Chapter 1: Building An Understanding

Whenever I try to learn a new fighting game, I try to find whatever I can relate to and compare it to a game I have played before. This isn't an original concept and most people do this, but in terms of doing this practice with Smash it proved to be a lot more difficult. Comparing 2-D fighting games to other 2-D fighting games is pretty simple, even 2-D to 3-D. Comparing 2-D fighting games to Smash is pretty interesting to say the least, and takes a little bit of time and filling in some blanks. While doing this I have learned a lot of stuff in PM that I grasped in a somewhat alternative way, and I have learned about a few things that I really struggle with in terms of building an understanding. So to start off this blog officially i'm going to just discuss things that I really like about PM coming from fighting games. As well as things that confuse me, not in a way that makes me hate it or anything like that of course. Certain things that are in this game I just legit have a very difficult time grasping, so i'd love to go over it and maybe I can find the answers while talking about it! Lets begin!

Things I Love

-Movement/Dash Dancing/Platforms-

To open with a very weird point, I remember in the smash doc (I know I know just hold on) Wife said something that really resonated with me. He was explaining how the movement and control of your character is very creative, and compared it to playing basketball or something like that. This really struck a cord with me, because in 2-D fighting games while you're VERY much in control of everything you're doing its very.. self-explanatory? Smash has this really interesting analog feeling that really lets you have so much freedom in what you want to do with your character. A lot more possibilities are there for you just on movement alone. It's really weird to explain, but its a really cool feeling to feel clean and confident with your movement in this game. While of course, i'm not there at all.. seeing it in top level play is really something to watch. Which brings me to what I think is honestly, one of the single coolest things in this entire game...

Dash dancing is so sick I can't even begin, I can literally gush about it for hours. So lets break it down on why this technique is so damn sick coming from my background.

(Original Link: https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/RequiredSnappyEquine )

So you can see above how the Hibiki player is walking in and out of Sagat's range trying to bait out a button so she can respond with a whiff punish. This idea coupled her with really strong forward and backward walk speed make this super efficient for her. Sagat wanted to come in to interrupt with a crouch hard punch (C.HP, low fierce, etc.), the Hibiki saw this a mile away and beautifully whiff punished with a empty jump into crouching light kick to get the confirm into super. 

The biggest thing to take into account is that the Hibiki is WALKING back and forth. Usually in 2-D fighting games, practically every single characters back dash is different from the forward dash. Meaning, almost every back dash in most games is used as a quick and nimble tool to get out of the opponents range and try to reset neutral. They tend to not be incredibly fast or cover a wide amount of range, and used more defensively. 

Dash dancing takes the concept above with Hibiki and just speeds it the hell up, in a really aggressive way. Dash dancing lets you have a forward dash level of momentum in either direction, which makes for a really entertaining and fast paced way to make an opponent whiff. Seeing this happen at top level is what made me want to drop Wario and commit fully to Meta Knight, since he's so spectacular at doing exactly that. Of course I have a long way to go before I can get super crisp with it, but it's something that just really connects to what I want to do. Seeing a Marth dash dance in and out of the opponents range while still keeping the real estate and reacting to a whiff with a grab or dtilt is just never going to get boring for me, not even close. It makes micro spacing and just the pace of the match so interesting, you can go any direction at anytime. On top of the point I was saying earlier about how movement works in this game, you have so many options and ideas at your disposal. To top it all off... you guys have something 2-D fighting games never have... platforms! 

I've seen Smash be referred to as exactly that, a platform fighter! It really adds layers to the neutral game, the combo game, and the defensive game in such a vibrant and colorful way. The whole idea that you can anti air or shark someone from below a platform while they are grounded is incredibly interesting. The fact that during your punish you can end it to force your opponent on a small platform, just to cut the defensive options so dramatically so you can limit where they end up and punish them accordingly is so sick! All 3 of these points connect, having the freedom of movement to just waveland and slide on a platform to get to your opponent's height efficiently is so cool. However, 3-5 seconds ago you could've just been dash dancing a few steps over by the side of the platform and they had to figure out what you were going to do.

These 3 things combined makes the neutral and pacing of matches really fun, its honestly a breath of fresh air and reminds me of Marvel Vs Capcom in a strange way. Whereas MvC gives you so much freedom of movement in the air, PM gives you incredible freedom of movement on the ground. 

-Sweet/Sour Spots-

This whole idea has always really interested me even back when I was a kid that knew nothing about any fighting games. The idea of a singular move having different outcomes, based on YOUR decision is hella fascinating. While PM Meta Knight doesn't have that many examples of it himself aside from a couple of moves, just seeing it in action is amazing. It lets people have different ways to create combos and punishes with the same move, how people capitalize off of it is just so sick to see. Seeing a player hit the sour spot on purpose to DI trap an opponent into a sweet spot kill move is another one of those things that i'm just not getting tired of anytime soon.

In terms of relating this to fighting games, I just instantly thought of proximity normal's in certain games. 3s being a perfect example!


As you can see above, this is Ken doing a standing medium punch (S.MP, stand strong etc). Notice how both animations are completely different moves even though they're created by pressing the exact same input? That's because its called a proximity normal, the amount of pixels between you and your opponent decides which button is going to come out. The animation on the left is Ken's far S.MP, and the one on the right is Ken's close S.MP. So while its not exactly the same, the concept of pressing the same input and getting a different outcome based on something is there. So that's what I related it to! 

-Ledges/Corners-

This one is pretty self explanatory, ledges in Smash are very similar to corners in 2-D fighting games. Being near the ledge/corner limits your options because it limits where you're allowed to move. Getting out of this situation since it cripples your options pretty much leaves you with having to read your opponent to get out. In 2-D fighting games you try to get them to jump in for a cross up and you dash under to escape, and so on and so forth. What's different in Smash however, is not only just the concept of ledges.. but just the fact that this game gives you space beyond the corner. Of course, it's not as powerful of real estate on the ground, but it makes such a interesting and ambiguous game of king of the hill. The fact that you can mix up where you want to be near the ledge, near, above, and below is really interesting. Lastly, PM rewards center stage in such a different way compared to 2-D fighters. In 2-D fighting games if you pin your opponent in the corner, you abuse the fact that you're closer to center by sandwiching your opponent and keeping them there. You use all that space you have at your control, to just slightly edge in and out of the opponents range and limit what they can do. You simply make them claustrophobic, PM does this as well but in a different way. Since in PM you have more options to use the ledge to your advantage or escape the position, it seems that the owner of the center at the time wants to keep the real estate a little more. So what I mean by that is that they won't necessarily want to rush in and close the gap on the opponent, they can just go to the ledge. So you want to keep your distance and the center, but again similar to king of the hill you WANT to keep them out. You don't want to give them center stage so it's a really interesting dance of keeping the risk/reward in the favor of the space you own and cover. Which makes it claustrophobic in a entirely different way.

-Defensive Options-

This topic is a little more difficult to talk about for me, since i'm still at a pretty low level and I've just scratched the surface and basic understanding of the options that are available to you on defense. However, I really like the way PM handles defense, and similar to movement.. how much freedom the engine lets you have. Buffering a roll to get out of pressure, but still making it a commitment that your opponent has to read is very entertaining. In 2-D fighting games tech chasing works (usually) very different, it depends on the game in specific but most of the time the game leaves you with less options than PM. You also just tech chase on offense for positioning and to keep pressure on and maybe do some tricky cross up stuff, you don't actually have a recovery on the tech usually. PM and Smash in general has this really awesome chemistry where.. your defensive options give you a lot of freedom to be in control. You can really make a lot of decisions constantly when you're getting hit or at the neutral disadvantage, however.. even when your defensive decision is made it can turn into a tech chase or DI trap for the player on the offense. It turns into a really interesting and interactive entity for both players involved. Sadly, I can't discuss much more on this since I still have so much to learn.. but at the surface already its something that really intrigues me.

-Character Diversity-

Off the bat this is one of the things I've found the most captivating about Smash. Because when you get down to it, pretty much every character has the exact same amount of moves. Yes okay some ftilts have 3 angles and DK can't down B in the air until Smash 4, but everyone's move pool in terms of quantity ranges from extremely to completely similar. In 2-D fighting games this is very much not the case, Guile in the Street Fighter series has famously (for the most part) always had just two special moves in Sonic Boom and Flash Kick. In that same game you have a character like Vega who has far more special moves (8 in SF4), this fact thrown in on top of basic normal's being different, command normal's, supers, etc. Obviously Smash is nothing like this so what did they do? They got so gawt dang creative with everything, each character screams individuality with what they do and how they perform and it really shows. PM goes even further with this and reaaally stretches it out even more, so many characters in this game possess something you just can't get with any other character whatsoever. It makes for such a interesting clash of personalities between so many styles of just the characters themselves. Its all in play here and it makes for a really special spectator and player experience, one that few games can achieve. Smash also brings a level of individuality that really can only be seen in the fighting game genre, so many characters in this game become so unique just on a player by player basis. Meta Knight is a beautiful example of this! Emukiller, Boringman, Boiko, Yung Quaff, Tealz, and so on all play MK at a solid and competent level but just from studying vods they all have things about the way they play that make them unique. Coming from 2-D fighting games I adore that so much because so many of my favorite games do that completely, Parasoul in Skullgirls is a very interesting character with a lot of options with plenty of representation at top level and we all play her differently for another example. Lastly, it's no secret that PM is incredibly balanced in comparison to the rest of the Smash games. Smash 4 is the only one that comes remotely close and even that can be considered a stretch. I don't really need to harp much on that we're all aware of it we can just look at our top 32/8 results and get the basic idea. PM just makes for this beautiful combination of diversity in characters, players, and styles that is just another huge breath of fresh air for me. I can't wait to grow as a player and just notice this more and more as time goes on.



Things That Confuse Me 

Disclaimer:
When I mean that they confuse me no double meaning is in place, it just literally confuses me. It's not really anything I dislike about the game or disagree with, and i'm not at all saying it shouldn't be in the game or anything dumb like that. It's just a matter of coming from my background and just being confused by said mechanics. I'll do a better job explaining below so lets dive in!

-Stages/Counter-picking-
So as I've been working on this post I've been getting better at understanding this but its still something I sort of struggle with. 2-D fighting games as most of you know pretty much never have stage differences that impact a match in anyway outside of maybe a stage adds input lag like in MVC3 (that's why they pretty much only play on two stages), or SF4's Volcano stage just looks ugly as hell and sucks for people who are color blind. In Smash it totally matters, it's not something you can completely blame a loss over or anything but it definitely impacts the game. So learning the concept of what to ban vs what character can be tough, and where to take certain characters as well. The more I learn the game the more self explanatory it is getting so that helps, but I have ways to go. I'm working on a personal chart of mine that just lists every character and says what to ban and what to CP so that's progress. One of the many good things about Meta Knight is that since he's so amazing I can just ban 2 stages my opponent likes, so i'm adopting that mindset hard too. I also just need to learn to build a confidence with the character because small stages still scare me, Wario Land and Fountain in specific. Now i'm just rambling but yeah, definitely a different but fun and interesting concept to tackle!

-DI/SDI-
This is one of those things that I totally understand needs to be in the game without question, this game would be rough without it. However, wow am I terrible at understanding this. This is a mechanic that truly has never been in any fighting game I've ever played in any type of capacity, it's really something you just have to learn head first. I'm slowly understanding it on paper more but in practice is where it really gets hard. Back to the amazing defensive options this game gives you, this being one of them.. it also makes the offense so engaging. As soon as I pick up a habit of an opponent and I DI out of something, they mix it up next time and DI trap me and punish me for doing what I thought was the correct DI. This is so freaking insane I can't even begin, none of this is in any game at all. Getting hit by PK Fire so you SDI out of it and they read your buffer roll in and grab you? What's going on in this crazy world!? I have a long way to go with this mechanic but it helps me feel better by knowing that no shortcut really exists, you just have to get hit by something hundreds of times and just understand the character you're playing against and just grasp how you're suppose to handle it. Take's time that I cant wait to put in!

-Crouch Canceling-
In the disclaimer up there where I said that I don't really hate anything down here that I listed? Well.... if I HAD to choose one? It'd probably... be... this. Once again, I totally get why it needs to be in the game some characters would be able to just bully everyone with little to no effort. Cool I get it, i'm there, its part of the game, counter-play exists, its gucci. It's just.. taking some getting used to getting punished for hitting the opponent is all, it is pretty interesting though at the same time. How different you have to play vs a certain character at low percents, what you have to do to bait out the CC option they so desperately want to do and so on. I'm grasping this at a faster rate compared to DI, but this is just a really aggressive thing that happens in this game that'll take some getting used to for sure.

-Character Gravity/Weight-
So when I talked about how diverse and different characters were? Yeah I wasn't kidding this game takes it ANOTHER step further and gives each character different weights, and even gravity it's just so out of control. When Switch told me that characters that weigh more are in less hit stun due to the fact that they weigh more I was totally mind boggled. 2-D fighting games kinda have similar things, certain characters are really big or tall and fall faster when you combo them in the air. Examples of some of this would be in MvC2 Storm doesn't have a universal infinite whatsoever but she can infinite Sentinel because he's so tall that it lets a string happen that wouldn't occur if he was shorter. In SG Big Band has a really fast fall speed because he's heavy so you have to do different combos based on that, so fighting games do have this it's just not as specific. The hit stun thing to my knowledge is not in any 2-D fighting game, the drastic differences between weights is not something you can't compare in fighting games either. Punishing and hitting a Fox is drastically different from punishing and hitting a Luigi for an obvious example. In 2-D fighting games the punish you get on the character is more in specific to the characters hurtboxes and how wide/tall they are.

(Original Link: https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/HandyObedientGiraffe )

Example of this would be above, the Dudley combo i'm doing is strictly possible due to the fact of how wide Chun Li's hurtbox is while in the air. The combo above also works solidly vs Makoto as well, and while they both have different fall speeds in that juggle state its simple enough to do on both. However, this combo will never work on Ryu or Ken, but not because of fall speed or weight but because nowhere during the fall will my C.HK hitbox touch a hurtbox.

So having to adjust my thought process on punish game and think (Weight/Gravity/How They Fall) instead of just thinking strictly how the hurtbox works is pretty different and will take sometime, but i'm confident it will translate rather well in the future. I'm excited to see how clinical and clean my punish game will be coming from 2-D fighting games, once I actually learn how to play PM first of course!



So there it is everyone! Pretty much wanted to talk about all the cool stuff that's in this cool game, I hope this was interesting to read! Let me know what you'd like to see me talk about next, or whatever questions you have feel free to fire away. Looking forward to grow in this game and see where it goes, see you next time.


Comments

  1. I've been enjoying reading this so far but it's been a while since there's been any update. Is this kinda dead or is it just gonna be a while between entries?

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