A bit of a mix-up this week. I did one day of Ice Climbers and the rest as Mr. Game & Watch.
Night One
Random selection choose Ice Climbers as the next character(s) to try out. Honestly, there isn’t much resources for them. Looking up combos and tutorials on the internet doesn’t return much. Before I started practicing with them, I had some combos down and a few kill confirms. But I didn’t have any advice on the best way to play them.
This week I also practiced my B-Reverses and out-of-shield options. For OoS it’s not just knowing which aerials are the fastest. I also want to be able to perform grabs, smashes, and Up-Bs out of shield as well. Ice Climbers aren’t great for practicing that; their grab range is pathetic and it’s hard to buffer their up smash.
Anyway, after Training Mode I played three Level 6 CPUs. I was feeling pretty good, and beat all of them easily. I was moving pretty well with the Ice Climbers.
Then I went into Online Quickplay. It was a nightmare. I won one match out of more than 10. And I won that match because Final Smashes were on. Though I guess I would have won anyway, since I was only losing stocks to Final Smashes. Towards the end of the night, I just barely lost to a Bowser. I was moving pretty well with the Icies, but I lost because I just couldn’t set up any confirms. Couldn’t up tilt a Bowser Bomb. Or up air or forward air once I popped the Bowser up because all of Bowser’s moves would still beat mine.
But the worst was when it rematched with the same person three times for some reason. It was another Ice Climbers. The first match went fine. They were a better Ice Climbers and beat me. It was a little confusing to keep track of who was who. We both SDed thinking we were the other one. Fine a better Icie player won, let’s go find another game. Put me back with the same player. Okay, let’s try it again. Doing okay, they take one stock and then start teabagging. I’m done. First night trying out a character I’m trying to get 10 separate face-offs. If someone starts teabagging on rematch I didn’t even want, I’m just over it. I SDed my remaining stocks. And didn’t rematch. Searching for a new match and it puts me in with the same player again! At this point I just start spamming Neutral B. Over and over again. But I’m pressing a button a lot so I’m not being inactive. But I was disconnected for inactivity. Which doesn’t make sense since I was pressing a button. So I guess I need to move around and SD or something when they rematch me with someone I didn’t want to rematch!
Then I played Classic Mode. Whatever.
I honestly don’t even care to recap the Icies. What’s good about them? They have a good recovery if you don’t mess up a move. Their combos are easy to pull off. That’s about it. They’re slow. Almost all of their moves have bad endlag. They have no grab range. It’s very easy to mistime your Up-B or Side-B off the stage and kill yourself. Their confirms are easy to pull off but very hard to actually set-up in a match. The second Climber AI isn’t always very smart. Once you lose an Ice Climber your moveset is even more limited. Their projectile is very slow so it’s not actually a good neutral tool. All around a low tier character.
Night Two
I was in a bad mood on Night Two before I even started playing. It didn’t improve. I started trying out Game & Watch. I won 4 out 10 Online Quickplay matches despite my mood, so I guess he’s pretty cheap? That’s all I want to say about this night.
Night Three
So Night Three was pretty much routine. Lost more matches than I won in Online Quickplay. Something interesting happened though. One player decided to SD three times in a row rather than even attempt to play just because I was Game & Watch. And then he unfortunately re-matched with me and had to do it again. Free GSP!
I don’t think I play G & W toxically, but he does have a bad reputation online. And honestly, there have been some nights when I’ve been tilted and I saw I was matched up against a Sonic or Jigglypuff and I just SDed as well.
Night Four
Night Four, same routine again as normal. I wasn’t really feeling it in Online Quickplay. I think because the first match I played was laggy, it was messing up my timing or something. But I was able to bring it back and end three Best of 3 sets with a winning record.
Then I joined an Omega tournament. And I lost in the first round to a King K. Rool. Again, I don’t like the match-ups against the heavies with Mr. Game & Watch or Greninja. I know the heavies technically lose those match-ups, but it stresses me out trying not to get hit since three hits will end a stock. Anyway I lost and was losing the whole time, but I also went for a dair spike offstage that I missed. Which lost the game and I knew I shouldn’t have attempted but I felt like taking a chance.
And then I entered the next Omega tournament. It was only an 8-man tournament but I won my second tournament! This either means I’m getting better or Game & Watch is super cheap! I beat a Link in a pretty even game, 2 stocked a Marth (who I think was struggling with their recovery tbh), and then made a comeback against a good Pichu. I noticed this week and the last, when I’m not playing well sometimes it’s because I’m not looking at my opponent. If I shift my focus to following them, sometimes that’s an automatic improvement and I can sometimes make comebacks. It also causes me to SD more and not throw out what I want each time, but take the good with the bad.
I also have a theory about the tournament set-up. The first tournament I was matched into was a 64 player tournament. I lost in the first round and then was was placed in an 8 player tournament I was able to win. No one in that tournament was as good as my first round opponent in the previous tournament. I’m pretty sure the 8 player tournament was populated only with players who had just lost in the first round of 64 player tournaments. Especially since it seems like your always matched into 64 player tournaments first and then put in 8 player tournaments after. Which actually makes sense. It’s a good way for Nintendo to balance the tournaments and make sure people don’t get discouraged and just stop entering them.
A side note, I’m very glad I worked on mashing out of moves last week. This week it seemed like I was getting out of helpless state much faster. I probably need to go back and work on stage teching. That is just so hard to practice.
Night Five and Six
More Training Mode, CPU warm-ups, and then playing Online Quickplay.
Night Seven
Night Seven my friend came over and we had a bit of Smash party. So I played lots of different characters, we played on some non-tournament legal stages that we still think are fun and competitive , and we played a lot of Squad Strike which is a very fun mode.
Wrap Up
So I enjoyed Mr. Game & Watch more than I anticipated. His strengths are fast smash attacks and aerials, the best Out of Shield option in the game, very good recovery, an anti-projectile move, decent edgeguarding and ledgetrapping options, good combo game, multiple disadvantage breakers, and his moves do a lot of damage for such a small character. The bad parts of his kit? He’s light and can die easily. His tilts are inconsistent. If he’s recovering offstage or trying to edgeguard offstage he can die to one hit, his ground speed is bad, and half of his specials have long startup and cooldown.
He’s known as a spammy annoying character online. And yes his strengths do sort of encourage spamming fast moves over and over. But it works a lot of the time, and to actually win with Game & Watch you can’t really just spam up air and down smash. You do have to still plan your attacks, space correctly, and work hard to survive and avoid big hits.
And after a week of playing him…I think he’s going to be my new co-main. He covers the same bad match-ups for Joker that Greninja does and maybe even a little more. He does have the same weight/survivability issue. But he has a more rounded game. He has more moves he can use in neutral. He has an out of shield option. And Greninja is so much work. I don’t think I could keep my Joker and my Greninja sharp. And that would be a hard mid-set switch. Mr. Game & Watch is much easier to pick up and play. Counter-picking to him wouldn’t really be an issue.
A lot of what I learned the last week, helped me this week. There a certain situational moves you should only use at certain times. All characters can’t use all their moves in neutral. Those things I learned as Greninja I was able to apply as Mr. Game & Watch. I think it helped me pick up the character and his playstyle much quicker than I did with other fighters.
Anyway as a final wrap-up, I’m taking a break from this blog series for a while. I’ll likely still be playing Smash, but I’ve documented almost a full year of my progress. And I’m starting to get stale and repeat myself. I’m still working through new characters, but I don’t think that’s enough to justify weekly blog posts anymore. And I’m working on a big tier list I’ll be posting eventually as well. So this series is on hiatus for now. I’ll likely bring it back a few more times. I’d like to revisit the other games and decide my mains again. I’d like to enter some more tournaments. I’d like to finish learning all the advanced tech and have my characters set for the remainder of Ultimate. I’m still excited about the new DLC characters. So until then, keep Smashing.