Written by Justin Wong
on Dec. 9, 2011 at 10:08 p.m.
There comes to a point where a player has reached a certain level that they cannot plateau any higher. Now they are desperately doing worse, not as confident as before, and their drive is slowly drifting away. You practiced your combos in the training room, you beat the computer senseless a million times, and you have exposed yourself in a tournament environment. What else is missing? Why am I doing worse? It’s an easy answer that most people don’t realize. Your love of the game is lost. All you want to do now is to win and prove yourself to the community that you’re a top player.
This is a very common situation for lots of players, but having love for the game or for your character will show a lot more signs of improvement than someone whose only interest is to win. If you look at the player DJ Huoshen on how he play and how he reacts to things. You can tell that he loves to play with the team he uses; Felicia/Skrull/Taskmaster. He loves this game and he takes the game as it is. He understands that the game is cheap and his characters have a high chance of losing but he makes it work and still comes out on top. Why? Because he loves to play the game. He doesn’t just care about winning. Winning is nice but staying true to your heart means a lot more and that’s where winning matters the most.
This obviously doesn’t mean that if you pick the character you like, you will win all your matches. There are broken things in every game that will just prevent your success.
*Cough* Phoenix
*Cough* but as long as you tried your best and your love in the game will be there, you will have a much more clearer outlook on things and what little things to improve on for your next match, tournament, and etc.
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Written by Justin Wong
on Nov. 20, 2011 at 10:52 p.m.
One of the hardest things to achieve is being able to play the way you want to play under a huge amount of pressure. Some players love the pressure and some players despise it. I personally love playing under pressure. I believe that I make some of the best comebacks when I am under pressure which is how the “Wong Factor” came up. Many players have gotten some awesome comeback victories when a huge crowd is watching. We have Peter “Bionic Arm” Rosas, Daigo “Lets Go Justin” Umehara and many more.
In order to see if you can play under pressure, you can do the following things.
- Play on an online stream such as Peaceful Jay or Shoryuken.
- Travel to a local tourney and see how well you do in the tourney with actual people.
- Travel to a major (EVO, Season Beatings, Canada Cup, etc)
- Try to play on a stream at a tournament (Highly Recommended)
- Do you get nervous playing against a top player? Y/N
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Written by Justin Wong
on Oct. 2, 2011 at 4:09 p.m.
What is a Training Mode Monster? A Training Mode Monster is someone who has great execution in terms of combos in the Training Room. Most common problems are that majority of the players are Training Mode Monsters which means that in an actual match, their execution goes down by a lot.
Not being able to land your combos against a moving target (Computer/Human opponent) is what a lot of players suffer from.
There are ways to increase your percentage of being able to land your combos against moving targets or in high pressure situations. When I was growing up, I played against the computer every day. Even though the computer isn’t really challenging, it still gives you an opportunity to land combos in many types of situations and not just a non-movable dummy. The computer will stand, crouch, jump, spam an unsafe move and more, but this is beneficial for the player because you will be able to change up the type of combos due to the situation.
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Written by Justin Wong
on Sept. 8, 2011 at 9:23 p.m.
Many players lose in the heat of battle because they “choke.” Choking usually means that the player could have won the match but they dropped the game winning combo or hit. One of the most important tools to have as a fighting game player is REALLY good execution. If you land a clean hit on your opponent, you want to make sure it’s going to count and get you closer to the win.
When I was growing up, I sat in the arcade (there was no access to these games for consoles at the time) for 5-6 hours every day during my summer vacation and practice my combos over and over. Practicing my combos over and over did 3 things for me.
• Improved my execution dramatically.
• Figured out new combos/setups/mix-ups/frame traps/safe jumps/option selects/punishes.
• Learn more about the character.
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