#journal
#journal
At some point in the thralls of my Puyo Puyo fever–where I’d stay up all night practicing stair patterns and T-Spins–it became clear that I’d caught the competitive bug. Playing with friends drove me to improve, and getting absolutely bodied by others playing online made me want to understand what techniques I needed to be adding to my arsenal.
Eventually I came to realize that Puyo Puyo Tetris was pretty much a fighting game–you needed quick reactions, practiced techniques and the ability to read an opponent. All of that had just been obscured by my lack of basic knowledge. My practice regimen also wasn’t unlike what happened in a fighting game training mode–hours of repeated motions to nail a specific technique. I’d finally entered the mindset you needed learn a fighting game.
Enter Street Fighter V.
Space (Jam) Camp is a series about what happens you attempt to learn how to play one of the most complex sports games made without knowing anything about basketball.
A while ago I decided that I’m going to play a sports game. In an effort to have a broader knowledge of the medium, I’ve been expanding the scope of the games I’ve been playing, and reading up on games that I never intend to play. The NBA 2K series is one of the most popular, dominating the charts and being one of the few sports titles not crushing the opposition through Electronic Art’s near monopoly on the genre. (It’s also one of the most complex, with an insane amount of context sensitive Isomotion™ moves to pull off). So with that knowledge, I promptly went over to my local game store and picked up a copy of NBA2K11 (and a bullet hell SHMUP by Cave).