How to Get Better at Fighting Games

Choose a fighting game of choice. Many people enjoy Blazblue, King of Fighters, Tekken, Virtual Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter, and other such games. A lot of games, especially if they're of the same dimension (like, 2D fighters) they generally share a lot of similarities that can be applied.^[1]

• Pick a fighting game that interests you and appeals to you so that you’ll be willing to play it and invest time into the game. Invest time into learning the game you chose.

Know the control buttons. If you aren't used to the controls, consider changing them to your liking so that you won’t have to look down at your control every time you want to execute a move, as these types of games require your entire focus on the screen.

Choose a "main" character, or set of characters, that you want to focus on getting better with. You'll have to play around with a few characters to find which one you're the most comfortable with.^[2]

Go into the Practice or Training mode of the game, and start learning what your character can do. Learn what your character's good at, know which normal to use at each range, the recovery of each normal and it's usefulness and properties. Then move onto the special moves along with supers and how to apply them then, move onto combos.

• Play the tutorial as soon as you decide which game you'd like to buy. Study what it will show you, including the basics of all fighting games and mechanics for that specific game. It’ll also show you some already built in combos for certain characters, depending on who’s being used in the tutorial.
• Play the story mode once the tutorial is finished. Aim to figure out how those newly learned mechanics and combos can be used in actual gameplay against an opponent, the level of difficulty of the story/arcade mode can be picked at the users leisure, and comfort level. However, consider medium difficulty so that you have a challenge, but not so much that makes you not want to play the game.

Learn to block. The Importance of blocking cannot be stressed enough! Always block as this is the easiest and most effective way to avoid taking large amounts of damage. Learn to recognize overheads (Moves that can hit players that are crouching and blocking) , patterns, sweeps (A normal move that knocks an opponent down, usually a cr. Roundhouse) and cross-ups (A mid-air attack that makes it more difficult for an opponent to determine whether they should block left or right).^[3]

Learn movement. Movement is a really underrated aspect in fighting games. Try to learn about moves that can help your character zip across the screen (Zangief's Green Glove/Banishing Flat and Yang's command dash from Street Fighter IV). Some characters might have a 8 way air dash which is a very valuable asset (Dr. Doom/Magneto/C. Viper in UMVC3). Some characters might have really amazing forward dashes, and a crappy walk speed (Makoto from Street Fighter IV) and a character might have an insanely fast back dash (Rose from Street Fighter IV). Walkspeed is also a make or break for some characters as well. Point is, be mindful of your movement options.^[4]

Play competitions. Start venturing out and play against your friends for competitions. Since you’ve beaten the story/arcade mode on the hardest difficulty, the artificial intelligence is no longer a challenge for you.^[5]

Play against other people online. It’s best that you play against other people because then you can see how well you do against another person and try to learn their tendencies and game plans and how you can adjust yours to win. If you can’t find people in person to play with, take your talents to the online circuit and battle with others in an online setting.^[6]

• Playing against people online will help improve your skill at the game because it will require you to read your opponent and adapt to different situations since you’re going to be facing a multitude of opponents. Keep moving up as you battle more in the game until you can beat the tournaments.