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More Super Street Fighter 4 Profiles with Capcom's in-house expert, Seth Killian, who's risking a flood of online Makoto players with his exciting analysis of the karate kid below.
See why he's so hot on the Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike veteran, what big guy she reminds him of, and why she might have trouble against that very same big guy in the upcoming Super Street Fighter 4.
On what he likes about Makoto:
Seth Killian: Makoto is one of my personal favorite characters — not only in Super Street Fighter 4 but also in Street Fighter 3. I call her the equivalent of poker's "all in" [laughs]. When you're a Makoto player, you've got to stay on the offense. She's got pretty terrible defensive options, but her offensive options are some of the best in the game.
Beginning with her command grab…. A lot of her offense centers around either her command grab or the threat of a command grab — and there's a lot of range on that grab. She's sort of like a mini-Zangief, but she's actually more dangerous than that because she has a superfast dash, which makes her really mobile. She's got this very dangerous command grab, but she's faster than Zangief and can actually do more damage than he can…because the command throw leaves you vulnerable for a minute just like in 3rd Strike, and you can land a combo.
Basically, when you're playing Makoto, you're in this sort of offensive flow, and you're keeping the opponent on the defensive. And if they pause for even a second — if you see a moment of hesitation from them, or they start to get scared, or they're like, "Ah! What should I do?" — Makoto is in a unique position to punish that. She can grab you, she's got a lot of great rushing strikes, she can chase you in the air pretty effectively, she has one of the fastest dashes in the game…she's just an offensive beast.
That's why I call her the equivalent of the "all in" because if you're going to be on the defense, you're probably going to lose. I like characters like that, where I can just say, "Ahhh…I'm going right after you!" It's sort of like a character who's going straight for the throat. If you've got your mojo working, she can kill people before they even know what happened. When they think they should be blocking, they're getting thrown…when they think they should be doing something else, she's rushing them down.
She's got a really interesting Super move which causes her to be raged. In 3rd Strike, she couldn't block while in that mode, but in Super Street Fighter 4, she can — and also her meter lasts for a longer time. That's a really dangerous Super.
She's also got two really great Ultras. She can fly off the wall and hit you with a series of kicks, which is great for countering things like fireballs. Or you can opt for the other one, which is more a direct-damage Ultra. You can do things like use a command grab then go straight into that Ultra for a nice, fat chunk of damage.
She has the tools to destroy any character in the game.
On the troubles Makoto might face:
SK: She's going to have trouble against certain players and their psychology more than any particular characters. She has almost no good defensive options. She has a few things she can do — she's got an uppercut, but it's almost worthless. It won't hit anyone who's on the ground, so it's very situational. For the most part, she's very weak on D.
She does have to be up close to do damage, so someone like Zangief will potentially be tricky for her. Obviously, Makoto wants to be in a position to perform command grabs and things like that, but if she's going to be in that position, then Zangief is also going to be in that position.
She's like a mini-Zangief — and I think mini-Zangief is going to have a hard time with regular-sized Zangief.
Also see: T. Hawk, DeeJay, Juri, Cody, Guy, Adon, Ibuki, Makoto, Dudley, Hakan
Note: Killian's comments are based on Super Street Fighter 4 as it stands today in its development cycle. Keep in mind the game may go through balancing tweaks leading up to its April 27, 2010 release, so his opinions are subject to change.