Monday, May 4, 2009

The Long Day that was A.I. Ranbat 2.2


Yesterday was another ranking battle tournament at Arcade Infinity for Street Fighter IV and I had a new plan in mind, which is to go with my second main character E. Honda. Turns out my Honda is not tourney ready and I went 2 & out running into bad matchups for the sumo man. The first loss was against a Sagat player in which I had a chance of winning, but I did some stupid things and that was that going to Losers' Bracket right away. My last loss and SF4 playtime was against Sanchez by the luck of the draw as that went poorly getting raped by his Bison (Couldn't get anything going as his Bison started the rushdown right away). While my tourney chances didn't go so smoothly, other things happened that day in AI.

Apparently there was some drama regarding a money match between shglbmx and DSO as shglbmx's Blanka straight up owned DSO's Bison. I'm not really into the drama scene in regards to the SoCal SF4 community as u check the results thread on SRK for more on that. Some heavy hitters weren't there like Gootecks and Mike Ross, who were at East Coast Throwdown repping the West Coast as they finished 4th and 7th respectively. For other heavy hitters, some of them had their bad days like Keno, John Rog, Sanchez, and Bebop, who is starting to use Dhalsim while the AI regulars like Tatsu, Moval, Fuson, and Jack stepped up their game by going to the top. In the end it was Edma, aka the #1 Ken in the U.S., winning the whole thing with his second main Akuma and Kai took 2nd with his El Fuerte (at times Chun-Li when down by one). Vicious's Rufus took 3rd as he leveled up like crazy and randomly was referring to that New Boyz song, "You're A Jerk" to people. I also appreciate some of the heavy hitters like Keno and Edma brought their hot girlfriends along to witness something like this that is so male driven, so props to the ladies for enduring the event and supporting their men.



Other than the SF4 tournament, I played more BlazBlue and King of Fighters XII trying to get somewhat better at those games learning them slowly. But first, DJ Vest and Bebop were playing Action Deka, aka the secret best light-gun type game ever, and that was comedic gold especially Bebop being his usual self getting hype punching fools left and right. I still haven't played it myself yet, but it feels like the Wii at an arcade with the motion controlled gloves. I'm now getting slowly better at KOF XII learning some more characters as I'm sticking with the team of Ash, Shen, and Terry for now, but I still need to learn some of the advanced stuff especially the critical counter system since its so crucial to the gameplay. It was good times playing this game especially with the likes of Rickstah and Sanchez as they were getting crazy when playing characters like Daimon (puts hands in the air after he does his super), Shen, and Raiden.

Even though there was no direct feed video or commentary at yesterday's SF4 tournament, I still had a good time regardless of getting owned in SF4. In case you're not aware of the SoCal SF4 scene yet and even how Arcade Infinity is awesome, check these videos below from the SF4 3 on 3 tournament a couple weeks ago.