immediately after watching this i loaded up tekken 8, jumped on my asuka, threw out the fancy combos i was practising, and simply sidestepped four times more than i ever would just to see what happened. the number of times people sailed passed me and i was able to get a real simple 1+2+4 punish on them was staggering

this is how I've been approaching fighting games I actually like for a good while now, instead of going for combos I slowly learn how to get hit less and getting some small pokes in when they drop their defense then when I'm getting comfortable try stringing in a few more hits then after a longer time maybe try a fancy combo and so on

Wow. I've been playing vf for ages and never heard such a clear explanation of the sidestep differences. Thanks

They tell you to learn your combo because it's absolutely the easiest thing to learn, and you need game experience to learn context for anything else.

This guy gets it.

Should’ve posted this in 2005

Also, shout out to you for citing VF so much. VF 4 singlehandedly taught me fighting games on a deeper level. Still to this day, there hasn't been a tutorial as good as VF 4 and VF 4 Evo.

i'd say sidestepping and sidewalking is a trap early on because you have no clue what any of the enemy moves are or when they come out or if the player you're playing with is even understanding their own moves, that's why block punishing and whiff punishing is basically the first step into tekken after learning your movelist somewhat, it's only when people start to jab up close and understanding the importance of the quickness and safety of jabs that the game actually evolves into a more full experience, because then you're looking for whiffs and or trying to create whiffs or this general frame advantage to press your advantage and that's when ducking and sidestepping and sidewalking comes into play just as you start to understand spacing and timing of moves and how moves work that the further away you are the easier they are to block and also easier to sidestep/sidewalk so you don't get punished as easily for sidestepping or sidewalking.

I cant explain it but i feel like his glasses are animated on

I watched most of this and I have to say I’m loving this.

Almost didn't recognize Aris without his cursed cam.

Very informative, I often get frustrated with my tendency in fighting games to just zero in on combos, its hard to get out of that habit.

38 and haven't bought a Tekken since Tag Tournament; this got me.

I ran into this issue a couple of days ago. I could do almost everything under the sun, but after getting dunked on by another player I realized my knowledge on core fundamentals was completely absent. I was trying to go for things that would net me a win without knowing HOW I could even obtain it. Nothing really worked on my opponent and they kind of just watched me embarrassingly flail about stupidly and fail at nearly all my attempts to the point that I just gave up and let them have the final round of the final set. I didn’t rage quit per se; my controller died, but I felt so defeated that I just forfeited anyway and let the 60 second timer tick down since I felt I didn’t deserve to win. As painful as those matches were, I appreciate that player for humiliating me enough to make me go back to my roots and return to the basics that will inevitably carry me further. I’m now doing everything I can to learn about vanilla neutral gameplay instead of trying to play around it. Even if I lose, my focus is only on getting better fundamentally and I feel much more rewarded when I’m able to best an opponent without using all the flashy cheese that most people rely on at lower level play.