Charge moves and you

One of the things that I rarely see used in online play are charge moves. Most characters have at least one move that can be charged up, prior to releasing. Once you've fully charged the move, it will automatically execute, and usually the properties are altered in some way. Usually these are automatic guard stuns, meaning that even if the opponent blocks the movie, they will still be staggered and have their guard broken.

Using a charge move requires a little bit of finesse, and is not something that you want to use frequently. At best, the move should be used sparingly, and as a way of mixing up the rhythm of your fighting pattern.

Let's touch on that for a second. Every match in Virtua Fighter, at its core, has a particular rhythm behind it. Combo strings follow a certain rhythm and timing, and most players learn to anticipate and react based on this timing. As you get to know the characters a little better, you learn where their combos can be broken, and where you need input your own counter-attacks to recapture the advantage in a round. Good players learn to feel this rhythm, even if they're not explicitly aware of it, and to adapt to the rhythm that the opponent is using. Great players take this one step further, and learn to change up there rhythm to increase the difficulty in reacting to their actions.

It should be obvious at this point where charge moves fit in - they offer one more way for you to mix-up your rhythm and keep your opponent from adapting to your pattern and timing.

So, how do you use them? The first step in a game like Virtua Fighter is to establish a baseline of expectation for your opponent. What I mean is that you start by using combos and moves that are generally safe, and do not provide a lot of room for your opponent to punish you. For Brad, some of these moves and combos are PPK, PP into stance, KP, and 6P. These moves provide safe options to begin your offense from, and do not leave a large amount of room open to be punished.

The reason that you want to establish a baseline of expectation using moves like this are so that your opponent becomes trained to expect them. Good strategy in Virtua Fighter 5 involves training the opponent to expect certain things, and then deviating from those expectations to catch the opponent off guard and punish them.

Our ultimate goal in setting this baseline, is to get the opponent to start robotically blocking each part of the sequence. After getting hit with the third hit in the PPK series over and over, the opponent is gradually going to become trained to block low after seeing two punches. It is at this point that we start to introduce new moves. Remember the golden rule - don't change what is working. If your opponent is not able to deal with what you are doing, then you should not change it. Let them adapt first, and then change up your gameplan.

Once you've managed to get your opponent to block each part of the sequence, mix things up by introducing a charged move. Brad's charge move fits in fairly well with the above mentioned sequence, and the new string to introduce is PP, 6, K (charge). This comes out as two punches, then entering into his ducking stance, and lastly, fully charging his knee. If you have trained your opponent correctly, they will sit their blindly waiting for the last kick, only to eat a fully charged knee and then be comboed.

Why not just use a throw instead? This is a good question - the short answer is because this is different than a throw. The long answer has many reasons. A succesfully charged attack like Brad's knee will break either standing or ducking guard. The knee will enable a combo, whereas a throw will not. Perhaps most important of all, it's good to do different things. The more varied you can make your attack, the more difficult it will be for your opponent to figure out how to deal with it.

You want to use charges sparingly, and mainly as a way to prevent your opponent from getting comfortable with any particular method of blocking. Make the opponent uncomfortable defending, and you will be one step closer to winning the match.

The alternative to fully charging is to partially delay your attacks. This will not alter the properties of the move, but it does provide another alternative to mix-up your rhythm. The ideal situation that you are aiming for is to unload your move right as your opponent realizes that they have a chance to strike and knock you out of your combo. If you have correctly judged your opponent, you will be awarded a counterhit, and can punish accordingly.

Charge moves can also provide the opportunity for good okizeme. That is - wake up games. Each time you knock your opponent down, a guessing game begins. Will your opponent rise with a mid or low kick? Will they roll away? Will they tech roll? Or will they stand up and block. When I've knocked my opponent down, I'm aiming to train them to rise and block. By punishing them for rising and attacking, you can set imbue your opponents with the need to block when they rise. Once you've accomplished this, you can start introducing charged attacks, once again, as a way to punish your opponent for rising and blocking.

Charge attacks should be used sparingly, and when the time is right, you'll feel it. I find myself using them at most once every 3 or 4 matches, simply because they put you at a high risk, and you need to know that you have got your opponent pegged correctly on their block.

That's all for now, but I'll post again soon with the other aspect of rhyhtm and mix-ups that are important - throws.

On Failure

If there's one thing that you need to become accustomed to, in order to continue improving, it is failure.

A player that I have come across a number of times, named V MIRZA, has written in his XBox Live Bio that "I know my skill level. If you're better than me, I won't try". After the second match that we played in which he just gave up, I grew frustrated, and messaged him.

"Why do you play VF5?" I asked.

His reply was something to the effect of "Because it's a game requiring skill, is good quality and isn't flashy or stupid like DoA".

An excellent reply I thought - these are the key reasons someone should play. So "Why don't you try to actually play then?" I returned. His repsonse was telling. "I get worried that I'll lose and won't get better".

There it is. Loss and failure are funny things. In many ways, they are counter-intuitive to the way we think about improvement. If I'm improving, why do I keep failing? In every skill-based pursuit I've ever tried to improve at, I have found that the formula is inevitably one step backwards, and two steps forwards. The tricky part is that we often greatly perceive the step backwards, and only slightly notice the movement forward.

A loss only truly becomes failure when we are unwilling to take stock of why we lost, and how we can improve from it. Every single loss that you experience during your quest to improve and grow, as a VF5 player, is an opportunity to learn about your own weaknesses, and a chance to grow as a skilled fighter.

V MIRZA's comment is a common attitude. There are a lot of people out there that will avoid losing in many ways. Some players will do what V MIRZA does, and simply give up. If you've given up, you can then take comfort in the claim that your loss wasn't because you tried your best and lost, it was simply because you weren't trying. Some players will blame their losses on luck, or lag. Some players will make ridiculous comments like "I prefer fighting people with variety, instead of canned combos". This just means that they enjoy fighting people that they can beat.

If you truly want to become the best player possible, it is essential that you be willing to look at your own losses with a honest introspection. There is nothing that will provide you greater insight into how you can improve, than by reviewing your own matches, and seeing what your opponent is exploiting.

Over at VFDC, people have made complaints about a player named Unico711. Unico plays a very unique Brad. He doesn't approach Brad the same way I do, and uses a very limited moveset. The first time I played him, I couldn't understand why his level was so high - the first round that we fought, all he did was 2P me. After I adapted to that, he changed up his attack, and started using DM P+K, and full circular sweeps. And so on. People complain about the fact that all he does is low sweep spam, and DM P+K spam. But this isn't something you should ever complain about. You should either determine why you are losing to someone that is spamming moves, or look to this player as someone that you can hone your skills against. Next time you lose and are tempted to say something like this, stop yourself, and ask why you really lost. We don't lose because our opponent was "cheap" and just used 2P. We lost because we were unable to adapt to that method of attack.

One of the people that I respect the most for this approach to gaming is David Sirlin. His blog/book about playing to win advocates an approach like this one, where you do not blame your losses on something like the moves your opponent used, or their attitude, but solely focus your view inwards, and attempt to resolve any issues from there. You can read more about his point of view in his excellent book (freely available on his website), here.

That's all for now.

The goods

What, four entries and I'm already slacking on updates? This is unacceptable.

I'm in the process of building a list of the attacks that I use often with Brad, and which ones of those I need to train myself to fuzzy with afterwards, but that is taking a little longer than expected, so instead I'll write about some of Brad's moves that I've noticed are more effective than I initially realized.

• P6PK





This string is typically used in Brad's combos to followup after a successful launcher. However, by itself, this string gets me more free hits than almost any other. Coupling this string with PP and PPK mix-ups makes for a strong starting point for any Brad player. Here are some of the reason why I like this string.

PPK is a strong baseline attack for Brad. The string opens up off of Brad's jab, his fastest strike, and is a great way to interupt. The second is a free hit (I believe), and the final kick hits low, which means it's rarely blocked, unless you're getting mechanical with your offense. On top of all of that, the move is safe on hit, because Brad is at -5 frames on the last kick hitting, which means you can fuzzy guard and avoid any harm coming your way, thus resetting your offense.

In contrast to PPK, P6PK hits high, mid, and mid. Most opponents starting to get sick of getting hit by PPK will automatically start to block low on impulse after eating the first two punches. The two mids that follow that jab provide additionally ways to mix-up your attack, and force your opponent to guess between low and high.

Also, the third hit of this string comes out just a little bit slower than the kick in PPK. This slight delay, rather than weakening the string, is actually a strength. In my experience, the delay is just enough time for the opponent to second guess their own defense, and either switch to blocking low, or try to break you out of the string with their own attack. In the first case, they get hit by your mid. In the second case, they're going to eat a counter-hit with your knee (as far as I know, there is not enough time for them to hit you between the punch and the knee).

And on that note, there's nothing Brad players like more than getting a free neck-clinch after a counter-hit. Train yourself to enter this string as P6PK,P+G, aiming to hit the throw input right as the knee hits. If you don't connect with a counter-hit, then it's no problem, and if you do, you get to eat away a large stack of your opponent's health bar.

Against newer players, I often open with this string, going P6PK (counter-hit into neck-clinch), 8, K, K, 8, 33PP, P6PK. The result is the combo, a neck clinch, two knees to the body, throw them behind you and followup with Brad's double uppercut, and then finish off with the same string for a massive amount of damage. It's very demoralizing to get hit with all this, especially for a new player, and they almost inevitable will turtle upon rising, making for easy pickings.

Lastly, this is a great string to use along with PP to cancel into throws. Remember, the knee is just a little bit delayed for P6PK, and so after eating a few knees, your opponent is put under pressure to give you just that much more leighway in your delay, creating the perfect opportunity to mixup into a throw.





• 4K





Maybe this is obvious to a lot of people, maybe it isn't. I never used this kick when I first started out, because somehow it felt like it took ages to execute. I wanted something fast that I could hit with, and I was willing to sacrifice range to accomplish that. However, this move actually executes in 17 frames, reasonable in many cases, and opens up an excellent range option for Brad.

I typically like to play my Brad up close and aggressive. Usually that means that I don't do much fighting in his outer range. However, I've been given advice lately that I should work to space a little better throughout my games, including using his sway back to complement my existing aggressive game. Once you start playing very aggressive and close to your opponent, they will switch to using more attacks with lesser range - jabs, ducking jabs, just ANYTHING to get you out of their face. This is a great opportunity to move back out of range, let them whiff, and then close the range again and punish.

4K has great range, in and of itself, and also allows Brad to make use of all of his slipping and ducking options. One set that I've had great success with is 4K, Enter Ducking, P, P. You can delay the last P in that series of hits out of ducking, and if it counter-hits, it floats your opponent, letting you connect with P6PK (remember that little string?). This ability to enter ducking needs to be used now and then, if only because Brad is -8 on guard with this kick. That leaves enough room to ETEG if you are good (I'm not), but with the ability to cancel out of this delay into his stances, you can prevent the opponent from following up overzealously.

Don't forget, any time you have a string that you can delay well, you've got a string that you can also cancel into a throw. These are the type of mix-ups you want to abuse. Delay your strings until your opponents start blocking, and then start punishing them by throwing. Keep them guessing.

4K also has excellent ability to create a wall-bounce, I believe even on normal hit, open up the doors to abuse this move further and gain free hits and throws off of your opponents. This move can also be used to cheat out ring outs, epsecially in conjunction with Brad's throw backwards, 1P+G.

Lastly, you can just do 4K and leave it at that. Excellent range and the ability to push the opponent back is always a nice way to create a bit of distance and some breathing room. Use this move along with 2K+G at distance and you'll be able to keep your opponent guessing and frustrate them.

That's it for today, but check back soon for my list of Brad strings and attacks that are useful and fuzzyable.