I have yet to see anyone do anything really slick with Zangeif. His spinning piledriver is almost impossible to pull off, and most of his regular moves suck (including his air combo). Grabbing the opponent repeatedly literally is the only way to win with him. But as you pointed out, that can be difficult to do when your opponent throws fireballs at you (constantly).
I have mixed feelings on combos. On some games I like them, and on other games, I could do without them altogether. I liked the combo system in Killer Instinct, because you got to mix special moves in with normal moves, which was cool. The combos in Mortal Kombat were pretty lame, I thought. You're right; with certain characters (e.g. Smoke) it's just way too easy to pull off an infinite combo. The combos in Tekken are kind of hard to pull off, and the timing is different for every character. I like the combos in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Although it is possible to do infinites, they made it so that the higher the hit count in the combo is, the less damage each hit will takes. Plus, it's very difficult to actually pull it off. Like for example, with Ken, I can pull off an air combo in the corner on my opponent, up+roundouse them on the way down, then jump and LP, MK, up+Roundhouse over and over. But if your timing is off even a little bit, your opponent will fall too quicky, you'll lose it and the combo is done. That's what I like about X-Men vs. Street Fighter: yes, it's possible to do huge combos; but a lot of them are insanely difficult to do (especially consistently).
People that abuse Ryu and Ken's fireballs don't bother me too much, because Ryu and Ken are vulnerable for a few seconds after they throw it, leaving them wide open for an attack (plus you can only have one fireball on the screen at once, and it doesn't travel very fast). You can usually punish people that overuse it. Certain other characters, however, enfuriate me. Take Captain Commando for example. His Captain Fire comes out too damn fast. The only safe way to get close to that f*cker is to jump in blocking. And Megaman, well hell, that's even worse, because all you have to do for his fireball is hit HP, and his recovery time isn't very substantial. It's almost like Capcom was encouraging people to be cheap with him.
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