Smash Brawl Blog

Okay, so i drew Lucas based on a photo from the smash dojo, thought I’d put it up here in low-res.
I’m just having fun :P
The main part of the post is here:

Ike impressions + strategy. (Video coming later in the day)

The main strategy of playing Ike, and to an extent the entire game, is punishing rolls, dodges, and recovery– if someone starts to roll to the left, and you’re fast enough, you predict it and you smash left, obviously. But this brings me to talking about prediction. Ike’s game is based around the ability to KO after 4-5 attacks, provided an FSmash or a neutral B is the killing move.

Racking up damage

This is not hard with Ike, for the reason that most of his moves do between 15 and 25 damage, but there are different ways to approach the situation. In my personal experience, distance is not a problem for Ike because of long sweeping attacks like FAir and side+B.
(Note: Side+B on the surface seems like a rather useless or kind of lame thing to attack with, if you think of it as like phantasm or something, but it is one of the most useful attacks Ike has. Fully charged, which doesn’t take long, has a MASSIVE range and moves you almost all the way across most of the tournament-balanced stages. For recovery, it’s a good way to get back to the stage when you don’t have time to use his Up+B, or only need quick horizontal recovery.)

FAir, with a short hop, is relatively quick and covers a lot of airspace, but the best thing is that because of the new physics of Brawl, you can do a running forward short hop, FAir, then while you do it you DI backwards and it becomes a retreating aerial– great for spacing and backing off. You can also (if C-stick is still set to be normal attacks, I don’t find B-Sticking that useful for Ike) just do backward short hops with fair as a defensive move.

RAR’d BAir is possibly best used by Ike, because it is his fastest move and very useful for approaching. Then there’s his NAir, which if you don’t fast-fall hits all the way around him on a short hop, which can be useful for an extra hit… his Up-Tilt is incredibly slow but has a wide range of ‘catching’ people that lets you set up for a FAir again.

I must say i’m not a fan of his UAir, because although it can KO at low percentages, it is both slow, hits forward THEN backward, and is difficult to time right. Up-Smash is great for edgeguarding against some characters because it hits in a sweeping arc all above Ike, but a little bit in front of him as well and a LOT in back.

The spike

Because using his recovery as a spike is auto-suicide in most cases, Ike’s DAir is his only practical one. Good as a bobbling move while on the stage, or to avoid being hit with an upsmash or UAir when high above the stage, it spikes in the first bit where he slams the sword downwards. While hanging on the edge, a lot of characters can easily be killed with ledgehop+DAir, which leaves the hitbox for the spike right at the ledge where they would need to be to grab on. I find that larger characters like charizard and DK get hit from fairly far away with this.

Finishing with Ike

Not hard. FAir, BAir (especially), and Forward- / Up-smash will all KO around 80-90 damage on most characters. The main thing is landing it– my absolute favorite way to catch people is with his DAir first:

1. Spike from fairly close to the ground, if they are in the air. Usually no one’s reaction time allows them to techroll out of that.
2. Because you land around the same time they do if you were already on your way down from the air when you DAired, or you fastfalled, you can see them lying in ‘helpless mode’ on the ground.
3. Most people roll. Some might attack out of it, which means that if you’re standing right where they are you should do the old shield, wait, grab routine.
4. Predicting the roll, while standing right next to them, means that you can do a forward smash (no time to charge) in either direction and hopefully hit them. Up-smash works too.

It’s all about practice- this game is much less about technical skill than melee, and more about punishing mistakes in the form of poor recovery, trips, rolls, and missed attacks.

EDIT: VIDEO UP!!
Mooplet (Ike) vs. Steel Kangaroo (Olimar)