anonymity88 said:
TheMadDoctorsCat said:
- I've finished this game about fifteen times, total, each time with a different set of skills. And if that sounds obsessive to you, all I gotta say is: I'm the guy who finished "Super Street Fighter 2" on hardest difficulty with sixteen "perfects" in a row on a console with no way of saving your game.
I have to ask, 1) How did you do it?
and 2) Why do you hate yourself?
How did I do it... boy, this is going to get technical. Stay with me here.
Firstly, you need to use Vega and lots of full-range hard claw thrusts. I'm sure there are ways to do it with other characters, but Vega is by far the simplest. If you start the thrust with your opponent out of range but walking forward, they won't block it. Vega can catch any opponent in the game that way, even Bison. Vega also has the fastest jump in the game, which is great for fireball-spamming characters (use lots of very deep jump-kicks followed by ground sweeps - don't kick when too high in the air as this will let any opponent recover and grab you for a throw or hold move, as most of them will do on the hardest difficulty) and a neat backflip special move that makes him temporarily invulnerable and that he can't be thrown from when he lands.
What else... Don't use his wall jump or rolling slash moves; both are way, way too vulnerable to uppercuts / sweeps respectively. Finally, if you hit someone when they're jumping (easy with Vega - he has an excellent high kick and an uppercut, both of which can hit almost any opponent before they even start to try and hit him from the air) and you time it well, you can throw out a maximum-range thrust to hit them as they land. If you're starting to withdraw your claw just as they become vulnerable, they won't block this attack and you'll get an unlikely combo (it won't count as such in the scoring, but who cares?)
The hardest is Deejay (both his fireballs and his spinning kick special move counter the long-range-thrust tactic, and he's one of the hardest opponents to both jump-kick and anticipate), closely followed by Guile (his sonic boom is almost instantaneous to both throw and recover from - he can let off a sonic boom and instantly jump forward and kick you while the fireball is still in the air, which nobody else in the game can do. With human opponents you also have two seconds of charge time that limits what they can do BEFORE they throw it, although it doesn't help if they know what they're doing and immediately charge in after a slow sonic boom to try and sweep or slam you. Not so with computerised Guile on the hardest difficulty though... he can, and will, spam sonic booms with impunity, and rarely walks forward; so the long-range thrust move is difficult to pull off.)
Ryu takes good timing to beat, but he's not that hard - you need to jump his fireball then do a kick/sweep combo. Ken is a lot simpler. He is constantly looking to be aggressive and walk forward, spamming attacks; if you play the long-range thrust defensive game, this is exactly what you want your opponents to be doing, not sitting back and spamming fireballs like Ryu.
Dhalsim's also tricky, although his extreme slow speed means you can jump over his punches/kicks, nail him with a quick kick, and then get the heck out of dodge before he can grab you to throw you (he will ALWAYS do that on hardest difficulty if you mistime the kick.) Cammy, Zangief, Fei-Long, Honda, Hawk and Blanka are really easy to beat using the long-range claw thrust, although with Hawk you have to be very careful not to block any of his frequently-spammed special moves, and don't let him get close. Chun Li's biggest threat, oddly, is her kicking you in the arm as you try and stab her while she's in the air. She only needs to get one medium stomp on the edge of your claw, and you've lost. In normal gameplay this would barely hurt you, but if you're going for perfects every round, it's annoying as hell.
As for the bosses... Balrog's charging uppercut leaves you ample time to duck and throw him during his recovery, but his charging straight punch (which hits ducked characters and causes damage if you block it) is an absolute nightmare. The only way to beat it is to jump right over it and throw him as he recovers, but again, you need perfect timing to pull this off. Sagat is, surprisingly, fairly easy once you learn how to goad him in. Just jump straight up over low fireballs or duck his high ones (watch out for the slow low ones though), then hit him when he closes in for hand-to-hand combat. He's slow enough that this isn't difficult, and he doesn't use fireballs when walking forward. Computer Vega isn't smart enough to avoid your tactics - just time your backflip right when he wall-jumps, or you'll end up being hit or blocking a special attack - and Bison is fairly easy provided you can jump straight up over his "psycho crusher". Again, it's a matter of learning the pattern and being ready when the attack comes.
Now that's HOW I did it... it took about four months of constant practice and repetitive failure. And if you're wondering if there really is an extra ending for pulling off sixteen double perfects in a row (there is one for never losing a match, and another for never losing a round - I've seen both), the answer is: no. Not at all. I guess the game creators never thought somebody would be obsessive enough to actually try something like that.
Anyway to answer your second question: How much do I hate myself? Answer: A little more than I did before I pulled this off. The weird thing is that when I finally did it, it didn't feel good. I didn't feel any particular satisfaction from it, just a sense of emptiness. It was like "This is what I've devoted all these months of my life to? That's it?" And then I just shook it off and went on to other things, I guess.
And the moral of the story is, System Shock 2 is still freaking awesome.
