Fighters?

[Lord Lodestar]

Anybody here big on the fightan games (i.e Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat, etc.). While I'm a huge fan of the genre, I've always seen it to be hit-or-miss with a lot of people. Maybe it's a learning curve thing, or the fact that oftentimes single player isn't given a lot of attention (which is getting a little better these days).

 

[Skeleton Man]

I played a lot (And I mean A LOT) of Third Strike back in my childhood, Urien main fo lyfe man. Gotta respect a giant naked man in a banana hammock. Marvel 2, also, really amazing game. Some CvS2 here and there but at the time I wasn't so familiar with SNK games so it didn't really appeal to me. From there, I went into an ArcSys frenzy. Guilty Gear XX, XRD, Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend, Chronophantasma, soon to be Central Fiction, I played Injustice when it came out for a while, had some fun with Sodomiser Grundy but honestly Netherrealm games have always felt stiff and clunky to me. Played a LITTLE Street Fighter 4 in AE era but it just didn't grasp me compared to 3S, it was just too slow. Soul Caliburs 1 through 5, and a little Soul Blade but I don't remember much of it specifically. I'm looking to get into UNIEL at some point because that game looks pretty interesting, but the sheer amount of systems would put the average ArcSys game to shame... I play Persona 4 Arena/Ultimax on and off, just enough to keep from going rusty when I do inevitably run some couch games with friends. Tekken 3 as a kid was pretty rad too but after 4, I stopped playing outside of casual games of TTT2 when someone asked for it.

That's just the stuff I can think of immediately from the top of my head, I've played a lot of fighting games in my life and I bloody love the genre with every fibre of my being. I play a lot more casually now that life has caught up with me, but I still find time every now and then to get the lads together for some sets of P4U and Guilty Gear Xrd. Youtube helps me live vicariously through the likes of the Best Friends with their Fisticuffs/Scrublords series, Maximillian when I want to see hype cool shit and Gootecks & Miek Russ over at Cross Counter always deliver quality top tier gameplay. Watching Miek Russ get bodied over and over. Das a good one too.

 

[CallistheCalloused]

I used to love fighting games, I've since almost sworn off the genre. Almost. There's very few I'll play anymore because the direction they've gone in is downright stupid....but before I go on that rant, let me say I used to love street fighter II (I played countless hours of that among friends either on my genesis or a friends snes) We used to have some epic battles to the point we had to put the time limits on because our fights would go on too long without it since we knew everything the other was going to do. I dropped off on it for awhile but came back to it with SSFIV as a Juri main with some vega/ken(my original main) and abel 


Soul Edge/Caliber up till 4. 5 can dump itself in a trash bin and set itself on fire. 3 was by far the best caliber game to date with so many characters at their 'best' and GI'ing at a point where it was actually acessable enough even lower skill players would attempt it making for more interesting matches. Siegfried has been my go to for as long as I've been playing the games though raphael,cervantes, Seung-Mina, Astaroth and on occassion rock have all been one of my top 2 at some point or another.


I used to play Tekken combo throwing people with King all day everyday, but lost interest in the series when they started introducing wall combos which created alot of garunteed kill combos once someone hit a wall. Matches became really uninteresting for me because it was just 'launch into wall, combo to death, repeat'.


I played some Guilty Gear back in the day but I didn't know new ones were still coming out....are they? I haven't heard about a GG game in ages. Not since they did away with destroy attacks.


Last but not least, DoA- I still play DoA, and 5 brought in Mila who became an automatic main for me replacing Tina as my leading lady and bumping Helena down to third. I love DoA because of the triangle system, which to a degree ensures a minimal balance among the characters because everyone has counters and counters hurt a lot. I just wish they'd nerf the ninjas a bit and christies invincibility frames on her snake steps. DoA's my favorite fighting game right now, since caliber got retarded with 5. There's still some balance gripes but it feels more like I'm winning on skill and outplaying my opponent and that feels good. Choosing to step, or counter, or throw to catch a hold, and not just mindlessly spamming juggle loops feels so much more satisfying than most other games. It's a shame more people don't take DoA seriously, because there's real depth there in the combat.


Alot of newer fighting games haven't really appealled to me, so i have a ever dwindling list of fighting games I enjoy, as more and more try to embrace the 'let's be more ridiculous' mind set. I couldn't get into the MVC games because there were so many infinites. I can't call defeating a opponent with a infinite combo that easily set up skill or interesting much less fun. I want matches that actually have some variation.


IMHO the thing that puts people off fighting games isn't the learning curve it's the 'omgwtf' 60-70% HP bar combos that have one person sitting there litterally unable to do anything while this ridiculously long combo goes off. It looks flashy to watch and the first few times it's cool but after that it becomes tedious to do and irritating to be on the receiving end of. Nobody wants to sit there and be helplessly juggled all day, it feels bad. But fighting games keep trying to push that to further extremes with games like KI(Killer Instinct is particularly extreme about it) and MK focusing totally on over the top combo chains rather than fighting balance and interaction. There's not alot of play/counterplay in most fighting games, it's "I landed my jab so i can start my string combo and you can't do anything but eat it now" that turns off most players. 

 

[Skeleton Man]

The most recent Guilty Gear was Xrd - Revelator on PS3, PS4. It's easily one of the best fighting games ever made, from a visual standpoint. it's a little slower than X2/XX games but it's not slow by ANY stretch of the imagination.

I can agree with a lot of what Callis said. Soul Calibur 5 is a pretty divisive game in my experience but I enjoyed it for what it was even though my main got bastardised into two shit kids (Pyrrha and Omega). Tekken stopped appealing to me much after 3 because Jin ended up being a totally different character after losing his Mishima moveset and Devil Jin just wasn't the same. When people started to grasp the meta of UMVC (Vergil, Doom, Zero, Magneto, Sentinel, etc.) then it became just a worse Marvel 2, and it's pretty well known how utterly imbalanced Marvel 2 was... I got into DOA pretty late when 5U came out and started playing it casually just to tide me over between releases. I actually got hooked on the game pretty quickly, maining Marie Rose, and have been bringing it out for couch matches to positive response from my friends. If they toned down the OTT nonsense (just leave that to the Xtreme Volleyball games, guys...) then DOA would be taken a lot more seriously. ...that doesn't stop me buying all the skimpy swimsuits for muh gurls though.

If you're looking for fighting games that are new-ish and worth time investment, I'd say Skullgirls 2nd Encore is definitely a good pick. Kind-of a 6 button Marvel but a lot less insane. Really vibrant art style, phenomenal sprite work and animation, really cool character movesets. Blazblue is kinda similar to Guilty Gear on a fundamental level but it's a lot, and I mean a LOT, more matchup oriented. Every character has some bullshit gimmick you need to learn or you get worked by them, which is a pretty common turn off for people who otherwise enjoy ArcSys fighters. The "story" is a jumbled up mess of anime tropes and technobabble terminology that really makes no sense, the character designs are a lot less inspired than their Guilty Gear predecessors, and the movement is a little stickier and more restrictive than you'd be used to coming from Guilty Gear. Persona 4 Ultimax is really solid, but it suffers from "You Really Need to Enjoy Persona To Enjoy This-itis" because it is straight up a "canon" sequel to Persona 4/the Golden. Going in blind kinda drops you in the deep end as far as story and character attachment goes, while also completely spoiling the entirety of Persona 4 itself. If you ever EVER plan to get into the Persona series, i'd give Ultimax a reluctant pass until you play 4 (and to a lesser extent, 3) to completion otherwise you deprive yourself of one of the best JRPG stories ever made. I hear good things about Under-Night In-Birth EXE: Late (UNIEL) but I haven't personally tried it, as I stated in my above comment, so I can't give a personal recommendation for that one.

And to pitch in on your last point, I agree... to an extent. Yes, getting touch-of-death'd sucks. In most games where it's a thing (lookin' at you Mahvel 3...) however, it's never actually a 1 touch = round over because you have 3 characters and, because Marvel 3 is stupid, losing characters makes you stronger thanks to X-Factor... Long combos are not inherently a bad thing. Taking your example of KI, everything in KI is readable and reactable. it's a game that encourages observation and learning how to read your opponent so you can breaker (and counter breaker) them to shift momentum, similar to the Guard Impact system from SC2. The lockout mechanic punishes you for making (wrong) guesses by giving the opponent risk-free combo time. A system like that rewards you for good understanding of your character because you can't just do the same B&B combo over and over or you'll get breakered constantly. That's what keeps KI interesting to me. When two REALLY good players go head to head, it's very entertaining to watch because the game becomes a back and forth of will he breaker, will the opponent counterbreaker the breaker, will he bait the counterbreaker by stopping the combo, will the opponent punish the bait by popping Instinct and DPing or jabbing, and so on. While I will agree that watching long combos doesn't teach you anything as a player (whether you're on the giving or receiving end), I don't think they are a major turn off because they're not super widespread (see: SFV, continuing the trend of Street Fighter having relatively short but precise combos). ArcSys fighters appeal to me because they have both long and super fluid combo systems while also having the burst and alpha counter systems to help you shift momentum and make a comeback.

Fighting games have been making leaps and bounds towards better tutorialisation geared towards getting people into the genre. Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN had a phenomenal tutorial, and Revelator only IMPROVED from there. Skullgirls is another standout for teaching a lot of character specific stuff that is helpful when learning a new character or trying to work out matchups. These are baby steps toward getting more people invested in the genre and I hope that more companies continue to improve on it.

 

[Lord Lodestar]

At the very least, with TODs or big damage combos in general, there's at least some expectation of meter usage. Or it's off of a counterhit, in which case the person on the receiving end got what they deserve for pressing buttons. Only thing that really gets my goat are dumb vortex setups.


I'm enjoying SFV, at least now that I have an actual main due to Juri being on the roster. It took until Makoto was added to SFIV before I finally decided to take the plunge and get back to SF after  basically playing all of the "animu"/airdasher fighters. As Skeleton Man has mentioned, though, GGXRD is the shit. Even though Slayer is nowhere near as good as his AC iteration, hitting dudes with Pilebunkers is still pretty satisfying. Been playing the Blazblue: Central Fiction for a bit, and I swear every time a new iteration of the game comes out, there's a new character I want to main. Best Witch Nine is shaping up to be hella fun with all of her spell building nonsense. Having played Ragna from CT > CSEX, it's amusing to me that all the characters I like to play now are waifus (Makoto, Izayoi and now Nine. Once Mai comes out, she's gonna get scooped up too). 

 

[Skeleton Man]

Having Dizzy back in Xrd Revelator has me over the moon. She's just the same character I've loved since all those iterations ago when I first tried her out. BUBBLES AND FISH, BUBBLES AND FISH EVERYWHERE!

Now I'm waiting with bated breath for Izanami time in BBCF. I loved playin characters like Magneto and Sentinel in Mahvel 2 and fly/unfly shit is just something i gravitate towards now. Once you git gud and start landing those combos man, it's just greeeeeeeeeat feeling. Izanami's ability to bad touch you anywhere on screen and carry you to the corner with good execution is definitely appealing for me. Plus that ZA WARUDO grab just gets me all a-quiver with feelings... Much as I liked Mu-12, she always felt like a bootleg clunky Dizzy, she had great damage but her inability to zip around without the double air-dash sucked the fun out of it for me. Also, the Mu-12 v Nu-13 matchup is basically the worst thing I've ever had to sit and suffer through... LET ME SET UP MY STEINS YOU DIGITAL HUSSY! Now that I have Dizzy back, I don't need Mu any more so Literal Satan will do nicely instead.

 

[Lord Lodestar]

So, it looks like Capcom's got their ducks in a row so we have a new MAHVEL. That being said, I'm not sure whether I should be excited or nervous. 2v2s and Infinity Gems smacks of SFxT.

 

[Skeleton Man]

I can see the Cross Tekken comparison a bit. Looks more like the early days of MVC1 and MSH to me. I'm cautiously optimistic, I think if they learn from mistakes made in SF5's launch this could be a glorious return to form for poor old Capcpom after MVC3/UMVC kinda dropped the ball. Frankly anything would be better than Cross Tekken to be quite honest... A fucking Pachinko Machine would be less offensive than that tripe.

X in the western trailer being the first thing we saw shows they're listening. The early gameplay footage kinda reminded me of Cross Tekken's tag combo mechanics but I wouldn't take anything shown this early as gospel considering the game probably won't be released until this time next year at the earliest. Hopefully once playable builds start showing up at events, things will be a bit more polished.