Fighting Game Catch-All

BishopRS wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Bishop, when are you getting your 360 back? Rejoin us!

Shoryuken just posted all the grand finals matches from EVO 2012. Soul Calibur V in particular is worth watching, because that is the best Tira player I have ever seen.

I have it but it's packed up. I'm moving this weekend.

Pumped for P4 next month. Hopefully, people are on playing regularly for awhile.

I think it's highly likely, that's what has happened with every big fighter release. It usually lasts 2-3 weeks, then I keep trying (usually in vain) to keep it going beyond that.

Speaking of big fighter releases, Namco is whetting our appetite with an absolutely fantastic trailer showing off what you can do in Tekken Tag Tournament 2:

Yes, that is Michelle Chang, doing what Michelle Chang does best. September is TTT 2 month, get your copies pre-ordered.

EDIT: Since attendance has been low for the last month, I'm going to put out game choice to those who can attend tomorrow. If you plan to attend, post what you'd like to play. If nobody cares, we'll stick with SF x Tekken, but I would rather have an event people show up to.

I'm down for SFxT, but as long as we're pitching ideas, I'm always OK with AE

I'm down for anything in the list in the OP other than MK or Marvel.

The last time I showed up was for SFxT and it was a rather soul crushing night. I'm not sure I can get myself into a frame of mind where I want to do that again.

The month of AE just hit at the wrong time for me, and that made me kind of sad.

Thin, if you can make it tonight we can do AE. This month has already been awkward anyway, I'm fine with just having it be a w/e month, and going back to "one game per month" next month with P4A.

Alright I'm online from about now until 10p EST. Just message me on XBL if you want to play (and what game since it's up in the air), otherwise I'll be hanging out in training mode in SFxT.

Sorry superbeard, I just couldn't make it on early enough to catch you. 6PM PST is when I get home from work, so getting on to play before 7 is pretty much impossible.

Good games last night, Bishop & Joe.

There is definitely some hype for P4A, if our chat last night is anything to go by. We have 3 more Wednesday sessions before the game comes out, is anybody interested in doing BlazBlue for some of those? The systems for the two games are nearly identical, so it'll be good practice and get us all into the AkSys groove.

What's the current version of BlazBlue? I know I have a copy of the game, but I'm unsure what version it is or if it's the current one.

Continuum Shift EXTEND is the one we play. Sadly it is not compatible with any previous version, but it does include all the DLC that Continuum Shift 2 sold separately.

ahrezmendi wrote:

is anybody interested in doing BlazBlue for some of those?

Yes!

ahrezmendi wrote:

is anybody interested in doing BlazBlue for some of those?

Sounds good to me.

OK, sounds like a plan. Next time it'll be BlazBlue, and I'll plan another month for SF x Tekken.

ahrezmendi wrote:

There is definitely some hype for P4A, if our chat last night is anything to go by.

Been watching the Persona 4 anime in anticipation. It's pretty good. http://www.hulu.com/persona-4

I still have to pick up Blazblue Extend but I am down for any fighter.

Here's a great beginner Option Select tutorial:

EDIT: And here's a very well done trailer for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 -

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/h...

BlazBlue this week! Just a reminder for those folks who were interested.

ahrezmendi wrote:

BlazBlue this week! Just a reminder for those folks who were interested.

I'm running on a 4G internet connection until Friday. If I test it out and it works I'll be there.

BlazBlue tonight! I'll be on at 7PM PST at the latest. I will try to get on earlier if I can, to accommodate EST folks.

Good games last night. I might put some actual time into Mu, she's a heavy setup character and I'd like to be able to do more than just rushdown. Plus, Elizabeth in P4A is a heavy setup character, and she's the one I'm most interested in.

Speaking of which, new trailer from a few days ago can be found here, showing off a bit of gameplay but also focusing on the story. Hype get!

Yeah my budget's running a little tight this month so I'm probably not gonna splurge on BBCS. Still mulling over P4A though. I hear great things about it, but just like KOF for all it's redeeming qualities, nobody in my local group seems quite ready to put real work into it.

P4A, as sirjoe pointed out last night (please correct me if this was Bishop), is trying to simplify things a bit to gain more appeal. Hard to say if this will work, I've never been able to put my finger on what it is that causes an amazing fighter like BlazBlue to not gain the following something like SF4 does, but I hope it does work. These games are hands down the best fighters I've ever played, and I think they deserve higher popularity than they've gotten.

Considering how close it is, if you don't already have BB Extend I would just wait until P4A. Check out some of the videos on YouTube too, it's been out in arcades for a few months in Japan so there's lots of footage to look at and see if it's something you'd like.

ahrezmendi wrote:

...I've never been able to put my finger on what it is that causes an amazing fighter like BlazBlue to not gain the following something like SF4 does...

The short answer in terms of mass appeal, at the risk of oversimplifying the problem, is that 1) it isn't a Capcom game and 2) its anime art direction. I'm not saying either of these are bad, or even rational for that matter, but that's what I've been able to glean so far.

From personal experience, I found the game mechanics to kind of pile up all at once which really got confusing and turned me off from the game. Compared with my experience in picking up SF4, I found the mechanics to be rather straightforward and easy to understand.

Now according to Valle when he got a chance to play the game, P4A has a similar learning curve to SF4, lending itself to a variety of play styles simple and complicated. Personally if I can pick up a nice footsie based character that's not so reliant on combos, then I'm golden

There's definitely a lot more systems to learn and remember in BlazBlue. I can understand the feeling of being overwhelmed by everything. I have more trouble getting into BB games than I do Capcom games too. What confuses me is when I look at the actual system breakdown, there's very little different between the games. They both have standard cancel/link combos, they both have systems for using meter to cancel any move, they both have supers. The only big differences are that BB has the Burst system and Barrier Guard (which even Capcom sort-of adopted in TvC & MvC 3 with Advancing Guard), and SF4 has the single absorb in a Focus Attack. On paper they're nearly identical systems.

I think your two reasons are probably the most apt, which is part of why I'm hoping P4A will turn things about. Persona is a big series, so maybe that'll get the Arc System Works/AkSys name spread a bit more.

ahrezmendi wrote:

I have more trouble getting into BB games than I do Capcom games too. What confuses me is when I look at the actual system breakdown, there's very little different between the games.

I think, and I can't be sure on this one, the difference is even though point for point they seem to have the same core mechanics, it has to do with how and when they're presented.

The impression I got when learning SF4 is "Mechanics? Yeah we got those, but really, you don't need those one-frame links and 20 hit combos right now. Here's a basic combo, here are some good buttons, here's your reversal, and whatever you do, don't jump. Have fun!"

Meanwhile, when I sat in tutorial / training mode for BB, it was more like "Welcome to BlazBlue, here's your textbook and dictionary. Please have them both read before the next class."

Probably not the best example, and completely anecdotal, but that roughly reflects how it felt trying to learn each game.

I had the opposite experience. While both games did a great job of showing the basic moves with the challenge modes, BB actually includes a tutorial mode for the basic game concepts, and then the challenges have demonstrations if you don't get what is supposed to be happening. There were challenges in SF4 that were insanely hard if you didn't watch a video to see how it's supposed to work. I had to YouTube a bunch of SF4 challenges to understand how they worked, where as BB just showed me.

One thing I noted playing last night is that movement in BB feels very stiff unless you're using the various dashes. I don't experience this with SF4, where just simple forward/back movement feels a bit more smooth.

Are we playing again tonight?

I'm still waiting for the perfect fighting game tutorial. BB was definitely an encyclopedia approach and I haven't finished grinding through it because oh god why. SF4 (and Marvel) desperately need some sort of tutorial. I was hoping skullgirls would have a good one, but it's much like BB's, although better for total newbies. What I guess I want is something like an RTS campaign, where gameplay elements are introduced sequentially in the midst of playing the game (rather than trying to execute a combo). If I ever see something like that, I doubt it'll be from Capcom though.

Unfortunately I think the nature of the genre doesn't lend itself very well to tutorials. It's all too easy to go from Capcom-style "figure it out yourself" to BlazBlue's walls of text to something even worse.

I mean, lets pretend we're introducing the Fireball mechanic. Seems pretty simple right? You do the motion and you fire some plasma. But try explaining why you'd want to throw a fireball. Now you're entering an abstract discussion of controlling space, which can spiral pretty quickly into reversals, baiting, and how you shouldn't jump except when you should. So then you have to make a decision of teaching barely the basics so you don't get into this interconnected web of more than just mechanics all at once, or go full-on encyclopedia.

I use fireball because it's an easy example. But imagine explaining a relatively new mechanic like Focus Attack to a completely new player. Why you would use it, when you wouldn't, it's benefits, it's weaknesses. Even for just one mechanic it's a lot to take in.

The best tutorial is trial and error. It encourages critically thinking about and exploring the game engine. At the same time though, if a game's mechanics are too obtuse then it slows down the adoption rate of the game - which is especially bad for an oversaturated environment like today, or 10 years ago. Some games are simply not going to get the credit they deserve because the chaotic collective community focuses all their attention on a handful of games and leaves the rest to the die-hard players.

I'm totally with you, but I keep hoping anyway. I haven't played Smash Bros Brawl yet, but I've heard that the single-player campaign manages to achieve some of this. Smash is weird though, so it may just be an outlier in what's actually feasible.

The notice is a bit late, but I won't be on this afternoon.