"Meet Your Mod" Episode 16: C0R

This Week: C0R

Why did you choose that particular handle, is there a story or reference you'd like to explain?

Sounds badass; I always rather liked cor, meaning heart, and repped it in almost all my online tags. But for some reason the name was always taken on IRC, so I threw in a 0 instead of an o and it stuck with me.

What is your background with fighting games...Did you start with BB or are your OG like SFII?

I managed to expose myself to almost every fighting game at one time or another when I was young. But never beyond a casual arcade experience. Tekken Tag Team was a big one, along with the Gameboy Color Mortal Kombat series. Soul Calibur 2 demo on the Gamecube disc (Why would you want to play anyone but Nightmare or Cassandra? Beats me), things like that. Then one day I was fooling around on IGN looking for spoilers and such, when I noticed a preview of KOF12 and figured, hey, cool, I remember that forgotten genre from when I was younger, let's go check it out. But when I got to Gamecrazy and they where sold out, the cleric suggest I get CT. I couldn't turn down the Noel art, and it began.

Then came CS. I was beyond hype for that game, but sadly, when I got it, I quickly outstripped my hometown friends in terms of experience and knowledge. Rather discouraged, I, once again, was fooling around online, this time looking for cool guy combos, and managed to find dustloop. Two weeks later I walked into a PNW meet and sat down with some random asian dude with glasses who played a black hakumen.

He sent me to another dimension, kicking my ambition to become a skilled player into overdrive. Thanks Spark.

What competitive scene are you involved with? (Ranbats, Arcades, XBL, PSN, Reload Online etc.) Would you elaborate the benefits of this particular scene?

The greater Seattle area has so many high level players, it's rather incredible. Nothing trains you like playing only the best in America multiple times a week, for 8-14 hours at a time. The old GG scene here is stocked with sage fighting gamers like Wuku, Woki, Veteru, TSK and Spark, all of whom are packed with years and years of fighting game experience. The BB competition is also very strong, bringing in a ton of new players such as myself.

Two to three times a week we've got multiple setups for almost every game, including SF, BB, GG and MvC, there's even a copy or two of AH3 lying around in case anyone's in the mood.

The scene doesn't have... official overtones, thus lacks things like regular, high-turnout tournaments or even a permanent venue, but I feel that PNW has the most passionate players. People who are always excited to tear each other apart then laugh about it after an entire day of mashing, any day of the week. I personally think the hardcore drive to be better, which runs through the scene like blood in a vein, would be suppressed if it was much larger or more official, so I'm very pleased with how it is now. I'm not saying I'd discourage advertising to more people, it's just that I think people with the same drive and passion, would somehow find us.

The presence of a local high turnout tournament would be savage though!

How strong do you feel your nation is as a whole, what is the next step to strengthening it?

I was once asked what I thought the top spectrum of American player's PSRs would be if they played BB in Japan. I responded with 175~200. High, yes, but, big surprise, still a ways to go before contesting the strongest of the Japanese players. Why? Because we don't play enough. They simply play more, with better competition, who in turn gets better. Every day, after work, or after school. It's a cycle of skill that keeps building on itself day after day until you become the best, then you get better. In addition to playing more, I feel like the Japanese get more out of the games they do play. It matters to them because in an arcade scene there's a lot of pressure to succeed. You lose, you sit in the corner going: "God damn, I'm such a fool, if only I had thrown Paper instead of Rock. I'll do better next time, I can't afford lunch if I lose the next one."

If America wants to level up, then they should probably prove it to themselves. Getting better means learning from all the losses, even more so than the wins. But you can't learn from losing if you don't spend the effort to evaluate why you lost, or how to fix it. It's the approach to success that I think sets Japan apart from America more than anything else.

On a logistics note, your physical presence supports your scene more than anything else. Another body in the room, another voice to build the hype, another player to learn from and grow with, all it takes.

Of course if everyone chipped in some quarters and always did their best to get better, that would help too.

Which player(s) give you the most trouble and why?

Huey goddamn 253.

Out of any player I've ever fought, he's the only one who can make me salty. Not because he's more experienced than me or calls me out every single time for doing something moronic. Not because he mashes on purple throws mid combo at 7am after 14 hours of BB when I'm way to tired to react to them, or when he buffers Daifunka after every move in my block-string and waits for me to hit the wrong button. No, it's because I can't think when playing him. He's got a mind control device inside my head, crushing my reads and throwing my yomi. Maybe it's because we're a lot alike in ways, and he can always identify with what I'm trying to do. Whatever it is. Maybe one day I'll overpower it.

Other then that? I feel very comfortable and very strong playing against experienced people like Veter and Spark, their methods and stratagems are powerful, but understandable. I get beat by the wild play. Hopefully I can become solid enough so that sort of thing no longer phases me.

What has been the most helpful tool while growing stronger in BB?

I went over this briefly earlier, but it's really in what you get out of your games. I got (still am) stomped by sG's Litchi more times that I can count. My response was to calculate the matches, redo them in my head, try and correct every minute mistake one by one until they no longer where made. I never once thought "Oh Litchi is top tier I can never compete". Instead always, always practicing to better myself, to outplay my opponent instead of outpicking them. A great way to do this is to record your matches, and watch every single one as many times as you need to. I CRINGE at the recordings of my casuals, seeing myself get completely exposed for the smallest mistakes and the most minute decisions. It gets my blood flowing to duplicate the situation in training mode, until I can overcome it.

Is there anything you'd like to share regarding your respective character or Dustloop in general?

µ challenges you. She tests you. I've never really felt that way with another character. Sure you can learn the combos and the setups, but it's something else that really appeals to me.

Makoto punishes you with 2c in the corner, she's going to show you some top end moves. You get nicked with µ's command laser midscreen? Whatever. Hit confirming off that laser into a huge damage combo that only works there, with that specific laser pattern, completely dependent on your skill, level of awareness, and absolute balls in order to succeed? Glorious victory. It's the ability to make up shit on the fly, to simply feel in your core that it works, to skate on that command laser across the sky like batman on a grappling wire.

It's worth the hard work guys, it really is. So keep it up. She's a sleeper character, a beast waiting to be awakened by the player's trust in that gigantic beam of light. It took what, 10 years for people to figure out all the cool stuff you could do with Venom? I feel that people have just scratched the surface of what you can do with µ, and that she will stand among the strongest in CS2 once her metagame is fully developed. She's easily one of the hardest characters to learn and fully understand in BB, that's a hint at how powerful she can really be.