A Killer Instinct Guide for SFIV Players by Infil

Normals

Normals refer to the moves your character does by optionally holding a direction and simply pressing one button. If you do not hold any direction and press any of the six attack buttonsEach character can use punches and kicks at 3 different strengths, for a total of 6 buttons. The strengths are "light", "medium", and "heavy", and are denoted by LP, MP, HP, LK, MK, and HK. Each of these buttons also has a colloquial name you may hear: in order, they are "jab", "strong", "fierce", "short", "forward", and "roundhouse"., you will get one of two normals, depending on how far away from your opponent you are. If you are very close to them, you will get a close normal; these normals are typically used in combos and while pressuring your opponent. If you are not directly next to them, you will get a far normal; these normals are often used to control space and prevent your opponent from coming closer.

Each character also has a different set of attacks while they’re jumping and crouching. In Killer Instinct, you have the same jumping normals regardless of whether you jump straight up or at an angle. Air normals serve very similar purposes to SFIV. For example, jumping MK is often an excellent crossupCrossups are aerial attacks which hit behind your opponent's head, forcing them to switch their blocking direction. When mixed with attacks that hit on the front side, it can create offense that is difficult to block., and jumping HK often extends downwards and is good for making contact with a blocking opponent. Crouching normals are often fast, well-ranged pokes similar in function to SFIV. Most crouching kick attacks must be blocked low, while crouching punches are faster but are not lows.

Let’s talk a bit about the speed of these normals. Using SFIV terms, the fastest normal in the game is 5 frames; every character’s crouching LP has 5 frames of startup.Start-up frames indicate an amount of time that must pass before your attack is capable of hitting your opponent. Heavy attacks usually have more startup than light attacks. The Killer Instinct training mode has built-in frame data that measures start-up differently than SFIV; these LP attacks are listed at 4 frames of startup, indicating that they hit on the 5th frame. This means that performing meatyA meaty attack is an attack that does not make contact with the opponent on the first frame possible, but rather connects near the end of its active window. This term is often used to describe attacking an opponent who is rising off the ground by hitting a button "on top" of their rising body, forcing them to stand up into an attack. attacks or frame trapsA frame trap describes a state where you force an opponent to block an attack, and then immediately launch another attack which is fast enough to interrupt any action the opponent tries. Slower normals for the defense means taking a bigger risk when pressing a button. against characters is easier than in SFIV, where many of the best characters in the game had a 3 frame normal ready to interrupt your attacks. Close HP moves, often very fast in SFIV, are quite slow in this game, usually measuring around 8-9 frames.

The trend of slower normals extends elsewhere as well. Jago’s prototypical crouching MK attack starts in 7 frames, similar to SFIV’s Evil Ryu. Most jumping attacks have a surprising amount of startup, requiring you to hit the button a little earlier than your SFIV muscle memory is used to. Jago’s go-to crossups, for example, are jumping MK at 8 frames and jumping HP at a whopping 12 frames. For comparison, Ryu’s jumping MK starts in 6 frames.

Overheads break this trend, however. Most command overheads are frighteningly fast for the amount of damage they can lead to. There are some fast overheads in SFIV (Dudley’s f+HK overhead at an insane 15 framesMost fighting game players agree the limit for human reaction is right around 15 frames. Given the fact that most fighting games force you to think about multiple possibilities at once, it is very difficult to reliably react to moves under 20 frames., for instance), but most overheads in SFIV need you to be close to land, or do not lead to much damage. C. Viper’s f+MP overhead clocks in at 20 frames, and most would consider this move difficult to react to in the midst of Viper’s offense. By comparison, Jago’s back+HP command overhead has only 19 frames of startup and reaches farther than his crouching MK, is special cancelable into a safe on blockIf your opponent blocks your move but you recover before your opponent can retaliate, that move is safe on block. Safe on block moves form the cornerstone of most offense in a fighting game, as they are ways to attempt damage without allowing the defender to easily retaliate. move, and leads to the full combo system. When an opponent is cornered, this gives Jago a very simple but very powerful mixup that will surprise SFIV players.

Lastly, let’s talk about canceling normals. Virtually every grounded normal in the game is special cancelableA move is special cancelable if the game allows you to input the command for a special move while your first move is making contact with a defender. The special move will immediately execute, "canceling" the recovery frames of the first move., including command normals. This differs from SFIV, where command overheads were used for low-damage mixups to make your opponent less confident in his blocking, and far-ranging standing normals, like Akuma’s two-hit HK or Abel’s LK, were used as single-hit footsies buttons or required a link to convert into a combo. In Killer Instinct, if you hit with a normal, you will be able to find a way to convert it into a combo almost without fail.

Like SFIV, some normals can be canceled into other normals. This manifests itself mostly with chain combosA chain combo is a normal that is canceled into itself by rapidly pressing the same button. For example, Jago can press crouching LP three times in a row to get a three-hit chain combo. (many characters, though not all, can chain their crouching LP and LK buttons together) and target combosA target combo is very similar to a chain combo, except the normals are not the same. For example, Sabrewulf can press LP, MP, and HP rapidly in sequence to get a three-hit target combo. Target combos are character-specific.. For more information on how these properties can be used offensively, continue to the Combos section.

Specials

A special move is a move that requires more than one input on the analog stick in combination with a button press. Iconic special moves such as fireballs, shoryukens, and hurricane kicks are recognizable to any Street Fighter fan, and Killer Instinct has a very interesting collection of special moves. All non-throw special moves do chip damageChip damage refers to taking damage while blocking.; the amount seems to vary, but it’s at or around 10% of the damage of the special move, which is considerably less than SFIV’s value of 25%. Most special moves can be executed in one of three strengths depending on the button pressed, which will change properties such as the startup, the distance traveled, and how safe or unsafe on block they are.

There are a few important things to note about Killer Instinct’s special moves. The first is that special moves behave differently inside and outside of combos. This will be covered in more depth in the Combos section, but once you’ve entered Killer Instinct’s combo sequence, all your special move inputs will trigger moves that look and feel slightly different from how they act in the neutral game. The second is that, to an uninitiated player, many of the special moves may be hard to distinguish from normals. For example, Jago’s Laser Sword special move might look very similar to his far standing normals, or you might mistake Sabrewulf’s Jumping Slash special move as a command overhead. This is especially true because, unlike SFIV, special moves are not solely used at the end of combos, but rather they are mixed fluidly and rapidly between sets of normal attacks. All that’s needed is a little familiarity with the system, which this article will assist in providing, and these two potential points of confusion will become clear.

Special moves in Killer Instinct are very good. Almost all of the ones that provide pressure and lead to combos are safe on blockMost safe on block specials will be in the -3 to +1 on block range. Remember that the fastest normal is 5 frames, so -3 is safe against a considerable portion of the cast in this game, unlike SF4 where throws and several normals could punish such moves.. Fireballs are considerably more difficult to jump over, as the LP ones travel very slow and the HP ones travel very fast, almost too fast to react to from a half screen away. Many special moves have hitboxes that let them crush lowsA special move will crush another move if the special move's hitbox is purposefully designed to avoid certain attacks. Low crush and high crush, or alternatively lower body or upper body invincible, are common properties for special moves in KI., or become projectile or throw invincible. Jago and Orchid's shoryukens start in as fast as 3 frames. In short, there isn’t a bad special move in the game. Actually, let's take a look at some of them.