FGC vs Smash: Landing a Hit

have you heard of no neutral November it's a fun Twitter Trend where during November fighting game players post their favorite moves that skip neutral like bardock's Lafayette and that was a popular one who needs to work to find it here when you can just press your neutral skip button and immediately start your pressure I saw that a friend posted Colleen's V trigger great pick I remember her Terror I saw Gordo's Grim Reaper that's a really strong example my current favorite is definitely Rose Thunderclap tons of fun for me someone posted kizame in Ultimate Ninja 2 and free I don't know what's going on there but now that I think about it I do know a character that was skipping neutral in an arena fighter as well smash players participate in the trend too however something is weird about their selections because I've noticed that none of the moves these players are posting actually skip neutral like here are some of the smash posts from esam Pikachu's neutral beam definitely a strong tool but you absolutely still need to play neutral min's ram ram okay she's voided out dalson ridiculously strong neutral game for sure but she isn't skipping neutral here uh I see cloud back here a lieutenant back from buttons I mean these are just strong disjointed tools but they definitely don't skip neutral for you fox and Sheik's entire existence once again crazy good neutral but they aren't skipping it Victor's F tilt okay I'm starting to think that smash players have a different definition of skipping neutral so what's going on Street Fighter Smash Brothers goatee gear Tekken they're all variations of the same thing a fighting game of course fighting game fans know that there are several important differences between each and every game but from the outside looking in Smash Brothers Guilty Gear these are just slightly different breeds of the same thing like a Husky and Labrador what's the fuss a dog is a dog that was easily the most ignorant statement I have ever allowed onto this Channel and I'm sure dog owners worldwide would cringe upon hearing it in a way not too dissimilar to when fighting game players here the street fighter is just like Smash Bros but I don't blame them because really despite the obvious differences most fighting games have a lot in common there's the typical stuff player versus player from a third person view normal specials guarding and grabbing but they even share Advanced fighting game concepts with punishment stage control option select hit confirms frame Advantage neutral archetypes anti-airs Fireballs combo scaling empty jumps guard council's guard crushing Mix-Ups what else can I pluck from this lustrous glossary ah cross-ups attacking your opponents immediately after changing which horizontal side you're facing usually by jumping over them because blocking requires holding the direction away from your opponent in most fighting games close-up attacks will force players to quickly switch their blocking direction from left to right or vice versa or else they will get hit this is true you but that's not what a cross-up is over in Smash Bros over there a cross-up just means a move that ends with you on the other side of the opponent just keep in mind that dashtag is generally not safe against Shield it can cross up at close range against a few slim characters but it can still be punished if they predict it which technically means that if we followed smash's usage of the term this would be considered a cross-up but of course smash uses a block button so naturally the meaning would change slightly what about um Fame traps two attacks back to back that leave a very small gap between them the Gap will be shorter than the defender's fastest attack which means if they try to attack with a normal they will get counter hit oh wow that's a super clean description I would have simply said that a frame trap is when you leave a gap big enough that your block string isn't true and your opponent can Mash but the Gap is also so small that they'll be punished if they do Mash I guess that's the same thing though but um if I double check this definition with a friend who exclusively plays smash what is a frame trap a frame trap is when an opponent can air Dodge to escape a combo but you can cover that escape option with another move so either they don't air Dodge and they get hit or they air Dodge and they get hit it sure is thank you for the Wii confirmation I take it something unique to platform Fighters nope in Smash frame trap as well has a completely different meaning even though the traditional fighter definition of a frame trap is still possible within smash clearly there are some differences between traditional Fighters and platform Fighters worth talking about but there's just so many elements that we could pick apart we could talk about having a wall for a corner versus an off stage we could talk about the effects of a life bar versus a percentage or we could even talk about the first assumption that interactive combo somehow makes for a better quality fighting game but that's gonna have to wait we only have so much time so for this video all I want to focus on is how to hit someone or more clearly the process behind finding and Landing your hits doing so in a traditional Fighter versus doing so in a platform fighter and by platform fighter I mean smash ultimate like I've barely played the others and I don't really want to sorry there's a good chance that the things I say about smash ultimate May apply to other platform Fighters but be aware of my bias on the other hand traditional Fire 2 is also a rather nebulous term every time I say it I could mean anything from Street Fighter to Tekken to Guilty Gear to Sailor Moon that's real tradition but I am entering this comparison with games like King of Fighters and Guilty Gear as my representatives for traditional fighter mainly because they feel the closest to smash so it just feels natural for comparison but I'm aiming for what I say to apply to most traditional Fighters as well but that's enough prefacing let's put the spotlight on my ex chip zaniff and put ourselves in his shoes I mean sandals chip is a rush down character with blistering speed he's not always required to be the aggressor but in this scenario that is the road we'll play we want to land a meaningful hit and with Chip's moveset that's only possible if we manage to get over there I'll go post this Leo player knows this as much as the chip does and he's prepared to stop chip from succeeding we have all been in ship's position before how do we get there obviously we pick our opportunities to carefully work our way in but how far in and what buttons do we press out of chips Arsenal here are some of the buttons that would be floating around in your mind during these moments 5K 2K jump H far slash 2D and jump D the button that you press really depends on your goal if you just want something to connect your best buttons in neutral would be your pokes fastlash 2D jump D but most of the time that's not what we're actually aiming for instead we want to land these buttons they don't have the best range but we want them to connect because they have greater reward unlike the pokes they can be followed up in several ways making them great to establish pressure or perform a damaging combo two things you typically won't get out of your pokes the best part about successfully Landing these moves is that it really doesn't matter if the opponent blocks them or not as long as your hitbox connects with their hurt box you're running your game at best you're doing damage and at worst the opponent hopefully squanders under your oppressive block strings I'd like to emphasize that in a traditional fighter blocking is a very bad position to be in and it's often just a precursor to getting hit hence we do all we can to avoid it ideally we maneuver in ways that allow us to completely avoid the opponent's buttons but when you're unable to outrun a speed demon-like chip we have no choice but to directly counter their approach and that is what our layer must do real good oh but there we go like we say I still trying to throw out these buttons and pretend to run up there for being one hit hit confirm able to get the meter out of him and that is a very simple look into the process behind Landing a hit in a traditional fighter now if we turn the page over to smash we get a completely different experience this is Fox vs cloud like chip Fox is yet another rushdown character with blistering speed he also wants to get into a closer range and land a meaningful hit but he'll have to make it past Buster sword Cloud's big disjointed weapon that occupies the space around him all right so we could repeat the process of going over what buttons Fox aims to press but I'd rather just play the clip and let this excellent display of aggression speak for itself okay so he ran into Cloud's preferred range but he parried the Forward Air beautifully and gets to take his turn and for his turn he empty jumps and then he presses Shields okay maybe this clip is a little too unordinary to use so let's look at a different one okay so he precious Sparkle shield with neutral air this is fox's safest aerial so it's a common pressure tool to see use he hasn't quite gotten the hit yet though so once he lands what does he do the spot Dodge then Dash away okay he didn't manage to get the hit here let's just find another clip there we go a simpler interaction Fox successfully gets close to cloud and then he holds the shield button and then he does a four hop and attacks the air the same air that cloud jumped right into and suffered a hit from a very simple way of getting a meaningful hit if you're solely a traditional fighting game player this is a pretty what the [ __ ] approach to aggression welcome to smash because the lines are constantly blurred [Music] Landing a hit requires an entirely different approach because shielding is a drastically different mechanic to blocking mainly it's ridiculously stronger thanks to a mechanic cord out of Shield put simply after you put your Shield up in Smash dropping the shield comes with some recovery frames Where You're vulnerable however with out of Shield moves you're able to skip the recovery portion of dropping shield and immediately cancel your shield into a specific set of moves think of it like a guard cancel except it's free faster and does real threatening damage some characters come with a good set of out of Shield options While others don't but for the majority of the cast it's a mechanic that you always have to be on the lookout for tapping someone's Shield always poses a risk and because of this threat players not only need to enter their preferred range but they also need to figure out how they're actually going to hit the opponent without the situation instantly being reversed on them for merely breathing on a shield and this is at the core of why throwing out buttons and fishing for hits is such a different game in Smash compared to traditional Fighters players pressure their opponents with safe buttons that have little lags so they can at least be safe if the opponent Shields it or they attempt to space their buttons well enough to be outside of the punish range but that's just short pressure sometimes it's necessary to play riskier doing things like empty jumps to bait people into taking an action out of shield and then punishing them for it or well grabbing the shield I guess the threat of out of Shield is why you see this fox entering what looks like the ideal range for the character and then all of a sudden its defensive options Galore this is actually a pretty common scenario in Smash because that's just how the game works finding a hit isn't just about overcoming them in neutral it's also about seeking out their defensive habits and baiting them into exposing themselves to an attack that's definitely an extra step that I don't have to go through when I play my traditional Fighters as I said before once you're in you're in regardless of whether they managed to block or not if they're blocking the moves we often land are ones that now move us onto step two offense and defense the mix-up game full of stagger pressure high lows resets all that fun stuff whereas in Smash seeing the enemy Shield could be rather frightening finding any hit is a blurry Endeavor and it's never really clear who is in a good position and who isn't a bad one until you actually see that hit successfully connect seeing special ultimate appear in no neutral November will always be weird because nobody skips neutral in that game I don't see how they could without instantly breaking the game because the steps to Landing that hit in Smash is fundamentally different in a traditional fighter we very frequently settle for at least connecting with our opponents even if they're blocking our attack that's good for the aggressor neutral is over it's on to the pressure game in these games some characters come with obnoxious neutral tours that often allow them to forego the entire process of cleverly working your way in and instead they skip straight to the phase where the opponent is blocking and the game continues from there this just can't exist in Smash when you have mechanics like out of Shield you rarely even want to settle for them shielding your buttons in neutral Smash characters do come with tools reminiscent of neutral skips in a traditional fighter but block strings don't exist and getting in your opponent's face like that would probably just get get you killed at best the neutral skip tools of Smash could only be ones that keep someone safe enough to pick a defensive option after the opponent's Shields and that isn't really skipping neutral if you're the one that ends up having to play defense the opposite of what happens in a traditional fighter with all that said I have been getting dangerously close to feeding into smash propaganda before I end this video I think it's extremely important for me to be clear where I stand and curb any false interpretations that people might be getting about the neutral game of Smash ultimate there is a strong belief among several smash players that neutral is more important in their game than it is in most traditional Fighters and there are several things fueling that belief smash has very loose movement options typically less punishing combos so there's more time spent moving all over the place the presence of platforms on stages you know it's easy to see all these things and on the surface assume that good neutral is an even more central part of your play in Smash than it is in a traditional fighter when I was merely a spectator of Smash I naively bought into that very belief however now that I've played smash ultimate I can confidently tell you that that isn't true look I'm gonna keep this short because this part is super subjective and it pretty much only applies to smash ultimate and not other platform Fighters but I do not think a game where you can reap so much benefit from sitting in your Shield is one where neutral is the most important watch traditional Fighters and see how much effort players constantly put into making sure they can evade their opponent's attacks of course this effort exists in Smash 2 but you can easily find several moments where actual movement is neglected in favor of sitting in your shield and giving your opponent trouble through that alone this is the fighting game where you can go anywhere and everywhere why is it also the one that rewards you for not moving out of the way it's made worse by how difficult it is to get a whiff punish in Smash ultimate with punishment is such a huge part of neutral in so many fighting games it's never easy to do perfectly but you don't have to be perfect in a traditional fighter when you're too slow to get the punish and they manage to block you'll at least either be in an advantageous position or simply continue playing neutral but in Smash being too slow on a whiff punish may actually get you killed if the opponent is able to Shield which is a brutal consequence in a game where most moves are actually incredibly safe on web even at the top level you'll frequently see failed with punishes when everything is so safe it's so encouraging to just throw some crap out there constantly as long as you have just that one frame you need to be able to just Shield afterwards who cares if you almost got whiff punished you probably turned it into a good thing but you know I'm not saying that smash neutral is worse I am but there are too many perspectives to look at this from it's hard to undersell the skill it takes in Smash to open someone up when it genuinely does take that extra effort to read someone's defensive habits and still somehow overcome their Shield however staying truly on top of your movement in a traditional fighter when you have no leniency to even block is a completely different skill set in itself these things are hard to compare all I know are these free truths one never listen to a smash player boast about neutral in their game 2. King of Fighters is the only fighting game with good neutral anyway three smash is easily the hardest fighting game to find a hit in it's because to actually hit someone I have to do all of this foreign [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Daz is Bambo

Views: 128,215

Keywords: Fighting Games, Guilty Gear, Neutral

Id: _osEv8-WJUQ

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023