Savagery At It's Finest: A Spoiler Free Review of Combo Breaker 2016

[mikadolurker]

Combo Breaker 5/27 - 5/29/2016
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    Mother. Fucking. Combo Breaker. From Day 1, this was probably THE best tournament of the year so far in the US. The venue was sick, the streams were run well, the brackets were stacked as all fuck, this seriously had to be the greatest production in recent Guilty Gear history. Speaking of the brackets, getting out of your pool was harder than swimming while with a short chain welded to the floor. Unless you’re strong enough to break the steel, you’re ass is drowning. Before we talk about that however, let’s settle the question of who’s the strongest arbitrarily divided section of the States.

    The 5v5 team tournament that went down on the first night was disgustingly awesome. Do yourself a favor though and get properly situated with whatever strikes your fancy prior to sitting down to watch this shit, because like I said in my Kansai v. Kantou review, this went on for a good while. Ending somewhere close to 3:30 AM, every second of play was worth watching though. A massive shout-out to bgcallisto as well for holding it down until the wee hours of the morning and even hopping on the mic when to back up Ryan Hunter when every sane person had abandoned us on stream and gone to bed. I mean who needs sleep to play, right? The non-stop action probably helped a damn good bit too because with the teams being: FF|ElvenShadow (FA), Sym (MI), BlackSNAKE (VE), ChosenNinja(MI), and Kizzercrate (KY) on Team Chicago, the Midwest was already looking strong. Then you had Team Michigan with CORN|AxisTheBeast (JO), Shinsyn (CH), SRM|Leonil Requiem (RA), the dapper as fuck YASE|Mr. U Suk (SI), and Gekioh (AX). Out of all the teams I’d really have to say the latter was by far having the most fun of the night, these boys were all smiles constantly. Fucking Team East though came to murder people’s hopes and dreams being by far the most concentrated example of talent consisting of Apollo (EL), LoCal|Sway (FA), D-Link|Lord Knight (MI), the newly sponsored PG|MarlinPie (ZA), and Lost Soul (THE EL). How the hell is something like that even fair?! You know who didn’t care? The Stardust Crusaders that's who! AKA (ZA), KBnova (BE), Mr. K (LE), Zinac (FA), and Grant (SL) were going to try to claim the glory for the Midwest themselves and stage a massive upset. That’s  only if they could get through Shinobi (KY), Doren2k (JA*), Hotashi (EL), that Texas boy TXRD|Faultydefense (SI),  and Ryan Hunter’s (VE). What’s that asterisk next to Doren’s name? Something he’ll never live down, but that didn’t even happen until the next day. Team Nebraska wasn’t going quietly into the night either with Cue (ZA), Dekline (SI), YooYoung (SO), JaMarvelous (LE), and TS|NerdJosh (EL) rocking the state approved ID to prove his geographical credentials. Then we had Team LCQ with Miller2B (FA), Scrublord Zega (SI),  Woocash (SI), Organic Lurker (AX), and Nope (SO). Finally, rounding out the entire ordeal was Team West featuring Beautifuldude (ZA) who lost his glasses eventually yet again, Foo (JO), Shtkn (KY), the most hype god damn commentator in the US AS|Tasty Steve (LE), and the godlike BjornSonOfBear (CH) who played out of his god damn mind all weekend. Buy some beer in bulk before you watch this because as long as it took me to list everyone, it takes roughly six hours for this event to conclude. Lucky for me the Kansai v. Kantou’s yappy ass beginning took just long enough for the Finals and Grand Finals to wrap up. Damn that was a hell of a night. Whiskey really tastes its best when the moment sings you know?

    Then, bleary eyed and hungover it was time for my ass to watch people get brutalized in pools. As stacked as the Team Tournament was, this was somehow far more potent. Most events have one or two pools you’d be unlucky to land in but every fucking one of them at Combo Breaker was an undeniable death trap. Aside from the aforementioned murders, Kid Viper (JO), Flux (JC), DacidBro, VR-Raiden (SO), TheArm (RA), and more good players than I’ve seen in a single state-side tournament this year all showed up to take home the gold. Saturday was a bloodbath and a half because the eight pools eventually culminated into something you really don’t seen very often. Well, I mean I guess every fucking tournament has one eventually but I really can’t remember the last time I saw a Top 16 celebrated on it’s like this! With shades of EVO ever so subtly present, these sets were  an amazing brawl, and all for a spot in Sunday’s Top 8. One thing that really gets me about this whole show though is that I’m honestly starting to think that this is far less of an outlier and more of a glimpse into the somewhat near future of this game. After all, at it’s peak well over eleven thousand people were watching out humble little fighter. Who knows what seeds might have been sewn.

Awkward commentator stills might be one of the best things about tournaments. 

    Another shout-out to Spooky because man, he absolutely created the single greatest floor plan for the main stage I have ever seen in any tournament. Ever.You’ll have to check it out for yourselves but basically he managed to position an island of a commentators desk at the front of the crowd which was framed on either side by the players on stage. You could everything that was happening at once while never missing a moment with whoever happened to be holding down the mic at that given moment. Patent that shit or something quick man because every event should steal this layout it’s simply that perfect! Speaking of those five golden letters, we have a damn near flawless line up to polish this whole thing off in the Top 8. Down to the last round, these matches were so on point that it made one thing very clear in my mind;There are a lot of Japanese players coming over for EVO this year, the eight here alone will send more than enough home salty as all fuck.

    Revelator is here though and with it a new age of Guilty Gear begins. A time where new players come up, where the established become gods, and we all somehow get that fucking soccer ball stuck in random ass places in the private lobbies. Seriously, I’ve seen in on top of the cabinets before.

Links to everything:

5v5 Battle Summit Team Tournament: https://www.twitch.tv/bgcallisto/v/68972425 (Starts at 05:54:59)

Pools: https://www.twitch.tv/eventhorizon/v/69119835 (Starts at 04:17:28)

Top 16: https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky/v/69211651 (Starts at 00:19:26)

Top 8: https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky/v/69323710 (Starts at 03:19:00)