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Burning Ranger
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"The Suckening..." , posted Mon 21 Mar 12:07post reply

I decided to break away from playing MvC3 and Dead Space for a while and retreat to some old school Street Fighter action on the PS2. I first went to Hyper SF2...and much to my own shock, I found that I played horribly. While I can easily play MvC3, SSF4, KOF and even Third Strike, I just could not perform on Hyper SF2. I couldn't land many hits. CPU was taking a thrashing on me. U couldn't get past 3 opponents!

In a fit of rage, I ended up switching to SFAlpha3 (the Arcade version on the SFA Anthology). There, I did somewhat better, but nowhere as good as I did on more modern games. I wondered if it was because I hate this game (I prefer SFAlpha2 personally).

But then I started to wonder. I'll admit that I was never an expert at fighting games, but I'd like to think that I was at least decent with old school fighters. Has playing new generation stuff spoiled me? On a related question: I've always been more partial to KOF as my fighting game of choice. Has KOF spoiled me to Street Fighter (if so, then why can I perform in SFIV?)?

I also haven't been playing fighters with as much frequently, with my time split between non-fighting games and non-gaming endeavors. Perhaps I'm out of practice?

In any case, has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone else experiencing this now???






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Pollyanna
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"Re(1):The Suckening..." , posted Mon 21 Mar 14:31post reply

I can't speak to your specific situation because I'm not you and I didn't see you play, but I've experienced something similar.

I think it's an issue of playing against the computer. That's never an accurate measurement of skill in the first place, as your success or failure is highly dependent on how well you recognize the CPUs patterns, which almost never resemble those of a human or anything with any sense whatsoever.

If I spend a day playing against the computer, it will mess me up completely against human players. Nothing works the same. The whole line of thinking is different. I'm sure when you played these games in the past, you developed a good "feel" for what worked and what didn't work. It's no surprise that you haven't kept that over the years, especially when you've played so many other games.

I have no doubt that I am both better at fighting games on the whole and better at any given game than I used to be, say, 10 years ago. I can do things now, I couldn't even dream of back then. However, I was remarkably adept at fighting the computer. I remember one time I played an MVS with KOF 98 and Samurai Spirits 4. Up-right and down-right were broken on the joystick, and one of the buttons didn't work at all. Still, I was able to win both games on one credit, KOF without ever losing a character. There is absolutely no way I could do that now. However, if I played a human opponent in either of those games, I'm sure I would do much better than I would've done back then.

Anyway, I know you didn't say this was a CPU vs Human deal, but I think it probably works on a "one CPU vs the next over a period of years" level as well.





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Nobinobita
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"Re(1):The Suckening..." , posted Mon 21 Mar 14:40post reply

quote:

In any case, has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone else experiencing this now???



I recently experienced an incredibly dumbed down version of this. The last three years of my life have been the longest I've gone without playing any games seriously(other than Facebook games which I have to keep up with for work).

I recently broke this chain with Pokemon Black. To my surprise, Pokemon, one of the more streamlined simple RPGs suddenly became kind of challenging. It wasn't the gameplay so much as the memorization. I had to use my brain to remember my Pokemons' stats, moves and elemental affiliations. All these things that used to be intuitive and routine became a challenge. This has given me some insight into how intimidating traditional games can be for new casual gamers.






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"Re(2):The Suckening..." , posted Tue 22 Mar 02:03post reply

It should be noted that the AI for some of the old fighting games, especially ST, is actually quite good!

I can't remember much about the HF AI, though...

The SFA3 AI from time to time pulls off ridiculous stuff. Since you start with full meters, I have on exactly one occasion seen the CPU start a match with level 3 FAB, immediately after the "FIGHT!" signal. Certain characters have better AI than others, as well; Nash/Charlie is a much more diligent poker than the vast majority of the others in the game.





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"Re(3):The Suckening..." , posted Tue 22 Mar 02:49post reply

Wasn't one of the selling points of Hyper the hardened AI? I've always thought the AI was tough in that game. I think one of the problems with today's fighters, dare I say games in general, is that they give the player too much credit. In MvC3 everything looks cool when you do it. In Super 4 you can comeback with one move and not even have to execute it correctly. Even Tekken 6 has it's Rage system. We're all Gods now.

I've noticed these same things. When I go back to playing 3rd Strike or Alpha 2 with people I feel sloppy because the new generation doesn't make me think as sharply. It's disheartening to think that the way to make a fighting game appeal to the masses is to lower the minimum level of thought that goes into defeating your opponent.





Burning Ranger
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"Re(1):The Suckening..." , posted Tue 22 Mar 09:23post reply

I spent some time today with SFA2 today and had a more pleasant experience than when I played Alpha 3...that is, until I fought the final boss (I was Sagat, boss Ryu). I felt like I kept getting owned by an AI I should have easily beaten. I also felt a sharp difference in control...Alpha 3 (and Hyper SF2) felt like it required extremely precise inputs, while SFA2 (and SSFIV, MvC3 and other current gen fighters) was more forgiving with inputs. Another sign of being spoiled?






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"Re(2):The Suckening..." , posted Wed 23 Mar 01:22post reply

Polly's right, a lot of those old AI's were based around pattern memorization rather than helping you actually getting good at the game. Knowing that Clark will always walk into your standing or that you can crouch anti-air crouch Honda all day is not going to make you better at fighting either character. It's not that you have become worse at fighting games, it's that your perspective on how you approach the games has changed.

While fighting AI that was invincible except for exploitable bugs is fun in its own way I'm glad that style of CPU is not as common as it used to be. Since you often had to alter your play style so dramatically to beat an AI that was often reading your control inputs you could easily pick up bad habits in your play style. It seems, however, that action/reaction style of computer opponents hasn't fully vanished. If you want to see the CPU go nuts with fireballs in the MK9 demo throw out a random ice clone with Sub Zero. The computer must hate that ice clone more than anything in the world since it will immediately stop what it is doing and throw things at it until it vanishes.





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"Re(2):The Suckening..." , posted Wed 23 Mar 01:56post reply

quote:
I also felt a sharp difference in control...Alpha 3 (and Hyper SF2) felt like it required extremely precise inputs, while SFA2 (and SSFIV, MvC3 and other current gen fighters) was more forgiving with inputs. Another sign of being spoiled?


But... this has me thinking-- when arcade-perfect (or at least close to perfect) home ports were a new thing, I remember thinking that it was so much easier to pull off specials etc. with a console controller than the average arcade controller. At the time I chalked this up to the huge number of poorly maintained arcade cabinets I always encountered, but based on what you're saying, this might have been due to more forgiving inputs in the games to start with? That's pretty interesting to consider. Playing some of the seriously old SNK fighters in their PS2 compilation ports seems to say otherwise (since Fatal Fury 1, for example, was always nearly impossible for me to control in the arcade, especially compared to its near-contemporary SFII, but on the PS2 I can pull off almost any move with ease every time). Is it possible that the input sensitivity was tweaked for the home port? Either that or I am experiencing the exact opposite of the overarching topic!

Speaking of which, I'll chime in in general. More than my skill against the CPU, I'm finding lately that the oldest of fighters seem not so much difficult as frustratingly slow. Jumping in SFII for example feels like moving through molasses. And this is from a person who used to thing that Turbo was 'too fast'.





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"Re(3):The Suckening..." , posted Wed 23 Mar 02:01post reply

quote:
Polly's right, a lot of those old AI's were based around pattern memorization rather than helping you actually getting good at the game.



While I agree on this it need to be said that there it was a certain.... Level of art in unveiling AI sploits in order to proceed further.

The one feeling that I got from the older games is that they are usually... Not meant to be played outside their home platforms; for example an arcade game needs a little time used to it, but you could achieve great accuracy by getting used to it and you can actually get what you desire at will even if the game has incredibly chunky controls....

.... But that usually changes if the game comes out in the console release, when actually acting on what you want becomes stupidly harder. I always got the feeling that companies tested their "reading methods" with the primary hardware at hand, and when it came to porting the product they didn't added extra studies in order to readjust the behavior of the game. It is only in the late PS2 era that I felt that companies addressed this matter.

(Obvioussly I bring this up since...) .... I just met such circumstance : in the arcade version Wild Ambition I wouldn't shy away from a Raising Storm sequence, however in the PSX version I'm dyed with embarrassment at the mere face of a motion. Back in the day I used to think that since I had no PSX nor any gamepad control experience beyond the SNES I whiffed the commands based on such incapacities... Now that I own a controller and I'm perfectly used to it I notice that such case wasn't just as such.

I'll cross [x] reference with another thread because senseless crossovers with no appeal are the trend in videogame industry :

quote:

Wastn't there something profoundly awful about the super meter in that game? I can't remember the details off the top of my head but I do remember I like the game except for when I try to play it.



The thing was that the super meter was used for everything. It was not only used for special moves and whatnot, but it was also used for harmful effects such as the player getting stunned if you are attacked when it's empty. Personally it wasn't as bad as it sound, by hitting the enemy your power meter increases, but getting beat up would mean decreasing your power bar. The bar itself tries to "balance" itself towards 50%, if you have less than that amount that bar will automatically regen itself, if you have more 50% then the bar would automatically decrease as to reach 50%. The sole exception to those rules is when your bar is full, then it does not decrease automatically and it becomes "sturdier", meaning that you need to take several hits in order to experience a "decrease" in it's amount, that effectively meant that having your bar full was not only "offensive" because it allowed you to have access to more moves and the game subsystems, but it was also "a defensive" measure since you where less vulnerable to stuns and other things.

That gave away to comical situations such as if a player does a DM or a Guard Breaking move and misses, a few counter attack jabs would send the player to sleep. Since DMs and Guard Break (Heat Blows) had such huge advantages that characteristic it didn't really felt that out of place. I remember that most of the people had little qualms when exposed to such characteristic; then again the game came out in that era that players would play just for about anything with no complain, instead of doing huge threads of 300+ post filled with whining about unbalance, prompt console release, lack of extra content or decent netcode.

On unrelated comments, by following the call of a surprise attack of Raiden Love I decided to check upon some CvS2 videos fight videos; but since no one cares about that I'm better of resuming the story to the simple fact that I didn't knew that Iori could teleport.







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