Welcome back to Jett Vs., the series of blog posts where I analyze some of my fighting game matches for your entertainment. You may learn a thing or two from my match analysis as well, though I don’t claim to be an expert in anything.

In this post, my Rose takes on MOMOHUBBY‘s Ken, who was the 29th highest ranked Ken in the world on XBOX Live when we played each other. Do I stand a chance against high quality competition?

The Rose vs. Ken Match-Up
This match is generally considered to be even, as neither character has any inherent advantages over the other. While Ken is often associated with scrub-level play due to his popularity with newbies, Ken is now a really good character in Version 2012. If he gets in close to his opponent, he can do all sorts of crazy damage and put his opponents in tricky mix-up situations.

As a Rose player, I want nothing to do with Ken’s inside game. I want to keep him away from me with fireballs, fend him off with pokes from footsies range, or intelligently pressure him in close without opening myself up to eat a huge combo.

The Match
I set the tone of the match by playing within footsies range. Once I’m in there, I tag him with staccato and long range pokes such as Rose’s slide, her standing medium kick and crouching medium kick. I back off when I want some breathing room and when he gets too close, I throw him away. In the second round, he opens me up a bit, but that’s primarily

In Hindsight
This video wasn’t posted because it was a flashy match, or because I beat a high-ranked Ken. I posted it to show how my specific strategy of keeping Ken outside worked out. Luckily for me, it worked well on this one. I never really let Ken into this match because I kept him out of the my face, where’s he’s the most dangerous. Thanks to MOMOHUBBY for the match, though I’m sure he’d figure out my ways and light me up with a number of Shoryukens. Here’s to hoping he doesn’t read this and uses this against me next time.

Making a game that is rewarding to all skill levels is hard.

There are games that have great shallow end but weak deep ends. The games that come to mind that fit this description are the Mario Kart and Mario Party series of games. Any entry-level player can figure out the controls in seconds and have a blast, but advanced players often complain about the random elements that punish players for being ahead, which can make your overall skill in the game less valuable.

On the other end of the spectrum, most fighting games have great deep ends and weak shallow ends. I’m having the most fun now playing Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Version 2012, but it’s taken me years of practice to get as much out of the game as I do. The shallow end of fighting games usually sucks, as they require players to learn complex button inputs for special moves, alongside learning how to leverage complex game mechanics to your advantage.

With that in mind, I pose these three questions to you:

1) What games have a great shallow end but weak deep end?

2) What games have a great deep end but weak shallow end?

3) What games are equally rewarding across all ends of the metaphorical pool?

Love to hear from you in the comments!

All things considered, I shouldn’t like Skyrim. The only reason I even bought it in the first place was because I think I’d be missing out on the gaming zeitgeist if I didn’t play this game. However, instead of shrugging it off like Oblivion, Skyrim has won me over in a big way.

Skyrim’s biggest achievement, among the many it has under its belt, is its ability to immerse you into the game world. It does this by giving you a plethora of choices that make the experience feel organic. The quests are structured in a way that you can follow or jump between a number of major and minor story threads at your leisure. Oftentimes within those quests, they’re open-ended in a way that really gives you the power of choice. You can simply stumble upon different things to do just by walking around towns or the woods. When it comes to your inventory, you get a ton of different options for weapons, armour, spells and more. Story points can also be greatly impacted by the dialogue you choose for your character.

While the openness of the game’s structure freaked me out at first, I soon embraced it when I realized how organic it let the experience be. My favourite example of this happened early on, when I was originally on a quest to notify the Jarl of Whiterun of the dragon sighting. As I walked to Whiterun, I ran into a group of Imperial soldiers, who were escorting a Stormcloak rebel somewhere. I followed them for awhile, passing a tower and a fort along the way, until I decided to free the prisoner. I fight broke out because of this and everyone but me died, but I got to steal all of their stuff. On the way back I ransacked the fort, visited the tower, and ran into a horse and carriage in front of Whiterun, offering me a ride to distant places. On a whim, I decided to go to the farthest place on the map where I had an objective, which led me to join the mage college in Winterhold. I would eventually notify the Jarl of Whiterun, but not until I completed a number of other mage related quests, including one where my soul was placed inside a sacred gem to kill the soul of another person stored in that gem.

This entire sequence of events didn’t feel like a video game at all to me. This felt like I was just a person in this world, and those were the choices I made. The quests themselves all felt of a high-quality too, as many of these scenarios were well thought out and are fun to play through. Even though I’m not traditionally a fan of medieval fiction, any of my preconceived prejudices didn’t matter here, as the quality of the fiction was great. This seemingly never-ending tale of medieval awesomeness stayed entertaining throughout. My brother, in contrast, has also been playing Skyrim, and the story he’s created for himself was completely different from my story above, which is also cool.

A lot of the rough edges I disliked in my initial pass of Oblivion have been ironed out. Graphically, the game looks incredible. All of the character class system stuff was completely redone and simplified. I really like the fact that just because you pick a specific class doesn’t mean you’re locked out of any potential equipment options. This meant that at any time, I could decide to switch from being a melee warrior to a ranged mage if I wanted to put the effort to level up rather than being locked out. Menus, while not perfect, are a lot more manageable and readable to me.

While it does a lot of things right, it’s not without fault. Just like Oblivion, melee combat is still a sore point for Skyrim. The big issue is that the game doesn’t really give you a sense of impact when you hit someone with a sword unless they block it. Otherwise, swings that hit your enemy react the same way as swings that whiff. At a certain point, I just let it go, but the effect can be jarring. Companion AI always seem to block doorways just to annoy you. I really dislike the design decision that limits the amount of money a store has, which means you can rarely ever sell everything you want in one city. From a technical perspective, I did run into one or two scenarios where the game chugged at a single-digit frame rate. When this happened, the game was virtually unplayable.

Skyrim is by no means perfect, though very much deserving of the praise it’s been given. Even with all of the critical acclaim and game of the year awards behind it, I didn’t believe going into it that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would grab me at all, let alone grab me as hard as it has. Instead of shrugging it off, I can’t put this game down, as this amazing and wildly addictive RPG to me is a modern day gaming classic. It’s incredible to me how ambitious this game is and how well it executes almost all of its ideas. Though this game may not be enough to ease me into The Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons, I’ll surely be spending a few more dozen hours immersed in the world of Skyrim.

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Following in the foot steps of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters, SoulCalibur has made its way onto iOS. Unlike Street Fighter and King of Fighters, this SoulCalibur release is mostly a port of the 1999 original. 13 years later, does it still hold up? Does the experience get compromised by having to control it with a touch screen device? Most importantly, is SoulCalibur for iPhone and iPad worth the $15 regular price when its closest competition is roughly half of that?

The answer comes down to what’s in the package. Here, you get a version of the original SoulCalibur as a universal app that’s formatted to work on your iPhone and iPad. The graphics, while based on its 1999 counterpart, look awesome on an Apple screen. The game also has responsive controls that behaved as you would expect them to. The roster of 9 to start and a total of 19 when you unlock everyone is fine by me. If you’re looking for an on-the-go SoulCalibur experience where you can hit people with sharp objects in a 3D space, this is the game to get.

However, the feature set leaves a lot to be desired, especially at a regular price of $15. The game has an arcade mode, practice, time attack, two survival modes and a museum. The omission of online or local multiplayer is a huge letdown for a fighting game, especially when all of the major iOS fighting games have it and are roughly half the price. While not as glaring of an omission, I think that the lack of a tutorial mode hurts the overall package, especially if you want to learn how to play this game. Namco has stated that they will add more modes later, but they haven’t said when or if these additions would be free.

For now though, the package is what it is, which makes it light on features and heavy on price. I have a hard time recommending this to even the most die-hard SoulCalibur fans right now because the price tag is too high. At the time of writing, the game is/was on sale at $11.99, which I’d say is still too much for what you get. Once it comes down in price or Namco puts enough into the package to justify the price tag, then by all means pick it up then.

Do you have a preferred style of Mario game? Do you prefer the classic 2D Mario games, where you run left to right until you jump onto the flagpole? Or do you prefer the 3D Mario games like Mario 64 and Galaxy, where the primary objective is to collect stars? Ever since the release of Super Mario 64, the 2D and 3D styles of Mario platformers have diverged into their own entities. I’m not saying that people can’t be fans of both, but I think most people prefer one style over the other. With all due respect to the Galaxy series of games and Super Mario 64, which is one of my all-time favourite games, I generally prefer the classic 2D style of Mario games.

Super Mario 3D Land is the first Super Mario game that tries to marry the 2D style and 3D style into one game. Is this game able to please both crowds? Or does it just leave everyone underwhelmed?

First off, let’s talk about this game’s approach to merging the two divergent Mario styles. The overarching level structure of the game is taken from the 2D Mario games. You navigate from level to level through a linear world map, have the option to collect three big coins in each level and end each level by grabbing the flagpole. The actual levels themselves, however, play out in 3D. With that said, there’s a fundamental difference to how this game handles 3D level design.

Taking advantage of the system’s strengths (3D) and working around the system’s weaknesses (no default second analog stick), Nintendo’s crafted a 3D Mario game that doesn’t require camera control and makes great use of depth perception. The lack of camera control doesn’t hurt Super Mario 3D Land, as the levels have been designed in a way where the fixed camera will never give you problems. In a way, even though it’s technically a 3D Mario game, the fixed camera and level designs make it feel a lot more focused without removing your ability to explore and find secrets in weird nooks and crannies. 2D Mario fans who may not like the open-ended feel of the 3D Mario games of the past will have a more pleasant experience with this one. The other cool new wrinkle is the 3D effects thanks to the 3DS. While they’re not mandatory, the levels were designed in a way where depth is always a factor. I found that playing with the 3D on made it a lot easier to navigate the world.

The end result of this mash-up is a pretty fun Mario game with no shortage of magical moments that only a Mario game can provide. I felt right at home with what the game offered and blazed through it pretty quickly. It was an enjoyable experience all the way through. The first few worlds are a bit easy, but the challenge definitely picks up towards the end. I don’t know if Super Mario 3D Land stacks up compared to the best Mario platformers, but that’s not a slight to it at all. It’s on par in quality with the most recent Mario games such as the New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Galaxy series’.

Super Mario 3D Land is an excellent addition to any Nintendo 3DS owner’s library. If you don’t have a 3DS, I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to pick a system up just to play this, but if you’re getting this alongside Mario Kart 7 and/or the Ocarina of Time, you’ve got yourself a sweet starting package.

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SoulCalibur for iOS is out now. While I am no good at any of the games in this series, I have picked up and enjoyed SoulCalibur II and IV in the past. I’ve been looking forward to this release even more so than SoulCalibur V on consoles because I’d personally get more out of an on-the-go SoulCalibur experience.

With that said, the price for the game is steep for an iOS game. Sure, the graphics look great in screenshots, has 19 characters and is a universal app that works on iPhone and iPad, but the ‘sale’ price of $11.99 is crazy steep. In a world where Street Fighter IV: Volt and King of Fighters i offer amazing fighting game experiences for as low as $0.99 when on sale, can SoulCalibur at a regular price of $14.99 hang? I have put the money up to find out on your behalf. Review coming soon!

Is it ever really impossible though? Let’s talk about what bad match-ups are, why they happen and things you can do to beat the odds.

What is a bad character match-up?
To me, a bad match-up is defined by the fact that character A has to work harder than character B to win, even if they’re controlled by equally-skilled players.

Why does this happen?
Fighting game designers try their best to create fighting game characters that have variety, yet are balanced in a way where no one character can completely dominate another. Expecting perfect balance with this formula is crazy, as the only true way to have a perfectly balanced game is if every character played exactly the same. Instead, fighting games give us a variety of characters with different attributes.

Since each character has different attributes, there will be instances where certain characters will have an easier time beating others.

Factors that contribute to a bad match-up
There a number of specific factors that can make a particular match-up bad for one character over another. Some of those factors can include:

- Damage Output
- Defense
- Ability to Mix-Up
- Move Priority
- Special Move Dominance
- Ability to Control Space

All of these factors are contained within the characters themselves, which means one character may have the advantage before you even pick up a controller. That’s just the nature of the beast.

What can you do to overcome a bad match-up?

1) Know who is in charge

Fighting games are about the players; not the characters. While you must be cognizant of the properties of both characters, this is about you vs. your human opponent. While the choice of character may put you behind the 8 ball, the vast majority of matches aren’t lost at the character select screen. If you can outplay your opponent, you’ll win, regardless of character selection.

2) Know character properties and match-up knowledge inside-and-out

When you find yourself in a situation where your character puts you at a disadvantage, you’ll need to dig deep to find any sort of edge. Knowledge in this case is critical. This means knowing as much as you can about character properties (yours and your opponent’s), strengths, weaknesses, as well as potential strategies and tactics to be used by you and your opponent. Knowing this data is critical, as it’ll be useful virtually every time you partake in this match-up. Some questions you may want to ask yourself in order to do this analysis may include, but shouldn’t stop at:

- What are my opponent’s mobility options like?
- What is my opponent’s best poke attack?
- If I knock them down, and I want to attack them as they get up, what options does that character have to attack back?
- Based on their character selection,will my opponent try and rush me down? Or will they try and turtle?
- What character advantages is my opponent going to try and exploit?
- What can I do to cover or prevent my opponent from taking advantage of my character weaknesses?

Once you have that data, you need to then apply that data to the match in order to win. One of the most common character-specific pieces of data relates to Phoenix in the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 series. If her team stores 5 hyper bars and Phoenix dies, she turns into Dark Phoenix, who is the most broken and over-powered character in the game. However, if you can kill her off before her team gets 5 hyper bars, she’s no longer a threat.

Knowing that it’s a lot easier to beat a Phoenix team if she gets killed before her team has 5 hyper bars, you can then formulate that as your strategy and come up with specific tactics to achieve that. In this particular instance, I like to snap Phoenix in early, and as she jumps in, go for a mix-up. If I successfully land the mix-up, I finish off Phoenix in one combo. Problem solved.

Dig deep enough, and you’ll find nuggets of character-specific match-up information like the tip above to give you an edge. It may require you to read guides, grind it out in training mode, or simply learning from the experience of match play, but learning the character match-up data goes a long way to securing victory.

3) Read your opponent and exploit holes in their play style

Because your character is at a disadvantage as far as the match-up, it’s going to be up to you to compensate through your superior knowledge and skills. It’s on you to work harder, think smarter and make more good moment-to-moment reads in order to win.

If you’ve done your homework going into the match, you’ve already put in the thought around how the characters stack up against each other. That means, the only remaining variable is your opponent. The goal now is to pay close attention to your opponent’s play style, wrap your head around what your opponent wants to do and exploit every hole in their approach. If you can find a lot of holes in their approach, you’ll break your opponent.

What type of holes are you looking for? Start with tendencies. Look for something they tend to do frequently and punish them every time they do it. For instance, one of the match-ups I hate as a Fei Long player in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is against Zangief. I find that Zangief’s spinning pile driver beats out a lot of Fei Long’s offensive options; making that fight excruciatingly difficult for Fei Long. However, many Zangief players jump in the air prior to executing a spinning pile driver as a side-effect of having to input a 360 motion on your joystick or d-pad. When I see a Zangief player jump in the air towards me, I either jump in the air to hit them out of the sky, because I know they’re more concerned with winding up the pile driver, or get out of the way of where Zangief will land, as that pile driver command is coming out the moment his feet hit the floor.

Knowing your opponent’s character and your opponent’s play style can also help you condition your opponent into committing certain behaviours. Let’s use the new Mortal Kombat as an example. You’re playing as Sub-Zero, and your opponent is looking for you to toss that ice ball. When they see you crouch, they jump in, cause they assume the ice ball is on the way. Knowing this, you can crouch to make your opponent think you’re going to throw the ice ball, and when they jump, unleash the ice clone instead, leaving them to jump right into it.

Though we’ve talked a lot about strengths and weaknesses of of the characters, it’s worth noting that human opponents have weaknesses, too. This could be anything from consistently dropping a certain combo, or not being able to block a cross-up attack. Be extremely observant in your opponent’s play to spot these holes in their approach and tear them to shreds accordingly.

4) Gain the tactical advantage by knowing all of the potential scenarios

Tactics become extremely important when your opponent has the character advantage. For me, I want to be in a place tactically where I understand every possible scenario that I could find myself in and have the ability to make the judgment call on what to do based on the scenario itself, my understanding of the characters and my understanding of the player. To explain how intricate this thought process can be, let me break down an image as if I were playing as C. Viper.

In the picture above, Hakan is in the process of oiling up, while C. Viper is in the process of whiffing a burn kick. Hakan has a fairly big life lead and a slight advantage on EX meter. C. Viper has an ultra on deck, while Hakan has a ways to go before he gets his ultra. If Hakan has just started oiling up, and you, as C. Viper land, what do you do? Do you dash in and ultra? Do you do a combo that leads to a knockdown and a mix-up opportunity? Do you execute a throw for the knockdown and mix-up opportunity?

If you can break down the match-up to the point where you know as of the possible scenarios at that level of detail, you’ll be in a much better position to outplay your opponent from moment-to-moment.

5) Counter-pick

If you feel like you playing as your main character has no chance in hell against your opponent’s character, then maybe you might want to consider turning the tables by choosing a character that is tough for your opponent’s character to beat. In theory, this would instantly make it easier for you to win.

However, this practice comes with a lot of challenges. For one, you’re most likely learning a brand new character from scratch. You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to get your new character up to snuff; work that could be put into making your main character better. This may also fail you in the crunch if your opponent has done their homework on how to overcome your counter-pick. Lastly, and this is particularly of importance if you play in tournaments, if you’re playing a 2 out of 3 set, lose game  1, then win game 2 with a counter-pick, your opponent has the opportunity to then counter-pick you in the final game.

Generally, I advise against counter-picking, as I feel that learning a new character simply for the sake of a counter-pick may be more work than its worth. However, this is coming from someone who goes out of his way to learn a number of characters to minimize being in this situation. Go with what works best for you.

In Summary

- A bad match-up is defined by the fact that character A has to work harder than character B to win, even if they’re controlled by equally-skilled players.

- You can overcome a bad match-up by outplaying your opponent

- Outplaying your opponent is going to require you having a lot of match-up knowledge in your back pocket beforehand

- Counter-picking is an option, but it may come back to haunt you in the end

Jett Vs. is back! Sort of. Last time I ran this series of posts, they were universally ignored by readers for any number of reasons. Because the readers weren’t there and these posts take a lot of work to create, I decided to stop running the series. However, over the past few months of leveling up and working towards world domination, I’ve compiled what I think are some pretty good match videos worth sharing.

In this post, my Cammy faces off against Niysx’s M. Bison.

About the Cammy vs. Bison Match-Up
Historically, this match has been considered to be even, as neither character has any major advantages over the other. However, my track record indicates that I have a lot of problems fighting against any M. Bison. I have problems dealing with his Scissor Kick pressure, his super fast standing heavy kick and the head stomp that’s really hard to punish in air-to-air situations. Specifically in the Cammy vs. Bison match-up, if Bison sets the offensive tone of the fight by putting on the pressure, I’m generally screwed.

My answer to that as a Cammy player is to score a knockdown. Bison’s wake-up options aren’t that great, and Cammy’s okizeme options are really good thanks to her dive kick. If I can get Bison into a vortex situation where he’s repeatedly guessing wrong on wake-up and is eating full combos as punishment, I will win more often than not.

Round 1
Niysx makes it very clear to me from the start that he’s not looking to rush in. He’s content with maintaining his charge, waiting for me to come in, and attacking with relatively safe options. I bait him out with a light Spiral Arrow early, and hit him with the Cannon Spike as he tries to punish the whiffed Spiral Arrow, which is one of my signature Cammy gimmicks. After that, there’s a lot of staccato hits and movement for awhile.

Where the match breaks open is at 0:33 when I throw him into the corner. Once I’ve knocked him down, I take advantage of the okizeme situation by pressuring with dive kicks. The first dive kick was an EX one that was timed and spaced in a way that I could finish with a full Cammy combo afterwards. The second dive kick is a regular one that hits high atop his head. He may have thought it was going to cross up. He eats that one too and takes a full combo for guessing wrong. The third time he wakes up, I’m thinking that he’s thinking I’m going to try and dive kick again. Knowing this, I hit him with a crouching light kick instead, which he wasn’t ready to block. This puts him in a dizzy state and I finish him off with a nice combo.

Round 2
Niysx is playing even more defensive now than before. I bait him out again with the light Spiral Arrow into Cannon Strike at 1:20, which pushes him back into the corner. From here, he just eats an onslaught of dive kick pressure as he can’t find a way to get out. He ends up getting dizzied and is finished off shortly after.

In Hindsight
I’m really proud of that match, as I executed my game plan perfectly. I also connected the majority of my combos. I find that with Cammy, if you’re unable to complete your larger combos, you’ll have a hard time winning, as her moves outside of combos don’t do much damage. As for Niysx, I think he would have had a much easier time against me if he was dictating the flow of the match. Instead, he’d get knocked down and be forced to fend off my offensive pressure, which didn’t work this time.

One of the first considerations that came up in our moving plans was the TV situation. I’m a fairly active gamer, and she’s a fairly active TV/movie watcher. While I aim to spend as much time with her as I can because I love her and want to continue being a good significant other, there will likely be times when we’ll both want access to a TV, and only having one screen available to us could get messy. My parents got me a 40″ TV for Christmas, which will be great as Steff and I’s future main TV in our living room. As for a second screen, I came across the PlayStation 3D TV at a heavily discounted price during the holiday.

The PlayStation 3D TV is a 24″ LED HDTV that runs in 1080p. The TV comes with one pair of 3D glasses, a mini USB cable to charge those glasses, HDMI cable and a copy of Motorstorm: Apocalypse. At $500, I thought it was a fair price for what was offered. However, I came across it during Boxing Day at $300, which makes the value proposition far more appealing, especially when equivalent TVs are notably higher up on the pricing scale. What it doesn’t come with is a TV remote, which is mind-boggling to me. You can use the PS3 remote, but you’ll have to buy it separately.

One of the selling points of the TV that Sony likes to tout is the inclusion of StimulView technology, which allows two players wearing the glasses to see two different full-screen video feeds while looking at one TV. While I have yet to try out the TV yet, I know that you’ll need an extra set of glasses to make this work (regular price $69.99) and that only a handful of games support this feature. While Motorstorm: Apocalypse does support this feature, I don’t think I’ll be running out to the store to buy a second pair of 3D glasses until more games support it.

I know the TV is a bit small, particularly for 3D movie viewing, but I think it will work great as a secondary TV for gaming or as a big PC monitor. I’ll most likely crack this one open before I move, so stay tuned to In Third Person for impressions!

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Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is a pretty good game on its own. My brother and I played through it with only four toys, and we had a pretty good time with it. Say what you will about the evil and genius marketing ploy of tying the purchase of toys as in-game characters into the mix, but the overall package is fairly solid and enjoyable.

However, it’s not perfect. Particularly when your lack of toys impedes your progress through the game. My brother and I experienced the scummiest of these moments during the final boss fight.

Up until the end of the game, we didn’t really have any problems beating the levels with our set of four toys. There were some close calls, but we never hit a point where we had to restart because we ran out of toys to use. That is, until we hit the last boss.

Without spoiling the game, there’s a final boss fight that’s pretty tough. We lost three of our Skylanders, and it came down to the wire with my Spyro vs. the last boss. I traded blows with him till the very end, when we killed each other almost simultaneously, though I died a split-second before he did. All we had to do was place a fresh toy on the Portal of Power, and we would have beaten the game…

…except that we didn’t have any fresh toys. Spyro was our last Skylander.

We now had one of two options:

1) Restart the tough and long boss fight

or

2) Go to the store, buy a new Skylander and place it on the Portal of Power to get the ending

I’m pretty sure that the creators of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure did not have that use case thought out, but it made me sick to know that it even happened. I have no problem with anyone wanting to buy a new figure cause they want to play with that figure, but the fact that I was in a scenario where the only way I could rightfully claim my ending without having to restart was to go buy another figure was not cool.

Out of principle, my brother and I chose to restart. We eventually got our ending without having to resort to the purchase of extra figures.