Gaming
Esports
How to get better at fighting games
Do you love fighting games but constantly end up in a hard knockdown? Here are 10 tips to help turn that around and up your level.
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The theory goes that practising any skill for 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you an expert; whether that's mastering musical instruments, computer programming, painting or anything else that requires the process of learning. The same is true for fighting games.
Amjad 'AngryBird' Alshalabi says it took him over four years to reach pro standard at Street Fighter. So, if you want to get better at fighting games, cast away any notions of natural talent paving an easy road to Evo or Red Bull Kumite. The true path to tournament glory is lined with hard work and practice.
If you liked the vibe when you tuned into Red Bull Kumite 2023 to see Adel 'Big Bird' Anouche take the win, it could be time to get serious and hone your skills. Here are 10 tips that can help you on your journey from button masher to contest contender.
01
Pick and stick to your game
Fighting games are awesome to watch and play
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This might seem like a no-brainer, but picking one game and focusing on it is important. There are so many great fighting games out there that it's very tempting to want to play them all for the shiny graphics, fleshed-out story modes and promises of fun times. There's nothing wrong with playing lots of different games – but that won't help you master any particular one. Esports stars like Angry Bird say that once they clicked with Street Fighter, they always focused on Street Fighter.
But make sure it's the right game, so playing all the different games at least once can be helpful. If you're up for embarking on a 10,000-hour journey to get good at fighting games, you might as well enjoy it, so play the field and pick the game that's right for you. Will you pick 3D fighters like Tekken, 2D ones like Street Fighter, fast anime fighters like Guilty Gear or platform fighters like Super Smash Bros? You won't know until you give them a good go. If you get 100 hours into a game and realise you hate it, you won't have the passion and drive to excel. We have a nifty guide on how to choose a fighting game right here.
Masato ‘Bonchan’ Takahashi
© Jason Halayko/Red Bull Content Pool
I went to game centres to play in my free time, and occasionally I was personally invited by a pro to play, but I didn't receive any coaching
One final factor to consider is what you want to get out of being good at a fighting game. Japan's Masato ‘Bonchan’ Takahashi – one of the world’s very best Street Fighter players – explains he picked the game because he knew it was popular, and therefore, the online lobbies and competition would be populated, giving him more competition. He also reasoned that tournament prize money would be proportional to that popularity, which would allow him to keep doing what he loved.
02
Understand your character’s play style
Learn your character with friends
© Jason Halayko/Red Bull Content Pool
The same principle applies to picking a character. Pick a main and stick with them, but also make sure you try all the ones these games have to offer and find the right one for you. The best way to start is to play with characters you like the look of. If you like the look of Dhalsim, play as him. When talking about how he decided which character to main, Bonchan says, "I always think about the balance between my style and my win rate."
While fighting game meta can sometimes cast certain characters to the wayside, there's always room for someone to discover a new combo or technique that can smash the meta wide open. There's also the possibility of your character receiving an update in a patch, so never consider a character useless. But be aware that the opposite can also be true. Angry Bird picks his main characters based on their strength in the game, and if that character gets nerfed, they switch focus to another.
Once you choose a character, ensure you work within their play style. If you like the look of King from Tekken, understand that he's a wrestler-style character, so you'll need to be able to get up close to your opponent for command grabs. If you start finding this hard or butting against your desire to be a fast-moving mix-up character, you may need to go back a step and pick another character that's more in line with how you want to play.
03
Use training or tutorial modes
Angry Bird competes at EVO 2019
© Marv Watson/Red Bull Content Pool
Long gone are the days when fighting games gave you an arcade mode and a versus mode, and told you to get on with it. Modern fighting games have super-detailed tutorials and training modes, and you need to make use of them. Always start with a game’s tutorial so you can be informed of all its mechanics. Mechanics like move cancelling might not be readily apparent if you just jump into a training match against the CPU and start pressing buttons.
Most fighting games will also have character-specific tutorials that can explain every character's play style in more detail. It's always good to play through these because they can give you an appreciation of combo timing inputs and illustrate use cases for their special moves.
Training matches are a great way to start pulling all this information together into real matches. You can start with a dummy character that just stands there, you can set them to jump at you so you can practise anti-air moves continuously, or you can record a sequence for the dummy to repeat so you can try out different strategies against it.
Find a great community
© Jason Halayko/Red Bull Content Pool
Knocking around a training dummy is all well and good, but you won't see significant improvement until you start playing against some real opponents. While you can play against the CPU in arcade modes and even training modes, the CPU is only a facsimile of a real player, one that's governed by a preset list of rules and actions. If you only play against the CPU, you might start to see them fail to react appropriately to certain things or be unable to learn how to counter certain moves. That's because the CPU can never mimic a human's freeform, reactive thinking. So, you need to play against some real humans, and the best place to find some of them is out there in the real world.
Fighting games are very community-based, so it’s always worth seeing if there are any local tournaments or groups that like to play together. On his road to becoming a Street Fighter pro, Bochan bolstered his game with offline experience. "I went to game centres to play in my free time," he says, "and occasionally I was personally invited by a pro to play, but I didn't receive any coaching."
After improving with others offline, it’ll be time to venture into online ranked matches. These can be scary at first, and you will lose – a lot. But don’t be disheartened. Think of all those losses as learning experiences and how when you start racking up the wins, they’ll be all the sweeter.
04
Put in the hours
Esports athletes put in five-to-six hours of play each day to keep match fit in Street Fighter. Those are the hours of a professional, though, so don’t feel obliged to match that as someone who just wants to play for fun or bragging rights. But it does give you an idea of the commitment needed to play at the pro level. You need to make sure you put in the time if you want to become one of the best.
I always think about the balance between my style and my win rate
"I was waiting for offers while achieving results in tournaments, and I was always aware of overseas exposure," says Bonchan, explaining how he was able to make the transition from casual player to professional. "In terms of time, it took me about three years to aim for it."
Angry Bird places a big importance on being healthy, exercising and taking care of your body. If you spend all day, every day playing fighting games, your health will suffer, so striking the right balance between practice and the other commitments in your life is key.
For Bonchan, it's because his career is predominantly sedentary that he makes sure that physical activity is part of his regimen: "I don't move my body for work, so I have to manage it myself. The walk before practice is like a routine."
Exercise and being healthy are just as important
© Stefan Voitl/Red Bull Content Pool
05
Understand the competition
To quote Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you'll also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you'll succumb in every battle.”
This couldn’t be more relevant to fighting games. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is only half the battle – you also need to know your enemy. This can come from studying replays or seeing how your friends play. Watch how their hands move across the controller or fight stick. Watch pro tournament matches to see how the best play. Download the videos and watch them at half speed. Watch how they advance and retreat during the neutral game. Watch the combos they use and when they try to use them.
06
Build a combo library
Combos win matches
© Suguru Saito/Red Bull Content Pool
Getting the fundamentals of playing your chosen fighting game down is one thing, but soon, you’ll need the tools to turn that knowledge of the basics into victories. For fighting games, those tools are combos. You need to be able to sustain an uninterrupted string of attacks so your opponent doesn't get a window of opportunity to deal damage back. That's how you make significant inroads into their health bar. Remember: the best defence is a good offence.
Building a combo library is how you do this. The more combos you have memorised, the more options you'll have to react to. Bonchan uses his combo library reactively by matching strong actions to different characters and playstyles. For example, suppose he's fighting an opponent attempting to control him at a distance with projectiles. In that case, he'll have a memorised list of potential actions and combos to call upon that can close the distance quickly or keep them pressured in a corner.
This is where training modes can help. You can spend time repeating the inputs for combos over and over again so that your muscles can just react to situations when they're needed.
07
Keep up with the meta of your chosen game
Understanding the meta of your chosen game is vital. 'Meta' in gaming is the generally agreed upon strategy by the community. This strategy is considered the most optimal way to win or perform best at a specific task. One way of thinking about it is if you read it as an acronym meaning 'most effective tactics available'.
Breaking the meta can lead to reactions
© Mark Roe/Red Bull Content Pool
This boils down to character tier lists and characters' accepted strengths and weaknesses. As mentioned earlier, if you love playing a character that's considered low-tier, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't be competitive. You just need to weave your play style into this accepted meta for that character. As you do so, you may even find holes in it that you can exploit. This meta can also dictate what strategies opponents will use against you. Use this to your advantage! If you know how an opponent will attack you, you know how to react to it.
08
Improve your mental game
Essentially, ‘mental stack’ represents how much a player has to think about at any one time during a match. Another way of expressing it would be ‘mental load.’ At any given moment, a player will need to be assessing what's happening in the neutral game, considering when the best window of attack would be, but also what they might do if they need to be defensive; do they block high or low, jump back or spend meter on a parry? On top of all that, the mental stack could include thinking about what special moves to use and how to execute them.
You need to reduce the mental stack as much as possible. One way of doing this is to practice special moves and combo inputs so much that they become instinctual to perform. The mental stack will never wholly go away, though, which is why fighting games are so engaging, so the key is being aware of it and managing it as best you can.
Dive deeper into this fascinating and complicated topic in our 'mental stack' fighting games article.
09
Have fun!
Always remember to have fun
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Possibly the most important pro tip we can offer is to have fun. People excel when they enjoy something. If you find yourself hating something and loathe to continue, that's a sure sign you need to take a break. If you find yourself alone, practising all day, every day, to the detriment of the rest of your life, that's a sign that you are subconsciously not enjoying yourself anymore. This is when you should reach out to your community of other fighting game players and start playing with them again. Once you find the fun again, you’ll train better and improve faster.
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