Tortellini Sensei

Introduction

As complement to Kiva's thread about my friend Turtle Sensei, this is some additional info about him as player.

Turtle is very interactive with other players and enjoys a lot watching their gameplay and combos. His learning method was based on watching, studying and even replicating chops or entire combos from other players. In regard to DMC, he is pretty much a human library, at the very least for DMC4 and SE. If you ask him about a certain set-up or tech, he is able to tell you which players/in which video has used it, or if it has been used at all. Even from characters he barely plays.

He is really specialized in combo making and as most of his favorite players, he prefers vanilla and the most of his combos are done with normal HP and without skill modify mods/options, to make sure any of his combos could be done within the game's natural features.

I am not going to comment anything about Nero or his Nero combos. Besides the fact that he started as Nero player and he has a special affection for this character.

This entry is focused on his DMC4 Dante combos and patterns.

Turtle's Dante

Turtle's style is characterized by some obvious and not so obvious patterns.

Obvious Patterns:

- Low height.

He enjoys mixing aerial moves with ground moves and, in general, he prefers to stay relatively close to the ground. There are maybe a few exceptions, especially frost combos.

- Frequent use of shotgun JC, especially into ecstasy.



It's one of his favorite techs.

He tends to do it on grounded scarecrows, but in general, despite how hard this tech is, he can do it from very varied situations, like: approaching with Sky Star JCd into Yamato rave, Sky Star JCd into E&I shot, reversed fireworks with bullet-magnetism-inertia, air trick or reversed trick (and more).

Speaking of which:

- Frequent use of reversed trick.

This is definitely one of his favorite techs as well, and many players would agree it's one of his idiosyncrasies. Here is an example (at 0:04).



Which also exemplifies another obvious pattern...

- Frequent use of pin explosions.

This is a really common pattern in high level Dante combos, but obviously each player has preferences. In the previous example he used first the explosions from climax to push the scarecrow towards the rose from ecstasy, and later to push it away for the second ecstasy and finisher.

Maybe not so often currently, but he has also used timed explosions (opposed to more immediate explosions like climax or explosions induced by ecstasy itself when the pins come from a move like splash).

Even in his early combos, like in this example.

- Frequent use of lucifer glitch (0:39).

Not so obvious patterns:

- Frequent, but sometimes very subtle use of gun-weapons.

What I mean with this is that he uses them very frequently, but sometimes it's a mere detail that works as ornament or subtle adjustment of height (beyond the already obvious options).

For example, every now and then he uses JCd fireworks looking away from the enemy, more for its aesthetic addition than its structural functionality (there are easier and more obvious alternatives for height adjustment).

Example at 1:27 ~.

- Use of guard cancels to lose quickly height. Other players, like nino, use this option as well, but it's overall not very frequent in combos and sometimes it's barely noticeable. (Example at 1:36)

- Use of not so common moves in combo-making, like kick 13 (normal version, not DT, which is much more frequent), release, helmbreaker or beast uppercut. (Examples at 0:38, 1:24, 1:33/35 and more).

Some final comments



As I said in the introduction, Turtle enjoys interacting and learning from other players, but at the same time this is occasionally one of his harshest self-critiques, as he considers that maybe he copied too much their set-ups or combo-structures. Questioning his own creativity.

But the uniqueness in Turtle's style are precisely the interactions between the not so obvious patterns and the obvious ones, in what I like to call his special weirdness (obviously in a good sense). He is extremely technical, but at the same time he doesn't hesitate to use set-ups or moves that aren't common or don't even necessarily make sense regarding usual implicit rules or standards in combo-making.

In this example (0:16) he uses inertial jealousy looking away from the enemy.

The structures of his combos aren't necessarily typical. In the sense that sometimes he may even use what's usually a finishing move somewhere in the middle of a combo, and finish the combo in a rather unexpected way.

There is an example of this at 1:08, where he uses Grief, a typical finisher in DMC4, yet you see it there in the middle of the combo. Another one in the same video at 0:43. Drive (facing the opposite direction regarding the enemy) is a typical finisher, but again it's in the middle of the combo.



Creativity is dynamic. Depending on the context and time, some set-ups and even styles can be considered creative by the majority, but later typical or even mediocre. Leaving strange variables aside (like fanboyism, which is a complex topic per se), the interactions between players and viewers develop standards and tendencies to perceive each new combo as more or less creative, cool, etc. And players like Turtle try constantly to break the standards again; they try to break internal norms and habits; they try to think outside the box. Which pushes the standards or re-builds them (pushing standards is sometimes more a matter of execution than creativity, but this is another topic).

This is how creativity constantly shifts, and Turtle Sensei has had a great role in its evolution in DMC4, being inspired by many, and inspiring many others.

The last thing I will say about him is that Turtle is also one of the most helpful and supportive players. Despite his popularity, he never fails to share clips from new players and encourage them with positive feedback, while helping them to get more visibility.