to clarify. In Brawl I don't believe I can safely say, "if i predict the opponent is going to shield, I can safely grab" in ALL situations where you are in range to do so. it depends on why their shielding, where you are, how fast your grab is, and how fast their defensive/counter options are. that's my point about this game. there are situations where I get punished by trying to follow ANY kind of rules like that in brawl, no matter how basic.
Im no fighter expert, but I can't think of a situation in SF4 where the phrase, "if I predict that the opponent will crouching block, I can land an overhead" is not true. and even if there are such situations, they are very few.
i'm not arguing right now that this makes brawl a worse game, i'm just saying i think its different
i dont mean to say that other games don't have isolated matchup tidbits, or that brawl doesn't require any kind of cleverness. but i still think a much huger emphasis is placed on specific, isolated game and matchup knowledge in brawl (and smash in general) than most other games
If Street Fighter 4, meter management is really important. Almost all overheads in Street Fighter are slow enough to react to if you're not looking for much else, and using EX safe move or FADC to cover yourself from anything often means that crouch-blocking when you have a decent lead is really, really powerful. Landing an overhead usually gives a very small reward (low damage, little to no combo/pressure opportunity), so you need to read well in order to use them at the right time.
Regardless, landing an overhead on a crouching opponent in Street Fighter is pretty much the same as, say, landing a grab on a standing opponent in Smash, except that the spotdodge is broken (which is pretty much my problem with Brawl in the first place). Most grabs don't get much more than the damage the throw is worth, they're rather slow for close range options, and they don't have much range in the first place. You have to mindgame the opponent into not avoiding or spotdodging in order to land a grab. Again, matchup stuff is very important in any game, since some of your character's best tactics might not work against someone with better pokes or a better pressure game. Pretty much everything is matchup-specific knowledge, but it's not like you have to memorize an encyclopedia for each character, and many characters can be lumped into specific groups (these characters have bad aerial games, these characters have an obnoxious projectile, etc.).
Learning about Street Fighter has confirmed this concept for me. I used to assume that Vega's supposedly-superior poking game would be easy to implement, but it's not. I have to know each character's blockstrings, what options are safe and unsafe against those and various special moves, and what is the optimal range to sit around in order to outpoke people. It's really a lot of feeling out the opponent and hitting them on startup a bunch. Matchup advice has helped me more than anything else so far.
ANYWAY, my point in this is that I am beginning to think that the best way for me to get better at Brawl is to learn each matchup one at a time. Instead of trying to learn any kind of generally applicable strategies. Like a few pages back reflex said something like, 'with snake, pivot grab more. and intelligently mix up ftilt and dash attack/dacus'. that's cool, but I don't think that kind of advice works, for me at least. I'm going to try to learn what I can do in each situation against each character.
The reason I can give that advice is because Snake's moves are fundamentally ********. Advice like the stuff I said to do against Falco will help more against Falco, but your performance can only improve by pivot grabbing more often and and mixing up F-Tilt for damage and Dash Attack/DACUS for defensive purposes. The generic advice is just stuff you should apply without any real thought. It's the matchup-specific stuff that will get you through players in the end, though those basics certainly help your chances against anyone.
Also, why is there a lack of a hitbox on Samus' forward smash directly in front of her? It's like part of her arm doesn't hit. Just dumb.
