[Chuplayer]

Maybe Art of Fighting 3, which also sucked.

[Deets]

[Chuplayer]

Blame Regular Chickens for encouraging me to post this here.

The Eulogy of the Fighting Game

Fighting games are dead. I learned this today when playing BlazBlue. Fighting games have become a joke. They're nothing more than soulless shells created by companies that have lost touch with the fighting spirit long ago. There are the obvious ones like Capcom Fighting Jam and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, but some of the games that are taken seriously today are gimmicky fanboy fests that don't even try anymore. Tag team trends, super combo trends, juggle trends, and trends that I don't even want to name here.

Gone are the days of the spirit of true competition. Skillful fighting and sound tactics have been replaced by combo this, juggle that, parryfests of epic proportions. It's no longer about being the better gamer. It's about being the better fanboy.

Not unlike how the brawl at Tupelo Sports Arena between Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee spurred the creation of hardcore wrestling that eventually tarnished the public perception of wrestling in Japan and bred hardcore federations all over the place, propagating a scene of pain and drugs, the beginnings of the end can be traced all the way back to Night Warriors with its reliance on major super combos. This started the trend of pointless gameplay mechanics. These things were supposed to augment the game, but they changed what became the game so significantly.

Gone were good ideas like sidestep and Just Defend. Gone were level playing fields and accessibility. Gone were the two combatants. Even the super bar pioneered by SNK in its Samurai Shodown series was perverted into style over substance over time. Not to discount the good gameplay innovations such as tagging and even the Just Defend system introduced in 1999.

Even Virtua Fighter has fallen victim to the style over substance trend. Look at the progression of those games. VF1 was early but groundbreaking. VF2 was considered a respectable fighter. VF3 even more so. VF4 requires a Ph. D, and it started the trend in the series of hyper complexity and flashiness. Instead of a good 3D movement system and a nice balance of VF2 mechanics with other new ideas, VF4 feels like something completely alien to previous games. VF5 further removes the series from its roots.

Nowadays, fighting game companies reach out to the fanboys and fighting nerds way too much. Convoluted gameplay mechanics. Bad compilation after bad compilation. When they're not making bad compilations, they're repackaging the same old stuff with bad new ideas and hoping the fanboys will eat it up. And eat it up they will. Just look at SF4. Tell me that's not SF2. Go ahead, tell me that's not a 3D remake of SF2 with a lot of bad ideas. It's like they weren't even trying. Well, they probably weren't. I didn't like SF3 and all of its versions, but nobody can say that they weren't trying. It was the fanboys that clamored for SF2 characters. Capcom shouldn't have given into their demands. They started the stone rolling.

And once the stone starts rolling, it will end up where gravity takes it.

Even unabashed remakes aren't immune. I hate KOF98UM, but I looooooooooooooooooove the flawless Neo Geo mode in the UM PS2 port. There's something intangible in the UM mode that I don't like. I can't wrap my heart around it. The NG mode, however, is the real deal. It's saying something when the old stuff outperforms the "much needed remake."

If you want a real fighting game, you need to go back to the down to earth fighters of the 90s. There are a few exceptions hearkening from this decade, such as the infallible GGX2, but if you want the real thing, you need a Supergun, lots of old JAMMA stuff, and your own custom jimmy-rigged joysticks. That's what I'm going to be spending my money on from here and out. No more gimmicky fighters.

[Chuplayer]

[gooktime]

[Chuplayer]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Deets]

[Touran]

[belthegor]

[Chuplayer]

Something different is going on in UM, and it makes me suck at it. I don't suck in the original mode.

[Loki Laufeyson]

virtua fighter 4 evo has in quest mode, the best single player game and the best training mode a fighting game has ever had. i went into with the nearest i'd had to experience in vf being fighters megamix and maybe a combined total of half an hour on virtua fighter 1-3, and i loved it, it wasn't even remotely impenetrable.
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[Chuplayer]

VF4Evo's quest mode is just a map with a bunch of arbitrary tournaments and lifeless opponents. The best single player fighting mode ever is in Power Quest. It's the only game to even try to mesh fighting game and RPG elements in any way more than a basic capacity.

[Deets]

[spinach]

keep "rpg elements" out of my fighters

chup you might like warzard/red earth for cps3

you are the only person i would recommend that game to

i don't remember vf4evo's quest mode, it's been so long since i borrowed someone's ps2+copy but vf5's version, those fictional opponents certainly do each fight with a character of their own. i'll have to get a copy one of these days and talk about it some more.
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[Chuplayer]

[spinach]

chup when is the last time you have had a real arcade rivalry and/or been the subject of ovation

evo tournaments come once a year, and Wizard was a long time ago

[another god]

Through this thread I'm realizing that BlazBlue is actually pretty fucking amazing. I really hate that okizeme games are just "wake-up" rock/paper/scissor games. It's really refreshing to know that when you finally knock your opponent down that he is mashing ABC to get the fuck up because you're coming at him with a low juggle into a big combo. There are no safe spots, and whoever you're fighting has to get the fuck up or get the fuck out. There are tons of options to defend, and since combos are not all perfect you always have a chance to get out. On top of that you have the Barrier Burst on defense to pretty much reset your positions for that last stand approach (fuck Ultras), and you also have the mindfuck games of throwing near the end of your combo to get even more combo on your opponent. Of course, you can only do that if you're on top of your game and not fucking up your combos AND you know your opponent won't be able to respond quickly enough.

I want the BB team to make the next MvC game.
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interdimensional

[Chuplayer]

[negativedge]

I still don't have Blaz Blue :(

I get the feeling that it is my kind of game, only too impenetrable for me to actually access what it is I would like about it. Won't stop me from trying!

[LandRoverAttack]

I haven't played story mode, but I hear reports from friends that it is entertaining. So maybe you can wring some enjoyment out of that?
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[RobotRocker]

Would be playing BlazBlue if whoever was publishing it in Europe werent twats about region locking and actually releasing the game. Worst part, no one knows who is actually publishing it yet. Current signs point to either VirginPlay, 505 Gamestreet or Rising Star. Which is really annoying as it would be nice to actually know who are publishing it.

Edit: Uh Oh


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[Cossix]

I really really like BlazBlue so far.

[BotageL]

BlazBlue's story mode is pretty painfully Anime Serious at times, and while it does a whole lot of hinting and implying, the "true ending" consists of one or two nonsensical events and absolutely no resolution, because everyone knows there's gonna be multiple BlazBlue revisions and/or sequels. Also, Noel is incredibly meek, scatterbrained, and has clone angst, so she's pretty much intolerable. A few of the "goofy" routes are worthwhile, though.

But all that hardly matters, because the game's a ton of fun and the netcode is ballin'. The only really laggy match I've had so far was against a Taiwanese player; even Japan seems to come through with tolerable levels of slowdown/delay.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[dementia]

Carl is fun. I'm terrible though.

oh, Blazblue update/sequel is coming to arcade this October last I heard

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[BotageL]

[astralpancakes]

The blurb Play-Asia had on BlazBlue told me all I felt I needed to know about the story: magical anime teen superheroes duking it out. Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WXIMiCnxFY. And the cover just screams Deviantart.


I guess it's a pretty good fighting game though, if you can get past the animu? Wonder if they'll ever manage to release it in Europe.

[adol]

I wish I had a next gen system so I could be playing BlazBlue and KOFXI. I guess I'll just go back to Vampire Savior via emulator now :(

[another god]

[BotageL]

The Ciel-sensei Dr. Litchi segments are all unlocked by playing through the story mode. Non-obviously, they have to be unlocked in a particular order, so if you're like me and put off certain characters (Noel) until near last, you end up unlocking them all at once. Grin and bear it.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Chuplayer]

[negativedge]

[gooktime]

there are multiple characters that require negative edge!

[another god]

[!=]

Have you played guilty gear before? One character (Eddie) makes heavy use of negative edge.

[Loki Laufeyson]

has anyone actually tried us blazblue on a pal 360
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[Jigsaw]

I heard something about the US version working on Japanese consoles at least, but NTSC cross-compatibility is not at all unheard of. With all the talk about it I really doubt it runs on PAL consoles.

[Chuplayer]

BlazBlue is such fucking trash.

I decided to mix it up by playing as u-13. I took her through the arcade mode. I had zero problems throughout the entire thing. I then upped the difficulty and tried again. Not too hard.

I took it online. First match, I won without even trying. And then I got kicked.

Second match, against a level 10 something. (I started looking from here. I was level 2, but that's mostly because I haven't played the game since Thursday.) Beat him. Got kicked.

So I find myself a level 22 u-13. This should be interesting. No lag. I beat him. AND I GOT KICKED!!!

Not only is this character more broken than Mr. Bowling Ball Face, I can't even play because apparently I'm too damn good. Or I'm too damn unbalanced. Or the game's trash.

I already packed the game away and will not be playing it again until I get an HDTV. I will not be playing story mode. I will not be playing arcade mode. I will not be playing it at all because the game is a joke. It's like, a waste of life. And once I get an HDTV, I will graphics whore all over it for a couple hours, and then I'll proceed to never play it again.

I may take it out to rip the music from off of the disc once tools that can do that have been developed. Or maybe they already have been. Either way I'll still need a PC Blu-Ray drive in order to do that. The music is a work of art, and the two CDs, while nice, aren't nearly comprehensive enough.

I have better things to do with my time than play this game. I just wish I would stop spending my money on shitty-ass games.

[idle]

lol

[Toptube]