Get into Garou: Mark of the Wolves

Garou: Mark of the Wolves just got GGPO. Wow. If you ever needed evidence that we weren't in the worst timeline, that's it. What a great game to get proper netcode and now is as good a time as any to jump into some of the ropes of how to play. This game is really beginner friendly and if you just want to jump into some games with your friends casually, you won't have to worry about SNK's infamous "pretzel motions" or anything like that. On the surface, Garou is very easy to jump right into and start playing. There are, however, a lot of intricacies to the system mechanics that I'd like to lay out and hopefully make even the weirdest parts of Garou more digestible.

Quirk of the Wolves

Garou is a beautiful, engaging, and exciting fighting game. What sometimes gets lost on people who aren't as familiar with SNK titles is that it is a Fatal Fury game and what that means is it is weird. Garou has a lot of quirks that you might not be used to seeing in your fighting games as the series has long been innovative and strived to be unique even among SNK fighters.

Counter hit specials launch airborne opponents - If you catch someone with a counter hit burn knuckle or some other special moves, your opponent will be launched high in the air for a free followup hit.

Not everyone has a cross-up - In today's fighting games, everyone has a cross-up and all the combos start with jump-ins. This game, thankfully, was before that. Cross-ups aren't a universal thing and converting a jump-in to a combo takes some timing. This means jump-ins don't completely dominate the meta.

Universal high/low crushes - By hitting the light keys together, A+B, you will do a universal overhead that is lower body invincible similar to the UOH in 3rd Strike. What's a little different is if you hit 2A+B, you'll do a universal upper body invincible move similar to 6P in Guilty Gear games. The 2A+B variant is also special and super cancellable.

Simple supers - Each character has at least two supers mapped to the 236236 motion with one super assigned to kicks and the other assigned to punches. The strength of the key you press determines the level of super you do. An S super is light strength, the P variant is strong. There are a variety of differences beyond strength between the versions such as P variants having additional invincibility and other benefits but these are unique to each move.

T.O.P. - T.O.P. mode is a state you enter whenever your health bar is in the designated section you've selected from the character select screen. When in T.O.P. mode, you do more damage, regenerate health, and have access to your T.O.P. attack, a unique attack performed by hitting the heavy keys, C+D, together that does high guard damage.

Short hops, but not KOF hops - Garou has the ability to hop just like King of Fighters, but there are no super jumps or super hops. This alongside brakes being such strong anti-airs makes hops dramatically weaker than in KOF. Hop pressure still exists, but feint cancel pressure is much more common.

Garou has rolls, but only on wakeup - By pressing the punch or kick keys on wakeup, you will roll forward or backwards respectively. The strength of the key determines the distance you will roll. These are strike invincible like KOF rolls and with distance as well as the direction being controllable, this creates unique challenges for set play.

Not hard, different

Combos in MotW are different. You're not going to have a classic 2-in-1 like in KOF and you don't have many simple links like in SF. No, you'll need to Feint Cancel between each normal which, while not difficult, isn't really something most people are used to doing so you should expect this to take a little time to get used to. You're going to mess this up, but that's okay because you'll get it after a little bit and Feint Cancelling makes links in Garou some of the easiest links in all of fighting games.

Button feint... button special. That's how you can mentally break it up. Select Terry and practice just hitting with his close C and cancelling it into 6A+C like you would any special move. Once you've got your hands getting that feint cancel, just try linking another close C afterwards and you'll see just how easy it is to link after a feint cancel. You won't be struggling with timing for strings, you'll be struggling with distance as making contact in older fighting games often pushed you further away than most modern titles. Terry is a good character to get a feel for feint cancels as he has one of the longer combos you can challenge yourself with:

5C xx feint, 5C xx feint, 2C xx buster wolf

Feint cancelling is one of the most important techniques you can nurture and develop for Garou and I would highly recommend giving it its own dedicated practice as it has a great deal of utility outside of combos.

Just!

Just Defends are the most well-known system mechanic from Garou thanks to their inclusion in popular titles like Capcom vs SNK 2, but they're a mechanic I don't think many people fully understand outside of Garou players. Most people know that Just Defends (JD) are performed by blocking at the last second and that they negate chip damage and build meter. But JDs do so much more in Garou! Here's a bunch of things you might've not known:

• By performing a Just Defend, you also get healed a little. It's possible to JD an entire super and actually heal quite a sizable portion of your health bar from it!
• JDs also negate guard damage which protects you from having your guard broken.
• Just Defends are special and Super cancellable! This is called a Guard Cancel.

Let's take a minute and focus on that last one. Just Defends can be cancelled into specials or supers. This is important because the modern representation of Just Defends in games like Guilty Gear are solely defensive. But that's not the what JDs are. They're counter-offensive! When you guard cancel, you're gaining some health, negating their attack, and can cancel into an attack of your own! I am more than comfortable asserting that if you're only using JDs for defensive purposes, you're only getting half of the benefits of learning to JD. And learning to guard cancel can be a ton of fun.

JD volleyball

Grab a friend and have both of you pick Terry to make this easier. Take turns throwing light power waves at each other and JDing them. Once you're getting consistent, start guard cancelling your JD to a light power wave and see how long the two of you can keep that going. Once you get comfortable with that, you can start changing the speed of the power wave and try to throw each other off.

Finding ways to make a game within a game that focuses on a particular system mechanic can help you get better much faster and break up some of the monotony of playing sets for hours on end. Sets with friends should always be a safe space to try new things and experiment. If every session feels like a grind just to say who won this time, it might be time to find a new sparring partner.

JD to Super buffer

This is a minor technique, but I wanted to slip this in-between everything else as it is important. While you can cancel a JD into a super, the window to do so is really small and some people may find that too hard. An alternative method is to buffer the super into the JD. The inputs look something like this:

2362364A

What we're doing here is we're ending the super motion with back. What you're trying to do is time it so that the JD happens when you press that 4, then you'll hit A and the super will come out as a guard cancel super. This is useful on wakeup, fireball reversals, or jump-ins as they're all situations where you can anticipate enough to be able to buffer the super before the JD.

Plinking the brake

Braking is a mechanic unique to Garou where you are able to cancel certain special moves by pressing A+B which allows for additional followups or safer anti-airs. The easiest way to describe how to brake to a new player in the year of our SNK, 2020, is to say, "you plink it like a kara throw." Easiest parallel is Ken's infamous 6mk kara from SFIV; the cross-continental catch. You're going to buffer the motion, hit your key for the special, then plink to your light keys, A+B. I'm going to notate a brake as ~A+B in order to make it clear what needs to be done. For example:

5C xx 623D~A+B, buster wolf

If you've never done this kind of sequence with your right hand, you can learn this right now. Take your first finger and your thumb and tap your desk/table/thigh like you're hitting the keys for a throw in Street Fighter. Now, right before you hit the throw, have your middle finger hit one of the heavy keys. You want the sound of the first key hitting to roll into the other like they're sounding off right next to each other, but you don't want to hit them together. If you're not sure, I would actually recommend going back to SFIV and practicing Ken's kara throw (6mk~lp+lk) as the right hand motion is virtually identical and the visual indication of Ken teleporting forward for his throw is really easy to see when you get it right.

A meaningful roster

Garou has one of the smaller rosters and seems sparse compared to the massive rosters you get with most modern fighting games. Garou is kind of rare in that there aren't any clone characters. Everyone feels really unique, not just in their movelist, but even in how those moves and combos are performed. Each character really offers a unique approach to the systems available. It's one of the few 2D fighting games where I'd say switching characters actually feels like you're switching fighting styles rather than just having a new shade of shoto. Here's a few standout characters I'd like to draw your attention to.

Kim Dong Hwan - Son of Kim Kaphwan and a rowdy troublemaker. He snuck off to join the King of Fighters tournament against his father's wishes and is avoiding his brother's attempts to drag him home. Dong Hwan is a wild card and is perfect for players that like to gamble. He has a command low that allows for stylish followups and a cross-up making him one of the more deadly characters up close. If you consider yourself a crowdpleaser that likes to take risks, give him a try.

Kevin Rian - Has some relation to Blue Mary (Mary Ryan) though their biggest similarity is they are both practitioners of the Sambo fighting style. Kevin is attempting to find who murdered his partner while raising his partner's son in his stead. He's an explosive character and if he has meter, you have to respect him or his kick super will make you regret it. Some of the biggest damage in the game and easily the best reversal. His kick super is so + that even as a trade you can combo off it. An extremely strong character, but also a really unique play style.

Play this game

Since Garou has had eyes on it since release, it's really easy to get a copy of. It's available on a variety of platforms though I am only aware of the PS4 and Steam versions supporting GGPO.

If you liked this, you might like some of my other fighting game guides. I've written one of these for KOF2002, KOFXIII and I have a massive general execution guide that contains a decade's worth of knowledge. I hope this was informative and you can always find me on twitter @Play_More_KOF. Thank you for reading!