The start of the big time player

Alright. I've loved playing Virtua Fighter for a long time, and have always appreciate the ridiculous amount of depth that the game provides for a player to delve into. Fighting games have always been my favorite type of video game for precisely this reason - the decision tree is rich, and the gameplay is dynamic. Micro-management isn't necessary, as it is in real time strategy games, and you can play a game and be finished in under a minute.

But enough about why I choose to play. What is this blog? This blog has manifested as a result of a few things. Firstly, I love Virtua Fighter 5, and have a deep desire to continue improving. Part of the learning process for me is sharing and teaching. I don't consider myself excellent at the game, but I do believe that everyone who has learned something can then in turn pass that knowledge along. By teaching (in this case, by writing about it in a blog), I am able to learn that piece of information a second time. Blogging gives me a way to articulate and breakdown what I've learned into manageable chunks that I can go back and review if I like.

The impetus for this blog comes from Konjou Akira and Leonard McCoy's excellent blogs for Akira and Goh, respectively. When I first started playing VF 5 three months ago, I cruised through the forums of VFDC, looking for good Brad advice. There's definitely some excellent analysis available out there of his various moves, his advantages, disadvantages, what to do in certain situations, but there is something that I feel is missing. The human element.

I like learning from stories. I like understanding along with the person that is writing. Somehow, it helps me plug in a little bit more than I would if I only read through a set of moveslists that I've got sorted based on the advantage in frames that I have when a move is guarded (don't underestimate the usefulness of this though. More on that later).

It wasn't until I started playing Goh that I came across Leonard McCoy's blog, and then by searching for more blog's, Konjou Akira's. It was with great dismay that I saw in these blogs a lot of information that would have helped greatly early on, as I first trying to gain an understanding of the basic concepts like advantage and disadvantage.

Anyhow, my goal is to do the same thing for Brad. The forums at VFDC these days are slowing down, as Soul Calibur 4 has been released, and VF5R is now out in arcades in Japan, but I'm still as interested as ever in improving my Brad game, and I will continue to learn in spite of all that. This blog will detail the things that I learn as I continue to progress, and it will point out the common pitfalls that I have made in the hopes that anyone starting out new with Brad can read about them and avoid making the same mistakes that I have.

What this blog is NOT. This blog is NOT an attempt by me to present myself as an exceptional Virtua Fighter player, because... I'm not. This blog isn't an attempt by me to supercede anyone else's knowledge, nor to contradict the wealth of information that is already out there. If you see something that you disagree with, then write me a comment and let me know - the more I can learn using this blog, the better. After all, this is just one more tool to help me in my quest to continue to develop and grow.