• MadCatz bought Tritton not long ago. Was it a prerequisite for the MLG deal?
• Since MadCatz produces the Capcom Fightsticks, can MLG use this as leverage to get Street Fighter on the circuit?
• MadCatz has signed players like Daigo Umehara, will there be a Team MadCatz vs Team MLG battles?
• Will the agreement allow MadCatz to continue to support independent tournaments like MWC and Super NorCal?
• Can the independent scene be the breeding ground for MadCatz and MLG to scout new players?

There is a potential for major shifts in the competitive scene. Who knows how things will turn out post EVO season.

WordPress won’t embed the interview video, so I will link it here.
Time Code:
Video – Part 2 @12:20 & @58:00 + all of Part 3
MP3 – @52:00 & @97:55

From my impressions of the interview, there seems to be a bit of bad blood back in the early days of the Street Fighter scene. MLG’s first attempt to support the scene was met with immature players booing and general intolerance at non-fighting games. Because of that, MLG has been gun shy about sponsoring another tournament. Now that we have grown up a little, MLG and Capcom are slowly working together to give the Street Fighter Community another chance.

However, there still appears to be a few remaining people who are still bitter about MLG’s dealings that they are willing to sabotage the goodwill everyone is trying to rebuild. The post interview commentary goes into detail about the subject, but to summarize, an unknown person was trying to build a new EVO-like international tournament. The event was disbanded afterwards but not before conning a bunch of people booking flight and hotel in advanced. The organizer stated he was bribed by an MLG employee and left forum entirely. It was bad enough MLG has to do damage control in the thread, but Capcom Japan also found the thread. Before MLG can explain their side of the story, Capcom Japan read the thread and assumed MLG was destroying independent tournament communities and stopped all plans with MLG entirely. Sundance DiGiovanni did not confirm any of the story nor did he say anything in detail, it is pure speculation by the djwheat crew. But if any of this is true, the voice of the community holds powerful sway in corporate decisions.

If the wall of text is too much, here’s my point of view:

• MLG wants Street Fighter to be a part of the circuit
• A bitter past may have left salty people trying to sabotage MLG’s attempts with Capcom
• Capcom Japan believes MLG is harming the independent tournament scene
• MLG has a stigma of being an over-controlling organization

So how can we fix this?

• Be aware of the scene. The more we know, the better we can voice our opinion to Capcom and MLG.

Whether or not you believe any of this, I leave up to you. For all I know, I could have been spouting propaganda the whole time. But I want to believe that we, the community, can help push MLG and Capcom and bring Street Fighter to the main stage.

By the way, I’m currently training for the EVO tournament next month. I’ll find some time to post something about it then.

I spent the last few weeks going through every part of the new assassin’s game and I can safely say I have seen two extreme sides to this game. On one, I enjoyed the story and the concept of the game. On the other, the game is so full of bugs that I am surprised it passed Sony’s and Microsoft’s quality control. I know not every game is perfect so small things like oddly handled jumps and AI decisions are stuff I can forgive. What really stands out is that Ubisoft managed to get away with bugs that would normally cause a game to fail certification process. And I’m going to rant on two of those bugs.

The first and probably the most obvious double twin-assassination move. Reports are all over the internet about the high chance the game will crash hard when the hidden blades kill two people at the same time and then two more in quick succession.  I stumbled onto this when I was attempting to assassinate a target in the middle of a crowd. By mistake, I killed the innocent people around me. In my rush to chase the target, I killed two more and the game promptly locks up. Although I can see how this bug may have been missed, since the ability is not unlocked that early on and combat is merely a recommendation. This would also make certain combat related achievements hard to unlock, which leads me to my next bug.

Achievements and trophies does not unlock properly. Many of the story related ones are broken because the save system and unlock system are not synchronized. The auto-save the game creates during the moment a trophy achievement is actually ahead when the trigger occurs. So, if by chance the game quits when the save happens but before the unlock, the will never give the unlock until the next playthrough. Another trophy achievement bug is about the character upgrades. The game has different sizes of item bags available at certain times. When a large item bag is purchased, the smaller bags are locked out. Logically, that makes sense because a smaller bag would be useless. However, the unlock checks for every item purchased and not the highest level, even though that is what the requirement describes. What this means is that this unlock will never happen as soon as a player skips a bag size. I don’t know exactly what is in the certification process, but I am certain this would cause any other game to get rejected.

So why does this game get a pass when others normally wouldn’t? Maybe the game was too big for QA to deal with in a short time frame. Perhaps Sony and Microsoft are willing to forgive since the hype and popularity will move consoles. Or Ubisoft simply just paid them off. Whatever the conspiracy, it baffles me why something like this can get nominated for game of the year.

And that brings me back to my point. What does “Game of the Year” mean anymore? It’s just dark marketing magic that revives games from the dead. Any pride and respect the term carried are part of the illusion. It’s the new mass appeal of video games that allowed me to see through the veil. “Truth is nothing and everything is permitted”.

Everyone go to work
At that start of the battle, if over half of your team grabs the worker hat, you’re in for a fast fight. I found that the team who gathers all of the stone resources at the start will usually win. On every map, there is a central location where all of stone is mined. By preventing the other team from controlling this point, they are much slower at upgrading their classes.

Stop exploding you cowards
Famous lines from the great Zapp Brannigan and it holds true to Fat Princess. There are two meanings behind this. One is to know when to retreat. It is faster to run back a few steps, hold still to recover health, and head back into the fight. Dying in Fat Princess makes you wait 5 seconds before you can respawn. Then you have to go pick a hat and hike across the map. If you stop dying, you’re more than likely to unlock the Thuggee trophy (kill 88 enemies in a single online game without dying).

The second meaning behind the quote is about the siege bombs. When the worker class is upgraded, the dispenser will start to drop bombs. They’re mainly meant to blow up the other team’s doors. But they’re mostly abused and are thrown blindly into the frontlines. If you ever see one come at you, just run. Stop what you’re doing and run. These bombs have a nasty habit of causing friendly fire. Be especially careful when fire wizards are around. One fire blast and that bomb will explode in your hands. Also get rid of any bomb piles that accumulate at your base. I seen one pile that was spread in such a way that the resulting chain reaction annihilated the base, leaving it empty for raiding.

Build a three-man outpost turret
On certain maps, there are outposts along the main path. Have two upgraded priests and a ranger sit together at the top of the tower and you can kill any target in less than a second. Dark priests can drain the life of a target fairly quickly. So having two will leave the target with a sliver of life instantly. But dark priests alone can’t make the kill. Have the ranger spam arrow shots and mayhem ensues. When all three hold on the lock-on button, everyone will always target the same person. One priest may have to pull double duty and spam the group heal from time to time. But watch out when the enemy charges together. Two or three fully charged mages attacking simultaneously can break this setup.

Soccer slaughter abuse
There are some trophies that are hard to do in regular battles. Setup an online room full of bots on a soccer map they will blindly follow the soccer ball, making them easy targets. This is the easiest way to get the Ring Sting, Who’s Your Daddy?, and Thuggee trophies.

Don’t be stale, mate
One major complaint I’ve been hearing a lot from other people are the matches ending in stalemate. Technically, battles of attrition do have one side winning with the combined point total. But these long matches are a pain to deal with. If you’re not willing to endure another extended match, play the other modes like Team Deathmatch. That “Jump In” button always seems to put me in the usual “Rescue the Princess” mode, so I have to mess around with the custom game settings.

I hope Titan Studios continues to update the game with new maps and items. After playing Fat Princess every night, things are getting a bit mindless. Maybe some cake will fix things.