So.

I am going to Evolution 2014.

It’s been a longtime dream of mine to go to EVO, my only regret is that I didn’t go earlier in the previous years, perhaps during the fun early days of UMVC3 and without the inferior update that is USFIV. I’ll get to cheer on all our Oz boys in person, swap old-man NBA stories with Igor, cheer on Xavier, and hang out with the Sydney and QLD boys like Yousseff, Sailo and Nader. Maybe I’ll get to have a few words with some of my writer/content heroes like Viscant, Maj, and Patrick Miller. (Maybe I could even get John Choi to throw a couple of fireballs at me.) I’ll get to eat American fast food galore and get hype at top 32, so it should still be extremely fun, and I’ll get to put that massive tick against it on my bucket list.

What have I been up to post-BAM in the meantime?

BAM6, while it was really good and it was great to see all the new shit we (the CouchWarriors staff) put together come through like the New Challengers tournament, was really draining on me.

Being heavily involved in the organisational process of BAM took up so much of my spare time, and not to mention – I put a big workload upon myself to finish up all five Buttonsmash Community: The Australian FGC episodes before BAM plus running CCH…meant that I simply didn’t get to play much fighting games for the last few months.

I have no one to blame but myself because a lot of that workload was self-imposed, but I wouldn’t have done it differently anyway.

But yeah, I played really shit at BAM. I took some time to reflect upon my suckiness after the tourney and vowed to start training like mad after the tournament.

So I took a lot of time off after BAM. Not only finally taking some time to play some fighting games (I have been putting a lot of hours into my Magneto but it’s a slow burn) but also to unwind, and relax my mind. I’ve been playing more guitar, reading more books, finishing Dark Souls 2 (one of the sacrifices for BAM is that I forced myself to not touch DS2 until the tourney was over) and enjoying life in general.

Now EVO is 8 days away.

I still have to work on A1major’s Community episode that I filmed at BAM, and perhaps do some Dusty Cartridge related stuff like my planned scathing review of USFIV. Couchwarrior assorted events like ranbats and things have also been taking up some of my time.

It’s time to knuckle down and start working again. My “break” was nice while it lasted.

My aforementioned Magneto is slowly coming along. Learning stuff like plink dash Mag blast movements, the trijump L, the fly turnaround glitch with the mag blast motion, all feels really rewarding to me. But man, Magneto is HARD. I dunno whether it’s my old man and stupid fingers, but it feels like I am taking way longer than I expected to get good at this character.

Take this BnB I am learning for example.

I have practicing this for the last two months, and last night it took me almost two hours to complete 10 reps left and right hand side of the BnB. Two hours for ten reps! I haven’t even begun to learn the Hypergrav loops or superjump hit confirms. Man I suck.

People keep coming up to me and expressing surprise that I am practicing Marvel so much and not practicing Ultra that much. They tell me Marvel is a dead game, no one’s actively practicing the game in Melbourne and that Amaterasu sucks.

My honest answer is that I know that Marvel seems to be on the decline, but I want to “finish the job” I started last year. I want to become competent with the new team I have chosen to replace my beloved Spencer Doom Ammy. I want to become a good Marvel player.

And honestly- Ultra turns me off 😛

I was heavily negative about the game before it came out, and people were bashing me and well I would love to be wrong…but look at the game!

Hitbox glitches galore. Buffing “there were times where it was too difficult to get in on the opponent” Yun and Rufus while nerfing characters like Dee Jay and Sagat. Implementing a character select screen button check menu but half-assing it with no way to select unassigned buttons. No delayed wake up in training mode.

And I hate red-focus and delayed wake up as added mechanics in the game. If you wanted a more footsie based game, why are you adding an anti-footsie tool in Red Focus? Delayed wake up is Capcom’s half-assed band-aid solution to unblockables but guess what? There’s still unblockables in the game!!! Spoony and I were talking about removing the unblockable but we both concurred that it might be too much of a inbuilt system property to change without significant cost, especially with the original development team that built SFIV now disbanded. And it looks to be true.

I can’t believe he said that.

In a game with massive reversal windows, MOV four-button tech, crazy far and invincible backdashes, meaties suck. So why would you nerf the hard knockdown on character’s oki? To remove vortex, you say. Well guess what, delayed wakeup matters shit all to divekick characters. Rufus can go lalalalala I don’t care about your delayed wakeup while merrily divekicking away…

Okay I will stop ranting like the bitter old man I am.

But there’s a reason I haven’t touched much Ultra SFIV. My character is mostly the same anyway. Meanwhile everyone else has switched to bloody hipster Ryu!

Ah well. I remain convinced that USFIV is an inferior update, but I hope that time will prove me wrong. I really do. In the meantime I will still play it because it’s Melbourne’s main game, the world’s international game, and also I still wanna become a good Ryu player someday.

Training mode non-stop, FT10s with Melbourne’s top players and weekday sessions with Jeff, let’s go.

Let me sharpen up a bit before Vegas. Here’s hoping I don’t go 0-2.

P.S. Shadowloo Showdown is coming up.

Everyone that loves fighting games, please watch Dave’s (Bosslogic) excellent SSV trailer with the voice of Ryu himself, Kyle Herbert.

SSV Facebook page

You can vote for international players to come down as well by purchasing the shirts to fund their flight:

http://teespring.com/ssvmagz

Hope to see you guys there! Don’t miss the biggest fighting game major in Australia, you might meet your fgc heroes or just have fun playing games and hanging out with your like-minded Aussie fighting game brethren.