Ep. 6: Get On My Level and a Long Awaited Victory

In this episode we take a look at what happened at Get On My Level this year, a tournament with a ton of unexpected upsets from some up and coming players, and long awaited win from one of the scenes most consistent players.

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to the sixth episode of Upset Factor. I'm your host Lukas, and today we're gonna be talking about the tournament that just happened in Toronto this week, Get On My Level 2023. This was a very exciting tournament filled with a lot of upsets that were very unexpected and a very long awaited win from the player Sonix, a Sonic main that has been very good for a very long time, but has just never been able to clutch out the win at a major. And while the character he plays might not be very exciting, his win definitely was. So without further ado, let's get right into the tournament. So getting into the tournament, a major theme of this tournament was the fact that there were so many upsets from players that people were not expecting, and this resulted in a very strange top eight at this tournament that was very different compared to the top eights that we've seen at a lot of the tournaments this year. And one of those major upsets was big duck hunt fan beating Tweek in top 1 28 to send tweak into losers much earlier than he would normally be expected to be in losers. I didn't actually see this set and it wasn't on stream but from what I heard from a lot of the people at the tournament, this was a pretty crazy set. Big Duck hunt fan actually won three one over Tweek which was pretty crazy. And. I did hear that the games were pretty close, but that was definitely an exciting set to watch If you were one of the people that had the privilege of seeing it, and so since I didn't actually see that set, I'm not gonna talk too much about it but I did think it was worth mentioning when talking about upsets from this tournament. Now, a player that I did get to watch at this tournament that made some huge upsets was xXBuntaifan94000Xx, who I found out later is the player midnight from SoCal, and he did go by Atreus later on in the tournament, so I'm just gonna call him that going forward. Atreus had some pretty crazy sets in this tournament. He was able to beat Mr. R three zero in top 32. And I didn't see this set. But judging from the way that Mr. R was playing at this tournament, this was a pretty big achievement because Mr. R was looking very good at this tournament. He was able to beat Maister three, two. And I did see this set and this was a very intense set. The whole time I was watching, the only thought that was going through my mind was, surely Meister wins this because he should be the better player. He has been here so many times before and. You'd think he has the knowledge of the matchup to take the win on this player that no one really knew about going into this but every time I would think this Atreus was just able to clutch it up and take the win. Now, the reason I think Atreus' run at GOML was so exciting to see wasn't the fact that he just made these big upsets, it was the fact that he made these big upsets and he made it far in the tournament much farther than he was expected to. And I say this because a lot of the time what you see in a big tournament like this when a player gets an upset is they'll win against this player. It'll be really exciting. And then they'll be eliminated one or two rounds later. And this is just because they won in a spot where they weren't expected to, which means now they're on the bracket path of the player that was seeded to win, which means it'll be harder for them and eventually they'll just lose because at the end of the day, they're expected to get a certain place and the odds are they're gonna get the place or around the place that they were expected to. And we saw this from the set I mentioned earlier with Big Duck Hunt fan. They were able to get that win, but then later on they were eliminated from the tournament and another good example of this was Burst, who is a very good Yoshi player from Toronto who was able to beat ApolloKage to get top 32, but then was eliminated right after. And so seeing Atreus get these big upsets and make it far in the tournament was really cool. And, it was honestly pretty crazy even seeing him perform very well against the likes of Spargo and Sonix and while he did lose to those players, the games were close. And especially in the set against Spargo in Losers' finals, it was pretty crazy because the whole time I was watching, and I think the whole crowd was kind of feeling the same way where we were seeing these games be as close as they were, especially at the beginning of the set. And I feel like the common thought between everyone was, is he really gonna do it? Is he gonna beat Spargo? Which would've been so crazy even compared to the other upsets he already got. And while he did lose this, I can't imagine how it must have felt to be that player and make this huge run at a tournament that was so big like GOML was. I am really curious to see now though if he will continue to be able to make showings like this at tournaments. Because another thing that often happens is a player will make a huge debut like this and get super far into the tournament when they're not expected to, and then they just won't be able to replicate that and they'll fall back into obscurity. And so I'm really curious to see if Atreus will be able to break away from that norm and continue to perform at tournaments going forward. And so I don't know when the next time we'll see him at a tournament will be, but hopefully it will be a performance just as good as his performance was at GOML. Now getting into the person that I think was the main character of this tournament, we're gonna talk about Sonix and his incredible run at GOML this year. So the first set I wanna talk about with Sonics was his set with Zomba. And the reason I wanna talk about this set is because what we saw in this set, Was a Sonix that a lot of people don't normally expect to see because with Sonix playing Sonic, what you normally see is him getting a lead and then just timing out and just stalling. Running away camping and making these games that are just super long and honestly a bit boring to watch. And a lot of people have not been very happy to see this style of play be so successful. And this has caused a lot of people to discredit sonics and the skill that he has. So this is the reason why I wanted to talk about this set between Sonix and Zomba, because what we saw in this set was very different from what we normally see from Sonix because he was showing off that while he has the skills to camp out and play the slow game with Sonic, he also has the skills to be super aggressive and play Sonic in A very rushdown style that is not what you normally expect to see. And I believe he did this because Zomba plays Rob and Rob has the ability to kind of counter Camp Sonic and he has projectiles, he has his gyro, he has his laser, and he's able to threaten Sonic at the corner where he can just sit and keep his lead against a lot of characters. With Rob having tools to hit Sonic without interacting, he kind of forces Sonix out of his campy play style because if he continues to try to camp, Zomba is just gonna keep peppering him with projectiles and force him to do something because eventually he's gonna lose the lead that he can use to camp with. And so watching the set. It was pretty cool to see because I think the whole crowd was a bit surprised seeing how aggressive Sonix was. And I think Zomba might've been a bit surprised by this too, because generally Zomba is pretty good in the sonic matchup, and you could tell that he was definitely ready for the campy play style, but as soon as Sonix changed gears and really went for the rush down play style that he did , it was. Obvious that he was gonna win the set as it was just looking like Zomba couldn't do anything against the immense power of Sonic's gameplay. I think it's really cool to see that Sonics was able to just flip the switch just like that and suddenly be this aggressive player because it just shows that even though he does camp a lot of the time, and he has become so known for that. He does have the skill to play a rush down Sonic, and he was able to show that this character isn't just a campy character. They can play so many different ways. And so I'm excited to see more of that going forward. And I think It will be very interesting to see him really shake things up between this aggressive play style and this campy play style, which will make it so much harder to prepare when you're trying to, learn this matchup. Because now where you normally would've just had to learn this campy play style, now you have to learn the aggressive play style and the campy play style. And so while we saw this a lot in the set against Zomba, we also saw this in other sets going forward, but I think the Zomba set was the main showing of this play style. Another set I wanna talk about is the set between Sonix and MkLeo. This set was definitely one that people were excited for because after Leo's big win at Wavedash, a lot of people were wondering whether MkLeo would continue to be a thorn in Sonix's side on his Corrin. Leo did go Corrin for the first two games of this set, and while the games were somewhat close he did lose both those games. And honestly, I'm a bit surprised because in the third game, Leo did switch to Pyra and Mythra and I don't know if I agree with this pick. Obviously Leo is gonna know his game plan more than I do, so he probably had a reason for this. But as a spectator that watched his performance at Wave Dash and saw how those sets went in Wave Dash he stuck it out with the Corrin uh, even after he lost twice and ended up winning the set from losers getting the bracket reset and winning the tournament. But in this tournament, he was in the same position where he wasn't losing by a lot, but still did make the decision to switch to Pyra and Mythra who is a character that I think Sonix just knows how to play against at this point. He just knows the matchups so well because he's played it so much that it honestly feels like even though this is one of Sonic's worst matchups, it feels like he just knows how to play it at this point, and he's able to take advantage of their poor recovery and make it seem like it's not even a losing matchup. And so seeing Leo switch to Pyra and Mythra at this point was very surprising. I'm curious going forward if he'll keep working on the Corrin to make it a lot more consistent in this matchup. But yeah, I feel like the Pyra and Mythra is just definitely not the answer going forward. Now getting into Grand Finals, this was a very exciting set because there was a lot on the line for Sonix and for Spargo. Sonix had the opportunity to get his first major win, which would be incredible for him. And. Spargo had the opportunity to possibly seal off first for this season on a lot of the rankings because right now, even though he has won against Acola a lot this season, and he has generally been the person that people regard as the best player right now at Ultimate , it has been very unclear whether he would actually take the top spot in rankings. This season because Acola has just had such a consistent season, only really losing to Spargo, and so with both players having so much on the line, You could really feel the tension when this set began. Getting into the set the first game saw a very spectacular showing from Spargo he was just calling out every option from Sonix and while it did seem like Sonics made a couple mistakes in this first game that ultimately led to his loss, it was looking like Spargo was just the better player in this instance. While I say this if you saw the set, you'll know this is the last time things went like this for Spargo because the next few games were a blowout from Sonix. Like I mentioned before, it definitely seems like Sonix just knows this matchup through and through. And even though, Pyra and Mythra is generally regarded as one of Sonic's only losing matchups and a lot of sonic players don't even say it's a losing matchup, but, it's definitely one of the closest matchups with only Fox having A similar performance against Sonic. Even with this being the case, Sonics definitely has just learned this matchup through so many matches, played online, especially against Spargo and while we were seeing a lot of Pyra and Mythra specific counter play. We were also seeing counter play against Spargo, because it seemed like he just knew every option he was gonna do when he was getting back to stage and when he was on stage. It just felt like Sonics had the read and every game while the second game was a bit close. The third and fourth game were. Blowouts from Sonix with the last game being a three stock. It honestly just looked like those few games were unwinnable for Spargo and while Spargo was playing what a lot of people think is the second best character in the game. Only behind Steve it was looking like this matchup was just unwinnable for him as Sonix was just getting him off stage and then making it impossible for him to come back. And I think this is partially just because Sonix has been able to optimize his character so much compared to. How a lot of people have been able to play their own characters, and this has been a trend that I've been talking about a lot in the past few episodes of Upset Factor. And I think this is gonna be a trend that continues to be very prominent going forward as Ultimate continues to grow as a competitive game. Because as updates continue to not come out and characters are. As they're gonna be for the rest of the game's lifespan. What's gonna continue to happen is people are gonna continue to optimize their characters and they're gonna bring them to the absolute pinnacle of what they can do in this game. And Sonix is a perfect example of this happening because he has played Sonic for so long and he plays so, so much online and offline that he just has so much more practice on his character compared to what a lot of top players have on their characters and. When you're watching him, it honestly looks like he's playing perfect sonic gameplay, which sadly a lot of the time comes out in a very campy play style. But when he is also getting aggressive, everything he does is so intentional and so perfect that it just makes it look like it's so hard when you're the person playing against it. This has caused a lot of people to think Sonic is one of the actual best characters in this game, possibly over characters like Pyra and Mythra or Joker, or Pikachu. Rob a lot of the other characters that people think are very good. And while I do agree with this sentiment, I think Sonic is an incredible character. I think the reason that a lot of people think this is because Sonix has been able to optimize the character so much compared to what a lot of people are willing to do with their own characters and I think a big example of this is Pyra and Mythra because this character is so, so good. They have the tools to be the best character in the game really. But a lot of people don't take advantage of those tools in. The way that Sonics takes advantage of the tools that Sonic has because Mythra has such good combos and such good frame data, they're so fast. They have foresight, which is such a free tool to get out of disadvantage and get punishes that you should not be able to get on any other characters yet. People just go for one or two piece combos that get them. Basically no percent because of Mythra's weak moves. And they have this character that can do so much, yet they don't take advantage of it. And while Spargo does do some of the more optimized combos he still doesn't take advantage of foresight, which is a huge mechanic in Mythra's favor that is pretty much untouched unless it's in a moment where it's accidental or just used in the same way as a normal air dodge or spot dodge, which is not how people should be using it. And one person that is sort of using that is Cosmos. But even Cosmos doesn't seem to believe in this character as he has been talking about possibly switching characters a lot lately, and so I'm curious to see what other characters are gonna be next in this optimization meta that is happening. Because if Sonics is able to continue performing like he has and other players aren't going to continue to optimize their characters like he has. I feel like there's nothing that's gonna be able to get in the way of him just continuing to win these tournaments like he did at GOML this year. And so saying that, I'm really excited to see what is gonna be next for a lot of the top players as they continue to perfect their game plans on the characters that they play. Because if they're not able to do this, It's gonna be very interesting to see what they're able to do in these matchups against characters that are so optimized, like Sonic and Steve and Kazuya. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of Upset Factor. GOML was a very exciting tournament. I'm super glad that I was able to attend it in person. If you're someone that pays attention to the competitive scene that has a major near you, I highly recommend going to that event, even if it's not to compete, because the atmosphere is so exciting. Being able to see the sets live is so different than seeing it on stream because you get to be there with the crowd and really experience it directly in the moment, and you get to feel the energy in the room. And if you're a competitor, even if you know you're gonna go O two, like I knew I was going to you still get to play against all these people and it really feels like you get to level up when you're playing at these tournaments. So I highly recommend going to an event if there is one near you. And even if you don't, I hope that you'll still continue to watch these tournaments because it's such an exciting time for Smash Ultimate right now with so many people optimizing their characters, and it's only gonna continue to get more exciting. So yeah. I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll be back in a couple weeks with another one.