STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN - IT COMES OUT

author=Feldschlacht IV
Street Fighter (among other fighting games as well) is easy to learn, but hard to master.

This is greatly true. My brother, every now and then, will play me in Street Fighter, but he doesn't play like the hardcore pros do and can sometimes still beat me. It's just his play-style is very hard to contend with.

There are some pretty simply tricks I've learned to get better at Street Fighter:

1) As hard as it seems, try not jump in on your opponent unless you're already applying pressure (or in other words, winning). People who play SF often can see you jumping from a mile away. What makes it worse is EVERY SINGLE character in SF has either a Special move or poke (i.e. normal attack) that can stop a jumping attack, such as Ryu or Ken's Shoryuken. I still find it difficult to not jump in on opponents sometimes. Sure, some characters can generally safely do this (Cody, for example, has some pretty pokes when jumping in) but the general concensus is that your opponent is going to be able to react quick enough with an anti-air attack. (i.e. the Shoryuken or Guile's Flash Kick)

Feld's comment...

author=Feldschlacht IV
There are very few moves and strategies that can work against a decent player by simply spamming them over and over again. Literally almost everything has a counter to it.

Leads me to my second point, 2) DON'T SPAM SPECIAL MOVES. This is something I used to always do when I played SF, until I started learning how to do combos and stuff. Like, all I every did was Hadoukens, Shoryukens, and Tastumakis (hurricane kicks). THAT'S A BAD IDEA. Special moves, for the most part, have slower recovery times that normal pokes. Plus, pokes are the backbones of comboing anyway. I'm not saying you should learn how to combo (though, if you want to go pro, then you have no other choice), but learning to use normal pokes as much as or more than special moves will dramatically boost your game.

3) If you and your opponent's characters are close enough to touch each other, you might as well go for a grab. Generally, it works, and worst case scenario is they tech your grab (tech means they get out of it by trying to grab you at the same time) and you get some distance between one another. I'm not saying grab all the time (cause that'll just piss everyone off) but it usually catches people off guard. (unless you're playing a pro)

4) Even though Ultra/Super combos are really awesome and do a lot of damage, don't just throw one out randomly when you have the ability to do so. You're going to get punished bad if you miss. 'Nuff said. Recently, I've been fucking up and doing this and it costs me the match.

The last thing I'll say, which is really important in my opinion is 5) Learn to cancel into special moves. It sounds difficult, but it's actually really, really easy. The only drawback is your fingers have to be fast enough to do it. An example of a special move cancel is if I poke you with a crouching medium kick and cancel into a hadouken. In order to do that, I have to complete the hadouken motion on the controller (i.e. down, down-forward, forward, punch) at the same time as the crouching medium kick connects to the opponent. Like, the punch of the hadouken input must be pressed in synchronization with the attack. This can be done with just about every special move and just about every poke with any character. This guarantees that you'll hit them without them having enough time to block. Learning to cancel into special moves is critical to getting better.

All of this stuff I listed above is junk I never knew until about a year or two ago. So, to reiterate what Feld said, Street Fighter is simple enough to just pick up and play, yes, but learning the innards of SF core mechanics is something casual players just about never do (to my knowledge) and that's what seperates good from bad players.

Personally, I consider myself a good player...but not a great one. I can do some simple combos and I learn what pokes are best used in certain situations and all the junk, but sometimes my brain just disallows me to react quick enough. I think that's my greatest downfall. And the fact that I get frustrated a lot, especially when I start losing--my emotions get in the way and that causes me to make stupid mistakes. And the fact that I play with half-busted Xbox controllers. You'll hear me say things like, "Akuma, do the fucking move!" or "That's not the move I wanted you to use, Cody." I know I'm inputting it correctly, but the controller is so old that it may not register the attack or my finger slips slightly in the wrong direction.

/SFfangasm