In fighting games there are fundamental rules that carry over into each other. Things like light attacks being quick and weak, heavy attacks being slow and strong, super meters being used for super attacks and overhead attacks hitting crouched opponents.
Thinking within these fundamentals is the right way to quickly latch onto the different fighting games there are in tandem with the kind of things that go without saying, like reading your opponent and reacting accordingly, but there are many techniques that go beyond the basic rules of the game and can elevate a player from being simply “good” to being “gud.” These are the methods utilized both in and out of the games that give a player that extra push into mastering fighting games as a genre and earning the respect and admiration of their peers. With this post, I hope I can lead players into that push so that we can all enjoy playing fighting games at the highest levels of play. These are my tips and tricks on how to get gud at fighting games.
- Taunt
Taunting is the most critical and important part of any fighting game that has it. A taunt shows the opponent that they ain’t shit and asserts your dominance as the better player. When the opponent is downed, taunt. If your opponent is standing there waiting for you to make a move, taunt. There may be times in which your opponent will hit you while taunting, but that just means you didn’t time it right. Taunting is more important than any combo. If you can taunt well, you have the leg-up.
- Self-balance
No fighting game is truly balanced, at least not perfectly. Some characters will inevitably be better than others and for the sake of fairness, it’s important to keep such characters under control. When you have truly become gud and know you’re the best, the only way to defeat you is with a character that is busted and unfair. Therefore, if you lose to a character, and you are playing in person with the authority to do so, ban that character from being used for the sake of fairness. If that character happens to be one you’re using, this means that player is cheating in some way, so instead of banning the character, ban that player from participating. No one likes a cheater and you’ll never get gud having to deal with them.
- Stopping
the Loss
In order to truly be unbeatable, you must mitigate losing. This is easy to achieve online with some simple tricks. If you are about to lose, simply disconnecting will prevent you from being sent to that losing screen, keeping up your win streak. On the PC, this can be quickly achieved by pressing ALT with F4, while on PS4 it can be done by holding down the PS Home button, then choosing to close the application. This will forcibly close any open programs without having to go through the menus. Doing it on the PS4 is obviously trickier than on PC, since there are added steps, but with practice you can close the game in one second, as shown by famed fighting game player Dale Wilson.
Sometimes this doesn’t work for some reason or another, in which case you must physically unplug your system in order to make it work. This can be achieved by unplugging the power cord, but to save yourself from having to reboot it, you can also unplug the Ethernet cable, if you’re playing with a wired connection (though I highly recommend playing on Wifi). This is a technique known as plugging and is an important part of getting gud.
- Distracting
Disruption
Plugging works when playing online, but in person it’s practically impossible to get to the cords fast enough to prevent yourself from losing, so instead a different method is required. If your opponent is close to winning, distract them from their playing through physical contact. A kick, punch or shove will do. This should give you the opportunity you need to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Keep in mind this is not a form of cheating, as it is a fighting game and there is no rule against it. Be sure to inform the opponent of this, should they accuse you of cheating.
Also keep in mind opponents do not take kindly to losing when this technique is employed and may in fact start to assault you. Should this happen, utilize all you have learned from fighting games to win the fight and if anyone declares “Mortal Kombat!” then you have the clearance to kill your attacker.
- The
Meaning of “GG”
This is more a skill of etiquette rather than playing the game, but when you fight someone they might send a message to you with the letters “GG” in them. This has more than one meaning. If the game in question was one from the Guilty Gear franchise, the player is informing you of the game you just played. If not, “GG” is an acronym for “Grimy Garbage.” It is an insult that should be returned in kind. If you want to be gud you can’t take that crap from nobody.
- The
Controller Spike
When you truly lose and accept the results as such, the most effective and efficient way to communicate “I concede this victory to you” is with the age-old method of the controller spike.
The moment you have truly lost, you need only take your controller and fastball it into the ground as hard as you can. The controller spike is a gesture of honor and dignity with a very clear meaning, so once you do it you need only walk away. If you are practiced enough in this technique, you will not need the controller anymore and can leave it.
If you are using an arcade stick, you probably can’t fastball it because you need two hands to throw it. Instead, hit it with your fists as hard as you can. Throwing it is optional, but due to an arcade stick’s wider frame to absorb the shock, it won’t be very effective. If you manage to split the arcade stick in half, the point will be gotten across even better than a controller spike.
PC players using a keyboard for their fighting games (yes, that’s just as valid a method) can opt to hit or spike their keyboard and possibly the rest of the computer. However, most keyboard players only play online, thus the message would not go through.
- Drugs
Performance enhancing substances are illegal in sports, but you don’t see a lot of mandatory drug tests for fighting game events, especially not online ones. This means that such drugs are at your disposal.
A steady diet of energy drinks, Adderall and/or Straterra is how you get good, but to get gud you want the stronger stuff. I recommend cocaine.
Cocaine (or crack), speeds you up and allows you to play at max efficiency in a near-instant, further guaranteeing your victory. It is important to remember, however, that you must maintain a steady supply of it. After your enhancement wears off, you may start to feel sluggish and depressed. This can be fixed with more cocaine.
As you can imagine, this is a bit of a money sink, so you’ll likely run out of money and will have to start selling your stuff, possibly your home and eventually your games and your arcade stick until you start stealing from others to pay for more, followed by an eventual arrest and a life in prison where you will likely be killed.
Possible negatives aside, it will help you win, which is what’s important.
- Code
Modification
The secret weapon to any player, and the hardest to pull off, is code modification. With sufficient coding skills, one can access the code of a game directly and manipulate it in all manner of crazy ways. Some possible changes can be purely cosmetic, like changing models or voices, but others have a practical use, such as preventing your HP bar from depleting.
This is not exactly easy to do for the average person, obviously. Coding is a very specialized field, especially when it comes to games. You may have to shell out for a professional to make this work, but if you can you will be substantially more gud than you were to begin with, capable of winning games with relative ease.
Be warned though, there are many people who will get salty over your victories and attempt to report you. They will accuse you of “cheating” or “hacking” and it’s even possible that someone in the game’s dev team will fall for it and ban you from playing online.
If this happens, it is imperative to make sure everyone knows of the injustice so that nobody supports that game again. Don’t just tell friends. If random strangers don’t know, tell them too. Tell everyone in as loud a voice as you can so that you will not be silenced. An important part of being gud is helping everyone else get gud.
Follow these steps and you will truly get gud. You will become as much a skilled and respected fighting game player as I am as well as an undefeated champion who will be heralded in history as one of the all-time greats as Twitter accounts repeatedly post quotations of your advice.
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