Once You Pop, You Can't Stop, Part 4

Hello again all. Going to try to power through two more characters for you so let me get right to it!

Chris Redfield

To be honest, its hard for me to do the same kind of impression of Chris as I have for the other characters so far. I have made some observations but nothing overly earth shattering. He is one of the first people I am going to take into the lab when I get the game because I feel like I understand him less than most of the other characters. However, that wont stop me from sharing what I have learned.

The thing I like most about Chris is that he is the closest thing we are going to get to The Punisher, a Marvel character I love who didn't make it into MvC3. Chris has almost every piece of traditional military hardware you can imagine in his back pocket and it's all pulled from the Resident Evil series. He's got a combat knife, a 9mm pistol, sub machinegun, magnum revolver, a shotgun, a flame thrower, an RPG launcher and some land mines and frag grenades to round it out. We dont really see characters like this in fighting games too often so I m looking forward to playing with him. He isn't as adorable as B.B. Hood, but he has more guns and thats a trade off I am willing to make.

I want to say that Chris is a keep away character, but that doesn't really do him justice. While he has tons of projectile attacks, they aren't all longe range. In fact many of his projectile attacks have limited range, like his flamethrower and shotgun. In fact I think just his pistol and sub machine gun have full screen range. His land mine is the only tool he has to deter someone from pushing in on him but it's easy to jump over and Chris has no good way of dealing with arial threats. Pairing him with a character with a good anti air assist will help this, but short of that, characters with strong 8-way air dashes or double jumps will have an easy time getting in on Chris.

But thats not really so bad. Chris is fine at close range and really, REALLY strong in the mid range with his smg, shotgun, land mine, flamethrower and frag grenades. His normal chains are much better than any other character who has as many projectiles as he does. Characters like Arthur, Dormammu and M.O.D.O.K. have a few decent normals, but not very fluid or consistent chains. Chris has as many projectiles as those characters, but a chain game just as solid and standard as say Captain America. He has a close range HC that does good damage and combos very cleanly with his basic combo strings.

Guns, LOTS of guns......

He has a couple of other unique little moves that give him some flavor too. He he has a unique preset attack string (kind of like a "target combo" from SF4). He charges forward a bit and does a series of body punches. From the way some people were talking about it it seems to have a unique input and timing to it, kind of like Cyclops's attack rush in MvC2. I dont know if it will be terribly useful, but it looks cool and is different so i figured I would mention it. He actually does it in the video above.

He also has what seems like a stance. I dont know the input, but he actually gets on the ground and goes prone and takes out his 9mm pistol. While in this state, he is lower to the ground than even Amaterasu which means pretty much any ranged attack is going to just go right over his head. While in this state he can crawl forward or just take pot shots at his opponent with his pistol. It's possible that in certain matchups, or with certain assists this stance could really fluster an opponent.

All told, Chris is what I would call more of a zoning character than a rushdown or keep away character. While he can play keep away with the right assists, and can be a threat up close in a rushdown role if properly supported, he is definitely at his best from mid-screen and can really give opponents a lot to deal with at that range. All his hardware will make him fun to play with and with the right assists around him he can play a variety of roles.

Chun Li

It must be said, Chun-Li is just a beast. I am going to call it now, whoever wins EVO is going to have Chun-Li in their team.

For casual players, Chun will be exactly what you expect. Capcom did not re-invent the wheel here. She looks really great in this game. Anyone who had a problem with her "thunder thighs" look from SF4 will be happy to know she is back to normal proportions. She is speedy, easy to combo with and her lightning kick is extremely spammable with a lot of priority and huge hit box both vertically and horizontally.

The intermediate/advanced players are going to be murder with her though because of several details to how she plays which I will now go over.

"I feel like if you are going to be randomed out in a tournament, its going to be by a Chun-Li player spamming legs." -Keits, http://www.shoryuken.com/

I know I mentioned this above, but it needs to be re-iterated: lightning kick (aka "legs") is totally insane. It comes out really easily, and just continues to combo for a number of hits and from a distance that is far beyond any other incarnation of Chun Li. But I said all this already. Wanna know whats even sicker than legs?

LEGS AS AN ASSIST!!!

So you know legs rocks. But the legs assist is hilarious. The key is the position Chun takes on the screen. One would expect her to jump in right where your character is standing and kick right in front of you. But she actually jumps out in front of your character, creating a wall of kicks that keeps anyone not super jumping from getting in on you for around 3 full seconds. Yes I said 3 full seconds. If someone gets hit by, or must block it, they are locked down FOREVER. It makes so much possible that would not normally be.

The applications are too many to discuss here. Lets just put it this way: anytime you ever try out a move, or try to create space between you and your opponent or try to get in on a turtling opponent and you think to yourself "if only I had more speed/time/opportunity to do this manuver..." that's something that having Chun-Li legs as an assist will make possible. The combos, mix-ups and manuvers this assist will facilitate will blow minds once advanced players figure it out. Watch Justin "Marvelous" Wong abuse it against Keits at the CES 2011 tournament in the Capcom suite:

"DO-DO-DOO KICK!"

Back when the game was first announced, Seth Killian said that the version of Chun-Li in this game is the fastest character they have ever put in a fighting game. They have slowed her down since then in the name of balancing but she is still lightning fast. If you pop level 3 X-Factor with Chun she is actually too fast to even control properly unless your reflexes are off the charts. Pros are going to abuse this so hard because she has nasty low/mid mixups for MvC vets to use.

If you watched any pro MvC2 or played competitively at an intermediate or higher level, you remember that Storm and Magneto were scary rushdown characters because of their 8 way air dash. For those who are unfamilar, with those (and other) characters you could press in any direction and press both punches you would suddenly dash in the pressed direction while in midair. This meant that you could be neutral jumping or even jumping back, and then suddenly change direction and dash in unexpectedly to attack your opponent. Since jumping attacks must be blocked standing, iff you threw out some low attacks and then jumped away, then air dashed back in with an air attack, you could catch someone blocking low still and they would get tagged. This was a staple of high end MvC2 play.

Chun is the new queen of the 8 way air dash. Hers is very fast and her air attacks are perfect for starting combos on your opponents. Making it even crazier though is the fact that her crouch+C attack is jump cancelable! So she can throw a whole low block string ending in crouch+C, jump cancel out of it and then quickly air dash back down to attack. With the right timing on the air dash, you could cross up instead. This all happens so fast that reacting is VERY difficult. Anyone who has good enough execution to pull this stuff off while X-Factor is active is going to just ruin people.

Something that will make these kinds of mixups even crazier, is that there are people with overhead and low hitting assists. Mix that in with her natural overhead/low mixup and you will be able to force unblockable situations on your opponents. If you don't feel comfortable with using advancing guard when Chun starts a block string on you, good players WILL open you up with these traps. You must keep her out at all costs or pay the price.

I didn't even mention her HC's, which are great too. I do not know if Kikosho hits otg like it has in some other games, but it certainly can be combo'd into. Her lightning kick HC can be combo'd into AND out of. It actually ends with a launcher and you just jump up after that and keep the combo going like any other arial combo. This is going to make it great for tail ends of DHC's. I cant wait to do a three part DHC, where Chun is the last one in with lightning legs HC and then go into an arial rave, and cycle back through my whole team with a series of air tag combos. Imagine the rage of opponents when each character in your team gets tagged in twice during ONE COMBO!! I can almost taste the tears!

I could keep going but I am going to stop. If you are a low level player just going into it for fun, you will have a blast with the Chunsta'! But if you are a serious player looking to play competitively or just an intermediate level player looking for a character who has advanced tools that you can grow into, Chun-Li is where you need to be. She is the new Magneto. Don't believe the hype? Watch her run it back all alone in this vid from the Capcom Fight Club that was held in Birmingham earlier this month:

THIS is how you run it back!

Here's to a decade of Chun-Li dominance! See you all tommorow!