Thought I’d give a heads up on EVO going on this weekend in Vegas. For the uninitiated, EVO is the annual world championship for fighting games consisting of tournament for each of the most popular games. It’s huge, drawing thousands of the best players from everywhere in the world. One of the cool things about EVO is that anyone can show up and throw their hat in with all the world class players, so it has that World Series of Poker kind of appeal where there’s a high chance of some player nobody has ever heard of advancing far into the tournament and making a name for themself. Unlike poker, it’s fast paced and fun to watch.
The big storyline this year is to see if two players can continue their reign in their respective games. Infiltration from Korea won Street Fighter 4 at EVO last year, and has since gone on to win nearly every major tournament he’s entered. Nobody has been able to consistently crack his Akuma play, but Xian from Singapore has been well on the rise this year, winning two major tournaments in a year that has otherwise been dominated by Infiltration. The US players haven’t had the best of years in international competition, but we’ll see if someone can step up. We’ve already suffered a huge blow as two of our strongest players, Wolfkrone amd Dieminion, are now in the losers bracket early in the tournament. That’s perhaps an insurmountable hole to climb out of from here. This is the biggest international fighting game and it’s always fun to see players from other countries who don’t often get to make it out to other US tournaments.
In EVO’s other premiere game, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Chris G from NY has won almost every tournament he’s entered this year…but hasn’t won at EVO before. This is a game that the US generally dominates , so I’m not aware of what’s going on internationally in this game. It’s such an open game, and there are likely many unknown killer strategies lurking around in the dark corners. Whoever wins the EVO tournament in this game is going to need to be able to adapt on the fly to all kinds of things they’ve never seen before. For a top player like Chris G, his strategy is well known and people have been training for months specifically to blow him up in this particular tournament. As much as he’s won this year, none of that even compares to what he’s going to be facing here and he’s under incredible pressure to cement his legacy. There are plenty of other killers playing this game (Justin Wong, PR Balrog, Filipino Champ, Flocker to name a few) and I have no idea what to expect. It’s going to be wild.
Here’s the game schedule. There are 3 streams going on all weekend. Tonight is mostly Street Fighter/MK9 and tomorrow is mostly UMVC3 and Injustice, with top 8 for all games going down on Sunday.
I thought the big storyline so far was the whole Nintendo objecting to the inclusion of Super Smash Brothers Melee thing. I guess they sorted it out enough that EVO can stream SSBM, but there still seems to be some sore feelings about the issue.
Evo co-founder Joey “Mr Wizard” Cuellar, in an interview with OneMoreGameTV, explained that the beloved company was initially trying to do more than ban the stream. “They were not only trying to shut down the stream, they were trying to shut down the event; the Smash portion of the event,” Cuellar said. "It’s their IP, they can do whatever they want, and they didn’t present us with any options to keep it open, they were just ‘Hey, we want to shut you down.’
“And we kinda wigwammed our way through it and they were fine with just shutting down the streaming portion of the event. And that was that. And we were not going to press any further.” It wasn’t until the fan backlash that Nintendo felt pressured to pull a complete 180.
Yeah that’s an interesting story as well, but doesn’t have anything to do with the actual playing of video games which is what I’m tuning in for.
Considering how long Melee was planned for inclusion in the event, the whole thing really seemed like a situation of lawyers not being kept in the loop.
I probably won’t watch any EVO stuff until Sunday. Most of what we’ll see streamed on Friday and Saturday consists of pools, which are pretty boring.
Early in the day is pool play but in another hour or two we should be in Street Fighter top 32 which should be a very high concentration of great players and matches. Last year all the good games were on Friday night and then Infiltration just steamrolled top 8 on Sunday.
A pretty exciting KOF13 final!! I haven’t played it, in fact I’m fairly inexperience with the genre, but for some reason I still love watching the competitive play.
Mortal Kombat had a great final as well but few supporters, I think the stream only maxed out around 18k viewers, comparatively there was about 100k watching the KOF, Super smash Bros and Injustice final today.
I skipped Smash Bros but watched Injustice. Man, Injustice could have been really good, Chris G and DJT matches were very exciting, but superman kind of spoiled the fun. I think the overall feeling is that the best player didn’t win the comp, not to say that winner wasn’t an excellent player but with superman’s high damage combos it seemed like the opponent had an up hill battle. In summation, supes is Over powered! It’s disappointing because I really like Injustice, both as a game and just watching it as a spectator.
Looking forward to Marvel craziness and the Street fighter finals in the next few hours.
Melee was mad hype.
I watched the Skullgirls and Vampire Savior side tournaments yesterday, as well, and those were pretty cool.
Injustice was whatever. I wanted to see Chris G rock faces with Green Arrow, but yeah, Superman is just dumb.
Killer Instinct is anti-hype. The announcing is incredibly forced and the in-game announcer is obnoxious.
Chris G and Justin Wong, Marvel, Amazing! wow! Just so good.
Cracking a beer to watch the SSFIV finals soon. Can’t wait!
First match is Infiltration vs Daigo?!
HOLY SHIT.
Jesus, Xian vs Sakonoko was fucking amazing.
wow, sf4 top level play is so impressive.
Hell yeah, that xian x Sakonoko was exciting! Sakonoko’s next match is looking to be crazy too!
Watching this EVO stuff always makes me want to pick up a fighting game…only to realize that what I do bears absolutely no resemblance to what is happening here. Still Street Fighter X Tekken is only 20 bucks on Vita…Might need to remind myself yet again that I suck at fighting games.
No offense to PR Rog, but I think Infiltration vs Xian would be the most amazing shit ever.
Last minute character change…Seems kinda weaksauce to me.
Definitely pulling for P Rog on this one!
Wow, bags in his tricks!! amazing bags!
Holy shit this year delivered!
I’m in awe at the matches so far.
