[Loki Laufeyson]

chuplayer mentions a "level 22" character. is that just a status thing like in vf's quest mode, or do the characters get stronger?
the latter sounds like a terrible idea D:
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[Deets]

[Touran]

It's a status thing as Deets said, but it only applies to the online portion.

So the levels are supposed to mark amounts of experience the player has with the game - higher leveled players are supposed to have a better understanding of the game than one's of lower ranks.

In practice these ranking systems rarely work out correctly, especially in fighters, but you can still use them to judge player skill to a point.
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Man, I'm sorry.

[Tulpa]

lol isn't v-13 a boss character? This is comparable to like calling Street Fighter 2 cheap because Akuma is broken.
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[Chuplayer]

[BotageL]

Nu's not "cheap," she's just all about zoning. Her entire gimmick, basically, is getting the opponent at a distance so she can combo with her flying sword attacks and other projectiles. Combined with her ability to cancel most of her close-range attacks into a teleport dash that she can use to get distance or switch sides, she can be rough to fight if you're not sure what you're doing. Frankly this goes for a lot of the more ranged-friendly characters in BlazBlue, though, like Arakune.

Chu, if you don't want to get kicked by idiot scrubs like yourself, go played Ranked matches. I've run into very few ragequitters so far, and you'll likely find that your token knowledge of a few Nu tricks will fail you quickly in the face of a mildly skilled player.
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[Chuplayer]

Blah blah blah I still hate this game.

[BotageL]

Blah blah blah you're worthless.
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[Drem]

BlazeBlue is good, but I can't say it's really captured me. None of the characters' play-styles immediately appeal to me, and I've already mentioned most of the game's personality didn't impress me. But it's a good game; I'll play it often, but not non-stop. I think the only fighter I've seriously played for a long length of time is Virtua Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 5. I'm not sure why I like those games so much, but I've played those single-player for years even though I only ever played one character.

Have there been any reports on KOFXII's balance? I've seen a few videos recently with some pretty insane critical counter combos. By insane, I mean they look very broken; 85% life-bar broken. Is SNK going to include a re-balanced mode like in KOFXI?

[belthegor]

[Drem]

Is Iori ever not top tier?

Siliconera is reporting that Battle Fantasia is getting released on PSN in the US this fall. Aksys has said there will be surprises in store for us; no clue what that means though. I haven't played too much of BF, but one of my friends seems to really like it.

The best Virtua Fighter news in a while is just something pretty neat for those who can play it. VF5R replays can display frame data, showing the frame advantages each player has during the match. I see it also shows attack heights, and they've always had the ability to show players' button inputs. Why don't other games do things like this for their replays?

[dementia]

probably because they aren't desperately struggling for relevance?

[Daphaknee]

http://www.gallopingghost.com/dark/
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the internet's

[Chuplayer]

BlazBlue is still shit. I played it in HD. 720p. The menus look okay. the backgrounds, while not as impressive as actual 2D backgrounds would have been, are decent. The artwork between matches looks okay.

The sprites look atrocious.

I'm serious. I could count the pixels on Litchi's thighs. The resolution of the sprites isn't anywhere close to the resolution of everything else in the game. What a joke.

As a bonus, it looks like you can discern Litchi's panties in one of the winposes if you're playing in HD. Unfortunately for Litchi, you can't see the straps that go around her hips. Since the color of the panties looks like the color of her hair, I can only determine that they are not actually her panties at all but rather she's showing off her fully grown bush in HD.

What a joke this game is. I'm beginning to wish I didn't decide to hold onto it just to see it in HD and then rip the music. I passed up UFC 2009 for this shit?

And I played the UFC 2009 demo in HD. 720p again because that's about all the game seems to support, but it looked phenomenal for the most part. Playing in HD did show the low resolution of some of the mat textures, though. 480i hides that. But seeing the definition in the veins on Chuck Liddell's forearms was amazing.

[BotageL]

You're nuts, man. Are you actually complaining that the sprites (which are sized for 720p, and are demonstratively larger than KOFXII and Guilty Gear sprites, sorry bro) are crisp and clear rather than smudged with some sort of Vaseline filter?

By the way, fighting fans, we had a great EVO thread in the Axe.
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[Chuplayer]

I'm complaining that the sprites look SD. Why do the sprites look like shit when the hand-drawn art that shows up between matches looks like a million bucks at the same resolution? What I'm saying is that everything should look like a million bucks. The sprites may be sized for 720p, but they certainly don't look it. They look like they're zoomed in all the time, and that makes them look pixelated.

[BotageL]

They're definitely not; if you want to see zoomed-in high res sprites, check out KOFXII.

I think your issue, if I'm reading you right, is not that they're "pixelated" but that they're traditional game sprites and are coloured as such, rather than every single frame being coloured like portrait art. The only way you can get away with that usually is when you're doing something like Odin Sphere where many of the animations are constructed using rotated and moved "pieces" you've already finished and coloured and where you don't give a shit about having to provide multiple colour palette options for mirror-matches.

Here is a comparison image I stole from Google for illustrative purposes:

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[LandRoverAttack]

Also the BlazBlue stages do zoom in and out, and it affects the sprites as well, which can make them look more aliased as it zooms out. Or so I think, I don't pay too much attention to it!

That aside, BlazBlue is really, really fun. I'm enjoying it a lot. I like that the technical barrier is a bit lower than GG (for now at least. GG didn't start off with FRCs and FBs...). Playing Carl is a lot of fun! It's quite a bit of work to win matches, but when I do it's immensely satisfying. Also I've only gotten good-natured messages on PSN so far, have met some cool people. Kind of want a hatemail or two :( I guess I'd have to play v-13 or something to get those...
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[BotageL]

I'm pretty sure BB doesn't zoom, actually. It's one of the major differences from Guilty Gear, probably due to the widescreen format of the game. (Maybe it zooms if you play it in 4:3? I dunno, never tried.)

KOFXII, though, does a fair bit of zooming, and indeed, at their "closest" the player sprites are scaled up rather obviously.
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[LandRoverAttack]

[G.]

Just got BB LE through the mail (hurray, region free!), and so far... liking it. Slowly working through Arcade mode to unlock Astral Heats.

Holy crap, what's up with Noel? At best plays like Angel, at worse this game's Eddy Gordo. Yaps a lot during those comboes =/. Going to watch the Bluray while making my mind up about dinner.

[LandRoverAttack]

I don't quite know what you mean (don't know Tekken very well), but I guess you're talking about her Drive ability. And yeah, you'll be seeing a lot of that if you play online. It basically gives scrubs a pretty easy auto-combo + quick overheads, sweeps, and invincible side-step frames. It'll take a while to get used to fighting against it, but it's fairly vulnerable at certain points, and just going into drive and hitting random buttons is not the best way to play her.

If that's even what you were talking about.
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[belthegor]

[Chuplayer]

[Loki Laufeyson]

whoever the publisher of blazblue is has totally shot themselves in the foot. if it was region-free or came out in europe at the same time as the us, i'd have a copy now. as it is, i'm waiting for kofxii, while i'll maybe get a preowned blazblue in the distant future if it ever comes out here
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[gooktime]

the funny thing is, it's going to be at SVB in spite of that

[DJ]

[CubaLibre]

retarded sister
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Focus]

retarded sister
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[Drem]

Chu, maybe you just don't want aliasing in new games; it's something you think we should have gotten past by now. It is, however, something that will stay for a long while because drawing is a lot of work and drawing larger pictures for higher definitions cost a lot of time and money for something that probably won't sell enough to break even for that budget.

Have games explored vectored art? Vectors are supposed to be scalable to any size without quality loss. How well would those work for sprites?

Is Akuma's retarded sister canon?


Gamestop still has King of Fighters XII listed for this Thursday, the 23rd, and employees at stores seem to be expecting the game Thursday or Friday. It seems GS might be getting the game a tad earlier than everywhere else. Hopefully this means I can play it over the weekend.

[Chuplayer]

Excuse me for expecting a high resolution game to be high resolution! Outrun 2006 on the PS2 at 480p looks better.

As for "drawing is a lot of work" look at HDR. Hell, look at Arcana Heart. That was certainly not as high budget as its contemporaries, but it outshines many of them. The same thing happened with HDR. HDR is the Arcana Heart of the HD age.

[Drem]

There are several things with HDR that makes it's production different from BlazBlue and KOFXII, though. HDR had it's aim set pretty high, but this caused the game to be delayed over and over again, because drawing is a lot of work. Then, after months of delays, they announced the project was being downscaled and that the art wasn't going to be as detailed as originally planned, because drawing is a lot of work. In the end, it took them long development accompanied with months of delays to create sprites that aren't pixelated in HD, but also aren't as detailed or involved as BB and KOFXII and contain significantly less amount of animation than either of them.

HDR is nice in it's own respect, but BB and KOFXII are in a different league aesthetically, and they all serve to prove that drawing is a lot of work. I just saw an interview with SNK last night where the producer of KOFXII stated that one character usually took 16 months to complete, though they eventually sped the process up a little with the way they organized their art teams.

As for Arcana Heart, I don't really remember the quality of the sprites too well to really compare them. But it doesn't have too many contemporaries to outshine in the first place, does it? Most games released last generation from SNK and Capcom re-hashed old sprites, and I don't remember other company's efforts off the top of my head. Guilty Gear and Arcana Heart both looked equally good in sprite quality, they just had different art styles; though I think Guilty Gear featured better animation for many of it's character (but Arcana Heart admittedly never attempted Eddy-like designs in the first).

Edit: In the end, I think this issue is similar to why walls and floors still look blurry when you look up close to them (and in many games, even from afar). Sometimes there are system limitations, sometimes there feasible work and budget limitations. I'd like to see wall textures look nice and sharp when I hide behind one in an FPS, but it's not something I see often in games.

[G.]

Hmm, late replies (Damn Story Mode!)

Not that it matters but...
.
Quick and dirty upscale of that previous image since someone seems to confuse aesthetics and taste with technology. I for one never cared for HDR but I can at least admit that it looks slick.

But anyway:

[LandRoverAttack]

Okay cool. Do Tekken scrubs pick Eddie? I see more Noels and Jins online in BB than anyone. But overall there's a much better spread than SFIV. Still haven't fought any fellow Carls, though.

Story mode is pretty cool! I think they did a great job of realizing the world and setting than Guilty Gear ever did. Still, I don't have much patience for it usually, as I enjoy the competitive game so much. Constantly pleasantly surprised by the English voices.
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[boojiboy7]

I have a lot of problems fighting Jin.

I can play as him pretty well though. But I don't want to main him, so I am working on figuring out who else to play. The woman with the staff whose name escapes me is pretty fun, though complicated.

[LandRoverAttack]

Yeah, Jin in BB can be a pain. Ice cars are not too bad, if they do a B or C version you can Instant Block the second hit and counter with something easy. His neutral D really is a problem for me. It's anti-air and long range and freezes you good. There's not much I can do after blocking it. Plus his DP moves with invincibility bleh.

Litchi... I've fought like 1 good one and never tried to play as her. I hardly have any idea how she plays. Is she kind of like Bridget? I probably know the least about her out of everyone.
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[Toptube]

A character named "Jin" in a not-Tekken game mentioned in the same breath as tekken, is confusing.

[LandRoverAttack]

Sorry, my bad. I can see how that is totally confusing.

I could say Jin K. BUT THAT WOULDN'T HELP ANYTHING GAAH
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[Drem]

I found Litchi interesting, but I can't seem to start her basic combos. They're usually something like 5B 5C 3C 5D instant air dash 5C or something. The 3C animation has the rod thrown outwards and the D makes it's separate from you and also counts as another hit, causing your opponent to become briefly airborne (or maybe the 3C did that and the D juggles). Then you're supposed to instant air dash and hit them in the air and then continue to more stuff, but this is the part I can't connect. The opponent always lands on the ground before I can get to them.

So instead I've been trying to get used to Ragna. He seems to have decent mobility and decent damage output, and I'm getting accustomed to all of the quarter circles used to combo his moves together. Sort of reminds me of A.B.A.

[Chuplayer]

Drem, have you ever seen a comic book from this decade? They sell artwork better than BlazBlue for 3 or 4 bucks a pop. There's no excuse.

[Touran]