Basic Guarding and Motion Cut

After play the insane challenge mode in the home version of evo. I have come to a better understanding of guarding attacks in general and the fuzzy guard phenomenon.

At this point, I have to explain first on how blocking works in VF4. As long as

is held, you are able to block high and mid attacks. If

is held without

, you can be thrown. If

is held with

, you block low attacks and avoid throws. Here is a little detail about blocking that will play into what will be said later. Once the blocking animation starts, for example, guarding a side kick, there will be an amout of forced guard animation where any direction input becomes buffered and not executed. So in said example, while the side kick is in contact with your character, holding down will not pull you out of a high guard and let you get hit. Another small detail is that the animation in between the motion of going into crouch and standing up from crouch do NOT play part in deciding which level you are guarding. Which level you are guarding is SOLELY dependent on your input. This is why sometimes you'll run into situations where your character instantly stands up and guard and attack while recovering from a knockdown. Now onto the details.

For anyone that have played the trial challenge mode in the home version of VF4Evo. The very first section put you in a challenge where you have to deal with Akira's Dashing Elbow and Low Back Fist guessing game. (DE and LBF) The first trial is fairly simple, you can play that just by watching Akira closely. This challenge, however, exposes a fundamental blocking concept. In VF4, low attack are generally slower than mid or high attacks. You can exploit this idea with what is said earlier about the concept of guard being dependent of input. In this specific scenario, Akira's DE is faster than his LBF. Once you get a feel for how fast the DE reaches your character, you can easily block both the DE and LBF solely by timing. Here is the explaination behind it. If you are just inputting

, you can block the DE, and while you are in the forced guarding animation, holding

doesn't cancel the high guarding. So if you always start holding

after the the time it takes for the potential DE to make contact, you can still guard against the DE. Since the LBF takes longer to reach you than the DE, holding

will always get you a low block against the LBF. So the theory is hold

until you see akira coming towards you for the potential DE, once he gets close and just pass the time that it takes for the DE to hit, start holding down. You will always guard both of the attacks this way. Practice this and you'll understand it easily. You might start out holding down too soon and eat the DE, but that's because you haven't gotten a feel for how long it takes for the DE to hit. Keep on practicing until you understand this bit.

Further on in the challenge, you have to deal with the guessing game of throw, DE, or LBF after guarding a jab. Now if you hold down

until Akira gets close, you can possibly eat a throw, so now this is where fuzzy guarding becomes a part of the formula. When you guard against Akira's Jab, start to hold

to avoid a potential throw, but stand back up in the time that it takes for a throw to execute. Since a throw is much faster than a DE or the LBF, being crouched for that quick moment will make the throw whiff if you've timed it correctly. At this point you have avoided the potential throw after guarding the jab. Now to guard against the potential DE or LBF, it's back to what was explained ealier. So in practice, this is what you have to do to successfully guard against all three potential attacks. It goes like this, hold

until you see the jab is being guarded, start holding

while the jab is being guarded, let go of

to avoid the potential throw, then hold

again when you anticipate the potential DE to make contact to block the potential LBF.

The last challenge is where you learn another aspect of fuzzy guarding. While in the animation of crouch dashing, you cannot be high thrown, but the moment that you cancel the crouch dashing by hitting

, you instantly become throwable. The premise here is that you must deal with Akira's dblpm, throw, or LBF guessing game at a small disadvantage situation after being hit by Akira's

. Now this is where timing becomes very very important. Putting all the points of guarding and avoiding throws from earlier explainations together, you can easily beat this challenge.

I'll now show you how. After

hits, when your character recovers immediately input a forward crouch dash by

. Do not at this point input

, because if you do, you can instantly be thrown since you were at a disadvantaged situation. Practice this part and don't worry about getting hit if akira does dblpm or lbf, but remember to not input

at this point. The important part here is to understand how crouch dashing will avoid throws even at a disadvantaged situation. While you are doing this make sure to also start getting a feel of how long the delay is for Akira to execute his dblpm.

The next step now then, is to avoid the throw AND the dblpm. You now can avoid the throw easily by crouch dashing, and remember that I said to note how long the delay is for the dblpm to come out? That is the exact moment when you start inputting

and cancel the crouch dash to go into a high guard. If you input

too early, you can be thrown, and if you input

too late, you get hit by the dblpm. The key part here is to NOT input

when you are crouch dashing until Akira can potentially execute the dblpm. Don't worry about the LBF for now and get used to crouch dashing forward to avoid the throw, and inputing

at the right time to guard against the dblpm. When you are able to do this, i'm happy to tell you that you've learned everything you need to know to understand how blocking works in VF4.

"What about the LBF? " you ask. At this point, it's easy to see that holding down after the potential dblpm hits will always guard against the LBF just like the very first challenge. So the whole step now goes like this. Get hit by

, immediately input

, Input

and hold when Akira can potentially execute his dblpm, then start holding

after the time it takes for the potential dblpm to hit to block the potential LBF. Now you should be able to easily pass this challenge.

Remember the KEY here is TIMING and ANTICIPATION, not reaction.

Once you have understand these concepts, you should first go "woh........" and then be overwhelmed at how systematic and logical the VF4 system is. Good Luck!!!!

Posted by Srider on 15/03/2003

Edited by Myke on 16/04/2005