not be understanding Mu's comfortable range beyond the corner. She doesn't feel like a ranged character, and her response doesn't lend to a rush down at all. Until the last month or so I had no problems with Sakura, and what I'm experiencing isn't just a matter of shaking off rust. The little bit I've dinked around with her iteration in SFxT is she has a ton of options, so it would be sad to "lose," a character I've been playing since Vanilla SF4.
Lastly I will not be putting a great deal of work into Julia, Asuka (SFxT) or Natsu (SC5).
I'm not retaining anything of Natsu, I'll hit the lab, get a good feel for her, start a match and all of a sudden nothing works.
Damn that Taki curse (again)! While Julia is super intuitive, I don't feel the need to "clone," a paired versus team for SFxT, I'm better off rolling with two of my mains.
Asuka is a funny case. You wouldn't think so, but she's really "slow," in terms of frames and move startup. With the recent patch to SFxT, Ryu's donkey kick was dropped from 0 frames to -6 so in theory it's super punishable and can't be spammed to hell and back. Boshadro (who has used Asuka more than me) figured out that the closest she can come to punishing the kick is a 6 frame standing MP. This still puts Ryu at a 0 frame safe zone against Asuka. Everything else has slower startup, or the kick pushes Ryu too far away for her to naturally punish. Unless they plan on buffing her anytime soon I'm getting the sense that whatever next tier list to come out will put Asuka pretty low.
Overall I'm really happy with the last 2ish months of new characters. I was beginning to feel trapped with the same 4-5 characters. It would be nice to be considered a "specialist," but I know I'm not anywhere near that level of skill yet. It feels a little cheesy to have Ryu quotes reflect on my own progress, "
The more I learn, the more I realize how far I am from the end of my journey." However it really fits in terms of my new characters, and my mains as well.
I feel like a fool to think I would have done well at the tourney in January. Looking back I was so unprepared and unfit. I was so focused on "points," and sort of reliving those days of being an "arcade god," when you could knock quarters and players down like fools. Ranked matches get that feel back, but I feel like it's contributed to a false sense of progress. I'm slowly pulling away from the idea that "ranked is where the rubber hits the road," but it's difficult not to want your tag emblazoned with a (hopefully) high ranking.
