Relive all the punches with these EVO 2011 finals videos

@Dance Mofo I believe it was just Red Bull.

@Outrager oh

@onslaughtree
>Complaining about Sentinal
It's really like I'm back at the day when MvC3 first launched.

If anything Phoenix ruins this game, it's like you have to play with a completely different mind set.

@onslaughtree Sentinel is upper tier, but he's not that great. Good assist, good for DHCs, but if he gets touched, he's done. A lot of characters make Sentinel look free.

@ShadowSoldier89 I keep hearing that. Aren't there game systems involved that prevent turtling and overly defensive play in BB?

@Bluebreaker
There are, but I think the guard crush meter takes longer to deplete than in previous incarnations. I haven't played much BB since CT though. So I might be wrong.

@Bluebreaker This, ugh. The Marvel final had some moments, I'll admit it (that Tron comeback, damn), and I desperately hate watching marvel 90% of the time.

Arcade Edition, though? Latif plays a really intense Viper. To see him get shut out so easily by Fei Long is just plain disturbing.

Honestly, why did Capcom think it was a good idea to turn Fei Long into a MUGEN character? :/

@Shadow Hog
I think the closest was one of the MvC3 semi finals (or maybe it was the final) were one player was down to just Tron with not much life left against all 3 of his opponents team still alive (I think all 3 were still alive, if not I know the 2 that were left each had a ton of health left) and pulled out a great comeback victory. He went on to lose the match though.

@AriesWarlock
Oh God, someone please post it.

@MP Xenon The entire issue here is with the lack of real balance in SSFIVAE because when it comes down to it, most marvel players have found a way around the "cheap" tactics.

Capcom intentionally destroyed the sense of balance in AE for the "spirit of competition". This was a really good idea for an arcade game when they did it. However, straight porting this level of imbalance to consoles, the platform on which world-series-level tournaments are played, is the worst possible thing they could have done.

Even considering that, most of the characters, high tier or low, have their strengths and can be used to good advantage by top level players. Except for one: Fei Long. Fei Long is essentially three tiers above every other character in the game, and this makes him an extremely difficult character to shut down with any tactic. It's cheap, it's annoying, and it's not surprising that the Evo Champion for SSFIVAE this year played Fei Long into the winners bracket and destroyed the competition.

This is what all the complaints about "cheap strategy" are regarding.

Short version: you're right. If it's in the game, it gets used, and Evo is famous for never banning anything in any game. (This is why Smash Brothers isn't played at Evo, incidentally.) SSF4 Arcade Edition has characters unbalanced enough that Capcom is releasing a patch, but this year at Evo the "best character" still didn't win.

Long version: the last guy is totally wrong. Before Fuudo (an extremely strong veteran who routinely makes it to the finals of national, single-elimination Japanese tourneys in Virtua Fighter) took Evo I didn't see anybody crying about Fei being some god-tier overpowered character: the twins got all of that attention. He's one of the best, mind, but he's not on the level that Yun is at all.

Yun is pretty poorly thought out: in a very defensive game he's got every offensive AND defensive tool imaginable.. It's very hard to get a hit in on him, and he never has to stop pressuring you. A few characters (Dhalsim, notably) have a near-impossible fight against him. When the game came out, he was almost immediately singled out as the best character in the game, and that has held up.

Capcom's line on Yun and Yang in AE is that the characters are intentionally too strong to "foster competition" in the arcade scene. This is PR bullshit: it doesn't make any sense from a game design angle. The arcade is not planned for as some lesser format. Of course the arcade scene has major tournaments: Japan sticks to the format for its major tourneys to this day. Six or seven years ago, during the fighter drought, Evo was done on arcade cabs too.

These games are location tested extensively before release, specifically to get the balance right. Of COURSE the developer wants a game to be balanced for the arcade, otherwise people stop playing, or they pick another game to pay $1 a match for.

When Evo started, people were talking about the Yun army. But you know what happens when you have the best character in the game? Everybody learns how to deal with him, and they learn well. Two Yuns made it to the top 8 this year, and no Yangs. A Seth was up there: hardly a "top tier" character, but the player was incredibly skilled. There was only one Fei Long, and the most "popular" character in the top 8 was C. Viper. These guys were the best players, for their characters, in the world.

Daigo Umehara, one of the strongest players playing the best character in the game, was taken down by Seth and then Viper. At that level of play, you just never know.

AE has a balance patch coming, but it's hardly the least balanced game around: Third Strike's balance was so lopsided that the game was dropped from Evo a few years ago. The tournaments just weren't exciting: same Ken vs. Yun vs. Chun-Li entries over and over again. It's a beautiful game, but the competition got boring.

Expect internet commenters to go mad with rage when 3S Online comes out shortly and SF4 players learn about Chun-Li.