For one brief weekend every year, we are all fighting game fans, mesmerized by the spectacle that is the Evolution Championship Series. Players new and old come together to compete and watch the world's best prove themselves in an open tournament of thousands of players. For game developers, however, Evo offers a different opportunity -- the chance to see how various fighting games try to create a rich, rewarding, and diverse competitive play space that holds up from the newest player to the most dedicated veteran. If you're looking to make your own competitive game, it's certainly worth your time to devour whatever Evo tournament footage you can find to see how fighting game players try to break the heck out of every game for honor (and profit).
But parsing high-level play is hard. Fighting games are built on decades of iteration, and understanding them takes time and experience. Fortunately for you, I've been actively competing in fighting games for 14 years, so I'm going to walk you through the Evo 2015 Ultra Street Fighter IV Top 8 matches with a special focus on takeaways that are more broadly applicable to designing competitive games. I even wrote a free primer for people interested in learning to play fighting games called From Masher to Master -- check it out here. [And full disclosure: I occasionally help out with stuff for Evo and its affiliated fighting game website Shoryuken.com.]
Note that I'll only be covering the Ultra Street Fighter IV Top 8 in this article, as it's the game I know best. If you want similar breakdowns for the rest of the Evo 2015 lineup (including Super Smash Bros.: Melee, Guilty Gear Xrd, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Mortal Kombat 10), let the Gamasutra editors know in the comments. (Be sure to make your demands IN ALL CAPS, WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!1! They love that.)
"For game developers, Evo offers the chance to see how various fighting games try to create a rich, rewarding, and diverse competitive play space that holds up from the newest player to the most dedicated veteran."
Let's jump in! You can watch the matches yourself on this YouTube playlist here; if you want the best experience, I'd recommend watching through them once before reading this article, so you don't spoil anything and can focus on dissecting the design afterwards.
Infiltration vs. r/Kappa Ai Ai (Winners Bracket Quarterfinals)
The Matchup: Decapre vs. Juri
Video: here
Infiltration is not only one of the most consistent Street Fighter IV players, he's also the Evo 2012 champion. He stands out among world-class players due to his attention to detail and relentless work ethic. Where most competitive players concentrate their time on mastering a single character, and many top players have only just added secondary picks to cover their main's hardest matchups, Infiltration has the widest character variety we've seen in competitive Street Fighter yet (he used eight different characters in his Evo 2015 run! That's the whole roster of SF2!).
Ai Ai is far less well-known -- Evo commentator Seth Killian notes in the clip that he's primarily an online-only player who lives outside Tokyo -- but he earned plenty of notoriety by taking out fighting game legend Daigo "The Beast" Umehara earlier in the tournament.
In this set, Infiltration picks USF4 newcomer Decapre into Ai Ai's main character, Juri. Both characters are most dangerous when they're in close against a cornered opponent, but they have different methods of achieving this -- Decapre relies largely on her variety of highly controllable special dashes that let her zoom around the screen and feint if she's running into a counterattack, while Juri's goal is to bully Decapre from a distance with well-placed fireballs to shut down Decapre's mobility options, then gradually push Decapre into the corner where she can deal her damage with hard-to-guard mixups.
The Moments: Decapre's Ultra 2, every single time
Despite the 3-0 win by Infiltration, the match was very competitive when you look at it round-by-round -- neither player had an overwhelming advantage over the other when it came to reactions, execution, timing, defense, etc. However, each player's choice of Ultra Combo had a defining effect on the outcome of the match.
Ultra Combos are high-damaging moves that can only be used once the player has filled their Ultra Meter at least halfway -- and you can only fill that meter by taking damage. This effectively functions as a comeback mechanic of sorts: once you've taken about 45% of your health bar in damage, you can spend that Ultra Meter to perform your Ultra Combo, and if it hits, get yourself back in the game (though, if it hits, you now have a pissed-off opponent that probably has taken enough damage to get access to her own Ultra Combo).
Each character has two different Ultra Combos, and in the character select menu a player can choose which one he'd like to use (or instead opt for Ultra Combo Double, which gives you access to both, but with a significant damage penalty). Ai Ai chose Juri's "Feng Shui Engine", which gives her a short buff period where her moves' combo properties change to allow longer, higher-damaging strings. Infiltration chose Decapre's "DCM", a lightning-fast dash attack that can hit from across the screen for heavy damage and leaves Decapre close to her opponent to continue her mixups up close.
While the damage potential for both Ultras is roughly equal, Infiltration's choice offered more strategic utility than Ai Ai's did. Ai Ai was mostly only able to use Juri's Ultra to get more damage out of situations where he already had the momentum -- typically after he knocked Infiltration down and pushed him into the corner. With DCM, Infiltration gets an opportunity to punish Ai Ai for being predictable and turn the round in his favor -- and he lands it six times in the seven-round set ( the only round where he didn't land it is the round he won before taking enough damage to charge his Ultra Meter enough to get access to the move).
Count 'em. Infiltration uses it in Match 1, Round 1 to punish a fireball (1:33); Match 2, Round 1 to tack on extra damage to a combo (3:19); Match 2, Round 2 to punish another fireball (4:16); Match 2, Round 3 to punish Juri from jumping backwards (5:20); Match 3, Round 1 to add damage after an anti-air counter to Juri's jump-in mixup attempt (6:30); and closes it out in Match 3, Round 2 to catch Juri as she jumps backward (7:36).
By the end of the set, Infiltration has shown Ai Ai that once Decapre has her Ultra, Ai Ai can't safely throw fireballs or jump without risking the loss of the whole round, which means her main options are simply to walk forward, attack, and hope for the best.
The Takeaway: Great players will make your game look broken even when it's not
After dissecting this set, you might get the impression that Decapre is hugely overpowered due to her high-damage mixups, high mobility, and the incredible utility her U2 gives her, especially in this particular matchup.
It's worth noting here that Decapre's DCM is not a particularly easy move to perform, as the motion requires the player to hold back or down-back on the controller for a short period to "charge" the move -- which inhibits the player's ability to walk freely. Infiltration covers this up by using her dashes to try to mask the "charging", which telegraphed his intent -- something Ai Ai either didn't notice in the moment or couldn't adapt to.
At lower levels of play, I'd expect the matchup to skew slightly in Juri's favor, since her Ultra's power is far easier to access than DCM is. Yes, Infiltration is dominant in this set, but if you ask yourself whether the reason for his dominance is reflective of a healthy competitive state, I'd argue the answer is yes: He wins because he knows how the matchup goes when he can bully Juri with DCM, and Ai Ai was unable to fake out, bait, counter-pick, or otherwise adapt. Infiltration wins because he did the work.
EG|Momochi vs. MCZ|Tokido (Winners Bracket Quarterfinals)
The Matchup: Ken vs. Akuma
Video: here
Momochi and Tokido are both highly-accomplished SF4 tournament veterans; Tokido placed second in 2013, while Momochi won last year's prestigious Capcom Cup. Momochi is known mostly for his Ken, and Tokido his Akuma; both players stuck with their signature picks for this set.
Both Ken and Akuma belong to the same classic Street Fighter character design family as Ryu: They each have fireballs (Hadoken!), invincible anti-air uppercuts (Shoryuken!), and a spinning kick that moves them forward (Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku -- yes, that's what they actually say). Akuma also has several moves that Ken doesn't, including a teleport that helps escape dangerous situations and an air fireball to control screen space at a variety of diagonal vectors, but he can't take as much damage as Ken can. Ken has an addition
No tags.
