Why I play who: Rufus

Anyone playing a fighting game to win comes to the point where they decide to stick with on particular character. Learning the intricacies of their main allows them the fun of one play style while also learning how to deal with unfavorable match ups. Instead of spreading your focus across several, hoping to counter pick, you focus on one to be proficient with and readily know how to play bad match ups.

Right now, I'm going to describe the reason for my choice in playing Rufus, one of the newer characters introduced in the Street Fighter IV saga, but has been around for a few years since arcade launch.


Falcon Kick
While in the air, you can press down + MK to descend with a dive kick. Rufus can either go straight down or at a 45 degree angle at any time while in the air. Falcon kick can be used in a variety of ways. You can end jumps early and bait reversals to block them, usually leaving you to punish them.

Dive kick can also be used to annoy your opponent with block strings. If they try going in for footsies (stopping you with a low reaching attack, usually a foot), you can go right over them and dive kick them. They may or may not block it but your choice of reaction on what happens can vary. You can lock them in block stun then walk up and throw. Or if you hit them just right, you can combo into Galactic Tornado or even Target Combo to Ultra.

A small convenience is that galactic tornado is safe on block, so there's really no need to hit confirm, that is, use a string of small hits to see if your attack lands or is blocked.

EX Snake Strike
This move is crazy. It does way too much damage but fortunately is regulated as a sort of air-to-air move. Unlike a dragon punch like Ryu's shoryuken, which will hit on the way up, snake strike will only hit while its in the air. However, in a world of jump happy scrubs, you'll find plenty of chances to use it and have the joy of teaching a harsh lesson: don't jump predictably.

Vacuum effect
This is entirely unique to Rufus with the exception of Seth's new ultra. His EX galactic tornado and big bang tornado have a unique vacuum effect that sucks players in, and as long as they get sucked in, it interrupts whatever they were doing. You know how people always talk about this false idea of priority? Attacks that seem to naturally beat out others if both were to meet? This is just a misconception of hitboxes at work, but vacuums at least always overrides almost all ground attacks to my knowledge.

Ultras
Good characters in SFIV hinge on how easily they can combo into ultra. It doesn't get any easier with Rufus. He literally only needs two kicks to get out ultra 1. Rufus has nearly a way to combo into ultra 1 no matter what the situation is. Air-to-air? Air-to-ground? Reversal with invincibility frames (EX messiah kick is still useful as a reversal in Super)? Ultra 2 also works as a great punishing tool and anti-air. Opponent's should think twice about fireball wars when ultra 2 is ready.

Despite his huge hitbox, lack of a fireball, and limited selection of reversals, Rufus obviously was meant to be at the top. And yet everyone on SSFIV flocks towards both old characters like Ken and more acceptable looking new characters like Juri. Still, Rufus is a rewarding character for players to master who can be extremely useful on offense (dive kicks) and flexible enough on defense (EX snake strike).