Alex the Angry Ryu Player

Ryu (4.5) Ken (5.5) Ken is the aggressor in this matchup. Essentially, Ryu's job is to let Ken kill himself as he tries to break through Ryu's rock-solid defence and zoning game. Ken players tend to be quite impatient by nature and will often resort to taking bigger risks when frustrated by an effective fireball/dp defense. Zoning is Ryu's most effective tool here; his mission is to keep Ken  out . Ken's over-arching goal is to get inside Ryu's safe fireball distance and begin his step kick/kara throw mixup game. Once in, he has a serious advantage in the ensuing footsie battle and can often fluster players with kara throw mixups. Hence, Ryu needs to concentrate on mounting an effective zoning defence early in the round. Start off with a basic zoning game, throwing fireballs and remembering to dragon punch (dp) all of Ken's attempted jump-ins. If Ken gets close, cr.mk > hadouken is a very effective tool to keep him at bay. Applying these three

The presence of Ken on the character roster poses an interesting proposition to existing Ryu players. What if you could take Ryu and enhance his offensive capabilities in exchange for a slight nerf to his zoning game? Ken is a nasty little bastard at the best of times. He has formidable footsie options, an infuriating mixup game and huge combo potential while still retaining much of Ryu's zoning game. Yet the oft-heralded tier lists frequently place Ryu ahead of Ken. This is understandable; on paper, Ryu is superior to Ken. Conventional wisdom dictates that v2012 Ryu is superior due to the many buffs he received to restore his appeal as a character following AE (Ken, in comparison, was tuned with a number of nerfs). If we break down both characters across a number of categories (assuming each category is assigned equal weighting), we can start to paint a picture of the competitiveness of each character: Ryu vs. Ken Comparison Table (a green highlight denotes a win

This article will take a markedly less formal approach and instead focus on raw gameplay tips. Given that the v2012 update is now applied across all platforms, a list of baseline Ryu tips and tricks could potentially be a useful discussion. The following is a list of principles the writer considers 'best practice' during Ryu play. By themselves, they do not win games, however as part of an overall strategy and solid technique such methods have the potential to turn a bad round into a win. Ryu Best Practice Ryu's best counter-hit setup is close st.hk. Higher-level players are particularly adept at the OS tech game and will easily block your pressure strings and tech all your throws. Break through this barrier with st.hk. Not only will it land you a counter-hit, it will also yield additional frame advantage to follow up with whatever you like (usually cr.hk if the opponent is crouching). This setup is best used after the first hit of your blockstring i.e. j.mk, cr.l

Most characters in the game by their very nature have an implied mandate as to how they 'should' be played; Guile is focused on  defense , Sagat is a zoner and the twins excel at solid, sustained  rush-down . Ryu however, does not come with any such disclaimer. He can turtle just as well as Guile, or zone in a similar fashion to Sagat . His rushdown may not equal that of the twins, but in the hands of a master he can come very close. Having played against a plethora of styles and templates throughout the past three iterations of the game, the writer is of the firm belief that the best players are able to use him aggressively .  This is of course  the greatest challenge of all since Ryu does not possess any reliable 'get-in-quick' moves to fluster the opponent at will. This is a fundamental shortcoming of the character that opponents are all too well aware of. Almost every other character in the game has one or more such moves to position themselves (often safely) wi

What are the core traits of top-tier SF4 players? The community often finds itself observing the gameplay habits of more well-known players in order to adequately define a formula that defines a 'top' player. This is a subject of intense debate and efforts to distill these traits in to one definitive 'stack' vary considerably. For the purposes of this article, the writer has restricted the discussion to  in-game  traits, that is, traits that players exhibit while playing. This deliberately omits practice which is arguably the most important trait of all. YouTube videos provide a wealth of consumable information. Never before in the history of fighting games have players had such a vast library of recorded matches at their fingertips. Yet these videos only provide half the story. As spectators, we are limited to making educated guesses regarding the thought processes unfolding before us. Steve Jobs once remarked the following to writer David Sheff in an interview

Ryu can be played in a myriad of different ways. The included flowchart is just one example. T his is merely a high-level overview of basic Ryu play and is  not intended to address all scenarios.  Note however, that this play style can remain  very effective given how well you read your opponent. Figure 1: The Reactive Ryu Ryu has two primary specials (we are going to ignore the tatsumaki for the moment). Hadouken, which controls horizontal space, and Shoryuken, which controls vertical space. Due to the nature of these specials and the space they control, Ryu can theoretically win using only these two moves. Given this, Ryu's gameplan can be distilled down even further: Figure 2 : Ryu Gameplay (Simplified) The above assumes you are at your opponent's jump-in range. It could be argued that this degenerates Ryu's gameplan into a game of rock-paper-scissors, thereby leaving too much to chance. This is a fair assessment, however one must acknowledge that