did some good video gaming, got all my workout sessions in, and rewarded myself with a massage to cap off my Sunday afternoon. not doing any replay review this week since i did it to prepare for the DAGG set, but i'm looking forward to trying out some of that stuff in R2D this week to see how it holds up outside of that very specific showmatch opponent.
no tournaments or gamecenter sessions this weekend for me, so i spent some good chill time netplaying a bit of rev2, +r, and cvs2 instead. i hadn't played cvs2 in a while, but it felt real good to knock off some of the rust and sit down to work on learning some characters that i've wanted to work on for a while but hadn't gotten around to it. these days whenever i'm watching JP cvs2 tournaments, i get to see a lot of GAO cleaning house with k-nakoruru and rock, so i hopped fightcade to netplay those characters for a bit and had a lot of fun.
every fighting game has a different cognitive pace to it, created by the sum total of a whole bunch of different micro- and macro- combat design decisions.
xrd and +r are "fast-paced" in a sense because there can often be a high volume of shit happening on screen that requires your attention and input, but the relatively long combo + pressure string potential enabled by the gatling system, RCs/FRCs, jump cancels etc. creates turns that are often very long compared to a less combo-heavy game like cvs2.
cvs2 returns to neutral quite frequently and often doesn't punish you heavily for losing neutral unless your opponent has meter, so it is 'fast paced' in that turns are constantly being exchanged in short windows. the longer a turn lasts, the more time the attacking player gets to orient themselves and plan ahead to the next critical decision point. in cvs2, the shorter turn length creates a lot more quick decision points where a player can react with the correct answer only if they were looking for the exact right thing. so it's a good game to play to remind yourself to look at the screen, since the length of its OODA loops are much much shorter than a classic GG game's turns.
if i were to sum up my personal preference in fighting games, the unifying theme is "i like the games that show us the limits of human potential". it's why i go hard for +R/Rev2 alongside CvS2 and MvC2 + MvC3, all of which are very different games in terms of combat design and aesthetic but share a vast breadth and depth of skill tests, and why i also generally detest anything made in the SFV generation of fighting games, as they're several thousand steps backwards. it feels nice to play games that build strong brain muscles, and each of these games pushes the brain muscles in different ways that contribute to being a more competent fighting game player overall.
it has also been wonderful to continue my weekly-ish sessions with @LuminousIllusion. streaming them was fun, but doing them offstream means we get deeper in the weeds without worrying about the entertainment value, which is real nice. she's gotten so much stronger over the last few months, and it's really awesome to see conversations about stuff like stagger pressure or the value of picking up alt characters turn into results. this week's chat was about finding small ways to keep a small friend group interested and active across disparities in skill and levels of interest; looking forward to seeing if any of it bears fruit. (i hope she checks cohost again sometime because otherwise she's never gonna see the nice things i say about her!!!)
i am almost on the other side of my class change at the 9-5, after which i'll actually be paid to teach people how to play fighting games!!! i'm excited to be able to drop the pretense of 'other jobs' and just focus on refining the craft i care about during the day job.
training notes
going to keep up the same workout schedule as best i can, doing the 3x10 rep scheme for another week or two before going back to 5x5(ish) at higher weights.
on days where i can get my workout done in the morning, i'm thinking about crawling back to Yoga with Adriene. think it'll be a nice way to shake off some of the desk job aches + pains and a nice mental break between work and play, and i had felt pretty good while doing yoga earlier in the year -- i just ditched it because i felt like i had some more specific health problems i wanted to target, but those parts are feeling better these days.
for xrd, i'm going to continue focusing on improving my risk/reward discipline around stuff like oki decisions, meter spend, winning neutral etc. the drilling i'm doing on converting hits and timing block pressure feels rewarding as well, so i'll keep doing that. i think there's still a lot of fun stuff to dig into here, and it's critical work for tournament consistency, which i definitely want to improve for 2023. getting top 8 at frostys felt great, and i'd like to do more of that next year.