Alright, now that I'm home from work, time to type. I feel a lot of different ways about this weekend, not just from Smash 4 itself, but I'm only going to talk about the game here.
I only entered Smash 4 singles, going Fox the entire time. It's been a while since I've been in a large tournament with pools, so for some *dumb* reason I thought there would be RR pools and I'd be able to play against everyone, which would be my ideal tournament experience. It was instead bracket pools, which meant, I only got to play against a few individuals in a tournament setting.
My first match was against a man named Revin. He used Pac-Man first game, which is an annoying matchup I have not gotten used to, and I managed to win there, in a close game. Second game he used Mario where I destroyed him.
My second match was against a Sheik whose name I forgot. I had no trouble against him. I think it might have been his first tournament, so I hope he had a good time and got some good experience against the players there.
My next match was against 6WX who 2-0'd me with Ryu. Not sure what to say here. I got off a couple of cool combos, but I wasn't prepared.
The first three matches were unsatisfying for me. I didn't have fun, win or lose, and I was just anticipating more from my tournament matches. The next match, however, sparked the beginning of a salty afternoon for me. I was up against Kaizo's Mario, with whom I've never dropped a set in any of the times I've played him, even when I mained Marth. The match was called on stream and I played the entire thing like an idiot. First game, we took it to last stock, where I had a percentage advantage. I recovered and decided to hang on the ledge too long, so he dash attacked and stage spiked me (Battlefield). Second game, I took him back to BF and went ham for a convincing win. Third game was on Smashville, where, once again, I took a convincing lead. In my hunger to close out the set, I constantly fished for kills until gradually, from punishing my obvious attempts, Kaizo racked up the percentage and threw me off stage. A combination of Fox's linear recovery, F.L.U.D.D., and being forced to recover onto the stage into a USmash (good job to Kaizo for capitalizing when it meant the most) led to the end of my tournament run. I immediately left the venue to go cool off in the car.
When I came back, I just walked around, more quiet than usual, just watching people play (though I talked to Auroura for a while about random stuff). When I finally got to play friendlies near the end of the evening, they all felt completely unsatisfying, so I just made my trek back home. Even the next day, when I came back for more friendly matches, regardless of how much play time I got or how much I was complemented by my GA peers, I didn't feel accomplished. Nothing I did (aside from Fair -> Footstool I managed to pull off on a couple of people) felt satisfying. When I won, I was frustrated because I often had to do it off of a read, and not a setup, like most Fox players seem to be able to do. When I lost, it often wasn't even close, and I'm not sure where to begin to make it closer. I keep trying to rationalize in the fact that I haven't been grinding the game as much as everyone else, but it still feels frustrating all the same. I'm not sure what to improve on or what to do to make those improvements, and I'm gradually becoming less and less motivated to seek the answers. I still have a lingering attachment to this game, so I'll still play in tournament when I'm able to, but I'm not feeling how I used to about it.
That said, one positive thing that came from this weekend was teaming with Doombot for a couple of friendlies matches in doubles. I normally avoid doubles, for lack of synergy, but from those games, I might have figured out how I like to play in doubles and might try to enter in 2v2 tournaments with certain partners.
I also got to play Rango's Ike. I only lost because [insert johns here] and [insert more johns here]. His Ike is still [insert shit talk here].
</inside joke>
