Evolution North, 2007
I missed Evo South due to the Game Developer's Conference. I missed Evo East due to my consulting in Montreal. But I won't miss Evo North, which is this weekend near Chicago. Click here for more info on the event.
I only play two of the games in our lineup these days: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Guilty Gear XX (Slash, and now Accent Core). And I hardly even play ST because it would cut into my valuable GGXX time, ha. Unfortunately, GGXX is a team tournament format this year, a "fun" format that waters down the serious competition in a 1 vs. 1 game. I have no team, so I can either scrounge to find teammates at the last moment (lovely) or play at a huge disadvantage on my own team. Perhaps I'll do that. I have Chipp, Faust, and Potemkin to choose from. In an normal good tournament, I'd switch between these characters as needed, but in this bad format we're stuck with, I'm stuck with choosing only one character for the entire event.
The Curse of Chipp has kept me better at him than other characters no matter how much I try to abandon him. My Faust is fairly good, but I just don't know what to do in a few matches. My Potemkin is good, but potemkin is all about "critical points" in a match: waiting and waiting for that split second where you can actually do something. In the pressure of a real tournament, I find it hard to rely on making these miracle moments happen. At least potemkin has enough hit points to weather the storm. And then there's Chipp. I can rush a lot of people down before they even know what happened, but one mistake can mean 90% of your life, and I'm not exaggerating. If I have to beat entire teams of 3 players by myself without losing one game, perhaps I'm forced to choose potemkin so the high high points reduce the chance of randomly losing off one hit. sigh.
This will also be the first time I see Capcom Classics Collection 2 used in a real tournament in front of my own eyes. (For SSF2T.)
We'll see how much I'm affected by practicing, lol.
--Sirlin
June 19th, 2007 at 9:46 am
[…] Original post by Sirlin […]
June 19th, 2007 at 10:18 am
I’ve fallen into the same dilemna with my Jam and Ky. I’ve wanted Jam to be my main since I first picked up the game. Now that Jam is a monster in AC, I’ve been able to get her to the point that friends dread playing against my Jam. On the other hand, it’s a bit degrading when I’ll switch to Ky every once in a while and get some easy wins due to his easier combos, good range and decent zoning capabilities (which I used to just blame on the fact that he was too good in Slash. Can’t really do that anymore). It’s annoying enough that I’m almost glad when I pick him after playing with Jam and lose pretty badly. Ah well. Here’s to hoping that my Jam gets better and my Ky gets worse. lol
I always pictured Faust would be your main as well.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:53 am
I hope Evo North has a strong Super Smash Bros. showing like Evo East did. I am unsure if you are familiar with the game or not, but our community site, Smashboards, has been reading and debating your work for years now. I hope you can get a taste for the scene because it has been strengthened by your work. The finals of Evo East can be found on YouTube and it was very exciting. I hope Smash will start to get the respect it deserves as a fighter at a flagship fighters tournament like Evolution.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Josh: Yes I’m familiar with Smash Brothers and your community. I’m glad we finally brought the game into Evolution this year (though we sort of had it 2 years ago, too). I don’t personally play it, but I have nothing against it. I voted to include it in the lineup, so you’re welcome. ;)
–Sirlin
June 20th, 2007 at 7:18 am
That’s odd. I keep hearing how huge Evo is, so you’d think they’d have solo and team tournaments for a game as popular as Guilty Gear.
June 21st, 2007 at 12:51 am
I’m a little surprised that it would be difficult to find a team. Seems many would jump at the chance to team up with you. Though I can see why you would wanna keep out ‘rifraf’ as well.
I’m also surprised that you say your Faust has some problem matchups. I always felt Faust was pretty good at preserving his playstyle except perhaps against Millia, Chipp, maybe Eddie or Axl?
Who are these troublesome encounters in your experiences?
June 21st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Alex, Evolution is run over a weekend. We have 8 tournaments, each with hundreds of people. It’s absolutely incredible that we are able to finish all 8 in one weekend. The organizers don’t even consider ggxx one of the top games for some reason. But anyway, if it had team and singles, every other game would want it too. That’s 16 tournaments. It’s impossible in the time allowed. I encourage a lot more protesting over ggxx team tournaments next year.
Kicks: I haven’t looked for a ggxx team. I enjoyed teaming up with Ruin and XenoTiger the last couple years, but I doubt they will be in Chicago. I’m prepared to go it alone, but maybe someone good will want to join me at the last minute, shrug.
Sometimes I do really well with Faust. Like, really well. I can take advantage of the items pretty well and play the odds with them. But then I get rushed down by a random May or Ino or something and with I either had way more speed (Chipp) or way more hp and damage (Potemkin). I’ll stick with him. It’s mostly just that I don’t have nearly the experience against a wide range of opponents with him yet.
–Sirlin
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Oh, okay then. I didn’t really know much about how the event worked in the first place.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
Speaking of CCCV2, I finally got around to picking that up last week. Unfortunately it made a corrupted save on my off-brand memory card, and now I can no longer access the memory card manager for that card (or save CCCV2 progress on it).
Good luck at Evo North.