Sonic Fox Kicked My Ass at Ping-Pong (and Injustice 2)

Last week, esports team Echo Fox held their first annual roster day. During this event, I had a chance to sit down in the lounge with famous (or is it infamous?) pro FGC player Dominique McLean, known as SonicFox. Hailed as the greatest Injustice player by the creators of the series, SonicFox is the champion in Mortal Kombat X, among several other fighting games.

You can spot SonicFox in any room due to his signature blue-fox-eared hat, which he kept on the entire day. We started the event off by playing a round of ping-pong. Earlier in the day, someone else on the Echo Fox team mentioned that if you give SonicFox 20 minutes to learn a game, he’ll master it. The word “prodigy” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to Dominique by both managers and peers. As someone who’s entire job is to work with their hands at fast speeds, he absolutely demolished me at the rousing game of table tennis. So, we sat down to a nice, friendly game of Injustice 2 on the big screen in the lounge.

SonicFox explained to me that his focus at the moment is on Injustice 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. Since we had Injustice 2 up on the screen, I had a chance to see his real moves at work. He started off with playing a round against fellow Echo Fox FGC member, Scar, where he used the new downloadable character, Enchantress, which he won. I sat down in the stool next to him and he told me who he was playing as, Robin for a warm-up and then he’d play as Red Hood. We said he was choosing Robin as the character he’s not very good at. For as much advantage as I could muster against the champion, himself, I asked the other players in the room who would be best against him that I could try to learn on the fly, which they referred me to choose Doctor Fate, which offers some long range moves that counteract both Robin and Red Hood.

I asked one of the best in the world to face me at his own game. I've made a terrible mistake.

I asked Dominique who his absolute favorites were to play as in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, where he boasted about his amazing Jedah and Rocket Racoon Team. As for Injustice 2, however, he pointed at the screen, which he had just chosen Red Hood to face me. “Hood is one. My favorite characters are actually both Red Hood and Captain Cold. Both of them have guns and they cut a lot of crap by using them.”

Great, I thought, he’s using his favorite to take me down now. Now, I’m not terrible at fighting games, but I only got in around 5 to 8 hits in against him on every round before I went down. Trust me when I say that he dominated as both his best and worst characters and didn’t even break a sweat. After getting my ass handed to me, I asked him if he had any proper tips for utilizing either of his favorites.

”Well,” he began, “with Red Hood, you should have him do everything. He’s the hardest character in the game to play as for a reason. But, if you can do everything perfectly, he becomes one of the absolute strongest characters. Captain Cold is an extremely hard character, as well (probably second or third hardest character in the game) to use. So, it’s very imperative that you learn how to set up properly with Captain Cold. Though, right now he’s not very good, it’s still important to learn how to apply each situation perfectly.”

Enchant This!

I recalled him playing as the new DLC character Enchantress earlier against Scar and wanted to know his opinions on how she plays. I brought up that people realized she can block players from tea-bagging and trolling their opponents. “She has an attack that casts four random spells, right?” He explained. “One of the spells disables you so that every time you duck or jump, you take damage. So, even if there’s trolls that sit there and tea-bag, it doesn’t matter so much for that in competitive play. It’s actually really, really imperative that you’re able to cross when you need to in a match. She can put a spell on you so that every single time that you duck, you take like 5% of your life. It’s really, really broken that she can put you in such a dangerous situation.”

He added in his best tip for playing as Enchantress. “So, she can keep stacking her spells on top of each other,” he smiled as he talked,” even if it’s all the same thing. But, the one I like to do is stack multiple at a time, if not all of them. But, there’s two specific spells I purposely go out of my way to keep on you infinitely. One of them is called ‘Ehwaz’, which the one where if you duck or jump, you take 5% damage, and the one one is called ‘Fehu’. In this one, your chase and special attacks are all disabled. If I can get Fehu on you, you have to come to me, and if you don’t, I can keep placing the spell on you. You can’t do much about it. All of the spells are green, but they have different visual cues, too, so you have to know which is which.”

When you ask a prodigy "What else do you do?"

After we stepped away from the game, I asked Dominique what he thought about the (then) upcoming game, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and who he plans to use as his team. “Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably going to become one of my main games. My favorite characters in the game so far are Android 18, Kid Buu, and Beerus. But, that may change. There’s a lot of gripes I have about Beerus right now, but hopefully they change that when the game comes out. If not, I might just sub out for Android 16, Goku Black, or something like that. I really enjoyed the game, so I can’t wait.”

Knowing he focuses on fighting games, I was curious if he ever considered playing any other genres professionally. “I never really thought about it before. Rhythm games, maybe?”

Aside from Injustice 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, I was curious what some of his other best games were. Surprise, surprise: They were all fighting games. “I play multiple games! I play Dead or Alive, Skullgirls, Mortal Kombat X. Oh, and I’m excited for Dragon Ball FighterZ. All of the games I play are fighters.”

As someone with such a vast, well-known career over the past years, SonicFox is one of the most confident gamers I’ve ever interviewed, which he has absolute right to be. I knew he had to have one moment that he was the most proud of, so I asked. “My proudest was the Injustice 2 Pro Finale this past year. I put in a lot of effort and work in the countless months of traveling and proved I was the best there.”

Knowing SonicFox plays the original Injustice, I was curious about his opinions between it and the sequel. “When it’s the same series, there’s a lot of similarities. But, there’s definitely enough changes in the system to make it it’s own game. It has a similar feel to the first Injustice, but it’s definitely different.”

Injustice 2 is widely known for making vast improvements over the original game, but this piqued my curiosity. I asked what he’d like to be seen brought back from the original Injustice into a third installment. “Batgirl, for Injustice 3, for sure. She’s my favorite DC character. She was so broken, but she was one of my favorites.”

This led us to the absolute core in our conversation, where I asked him how people should treat fighting games, and if he had any tips for newcomers. “Every individual fighting game should be treated as a brand new game,” he explained, “in the same series or not. It takes a lot of different mindsets to learn how to play a brand new fighting game. I’m just really good at it. But, no, not all fighting games are the same. Just look at Injustice 2 and Marvel. They’re not even relatively close to playing alike. I recommend newcomers start by playing their favorite fighting games. Then, they need to learn how to play at a high level. Then, switch over and see which fighting games might have their attention.”

I learned that day that FGC players can pick anything up and kick absolute ass at it, but I also am glad to see into the mind of SonicFox along the way.

For more thoughts from FGC pros, check out our interview with the Marvel vs. Capcom Tennessee champ Punisher and then read about the how the lowest tiers can be the best in their own ways in our on-going Life of a Low-Tier Hero series.