The time to take off came around and we all met up at my house to leave in Chris' truck. It was going to be my first trip with Chris and this would be Hunter's first experience with competitive gaming in real life. Everybody was excited for different reasons, and that includes me. I was excited to see my mom during a semester, I was excited to have my girlfriend be with me at a competition, and I was excited to see all the friends I had made at Kombo Klash as well see how much I had grown in the several months in between.
A 6 hour drive later we ended up at my mom's house and began to unload the truck. My mom had made some enchiladas for us before we headed to the venue to get our badges for the competition on Saturday. We all sat down and enjoyed our food while watching Futurama. As we began to to head towards the venue, I made Chris be in charge of GPS because even though I have driven in Houston before, I wasn't familiar with the location of where the venue would be. We hit the road and started to get our cash together so that we could pay the tolls.
Once we arrived at the venue, we made sure to go to the check in desk. Chris and I had already registered so we checked in and we picked up our passes. Seeing as how I had invited Hunter on such short notice, we had to get her a spectator pass which was something like $20. We figured that since we were already there, that we would take a look around and see if we could find any of our friends around. Chris went to go look at see what the vendors had, while Hunter and I had gone by the Killer Instinct stations to check out the crowd. I immediately found my friends Ken(Bass) and Daymein and introduced Hunter to them. I began to catch up with Daymein while Bass was getting to know Hunter. At one point he had asked me how I met her, because for some reason Hunter was being nervous and didn't wanna say. So I told him that we had met back when we were in High School and he said that was pretty cool. Hunter had pulled on my arm and asked if we could go look at the shirts, so we dismissed ourselves to go take a look at the vendors. Now Hunter was one of those super extra girlfriends, which isn't a bad thing, so when she saw this cool shirt she had asked me if I would be willing to wear the shirt together like some couples do. I checked out the shirt and it was this solid black shirt that had this cool little monster on it that was mashing buttons on a fightstick, and I told her that it was a sick shirt and to let me know how much it was for two of them. She said not to worry about it and that she would get it for us. So while she was in line to go pay for the shirts I decided to out into the parking lot and get her some Korean soda that she was looking at from this Korean food truck that was out there. I got her a bottle of strawberry soda and took it back in just in time to catch her finishing up with the vendor. I gave her the soda and I began to pack the shirts into my backpack. Chris had just caught up to us, and we had decided to call it a day and go back to my mom's house and maybe get some games in time for tomorrow.
There was actually an accident on the way home so a 45 minute drive turned into an hour and a half drive and we got home around 10 and hit the sack from there.
We wake up the next day, eat some pancakes, and head over to the venue in order to get some practice in before the tournament started. We hopped on our phones to figure out who was in what pool and I quickly learned that I was going to be in a pool with Daymein who was a friend that I had made back at the Kombo Klash event in San Antonio. I had decided that it would be in my best bet to avoid playing him until it was in tournament, so I played Bass until the tournament started and we were just having fun playing the Spinal mirror.
At 4p.m. the tournament began and I sat down to play some local Sabrewulf player and we shook hands to jump straight into it. Hunter stood behind me interested in seeing her first Killer Instinct tournament match. Sure enough I beat this local guy 3-0 and we talked a bit before I reported the score to the Tournament Organizer.
"Raven is Raw is going to be playing Daymein next so after the match is completed at station 2 make sure to jump on and play your match," said the TO.
"Wow, you have to play your friend already? I thought you two would've played later on," Hunter said as she was grabbing onto my backpack.
"Yeah that's what I was hoping for as well. Oh well it looks like I gotta beat his ass to make it further," I stated as we walked over to station 2.
Let me say this right now, beat his ass I did not. Daymein had been practicing a brand new character since we had played at Kombo Klash and he had been watching my tendencies as I was playing Bass because he knew my breaking patterns. Before I go tell you how I had figured all of this out, let me tell you about the breaking system in this game. Killer Instinct has a combo breaker system that allows the person being hit by a combo to break the opponents combos by breaking with the corresponding strength that the enemy uses. Lights, Mediums, and Heavies are the three strengths and you use these combination of buttons and timing to break your opponents combos by reacting or guessing their inputs. This means the person being hit can break combos until they lockout by doing the wrong input or being hit with a counterbreaker by the person doing the combo. A counterbreaker is when the person doing the combo knows that the opponent is going to attempt at breaking a combo and does a counter to punish them, but leaves the attacker vulnerable if they were wrong. Counterbreakers are high-risk high-reward plays, so I learned that Daymein had been watching my matches with Bass when he counterbroke me four times in a row to get a perfect victory over me in the first match. Now anybody who plays fighting games knows that getting perfected by your opponent can be one of the most demoralizing things to ever happen to you because that means this person just beat your ass without you landing a hit on them. The next two matches weren't that much better because Daymein beat me convincingly to put me into the loser's bracket basically at the beginning of the tournament. Luckily for me, there is no footage from those matches.
I was pretty abhorred about the set and Hunter immediately knew that I was upset so she came by and helped me look past the results and focus on the next match.
I won the next couple of matches to eventually face off against the FGC legend, Mr. Street Fighter himself, Alex Valle. As someone who joined the FGC in the year 2013, I didn't get to see a lot of Alex Valle in games aside from Street Fighter 4 and 5. Alex Valle is a natural and his years of experience in Street Fighter had me interested in playing him and finding out if the skills transfer over at all.
Texas Showdown 2015 Raven is Raw vs Alex Valle (Click me)
After my match with Alex Valle, I had to face against Daymein in order to make it into Top 8. It would've been my first Top 8 at a Major Tournament, so the pressure was on! I had to make the adjustments in order to beat someone who had just handed my ass a perfect. I was on edge and I'm sure Daymein was feeling confident.
I was able to bring out the W and solidify my position in Top 8 by taking the set all the way to game 5. I won and although I was ecstatic that I made my first Top 8 at a Major, I did feel guilty that I had to send one of my friends home early!
Later that day, we had our Top 8 matches and this was a foreign experience for me. There is an added pressure to playing in a Top 8 because the matches are displayed on the big screen with no other distractions. That means at any given point during the tournament that all eyes are on you with the commentators analyzing your every move for the room to hear if they weren't watching already. All of these factors can really add up and that's not even considering the fact that you have to play someone in what is a virtual boxing match where you trade blows. It also didn't help that I was the first match of Top 8 against a fellow Texas player, Sickle. Sickle was someone that I had met back at Ultra Arcade but we had never played in tournament before. We are the first match in the link down below.
Texas Showdown 2015 Top 8 (Click me)
Although I only got 7th at this tournament, I was happy to see my training partner Thrashheavy take 3rd place and it was great to see UA Bass take the entire tournament home and becoming an honorary Texan.
