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| |  "Re(2):Fighting Game Thread Summer 2017" , posted Sun 25 Jun 09:13:  
quote:
Here's the rumored Evo figures from the previous thread, compared to that of last year.
The 2015 figures certainly make matters more interesting.
Things that stand out:
The big three (SF, Smash 4, Melee) show the biggest shifts. Mind, SF5 in 2016 on its own posted higher attendance than the combination of everything else that year that wasn't a Smash Bros title.
If 2017 had only dropped back to 2015 numbers, then 2016 would itself be anomalously high. While SF5 was a new game, 2016 SF5 more than doubled USF4's 2015 attendance. Smash 4 and Melee also saw major spikes in interest seemingly out of nowhere. (Side thought: Is there a big crossover between Smash and Pokken players, so that the addition of Pokken convinced more Smash players to bother attending in 2016?)
This increased interest in 2016 only held for the big three, though. Tekken improved some, while Guilty Gear and MVC3 dropped. MK saw a fairly hard drop in 2016.
The killer for 2017 is that its big three didn't drop back to 2015 numbers, they dropped below the 2015 numbers. SF5 in 2017 is posting a few hundred below what the tail end of SF4 saw in 2015. But at least there are underlying explanations for why interest in SF5 might have dropped so hard, so fast. More inexplicable are the Smash drops. Not only did both Smash titles lose everything they gained in 2016, their 2017 numbers are only a bit more than half their 2015 numbers.
Only Tekken 7 seems immune to the 2017 drop. MVC3 and Guilty Gear both saw sizable drops in 2017.
Some thoughts:
What is the impact of having a really successful headliner game? Does a popular headliner boost attendance for other titles, or does it eat into attendance, or does it have little to no effect?
If a successful headliner breeds success for other titles, then not only could some of 2016's boosts be attributed to the rise of SF5, 2017's declines could be at least partially attributed to a rapid fall of SF5. (Tekken 7's consistent numbers could be due to little crossover.) You could even argue that the success of SF5 in 2016 acted to hide declines in MVC3 and GG, which would only reveal themselves in 2017.
If a too-successful headliner eats into the success of other titles, then the drops from 2016 to 2017 look even worse.
If there is no effect, then what does it all mean?
Touching back on that Pokken thought, is EVO 2017 potentially the victim of an overall weak and/or less than interesting line-up? Injustice isn't MK. KOF14 didn't seem to garner the general interest that KOF13 did. MVC3 is arguably in a natural decline. Is a lack of stronger secondary and tertiary titles causing more people to stay away in general? (Considering the attendance for these lower titles is pretty low in general, the odds are that they aren't having that much of an impact.)
[this message was edited by Baines on Sun 25 Jun 09:19] |
| | "Re(6):Fighting Game Thread Summer 2017" , posted Tue 27 Jun 13:44:
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To be honest, I never cared about fighting game tournaments, so... yeah, it's much better to just play and enjoy a game than get obsessed about tiers, buffs, nerfs and idolizing good players.
Now, I don't mean to change the subject; I just wanted to remember that Eagle will officially enter Killer Instinct tomorrow - and while his trailer was disappointing, he looks great in this gameplay video (and his music track may be one of the best in the entire game)!
As much as the general movement towards e-sports seems to be where the fighing game scene seems to be moving, I've had doubts of its effects towards the overall sales and merchandising for publishers, and the doubt has grown stronger in recent months. I think that in the end, it's the product itself that publishers need to focus on, not tournaments.
A survey for KOF14 taken this year showed that the general majority of players in asia (or namely Japan and Korea where surveys were taken) aren't interested in the competitive scene. Why this is different from the west, I think there's multiple factors involved. Money is certainly a big factor for the west. On the other hand, even if money was involved for Japan (as in, playing for money = gambling was legalized) I don't think the results of the survey would've changed that much for the country. Not like it's even really worth having a debate, since there's no way that it'll ever get legalized.
In that sense, regional marketing divisions for fighting game publishers are probably looking at very different directions when trying to sell their products. After this EVO though, I do wonder if marketing divs for US and EU will start to have doubts.
EVO Japan will be interesting. The game lineup is slated for announcement at EVO next month, but the commitee couldn't get license from Capcom to run SFV at their test tournament a month or two ago and people are wondering if it'll be the same case for the real thing come next February. Either way if it takes place at the Akiba UDX building again, it's going to be a mid-sized event where each tournament is run in seperate small/mid-sized rooms. The venue is a building in front of the train station where land value is premium, so size becomes a tradeoff to accessibility.
[this message was edited by Professor on Tue 27 Jun 13:48] |
| | "Re(7):Fighting Game Thread Summer 2017" , posted Thu 29 Jun 00:15
quote:
Now, I don't mean to change the subject; I just wanted to remember that Eagle will officially enter Killer Instinct tomorrow - and while his trailer was disappointing, he looks great in this gameplay video (and his music track may be one of the best in the entire game)!
On PC at least, this update has a very major issue in that it appears to have wiped Shadow Lord inventories (guardians, consumables, astral gems, astral energy) as well as your gold. Not only do those things require a significant time investment to acquire, some might have been acquired with real money.
No idea if this is a server issue, or if the data is actually lost for good.
From what I read, it seems the developers are trying to fix this and recover all the data. It seems this bug has also happened in previous patches and they managed to restore everything back.
But yeah, that's pretty bad. Especially if they fail to recover the data the players had in Shadow Lords mode.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(1):FINAL EVO BUSTER" , posted Sun 2 Jul 00:03
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Final figures for EVO2017 have been announced. I've placed the rumored figures from a few weeks ago next to them-- seems most likely that they were true.
That makes 2017 look a bit better in comparison to 2015, which makes 2016 stand out more as an anomalously high year.
Tekken 7 has shown a strong resurgence, more than doubling its 2016 figures. While not as impressive, Injustice 2 has also surpassed MK's 2016 figures, though it never came near MK's big 2015.
MVC3 is still down from 2016, but MVC3 managed to drop a bit in that bountiful 2016, so I'd guess the title is simply in natural decline. Infinite is already waiting around the corner to try to recapture the fame of the series.
GG Rev2 is still down from 2016, but it is by a more reasonable figure. And, like MVC3, GG saw a 2016 decline as well. This too could be a natural decline, with minor changes just not holding the burst of interest than Xrd generated.
SFV has managed to beat 2015 USF4 and had clawed its way above the halfway mark in comparison to 2016 SF5, but it has still taken a major tumble this year. I've said my piece on SFV before. The title simply has too much of a tumultuous history to draw much a conclusion about EVO 2017 itself. It is entirely believable that SF5 ballooned to absurd levels of popularity in 2016, only to crash hard in 2017, so you can't really use its raw attendance figures to draw conclusions about EVO 2017 itself.
Smash is a bit worrying. Both titles are still below 80% of their 2015 attendance. Even if events outside the games themselves are driving down EVO2017's attendance figures, Smash is seeing drops that are arguably far outside the norm. Smash 2017 shows significant drops (versus the more natural steady decline of GG or MVC3), shows significant drops without visible explanation (versus a predictable drop for SF5), and shows significant drops against both previous years (versus SF5 which managed to beat 2015 USF4 or Injustice 2 which managed to beat 2016 MK).
Has the presence and influence of Smash finally waned? Was 2016's amazing year truly propped up by Pokken's EVO appearance? (I know that there were Nintendo fans talking about trying to make EVO 2016 a year where three Nintendo titles would dominate.) Have the games simply aged past their primes? (Melee is almost 16 years old. Smash4 was for a last-gen system that is considered a failure, and will likely be cycled out when/if Smash5 is released.)
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| | "A late reply (KOFxDOA?)" , posted Sun 2 Jul 12:04
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Not that I know of.
DoA5LR itself seems to have settled on only releasing DLC for its women by now, and even recently delisted a couple of licensed outfit packs, so I figure the game is on its late stages - I do wish it had gotten more attention, considering it handled things like F2P and story mode structure better than most fighting games I've personally experienced.
Curiously, they're now having a Twitter promo collaboration with SNK about their respective games' Steam releases (TN represented their version with Marie Rose and Kula) - so I can't help but wonder if after the VF guests in DoA5 and the seamlesness of Mai as DLC in that game's system, if SNK might be a crossover partner for a sequel.
I've been recently getting some amusing thoughts of KoF's Alice and DoA's Mila cheering on their respective sides in a Terry/Bass match (or arguing who'd top or bottom, you never know with fangirls; I should take a crack at fan art to try and empty my head of such stubborn silly thoughts), so this promo comes up at an interesting time for me.
Kula being in the TN version of the promo could be meaningful if SNK characters in a DoA6 was to be a thing, given their more recent character additions to the DoA5 sub-series, and then there's the characters who got their outfits adapted around the time Mai was added to DoA5LR - IIRC, Yuri, Kasumi and Hinako, all of which could get their styles adapted to the more grounded DoA style (Yuri might be the trickiest given her projectile history, but she's had so many different movesets over the years they could make it work, especially after the Mai adaptation).
Rather than another DOA5LR collaboration, I suspect it will be a crossover game in the same vein as the highly controversial Street Fighter x Tekken. (KOF characters in DOA5-style models anyone?)
Amusingly, Kuroki twitted this a few days back.
Leona and Angel will be in this like the KOF XIV Steam promotion that Kuroki twitted? The answer will probably be in TGS.
"Lasciate ogne speranza"
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| | "Re(1):Arcana Resurrection" , posted Thu 6 Jul 19:25
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Now, speaking of SNK, that former SamShoV developer under the "new" name, Examu, started the kickstarter for the port of one of its lost games in the west.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/99831120/arcana-heart-3-love-max-six-stars-2d-fighting-game
I find amusing how in 5 minutes someone dropped U$5k just to have a drawing of his favorite character in any way that he likes it. I'm happy that it's already past 30% of the U$100k asked and, if we're lucky, we might even get new characters too.
I'm really curious about the direction they are taking with all that. As far as I know, they were working on Arcana Heart 4, but then the creator of the series died (in December, I believe?) and they have struggled since.
Could the new characters be new characters from 4, but the game has been scrapped and they are salvaging the work by retro-fitting them into Six Stars?
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| | "Re(2):MvC:I Jedah meets Arika" , posted Mon 17 Jul 05:15
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Jedah is real
Hmm. I know the "not like this" phrase is overdone, but...a character from one of the prettiest fighters ever made had to wait for a reappearance until a game whose own American producers admit is appallingly ugly? 絶望した！カプコンのやる気のなさに絶望した！
I respectfully disagree. We'll still need to know how Jedah goes in term of game play (I'd like to avoid another dreadful Leilei situation) but Jedah is by far the best looking character of this game (as he should). Hopefully his supers make him justice.
And while indeed Chunli and some others look terrible, pretending the game is ugly is something else (especially since Fighting Layer EX looks like an early PS3 game, which is a compliment in this specific case).
MvCI's graphical problems are 1) human character faces 2) UI 3) chromatic aberration on some stages. Jedah and Thanos at least look very good, and I hope Dormamu, Red Arremer or Nemesis translate nicely so we can pair them with either.
quote:
BUT IN BETTER NEWS, these cats have video of Arika's Fighting Layer EX, surely MMCafe's next universally adored game/mascot game after Justice Gakuen. GOGOGOGO
I haven't seen many matches of this game, but I'm really intrigued by their fusion of SFxT's gem system with Zero3's ISM system. It seems very original, and some of these options sound really crazy.
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| | "Re(1):Evollumania" , posted Mon 17 Jul 20:15
I couldn't watch SF5's finals (I did watch UMvC3, which was "yup, this game, yup, verily this game"), so my highlights are:
1) Jedah, because of personal loyalty
2) DBF looks so incredible. I was never a DBZ fan, but this game, man, this game. We should be used by now to the whole "the game looks like the anime, only better" after all of CC2's games, but DBF takes it to a whole other level. Apparently, the closed beta will have two more characters on top of Trunks? I am so looking forward to not getting in.
3) Annoying people finally got their Skullomania. Hopefully they will soon come to their senses and finally remember that the joke was never funny to begin with, and he'll go back with Dan into the locker room of eternally bad ideas. Darum is cool, though, he can stay. Pullum next?
Geese is fantastic on a conceptual and visual level, but he's trapped in a game I will never enjoy unfortunately. His musical theme will forever be the best musical theme ever, though.
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| | "Kompromania" , posted Tue 18 Jul 19:36
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I believe the KGB called this "kompromat."
Hahaha, goddamit.
I'm just saying I came to my senses earlier than you did, that's all!
Also, I'm reading Tracey Thorn's charming biography, and I'm being reminded how rapidly British music (as everything else) flashes through "this hasn't been cool in ages, this will be cool, this is cool now, what do you mean this not cool anymore".
So, Skullomania was cool until people on Neogaf and Eventhubs decided he was cool, at which point he became a tired meme. This is how it is. Sorry for your loss.
*Flicks his fringe*
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| | "Re(2):Kompromania" , posted Thu 20 Jul 19:15
quote:
I never pegged you as being emo before, now you ruined it for life.
You're a grown-up, you don't understand what I'm going through!
*goes suck in the corner*
As for Dan... The only games he'd had any right to be in were the CvS and SvC at the time. Now that the whole history around Ryo's creation is lost to the corner of Wikipedia and the fuzzy memory of the grandpas of this thread, he has no reason to come back at all.
Actually, SF5 using him to describe items in the shop is a good solution to the problem. If you like his antics, here they are, if you don't, you don't ever see them, and on top of that the dev team doesn't lose a second of their time.
Abigail does the goofball character really well, by the way. He's intensely ugly (though apparently the trailer was an old build, and now the Abobo-looking upper body is only in V-trigger, while in the trailer it was permanent), but from his reaction at the select screen (he corrects the announcer's pronunciation of his name), to the "crunch" sound when he sticks people in the ceiling even though most stages are blatantly outside, to his little finger taunt when he dashes back... Maou is soon going to hate me even more.
Also, the background is really nice: it has 3 different remixes from FF, and the sun progressively rises round after round. It's something that was always fantastic at SNK, but rare at Capcom's; and the fact that it's actually a call back to the sun rising in the original stage makes it all better. Finally, Alex, Ibuki and Juri's costumes are all nice, and Ryu's stage is Ryu's stage.
Exhilarated, I turned the game on for the first time in weeks. How can Ed be at the same time so bland yet so ugly?
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| |  "Re(3):Kompromania" , posted Thu 20 Jul 21:42:
I am OK with Abobobigail from a design perspective. He's the PTX of the game, alright. I am surprised he can jump. There were more interesting bad hombres to pick from Final Fight for sure, but alas Final Fight Revenge's existence would prevent most of these Bosses from being "entirely new characters", as promised by Capcom earlier this year. I realize that I got an impossibly perfect version of Geese on the same day so I won't be too picky about who he brought has a +1 on his Evo announcement invitation.
What irks me is how poorly they integrated Abigail's design into a proper story background. Capcom used to be way more coherent about this. Here is the character's storyline:
quote:
His territory is the Bay Area of Metro City, a location he terrorizes with his gargantuan size, and at eight feet tall, he makes the Red Cyclone look like a spinning top. The tires around Abigail’s monstrous biceps make is clear what he’s been up to when he isn’t cracking skulls. This mountain of a man is a complete (mad) gear head that loves to make car noises almost as much as he loves driving them.
One thing that’s troubling Abigail is the whereabouts of his prized monster truck. Be sure to check out his character story as he brawls his way through the mean streets of Metro City in search of it.
He is 8 feet tall. 2.44 meters high. Something like 5 feet wide even without the creatine bug. Why does he drive cars? How can he drive a fucking car? How does he get in? Even a cabriolet would be (quite literally) stretching it. They could have least had made him a biker; it would look as dopey as a circus bear riding a tiny bicycle, but fair enough. Yet no, they decided it was all sorts of cars, and specifically a Monster Truck for the story mode. These things have giant wheels, and giant chassis, but the interior and coverage of these machines' bodies is pretty much a standard pick-up truck. How does he fit? Why did they need to give him that storyline? Hoes does this fit with his FF1 storyline, design or stage?
Why isn't it the opposite and Abigail's entire persona being that he hates cars because he cannot get inside them? Why isn't Abigail some kind of extremist vehicle-hunter, possibly renamed Hidalgo, a reformed Mad Gear crew member who joined Mayor Haggar's side after FF1 and physically prevents motorized vehicles from entering gentrified Metro City neighbourhoods so the city can get awarded the 2024 Olympics? Why would he love cars? He is not even the guy from Oh My Car! That would have made more sense, and it would also have been a way better "as of yet unplayable" character from the Final Fight series. Street Fighter V feels always half-thought through.
Même Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Thu 20 Jul 21:43] |
| | "Re(2):That Dragonball game" , posted Sun 20 Aug 22:05
If I'm not mistaken, 17 is specifically an assist for 18 (like Mayoi for Naruhodo in MvC3, or the Commando crew to CapCom in MvC2). He's part of her move set, or at least her super.
There is no assist-only character, but an interview did mention that some characters may be weaker on point but with great assists, a bit like CapCom or Psylocke in MvC2 (I guess they were thinking about Krilin, since they alluded to characters who should canonically be too weak to beat the big bads 1 on 1, but still have their own roles).
Since they also added two copy and paste characters, it wouldn't be surprising if 17 was added later down the line, especially considering how expensive character in this engine are.
It's also possible most of the roster was decided before Super reached the current point.
Either way, 16 is a nice surprise. I wonder if he will have a self-destruction super... The scan seems to allude to that.
What other important DBZ characters are missing? Tenshinhan, Goten/child Trunks, the evil version of Boo...? The cast is shaping up quite nicely, and 16 opens the door for more surprising picks, like Raditz or Yamcha (please no Mr Satan).
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XBL: Gojiraaa
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| "Re(3):That Dragonball game" , posted Mon 21 Aug 04:32
quote:
If I'm not mistaken, 17 is specifically an assist for 18 (like Mayoi for Naruhodo in MvC3, or the Commando crew to CapCom in MvC2). He's part of her move set, or at least her super.
There is no assist-only character, but an interview did mention that some characters may be weaker on point but with great assists, a bit like CapCom or Psylocke in MvC2 (I guess they were thinking about Krilin, since they alluded to characters who should canonically be too weak to beat the big bads 1 on 1, but still have their own roles).
Oh, sorry for jumping the gun then. I haven't been following the game's progress too closely. It's still kind of the same issue even if it's only for one character, but at least they're not making a habit of it (yet).
Yeah thinking about it, there was no way that 17 was showing up in Super yet when they decided on the roster for this game. Even if they knew he would eventually, with the level of detail they've been applying to character adaptation maybe they wanted to wait and see if he had any big moments in Super that they could capture before deciding how he should play.
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| | "Re(3):That Dragonball game" , posted Tue 22 Aug 00:30
quote:
There is no assist-only character, but an interview did mention that some characters may be weaker on point but with great assists, a bit like CapCom or Psylocke in MvC2 (I guess they were thinking about Krilin, since they alluded to characters who should canonically be too weak to beat the big bads 1 on 1, but still have their own roles).
Keeping in with the tradition of Dragon Ball games, I am pretty sure Krilin will be generously kept as a standalone character, although it would have been hilarious if his much stronger wife had been available as a support character to help him stay toe to toe. That's a way Mr Satan could work, actually, if Videl (and/or Great Saiyaman) was doing everything "behind his back" and assisting for all special and command moves.
We know Tenshinhan is the producer's favorite character so I am pretty sure that's who she hinted at when she said some weaker characters might appear helped by assists (i.e. Chaozu sacrificing himself which remains the kind of iconic image they'll be too happy to reproduce 1:1 in the game as a desperation attack).
I think another potential candidate for "multiple characters in one" is Ginyu's team.
quote:
According to an unconfirmed leak from 2ch, Tenshinahn and Yamcha are in the game, together with adult Gohan, Videl, and two I presume are from the new DBSuper.
I had not heard about that leak. Considering their fascination for iconic moments of each characters in the source material, it's weird they would pick adult Gohan who had way less iconic moments in the manga and the anime than his kid version. Unless they base themselves on the one-armed future Gohan version from the Trunks movie? Speaking of which, that's a cool rendition of both characters. (I am sure they won't even have to pick, they'll just put both versions of Gohan anyway.)
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "Re(5):That DB game, that MVC game, that ARMS" , posted Wed 23 Aug 05:11
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Wait, BULMA?? Is she a fighter in this game somehow, or is ArcSys going as far as giving alt outfits for a SUPPORTING CHARACTER??
So alt outfits for Android 18, and Bulma is in the game. Oxford comma was a pre-order DLC.
Oh, my bad. Thanks for the comma!
As for MvC:I, Soul Stone's uses in the game made me realize why Capcom suddenly decided to have the defeated fighters stay on the ground instead of blinking away (which, by the way is something I not only like, but think EVERY tag-team fighting game should do). The roster is still disappointing, but I'm getting more interested in this game.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(3):That DB game, that MVC game, that ARMS" , posted Wed 23 Aug 19:50
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...but in this flood of news, where are the reports on the Arika not-SFEX-4 EX?? 
With such a small team, I don't think we'll hear anything before the TGS at best.
But on the same topic, I recently was remembered of a time when fighting game music sounded good, and some of SFEX's music was quite fantastic. Maybe not on par with the SF2's themes, but this, this or that is really how I'd like my video game music to sound even now.
I wouldn't mind if Sakura or Guile were to reclaim those themes in future SF5 updates.
I guess with how low the budget for Arika's game is shaping up to be, they'll reuse as much music as possible (they already re-used Ryu's theme in their trailer, I believe), so that's a start.
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| | "New challengers to BB's crossover" , posted Sat 16 Sep 08:42:
For anyone who didn't watch this video, Jin (BlazBlue), Yosuke (P4A:U) and Linne (UNIB) were announced for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. Since all of them are deuteragonists of their respective franchises, their inclusions aren't exactly surprising. The absence of a RWBY character in this trailer is, though (then again, I'm not sure why this franchise was added to the crossover in the first place; it isn't a fighting game unlike the other three, is it?).
To be honest, BB is the only of these franchises that I'm familiar with. P4A seems too heavy in terms of story, but I guess I'll research a little about UNIB. Ironically, so far this crossover got me very interested in the franchises involved, but not in the crossover game itself...
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
[this message was edited by Just a Person on Sat 16 Sep 08:43] |
| PSN: gekijmo
XBL: gekijmo5
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| "MvC:I thoughts and announced DLC" , posted Thu 21 Sep 03:24
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Brandon's surprise visit to the cafe coincides with the publication of his giant awesome interview with Harada about Tekken!
Very good interview. I remember being surprised that the Tekken has outsold the Street Fighter series and that was a few years ago before SFxT came out, but I really hadn't perceived Tekken as a more popular game at the time.
I got MvC:I in the mail yesterday and honestly forgot I had preordered it a while ago. The ad campaign in the weeks/days leading up to release felt non-existent. If Capcom hadn't allowed people who got the game early to stream, I don't think I would have seen anything.
After a few hours with the game mostly in arcade and mission mode I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the game mechanics. Although there are A LOT of reused characters from MvC3 they play completely differently thanks to the new combo system and the fact that it is a     system like MvC2 and not L,M,H,S anymore.
I don't think I can play Haggar right off the bat anymore since my muscle memory is getting in the way. I want to do   X when I do pipe, but now X is instead of H. I think I will try to do some of the cheap stuff I have seen with Thanos/Ultron since they will be fresh characters to me and I REALLY am anxious about trying to get the 5-win streak trophy(I hate win streak trophies and they are usually the ones I end out missing out on in the end if they are longer than 3 wins). Jedah is looking really nice as well.
I am still wrapping my head around the combo and gem systems. I have stuck with Power Stone for now since I like the wall bounce. With the combo system I am having difficulty getting synergy down to get good combos. That and the fact that off-the-ground attacks are more numerous and important now for relaunching opponents. I have to say that it is inventive and fresh. I wish Capcom had made more of an effort to really show people how the new mechanics were unique.
The presentation of the game is still God awful. Souless expressions, basic fonts, animations that are bit wonky (the camera angle on Haggar's piledrive makes it look like a bad gif), the single color screen for infinity storm is a bit annoying, Arcade mode is in the game, but there are no endings.
The rest of the season pass DLC was announced with zero fanfare.
It is Monster Hunter(female), Venom, Black Widow and Winter Soldier join the previously announced Black Panther and Sigma.
Some of those characters will rumored at before, but none really capture my eye.
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| | "Re(1):MvC:I thoughts and announced DLC" , posted Thu 21 Sep 07:26
I am seriously addicted to MvCI. MvC never was a series that important to me (I already said countless times that I don't care for the nobodies in spandex that clutter the right half of the screen), and this game has already many things going against it without even having to compare it to the previous entries. Season 1 having only 2 Capcom characters should have been the nail in the coffin.
But I bought it day 1 anyway because Jedah compelled me to do so, and after playing a couple of hours I can't remember the last time I've been obsessed with a fighting game like that.
Yeah, it's ugly, the roster is terrible and the sound design is shit.
But the gameplay is just pure bliss. It's especially visible that the people who designed this game knew what they were doing when you consider the amount of new stuff Jedah received in this game.
Generally, new characters in this series get good tools for the first game they appear in (Strider or Commando in MvC1, Cable in MvC2, many in MvC3, Gamora in this game for example). Older characters get copy and pasted without much care with the new system they're in, and sometimes they're shit and sometimes they're broken: Magneto, Storm and Sentinel ended up dominating MvC2 because of the little of care that went into them, and while she got into MvC3 Storm was never as powerful, even though she received some adjustments and the games were very similar. It could be argued Zero was so overwhelming in MvC3 because he comes from TvC where the different mechanics didn't allow him to be so insanely cheap (but you could also argue it's impossible to design Zero and not make him broken in any fighting game he's in). One of the things that make Ghost Rider in Infinite so good is that he's barely hanged from his previous appearance, but the game is entirely different and his gameplay seem to magically fit the new system like a glove.
It's worse for Vampire characters in particular (Morrigan excepted), because of their power level in their game is so much bigger than Street Fighters' that most designers seem to have believed it was enough to tweak a couple of move properties, give them a super jump, and there, you have a versus character. It may work for Felicia or Sasquatch if he ever comes in, but complex characters like Buletta, Anakaris or Leilei ended up being wasted slots in MvC2 and 3.
Jedah is the first non-Morrigan Vampire character to receive extensive adjustments to the point of being as much of a new character as Thanos. His original design only had two cinematic grabs as supers, which would have been difficult to use in a normal MvC, and downright atrocious in Infinite. However, amongst the many things Jedah received is a new aerial super which is probably one of the most interesting utility tools in this game (something to hold an opponent in place while you switch characters and prevent the opponent's switched character to interfere, while looking all cool as shit). The grabs are fantastic tools now they're not his only super, the new scythe swipe solves many of this ground problems while making perfect sense with the game's bounce and OTG systems, and all his air moves have been entirely redesigned to adjust better to this particular environment. Plus, the idea of holding the projectile to control its size is an elegant and brilliant solution to a tricky balancing problem for the EX version. I'm not saying he's good in this game, I'm not skilled enough to know that, but he makes sense with it, he can use proficiently all of its systems even if he may not excel in them or other characters are more powerful than he is (Gamora?). He'd also be much less interesting and maybe even bad if he had appeared in that state in MvC3 for example.
The people who picked Jedah in the first place for this game, then modified him to fit in Infinite are absolute masters in fighting game design. The possibility of swapping your assist character any time breathe new life in a game that had gotten severely stale after MvC3. The new system rewards reflexes, creativity and intuition over memorizing long combo strings, and is just an absolute joy to play. It's sad the game seems to be sent to die with zero marketing, because, even more than SF5, Infinite is the testament that NeoG's departure didn't kill the talent in Capcom's fighting game department. It's unfortunate the game didn't receive the amount of creative liberties that MvC3, and I'm playing on PC so it will probably be dead in 2 weeks, but right now, I'm struggling to remember any fighting game released after Savior 1 that hit all my pleasure zones so perfectly.
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| | "Re(3):" , posted Fri 22 Sep 23:57
quote:
Take this and eat it! How do you like that? Yeah!
I just spanked you! Please and thank you!
I... actually LIKE these quotes. Don't know why, don't know if I should, but I do.
I watched a longplay of MVC:I's Story Mode and was pleasantly surprised! While the demo made it look like an uninspired MCU film, the gameplay seems to be exactly what should be expected from a classic MvC game, and some Capcom characters (Frank West, Haggar, Arthur) deviate from the typical Marvel "seriousness and snarkiness". There could be more of it (like, I don't know, Morrigan and Chun-Li doing their classic victory poses jumping and giggling while the Marvel heroes look at them confused), but it looks nice.
The absence of characters from X-Men, Fantastic Four and Capcom's older franchises (Rival Schools, Star Gladiator, etc.) in this game is still a huge flaw, though. I hope an eventual Season 2 (if it manages to reach it) rectifies that.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "So..." , posted Thu 28 Sep 00:34:
Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite only sold over 8,000 units in it's first week in Japan.
Well, Capcom expected a target sales of 2 Million units. Good luck with that.
EDIT: Japan only, to clarify, but still...
Meanwhile in Britain...
quote:
The most notable new release of the week though is Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, which debuted at a disastrously low number 12 in the all formats chart. The PlayStation 4 version had to settle for number 16 in the individual format chart, with the Xbox One version not even getting into the top 40. It’s a shockingly poor performance for the game, which will now have to rely on its DLC for any hope of redemption.
(Update: According to this tweet Ultra Street Fighter II on Switch had a better debut than the multiformat Infinite, and yet no Switch version of the game has been announced or even hinted at.)
To add insult to injury Marvel Vs. Capcom only came in one spot ahead of the remasters of Pokémon Gold and Silver for 3DS, which are literally just empty boxes with a download code inside. Gold came in at number 17 in the individual formats chart and Silver at number 21.
Not even on Top 10 in UK.
"Lasciate ogne speranza"
[this message was edited by Yuki Yagami on Thu 28 Sep 02:51] |
| | "Re(1):So..." , posted Thu 28 Sep 02:04:
quote:
Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite only sold over 8,000 units in it's first week.
Well, Capcom expected a target sales of 2 Million units. Good luck with that.
It's Media Create figures, meaning the data is for Japanese sales only.
Sales not reaching too high isn't really surprising, although not being able to hit the 5 digit mark kind of shows what little effort Capcom put into region sales; there was very little promotion and the game has no JP Voiceovers.
Even though the game has a weak character lineup to sell well in Japan and about half the Marvel cast aren't familiar to them, the other remaining half are known and the game could've sold a bit better given the influence of recent Marvel Films. Capcom probably could've easily sold another 2K if they knew the market well enough to target the female cluster. Which may sound odd, but there's actually a mildy strong female following for American Comic characters in Japan right now.
As reference, the latest Undernight In-Birth sold 5,013 units on launch week, Xrd Rev2 sold 10,609.
[this message was edited by Professor on Thu 28 Sep 02:31] |
| | "Re(2):So..." , posted Thu 28 Sep 04:33
The recent mountain of Cammy and Chunli costumes in SF5 shows that the fighting game division understand that eye-candy allows for constant influx of money from whales. Marvel may refuse to be associated with too many lewd females, but Capcom had so many presentable yet popular females on their side, and yet kept away everyone except the two they couldn't not put in... I'd really want to know what happened.
quote:
Capcom probably could've easily sold another 2K if they knew the market well enough to target the female cluster. Which may sound odd, but there's actually a mildy strong female following for American Comic characters in Japan right now.
I have two Japanese colleagues who are in love with... Winter Soldier.
The most incredibly bland MCU character.
And they are really obsessed, their desk is covered with pictures, printouts, figures, they travelled around the world to meet the actor in fan events... I'm mesmerized by the prospect.
Winter Soldier who, like the other character who could have sold the game to Japanese audiences Monster Hunter, is hidden as DLC and doesn't even has a release date. Either Capcom is looking at the very long run, considers this an early access version, and is already planning a huge official launch in 2019 as a fuller package, or this is internal sabotage.
The only positive outcome I can think out of these depressing sales for a fantastic game is: maybe, like TvC or SFxT, they could try to recoup some of their money and use the corpse of Infinite to do a full-on Capcom fighter.
Same game engine, all Capcom characters from this game, MvC3 and TvC and you already have almost 40 characters with minimal investment. They can even cheat and re-purpose Hawkeye's move set and animations as the archer from King of the Dragons, or Captain Marvel's as Michelle Heart. You can go even cheaper than you already are, Capcom!
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| | "Re(3):So..." , posted Thu 28 Sep 05:04
quote:
Either Capcom is looking at the very long run, considers this an early access version, and is already planning a huge official launch in 2019 as a fuller package, or this is internal sabotage.
I doubt it is internal sabotage. It is most likely just a mix of corporate incompetence and different agendas
What Disney/Marvel wants is not necessarily what is best for either Capcom or the game. MvCI was just another toy/game licensing deal for Disney, a way to promote its character and get some money for little effort. Marvel, much less Disney, probably doesn't even care that Winter Soldier is surprisingly popular in Japan.
As for Capcom... For the company as a whole, fighting games are pretty minor business, aren't they? We've heard plenty of stories about the struggles of getting Capcom to back new fighting games. Capcom only really jumped on board of a fighting game revival with the response to SF4, and that was quickly dampened with the response SFxT experienced. Ono had to get into bed with Sony to release SF5, and it was evident that Capcom was cutting corners throughout.
As for the incompetence part, it seems like every few years Capcom goes through a period where it becomes obvious just how disconnected its management has become from reality. The head-scratching decisions mount up, the absurd sales expectations are published, and the like...
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| | "Re(4):So..." , posted Fri 29 Sep 00:02
quote:
Either Capcom is looking at the very long run, considers this an early access version, and is already planning a huge official launch in 2019 as a fuller package, or this is internal sabotage.
I doubt it is internal sabotage. It is most likely just a mix of corporate incompetence and different agendas
What Disney/Marvel wants is not necessarily what is best for either Capcom or the game. MvCI was just another toy/game licensing deal for Disney, a way to promote its character and get some money for little effort. Marvel, much less Disney, probably doesn't even care that Winter Soldier is surprisingly popular in Japan.
As for Capcom... For the company as a whole, fighting games are pretty minor business, aren't they? We've heard plenty of stories about the struggles of getting Capcom to back new fighting games. Capcom only really jumped on board of a fighting game revival with the response to SF4, and that was quickly dampened with the response SFxT experienced. Ono had to get into bed with Sony to release SF5, and it was evident that Capcom was cutting corners throughout.
As for the incompetence part, it seems like every few years Capcom goes through a period where it becomes obvious just how disconnected its management has become from reality. The head-scratching decisions mount up, the absurd sales expectations are published, and the like...
But... even if Disney/Marvel thinks of MvCI as just a way to promote their characters, they probably invested a good amount of money and resources into it, right? In that case, these abysmally low sales should be considerably bad to them. Although not as bad as it is for Capcom, who (unlike Disney) isn't swimming in money and probably really needed this game to sell.
It's a shame, really, as the game seems to be quite good.
---
Oh, by the way, Killer Instinct was released yesterday on Steam. It includes all the Definitive Edition content (minus the classic games, and the soundtrack is sold separately for some weird reason), plus the three post-Season 3 characters - but in a very weird decision, its Steam trailer makes it look like just the Season 1 fighters are there...
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(5):So..." , posted Fri 29 Sep 07:12
quote:
But... even if Disney/Marvel thinks of MvCI as just a way to promote their characters, they probably invested a good amount of money and resources into it, right?
Has Marvel/Disney invested anything into MvCI?
Presumably Capcom footed the production bill, and the advertising as well. Any Marvel employees were probably paid for their time. And Capcom presumably paid Marvel just for the rights to make the game.
Low sales means low royalties, but despite the beliefs of executives, "made less than we thought we could make" isn't really "lost money". This presumably isn't even an issue of being able to better spend resources elsewhere, unlike when Capcom has to decide which game it wants to make.
Further, how much was this investment compared to other Marvel efforts? Marvel's Iron Fist series was seen as setting a new low for the Marvel cinematic universe, and very rough estimates were that Marvel was spending around $3million per episode for that. And then brought back the same director to make Inhumans, which arguably debuted to even more embarrassing reactions.
(And an elephant in the room is just how much was spent actually making MvCI in the first place. Speculation has been than the budget was not exactly impressive. And even if we ever get a published figure, we won't necessarily know how much of that was spent on advertising and how much was paid to Marvel.)
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| | "Re(4):So..." , posted Fri 29 Sep 09:25
quote:
As for Capcom... For the company as a whole, fighting games are pretty minor business, aren't they?
If I remember correctly, Capcom projected 10 Million sales from software releases in this fiscal year, and 2 Million sales from MVCI alone. So it depends if you think 20% of your sales is "minor". I think a more appropriate summary of the issue you correctly pointed out would go like this: fighting games remain one of the key pillars of Capcom's catalogue but they are worried about this situation for the long term and looking for ways to 1/ mitigate the risks associated with investing in competitive fighting (ex. the Sony deal for Street Fighter 5), and 2/ increase the revenue from their engaged community of fighting game players (demonstrated by the different strategies they have relied on to make people pay for DLC).
I think what fighting games provide Cap is an angle to show their investors that they hold a unique position in the e-Sports scene, which is probably an interesting buzzword to have in your reports right now, even if the business itself remains low compared to the hights of LOL and DOTA2.
All that said, what MVCI really needs (needed?) above all is(was?) to excite casual Marvel fans in the way Injustice got DC fans excited to play the game, follow the story and check out how DC characters interacted between each other. Iggy's anecdote on Winter Soldier highlights the issue pretty well.
This is made even more obvious when you consider the first week sales of Ultra SFII, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 and Pokkén DX on Switch all outperformed MVCI. And it seems clear already that DB FighterZ will perform well on PS4 when it comes out (and even better overseas on PS4 and Xbox One).
One last thing: while the first week sales for MVCI in Japan are low by all accounts, Japan has never been a very promising market for the MVC series; actually the series has shined the best on Dreamcast and that's not even taking the earlier Saturn Vs games into account: X-Men Vs SF sold over 170.000 copies on the Saturn in Japan. Also did you know Vampire Hunter sold twice as much? Those were very different times for software sales but Vampire Hunter sold over 340.000 copies back in 1996. Even Jedah's hometown Vampire Savior sold 160.000 copies on the Saturn back when the hardware was pretty much considered software poison.
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "Re(5):So..." , posted Sun 1 Oct 09:29:
Out of curiousity, are there any players that play Guilty Gear, Blazblue, or KOF on pad here? I was just wondering because at least personally, it's pretty hard to play those titles on pad compared to joystick. Pads have been the gamer's best friend since the NES days and it's still easy to play Street Fighter V on the PS4 pad, but for games that require more complicated button presses or quick control maneuver, it starts getting hard.
IIRC, I first started experiencing this problem back with the PC doujin game "Eternal Fighter Zero"; the consecutive button presses required really quick finger position movement and it was just too physically stressing to the hand.
Games nowadays are a bit more forgiving since they feature longer buffers on the input, but it still doesn't help that the PS4 pad in particular wasn't well-designed for fighting games, even compared to the PS3 pad. Just whose smart idea it was to make the D-pad concave I donut know.
Also on the same topic, if anyone has an experience of "I'm used to playing *** but I gave up on ***", it'd be helpful to hear details about that.
Ex1: "I'm used to playing Street Fighter but gave up on GuiltyGear because it's so confusing, especially because of..."
Ex2: "I'm used to playing KOF but gave up on Street Fighter because ~~~"
[this message was edited by Professor on Sun 1 Oct 10:15] |
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| "Re(6):So..." , posted Sun 1 Oct 11:43:
quote:
Out of curiousity, are there any players that play Guilty Gear, Blazblue, or KOF on pad here? I was just wondering because at least personally, it's pretty hard to play those titles on pad compared to joystick. Pads have been the gamer's best friend since the NES days and it's still easy to play Street Fighter V on the PS4 pad, but for games that require more complicated button presses or quick control maneuver, it starts getting hard.
IIRC, I first started experiencing this problem back with the PC doujin game "Eternal Fighter Zero"; the consecutive button presses required really quick finger position movement and it was just too physically stressing to the hand.
Games nowadays are a bit more forgiving since they feature longer buffers on the input, but it still doesn't help that the PS4 pad in particular wasn't well-designed for fighting games, even compared to the PS3 pad. Just whose smart idea it was to make the D-pad concave I donut know.
Also on the same topic, if anyone has an experience of "I'm used to playing *** but I gave up on ***", it'd be helpful to hear details about that.
Ex1: "I'm used to playing Street Fighter but gave up on GuiltyGear because it's so confusing, especially because of..."
Ex2: "I'm used to playing KOF but gave up on Street Fighter because ~~~"
Do players normally use all four long fingers for the buttons on joysticks? For the reason why you mentioned below? I still preferred a pad, but a good fighter pad at that, because for the joysticks, I play using only my index finger for the buttons. I always assumed that was the norm. With that in mind, I find it difficult to play more complex fighters.
I was always a street fighter player but fell in love more with KOF and was fascinated by guilty gear. I stopped playing street fighter once IV came out because it felt the same to me. By same, it felt like an HD version of SSF2 Turbo. I some what gave up on Guilty Gear due to the insane revisions after GGXX Reload. Still need to try GG Xrd and see if it peaks interest. I never got the opportunity to try BlazBlue until recently and need time to sit down with it.
Long Live I AM!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Sun 1 Oct 11:46] |
| | "Re(9):So..." , posted Sun 1 Oct 17:41
quote:
Are you implying that ASW players would still use their thumbs on a gamepad? I think this is impossible considering the style of game and number of buttons. When I was seriously into Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers, I used to play with the Saturn pad and would usually hold my right hand above the controller's button layout, the corner of the pad stuck in my palm and the middle three fingers resting over the    buttons. I've always assumed that's how pro gamers play with a gamepad, hence the design of the Fighting Controller. I would assume ASW players do the same? Back when GGX came out on Dreamcast I already had moved full stick. (It's also probably the last ASW game I tried to learn.)
That's a good question-- playing with just the thumbs is certainly possible up to a degree in KOF and also with Street Fighter V. Given that ASW games use 4-5 buttons which is less than Street Fighter, it should be theoretically be playable with just the thumbs and trigger buttons. However, the game feels more stressing to the fingers since it requires a lot more button presses than SF and they're going all over the place. Now of course we're talking about non-competitive level since very few top ASW play with pads. It's an arcade-centeric title and most of the pro level players are in Japan.
Pachi (Kazutoshi Sekine), former SBO champ and current battle planner for the GG series, balance te
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
This is a question I can actually answer, since I've had multiple friends who played Guilty Gear with pads to a significant level of technical proficiency.
First of all, depending on your character, particular button mappings may be necessary. A button for RC is quite typical, and for Johnny players, it was pretty normal to have a slightly different button binding compared to default to make Mist Cancel techniques easier. Zato-1/Eddie players might also do this since button holding and releasing is important for controlling the little Eddie, so making use of shoulder buttons so that you can avoid awkward situations with your right thumb helps. One of my most technically proficient friends didn't even use an RC button, but that's because he was insane at the game.
On the other hand, there are plenty of characters that can get by with default button bindings. Sol, Potemkin, Faust, Ky, A-BA, etc. all don't have need for special bindings. In her Xrd incarnation, May now benefits from being able to hold buttons in order to control the set balls and dolphins.
So though these all may use different button mappings from default, they don't require unusual postures with the controller. You won't, say, need to claw grip like in Monster Hunter.
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(2):Re(10):So..." , posted Mon 2 Oct 23:29
quote:
But... even if Disney/Marvel thinks of MvCI as just a way to promote their characters, they probably invested a good amount of money and resources into it, right?
Has Marvel/Disney invested anything into MvCI?
While I doubt Marvel actually invested any money in MvCI I do wonder if the company's tendency to be cheap and occasionally paranoid with their properties affected the final product. Demands such as "Have X,Y, and Z in the game and have it on the shelves before the end of the year." probably strained what was obviously an already thin budget. Mind you, I'm not blaming MvCI's problems on Marvel since there's plenty of mistakes to go around. It's a shame it might be years -if ever- before someone does a post-mortem write-up on MvCI; the stories of what went on during production must be wild.
quote:
Do players normally use all four long fingers for the buttons on joysticks? For the reason why you mentioned below? I still preferred a pad, but a good fighter pad at that, because for the joysticks, I play using only my index finger for the buttons. I always assumed that was the norm. With that in mind, I find it difficult to play more complex fighters.
While I tend to use my index finger if I'm doing pokes or some other situation that only requires one button I find a lot of my fingers are engaged if I'm doing multiple button presses or pushing two or more buttons at the same time. Playing a character that has a charge button move (ex. Balrog's turn-around punch) on an arcade cabinet makes it feel like my hand is getting tied into knots. Come to think of it, I've sometimes used the wrist area of my palm to hold down the kick buttons while using my fingers to tap the punch buttons. Some fighting game characters are not designed with ergonomics in mind.
quote:
Also on the same topic, if anyone has an experience of "I'm used to playing *** but I gave up on ***", it'd be helpful to hear details about that.
Since I have no interest in being a tournament player I very rarely drop a game due to mechanical issues. I'm much more likely to lose track of a game due to too many updates or not finding a character I'm interested in (this is how I lost track of BlazBlue.) The only game in recent memory I've skipped due to gameplay I couldn't get into was Injustice. The demo for I1 was janky and unintuitive. I even watched some professional matches since I thought I might be missing something fun that the other players had figured out. Instead, I found most of the matches revolved around the slow and uninteresting clash mechanic. In the end I skipped Injustice not because it was too technical but because it was too damned boring.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):So..." , posted Tue 3 Oct 00:17
quote:
While I doubt Marvel actually invested any money in MvCI I do wonder if the company's tendency to be cheap and occasionally paranoid with their properties affected the final product. Demands such as "Have X,Y, and Z in the game and have it on the shelves before the end of the year." probably strained what was obviously an already thin budget.
I remember an interview with some Marvel PR guys who explained how they are so happy with MvCI because they were involved in all aspects of the game, and thanks to them the art style became more "cinematic", the musics were chosen to fit better the personalities of the Marvel character and feel more "cinematic", there's a "cinematic" scenario mode, the more "cinematic" characters were chosen...
As someone who has to work sometimes with illiterate marketing people who have only one buzzword and don't see the problem with repeating it at noseam, the interview gave serious déjà vu episodes. At least my marketing people are not involved in the creation or visuals of a game...
As for the button question... I'm used to play 6 buttons games (Capcom games, Skull Girls) with a stick and 4 buttons games (KOF, Persona) with a pad.
That was one of the reason I never played KOF seriously after XI: I had these fantastic NeoGeo CD pads, so I'm used to their layout to play KOF. The moment SNK games required one extra button, I was totally lost.
I wonder if my problem to play GG was because I never managed to make the control scheme fit with either of these habits.
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| | "Re(4):Re(10):So..." , posted Tue 3 Oct 02:04:
quote:
While I doubt Marvel actually invested any money in MvCI I do wonder if the company's tendency to be cheap and occasionally paranoid with their properties affected the final product. Demands such as "Have X,Y, and Z in the game and have it on the shelves before the end of the year." probably strained what was obviously an already thin budget. I remember an interview with some Marvel PR guys who explained how they are so happy with MvCI because they were involved in all aspects of the game, and thanks to them the art style became more "cinematic", the musics were chosen to fit better the personalities of the Marvel character and feel more "cinematic", there's a "cinematic" scenario mode, the more "cinematic" characters were chosen...
As someone who has to work sometimes with illiterate marketing people who have only one buzzword and don't see the problem with repeating it at noseam, the interview gave serious déjà vu episodes. At least my marketing people are not involved in the creation or visuals of a game...
As for the button question... I'm used to play 6 buttons games (Capcom games, Skull Girls) with a stick and 4 buttons games (KOF, Persona) with a pad.
That was one of the reason I never played KOF seriously after XI: I had these fantastic NeoGeo CD pads, so I'm used to their layout to play KOF. The moment SNK games required one extra button, I was totally lost.
I wonder if my problem to play GG was because I never managed to make the control sc
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
My habit when it comes to GG controls is to shift the 5th button to the left.
So normally it's laid out like this:
K S HS
P _ D
Whereas I lay it out like this:
K S HS
P D _
Because even though you can keep one finger and your thumb on every button in the standard layout, I dislike using my little finger for anything except 3 button moves because it's weaker and less reliable than all the other digits. D is also an important enough button that you need on demand that having the thumb access to it feels right.
I find this layout to be way more comfortable, even if it seems less elegant with the ideals of the design (e.g. that P K S HS D is in order of strength, that you get one digit on every button, that it's laid out in a continuous clockwise arc, etc.)
[this message was edited by Spoon on Tue 3 Oct 02:36] |
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| "Re(4):Re(10):So..." , posted Tue 3 Oct 09:56
quote:
I remember an interview with some Marvel PR guys who explained how they are so happy with MvCI because they were involved in all aspects of the game, and thanks to them the art style became more "cinematic", the musics were chosen to fit better the personalities of the Marvel character and feel more "cinematic", there's a "cinematic" scenario mode, the more "cinematic" characters were chosen...
Truly everything I expected. Though I think these epeople actually meant to replace the "ci" with an "e."
On the topic of pads: while Guilty is perplexing in every and all way for the outsider (hello!), even the outsider who adores its art (hello!), in retrospect it probably was pretty tiring, even with a Saturn pad, given that there wasn't an obvious progression (that I could see) between the six buttons. Like, in SF, you'll finish out a cancel with a fierce or roundhouse in many cases, and won't need to reach "all the way over" back down to jab and short. In Guilty, it seemed as though you could bounce around between all kinds of buttons, which is tiring even if, like me, you always use a right hand claw grip, even on non-fighting games. Somehow, even clawing between four non-sequential buttons in Tekken or Soul Calibur never seemed much work, even with the otherwise awful-for-fighters Dualshock, because the moves themselves seem slower than 2D games. Guilty combines those stretches with 2D speed, so I suppose it might be tiring.
"I'm used to playing Street Fighter, so I stopped playing ______" applies to almost every game for me except Soul Calibur, but air-centric recent attempts for me like Guilty and Skullgirls stand out. The former more clearly, for the reasons above: I couldn't figure out the advantage to digging through such a gruesome new system when a SF clone would've done just as well for my simple purposes...I just wanted SF with new art and THE POWER OF ROCK AND ROLL
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(5):Re(10):So..." , posted Tue 3 Oct 10:09
quote:
I remember an interview with some Marvel PR guys who explained how they are so happy with MvCI because they were involved in all aspects of the game, and thanks to them the art style became more "cinematic", the musics were chosen to fit better the personalities of the Marvel character and feel more "cinematic", there's a "cinematic" scenario mode, the more "cinematic" characters were chosen...
Truly everything I expected. Though I think these epeople actually meant to replace the "ci" with an "e."
On the topic of pads: while Guilty is perplexing in every and all way for the outsider (hello!), even the outsider who adores its art (hello!), in retrospect it probably was pretty tiring, even with a Saturn pad, given that there wasn't an obvious progression (that I could see) between the six buttons. Like, in SF, you'll finish out a cancel with a fierce or roundhouse in many cases, and won't need to reach "all the way over" back down to jab and short. In Guilty, it seemed as though you could bounce around between all kinds of buttons, which is tiring even if, like me, you always use a right hand claw grip, even on non-fighting games. Somehow, even clawing between four non-sequential buttons in Tekken or Soul Calibur never seemed much work, even with the otherwise awful-for-fighters Dualshock, because the moves themselves seem slower than 2D games. Guilty combines those stretches with 2D speed, so I suppose it might be tiring.
"I'm used to playing Street
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
I recently started learning to play Tekken, which made me want to ask Toxico for advice, which immediately made me. However, in Tekken it is arguably more extreme because there is literally no rule as to what input will result in a move doing more damage, except that just standing there and pressing left punch will probably do your character's weakest and fastest attack.
GG also has hugely important and hugely not universal character chain combos with their normals! Mercifully, ArcSys was wise enough to make it mostly the same for Ky and Sol, the two characters that most will pick at the outset... except that Ky can chain into f+HS much more readily, as well as having a f+K and df+HS move that Sol doesn't, which has its entire own set of chaining rules. Wheeeee
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| | "DBFZ Dated for Feb 2" , posted Wed 18 Oct 20:29:
According to early unconfirmed reports supposedly from the latest issue of Vjump, DragonBall FighterZ is slated for a February 2 release in Japan, priced at 7,800 Yen.
Nappa and Ginyu are confirmed for the roster. Nappa can summon Saibaimans, Ginyu can swap stuff with his opponent like their character and/or life.
The story mode thus far seems a lot better than BanNam's last fighter JojoASB (though that's not saying much); the DBZ fighters experience an unexplained blackout as seen in the trailers and when Goku wakes, he finds that his spirit is linked with the player. Same goes with other chapters (ie: the player's soul is linked with Android 18 in the android chapter).
In story mode, the player advances through the map and can take a variety of actions including battle, aim for exp points, earn skills, help friends, etc. Extra dialogues can be unlocked by becoming friendly with the characters.
[this message was edited by Professor on Wed 18 Oct 21:25] |
| | "Re(2):Noel, Chie... and Waldstein..." , posted Sun 22 Oct 11:20
quote:
Coming to BBTag
Looking at these three characters it finally dawned on me that I have no idea how BBTag is going to play. BB, P4A and UNIEL are really different games in terms of controls and what the characters are capable of doing. I'm now going to have to start paying more attention to this crossover just to satisfy my curiosity in seeing how these incompatible pieces are put together.
One of the bizarre ironies of UNIEL is that Akatsuki came from a game with much stronger universal air defense options than UNIEL (air blocking in UNIEL allows you to block even grounded normals and supers, the air parry beating everything that isn't a throw, etc.), but Akatsuki was TERRIBLE in his initial release in UNIEL. UNIEL compared to the typical ArcSys game has extremely limited aerial movement (most don't have double jump!), extremely limited air defense (no universal air blocking!).
Some of the later GGXX titles featured characters which chains that looped back on themselves, like Faust in GGAC having a chain that goes 2S, 2D, 2S, 2D... with the 2S having a vacuum property on hit/block! Over the course of the GGXX series, Faust also got more and more chains that would go into 5P and 2P that he could use to gain frame advantage or safety when his big normals are blocked and he can't throw an item. Chaining from a heavy normal to a light normal to get safety/frame advantage is pretty much what the "reverse beat" mechanic in the French Bread games is all about, so this aspect of their thinking has existed in common before, and should be workable.
Some of UNIEL's characters have extremely oppressive rushdown and oki that wouldn't seem out of place in a GG game (e.g. Seth and Carmine), while the mentality of being able to convert anti-air hits from long-reaching normals into combo damage is basically Axl from day one of GGX.
I think UNIEL characters once given bigger movement and air defense will be surprisingly easy to adapt to the ArcSys environment. They have powerful gimmicks and very strongly established gameplay identities that are largely inline with the high-combo, oppressive oki, sustained offense style of airdash/anime fighting games. They might not have the breadth of gimmicks that the P4A characters have, nor the sheer quantity of unique ones that the BlazBlue ones have, but fundamentally they should still be workable.
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| | "Re(2):Combofiend sneaks out" , posted Sat 28 Oct 19:48:
quote:
Combofiend has just left Capcom
Hmm? Not to undermine a person's work, but I don't get the significance of this, let alone for two threads? Was he a Seth Killian type of figure?
Capcom USA hired a number of players for their fighting game division after Seth Killian's departure, which included Mike Rosas (Combofiend). He worked as one of the assistant producters for SFV and also as the flack guy a PR man at various events. He recently recieved a lot of criticizm for saying that characters in fighting games are "just functions" rather than... well, characters. Although it makes sense at a hardcore level, it was probably not the best statement to make when trying to convince the general public as to why X-men characters aren't needed in MvCi.
" If you were to actually think about it, these characters are just functions. They’re just doing things. Magneto, case and point, is a favorite because he has eight-way dash and he’s really fast, right? So our more technical players, all they want to do is triangle jump and that kind of stuff. Well guess what, Nova can do the same thing, Captain Marvel can do the same thing. Ultron can do the same thing. Go ahead and try them out. "
[this message was edited by Professor on Sat 28 Oct 19:51] |
| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(3):Combofiend sneaks out" , posted Sat 28 Oct 21:11:
quote:
Hmm? Not to undermine a person's work, but I don't get the significance of this, let alone for two threads? Was he a Seth Killian type of figure?
Yes, that about covers it. He was the SFV version of Seth Killian. He got to do everything Seth Killian did, including (but not limited to) having a character in Street Fighter named after him, taking the brunt for Capcom's mistakes, and influencing (but not controlling) the direction of SFV. And of course he put his foot in his mouth a lot. He knew a lot about fighting games, but he knew precious little about interacting positively with human beings, which is why it was pretty ludicrous that Capcom had to use him for PR.
His Japanese interaction was limited to appearing in this section of the Japanese CFN portal to explain such FGC colloquialisms as "shimmy" and "turtling" to the non-English audience. These included voice clips, but unfortunately it seems they've been removed.
[this message was edited by Gojira on Sat 28 Oct 21:14] |
| | "Re(5):Combofiend sneaks out" , posted Sun 29 Oct 00:34
quote:
Interesting. I guess they thought the Americans wanted another "personality" from their side who appeared to have some sort of influence on HQ. I always wondered about that: I have the memory of Killian having done something important to advocate for SF's revival via SFIV, but if the extent of his actual development influence was the resulting SFIV gameplay and the execrable Seth character, and if Combofiend's was the awful SFV season "rebalances" as I thought I'd heard, I'm not sure if this illusion of involvement adds up to much...
The main positive I remember about Seth Killian is that the "Ask Capcom" section of Capcom-Unity actually saw answers posted. They often weren't answers that people liked, others were PR-heavy non-answers, and even then some topics were never addressed, but at least there was the illusion that someone at Capcom actually cared that people were using the provided forum. When Killian left, that ended. The Ask Capcom forum remained, but no one affiliated with Capcom would ever answer anything. (Later, the forum was changed so that regular users could not reply to posts. Presumably because someone got upset that it looked bad that any questions asked would fill with user replies warning that no one from Capcom would post answers anymore.)
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| | "You must defeat Sheng-long to.. oh wrong game" , posted Wed 1 Nov 23:10:
Spoon-- I wouldn't be surprised if that was the actual case. It's Capcom after all. In that sense, Arc Systemworks and SNK doesn't really have major stakes outside of fighting games so they're probably more commited (though less financed).
Switching topics for a moment, BandaiNamco ran a stream for DragonballFighterZ today which ended up with a hilarious PR blunder as the players unintentionally showed Sheng-long popping up in mid-match while the producer laughingly scuddled for the display to be stopped. I think it's still viewable at the link below, around the 1h31m mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmqvawZEmo&t=1h31m
Basically when the players collect all 7 dragonballs (displayed below screen during battle) it grants from an option of wishes:
Ressurect my friend / give me back full health / give me ultimate power / make me immortal
They also show of all the newly announced characters like Nappa, Ginyu, Tenshinhan and Yamcha, so check it out if you're interested.
- Nappa can plant Saibaiman seeds in the ground and have them fight together with him
- Ginyu's chi-attack button calls out Ginyu Tokusentai members instead
- Ginyu's character swap move does exaclty that: swaps himself with whatever character the opponent is using and also swaps their life. What's more, the opponent can't do many of Ginyu's specialties after the swap, meaning they can't call Ginyu's members or swap back using the same move.
- In one of Tenshinhan's supers, Chiaotzu does his suiside explosion. He can't be used again during the rest of the match.
[this message was edited by Professor on Wed 1 Nov 23:35] |
| | "Re(3):Asterisks" , posted Sun 19 Nov 11:03
Ah, if the Japanese version has **, then anything goes... Actually the Japanese version does not even specify if the character is a guy or a girl so maybe it's a super stylish adult Yuri ! The one hint I don't get is this one:
quote:
豪鬼やデミトリではない。
This isn't Akuma or Demitri...
The same characters are singled out in the JP version, except obviously Akuma becomes Gōki. Why these two? Was it because they were specifically "hidden"/mid-boss characters before Death, and *** was supposed to appear under similar conditions? Otherwise, I don't see the thematic connection with K' (or Kyo).
Also, tying back to our previous discussion... They say this about Luke:
quote:
in Japanese, cool is "ku-ru", so we just read it backwards to become "ru-ku", or "Luke"."
名前は「クール」な奴だから逆から読んで「ルーク」にした（笑）。
Isn't it funny that Luke, a blond bishōnen hero with tattoos created by former SNK staff and named after the word Cool, was described on the game's flyer as "the fallen angel"?
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "Re(2):Checkmates" , posted Sun 26 Nov 08:12
quote:
Castling.
Elsewhere, yesterday was a gigantic 1220-person 5v5 team tournament for Tekken 7. Structured much like Co-op Cup, anybody could enter, there was a pools stage followed by playoff stage.
It was NUTS. There was no limit on team structure, so if you wanted to run a team of 5 characters, go right ahead. The custom costumes were brilliant and crazy. There were stacked-as-hell teams from Korea, teams that looked like they were made of 5 OLs, goofy theme teams, you name it, it was there, and the entire tournament was played in a SINGLE DAY.
But the best part of all were the matches. There was a team of 5 Gigas players that took out the heavily favoured South Korean team that featured no fewer than 3 world-renowned players including the current world champ, and that team won with an OCV! Gigas is infamous as the worst character in the game, but that player who had customizations that ranged from Dio's THE WORLD to Skeletor played out of his mind. The grand finals were the best of all: a brilliant Hwoarang player, playing on the team sponsored by the event sponsors themselves (Yamasa), looked to OCV the opposing team. Down 0-4, the final player on the losing side, using Josie Rizal (not a tournament favourite character by any means!), proceeded to OCV the entire opposing team! The hype was insane. Everyone who was still conscious was going nuts. It was GREAT.
I still hate watching matches involving Jack, though. That hasn't changed.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(9):Checkmates" , posted Mon 27 Nov 11:25:
quote:
I'm really interested to hear about this, given that I didn't follow Tekken in any more than a cursory way until Tekken 7, largely because I have co-workers who play it. Compared to past Tekkens, what do you not like about it?
I always found the movement and input conventions of Tekken incredibly alien coming from a 2D fighting background, but strangely I think as time has passed, my mind is more open to different gameplay paradigms... I expected the opposite!
Okay, though I must reinforce that while there are a few things that other people will have said, this is my VERY subjective opinion and your co-workers may not agree. I'll take it in order of general relate-ability.
1) The roster. Many Tekken players have expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of certain mainstays of the series who have been around since the early days like Lei or Julia, but for me the missing character that hurts most is Zafina. When I got tired of Feng Wei after Tekken 5 I realized I wanted a more challenging character to learn, something that was more in line with my SC2 main Raphael - an agile multi-stance character who was incredibly fun to play - and I found that in Zafina. Although she ended up being more like Voldo, the reasoning still stands. So imagine my disappointment to find that her place in the main Tekken series has now been limited to a single game while EVERY OTHER new character since Tekken 5 has been represented. To me this feels more like a betrayal than an oversight. I eventually settled on learning Katarina as a substitute but her similarities to Sarah Bryant (another complex character who I played a lot) just ended up making her feel too simple and limited in comparison.
2) The movement. This isn't going to mean much to a person who is just starting with Tekken 7 but if you ever have the chance, try going back and playing Tekken 6 or TTT2 for a bit and you might notice that these games are ever so slightly less restrictive in their movement than Tekken 7. Sidesteps had more use than sidewalk, backdashing was better, it just felt more free. Now you can still do some sideways movement in Tekken 7 but to me it feels more limited that it used to be and that in turn really messes with what I think I can do at a given time. It's like the game forces you to use advanced techniques like KBD to get the most out of your movement now, whereas before they were just the furthest on a sliding scale of technique.
3) New system stuff. Movement aside, everything that was "new" about Tekken 7 just didn't feel all that new. Power crush on paper sounds cool but since its weakness is nothing new and its utility overlaps a bit with high crush it didn't really change as much about the game as it should have. Rage arts are flashy but also don't serve much of a new function; rather they serve to highlight a specific do-or-die situation that Tekken has never lacked. Simplifying throw breaks to one or two buttons was kind of sad and unnecessary. I will say Rage Attacks are okay, but they were added late and being so specific they're easy to overlook in matches overall.
4) The effects. Here's where I really start to get picky. Compared to something like Virtua Fighter, Tekken has always had some fairly obtrusive effects, and that is something I've sort of begrudgingly accepted. But now in Tekken 7 it's just reached new heights of ludicrousness. Hit effects are so big and crazy you can barely tell what's happening behind them. Ridiculous amounts of flying debris obscures people as they fall on the ground. The screen shakes like there's an earthquake. The camera zooms in to "accentuate" hits but it's usually so tight it misses the extremities of any movement. Basically, they all make the game pretty to watch but annoying to fight in.
5) Character models. Yeah this is a direct contradiction to what everyone says about Tekken 7 but I think the character models are not that impressive. That's not to say they look terrible, or that they all looked great previously (Tekken 6 had some infamously weird-looking faces) but I just think that these models lack some of the expression and looseness that they've had in the past and gained more bulk, probably because of the move to UE.
6) Akuma. I really don't like Akuma. And since he plays mostly like his 2D version, it just ensures that I continue to not like him; his gameplay needed to be more re-imagined to get my interest. And by association the 2D gameplay he brought with him kind of soured me on that as well and I didn't get as excited for Eliza and Geese (even though I love Geese).
I could go on but I'd be getting into story stuff which frankly doesn't matter to a fighting game in the long run. Although I will say that the story does a poor job of making me feel anything at all for most of the new characters because the vast majority of them are not even involved. (Any one of them could have substituted for that boring narrator!)
[this message was edited by Gojira on Mon 27 Nov 11:38] |
| | "Re(10):Checkmates" , posted Mon 27 Nov 11:53
I don't think silly reasons are all entirely dismissable on the basis of being silly when they concern things we take to because of reasons of personal appeal.
I definitely don't have the history of connection with Tekken that you do, so the feeling of lacking characters being "advanced" enough is interesting to me! It's certainly the case that they've been making sure to add at least one "beginner-friendly" character every game for awhile now, and in T7's case, I think more than one! Claudio and Katarina I recall being advertised as both being advertised as beginner-friendly. Josie seems like a beginner-friendly character as well, even though she seems to have mostly Bruce.
From my newbie perspective, I actually couldn't tell what the difference is in movement mechanics between the Tekken games, because all of the rapid dashing and side stepping honestly... looks the same to me! I apologize! I was really surprised to learn that you could block during a backdash, but I was also really taken aback by how odd the movement in the game felt compared to the 2D fighters I'm used to playing: walking is painfully slow in Tekken, backdashes have oddly long recovery especially contrasted against forward dashes which can be interrupted midway, and so on. This is a really interesting point that I definitely lack the background to appreciate! Which Tekken do you believe had the best-feeling movement? And do you feel that this sentiment about the game's movement is shared among your Tekken-playing friends?
I like power crushes ability to absorb entire string's worth of highs/mids, and you're right, it being completely undone by lows does make it feel like a high crush... but since it arguably crushes mids as well, that's kind of different. I do think it gives everybody some kind of tool that forces people to think about both their homing/tracking moves and their dominant mids (e.g. EWGF), since it can beat both (as long as the homing move isn't a low...). Rage Art is a lot less significant than I imagined it would be since it's quite possible to outright die before it even can hit the opponent. I guess I am sentimental for the "Desperation Move"?
Yeah, the hit effects are kind of obnoxious. VF's have always felt too restrained to me, to the point where they feel like they aren't there, whereas T7's big sprites feel too intrusive. I think an approach which emphasized the 3D particles a little more would've been good, because their dispersion and interaction with the character geometry could provide good signalling as to where in 3D space the hit was detected, while not existing on a layer in front of the 3D models that obscures them so much.
I think some of the models are really great. Akuma is really great! Kazumi looks cool. I wish I had an option to not have Leo's dangling chain things because they move around with way too little weight, and Leo can't hit people with them anyway. I almost wish the character's skin textures were a little rougher, because seeing pores on Jin/Kazuya/Heihachi's skin in the hi-res cutscenes doesn't make them uglier, it makes them feel more powerful! Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya look as silly as always. If there's one thing I loathe, it's that Katarina seems to have like a grand total of two voice clips, and a lot of the hair customs don't look good.
Akuma is WEIRD coming from 2D land. In SF, Akuma is the faster and flimsier shoto. In Tekken, Akuma is a SLUG. Jack and Gigas seem like they could run circles around him. The painful walkspeed of normal characters in Tekken is even slower for Akuma, and for people who haven't mastered the dashing and sidestepping of Tekken like me, Akuma is even slower still. His sluggishness is what I imagine Gigas or Jack being, no Akuma! Also, he's HUGE compared to the other buff men of Tekken! He looks like he could eat steel beams with his jaw!
My final confession is that I haven't played the story mode yet beyond getting kicked by Heihachi as kid Kazuya, which was hilarious.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(2):Re(10):Checkmates" , posted Mon 27 Nov 14:42
quote:
I don't think silly reasons are all entirely dismissable on the basis of being silly when they concern things we take to because of reasons of personal appeal.
I do agree, but I had someone on Twitter berate me for not using my 120 characters to outright state that it was my opinion about the game and not a fact, and then minutes later block me so I couldn't respond. Contemporary discourse hurts my feelings!
quote:
I definitely don't have the history of connection with Tekken that you do, so the feeling of lacking characters being "advanced" enough is interesting to me! It's certainly the case that they've been making sure to add at least one "beginner-friendly" character every game for awhile now, and in T7's case, I think more than one!
I've heard that, and I generally think that with a few exceptions, most characters in any given Tekken are more simple than the impression they give. It's usually a question of getting over the breadth of options, while all of the depth arises from the basic system. Learning a complex character in Tekken or VF is such a different feeling from learning a complex character in SF or KOF because there's so much to remember, but the reward for reeling in that massive list is much more superficial. 1001 channels on TV but you only need 5.
quote:
Which Tekken do you believe had the best-feeling movement? And do you feel that this sentiment about the game's movement is shared among your Tekken-playing friends?
At first I was thinking it would be hard to pin down, but then I remembered TTT had some ridiculous movement freedom. Forward/back dash could be canceled into sidestep, sidestep could be canceled into just about anything. It felt very smooth and characters with stances could freestyle some silly movement patterns. It probably wasn't the most balanced, but what's most fun usually isn't. Unfortunately I don't think any of my Tekken-playing friends that I can still find started Tekken before or during TTT so I don't think they'd say the same. I wonder what they'd pick?
quote:
If there's one thing I loathe, it's that Katarina seems to have like a grand total of two voice clips, and a lot of the hair customs don't look good.
Oh yeah, the limited hair options are so strange considering the wealth that TTT2 had. I get the feeling like it's incomplete, like they hadn't yet figured out how to get them looking right in UE4 when the game shipped so all we got were a few safe, short-haired unisex wigs. And although they patched the color options to allow black, some shades of color evidently don't exist, like whatever shade of red Katarina's hair is supposed to be. Trying to find that, save it and apply it to a different hairstyle is literally not possible.
quote:
Akuma is WEIRD coming from 2D land. In SF, Akuma is the faster and flimsier shoto. In Tekken, Akuma is a SLUG. Jack and Gigas seem like they could run circles around him. The painful walkspeed of normal characters in Tekken is even slower for Akuma, and for people who haven't mastered the dashing and sidestepping of Tekken like me, Akuma is even slower still. His sluggishness is what I imagine Gigas or Jack being, no Akuma!
He sure hops like a mighty frog though! Tekken characters really have to get their strength up before propelling themselves into the air and not breaking their legs when landing, but Akuma has overcome such mortal limitations.
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| | "Re(2):Young Geese Howard" , posted Thu 30 Nov 04:14
quote:
Now coming to a Tekken7 near you
Very excited for the Young Geese outfit, slightly weirded out by the terribly loud Phoenix outfit, and a little sad that they didn't give the Young Geese a ponytail (although I'm certain it will be a hairstyle option, along with samurai topknot, bar code head, and hopefully even Heihachi hair).
Also, the stage is just perfectly executed <kisses fingers> I'm surprised to find out it's located on some snowy mountain-- I had always assumed it was in the penthouse of the Howard Building in Southtown (and this is borne out by Professor's Southtown map!).
Impressive stuff. Namco really knows how to handle a guest character. Geese is looking like a real badass (although I agree that the Phoenix outfit is a bit much for my personal taste).
Tekken 7 does look good, but man, I just can't right now. As Ishmael mentioned the home release isn't exactly bursting with appeal outside competitive play. My initial enthusiasm has never recovered after I heard about Lili being different/weaker here (or maybe that's an excuse and the real reason is that I just don't think I have the time to get good).
However, I'm starting to get kind ofpsyched for the Soul Calibur VI rumour.
/ / /
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| | "Re(2):Young Geese Howard" , posted Thu 30 Nov 10:11
quote:
Very excited for the Young Geese outfit, slightly weirded out by the terribly loud Phoenix outfit, and a little sad that they didn't give the Young Geese a ponytail (although I'm certain it will be a hairstyle option, along with samurai topknot, bar code head, and hopefully even Heihachi hair).
Unfortunately, no. Geese, like Akuma, has no hairstyle customization. (Okay, they have the two metallic variations, but they have no actual alternate hair styles.) Also like Akuma, Geese has no helmet customization. (So not only can you not give him Heihachi's hair, you can't even give him the inflatable Heihachi head.)
The Phoenix and Retro outfits have to be assembled in customization, they aren't available by default. The Phoenix top and bottom are immediately purchasable, while the Retro top and bottom are locked in Treasure Mode chests.
As for the move set...
Raging Storm uses the classic input motion, not the simplified KOF XIV input. In similar fashion, Deadly Rave (which is available in Rage mode) requires the various strikes to be manually entered. (I didn't try it in practice, so I don't know how much buffering leeway you get.)
Geese gets a super meter, and can build three stocks. Pressing LP+HP+LK will, at the cost of one stock, put you into Max Mode, where you can do EX specials. Geese gets three supers: Raging Storm, Raigou Reppuu Ken, and Raigou Midaretsuki. Rage Arts are Rashamon (db+LP+RP) and Deadly Rave.
Raigou Midaretsuki is the weird one. It is activated with the final button press of a simple LP,RP,LP,RP combo string, where the final RP instead triggers a Raigou Reppuuu Ken. The ease of activation is countered by it costing two stocks. Is this a classic move that I've missed, or is it some kind of nod to an SNK stock-costing cancel system mechanic, or what?
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| | "Re(3):30-minute Geese Howard" , posted Thu 30 Nov 18:12:
quote:
Very excited for the Young Geese outfit, slightly weirded out by the terribly loud Phoenix outfit, and a little sad that they didn't give the Young Geese a ponytail (although I'm certain it will be a hairstyle option, along with samurai topknot, bar code head, and hopefully even Heihachi hair).
Unfortunately, no. Geese, like Akuma, has no hairstyle customization. (Okay, they have the two metallic variations, but they have no actual alternate hair styles.) Also like Akuma, Geese has no helmet customization. (So not only can you not give him Heihachi's hair, you can't even give him the inflatable Heihachi head.)
The Phoenix and Retro outfits have to be assembled in customization, they aren't available by default. The Phoenix top and bottom are immediately purchasable, while the Retro top and bottom are locked in Treasure Mode chests.
As for the move set...
Raging Storm uses the classic input motion, not the simplified KOF XIV input. In similar fashion, Deadly Rave (which is available in Rage mode) requires the various strikes to be manually entered. (I didn't try it in practice, so I don't know how much buffering leeway you get.)
Geese gets a super meter, and can build three stocks. Pressing LP+HP+LK will, at the cost of one stock, put you into Max Mode, where you can do EX specials. Geese gets three supers: Raging Storm, Raigou Reppuu Ken, and Raigou Midaretsuki. Rage Arts are Rashamon (db+LP+RP) and Deadly Rave.
Raigou Midaretsuki is the weird on
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
So I've played Geese for 30 minutes before going to bed, and here are some quick thoughts:
- LK and LP meaning "Light Kick" and "Light Punch" is mostly true. RK and RP... not so much haha
- the move list lists "Command Normals" and "Special Moves" just like an SNK console training mode!
- it is totally not obvious what is and what is not cancellable, you just have to experiment for yourself.
- d.LK, d.LP is a fixed chain, no rapid fire lights or anything... but d.LP is cancellable from this, and hit confirmable.
NEW INFO: it turns out that d.LK, d.LP isn't a real combo unless the d.LK is a counter-hit. That's really bizarre.
- d.RK is not a knockdown sweep, but it is cancellable.
- RP, f+LP is a damaging, cancellable chain... meterless combos from this can reliably do damage.
- QCB+LP/RP is a dash punch, with LP knocking down while RP has multiple followups, some of which combo and knockdown. I don't know what the use of QCB+LP is act a glance. Followups are super cancellable.
NEW INFO: QCB+RP is slow enough that it isn't a real combo in some cases, while QCB+LP is. LP always wall splats, QCB+RP and its followups don't. QCB+RP->LK is not a real combo, QCB+RP->LP is always a real combo.
- JAENKEN is done with HCB+LK/RK, super cancellable, carries opponent further than QCB+RP followups, but QCB+RP's LK followup is a knockdown that seems really good.
NEW INFO: JAENKEN is not duckable, unlike QCB+LP/RP. This suddenly makes QCB+LP/RP a lot less useful, and JAENKEN a lot more useful.
- you can combo into ground normals from his jumping normals, but you have to land them quite deep in order to do so.
- the simple combo of j.RK, RP, f+LP xx QCB+RP->LK xx QCFx2+LP+RP does a whopping 94 damage!!! But you have to land the j.RK quite deep for the RP to combo, and the super cancel costs 2 meters.
- from full crouch, df+LP does what looks like his old d.HP, and it launches. This feels weird coming from any direction, 2D or 3D.
- he has that jump slice move, and it cancels into air fireball.
- he has a chain into that throw which Rock also has. You could probably combo from it if your back was to the wall.
- his stage has MULTIPLE breakable walls before you fall into the courtyard!
In brief:
He superficially feels better than Akuma with a bigger variety of tracking moves, better and more reliable meterless damage from low hits, the ability to pump out tons of damage with super, and lots of cool moves. Like Akuma, relatively few of his normals possess the forward movement typical of Tekken characters, but his movement feels superficially less sluggish than Akuma. I felt more at home with him than with Akuma from a 2D fighting perspective. It remains to be seen how useful jump-ins actually are. I would be delighted if crossups were actually possible on knocked-down opponents. The omnipresent threat of damage + knockdown from low hits the moment Geese is in range of the opponent seems quite different compared to many members of the cast, some of which get no combo damage from lows at all unless they are counter-hits. Geese in full crouch in that regard is kinda like Shaheen, who can threaten with the damaging slide/launcher from full crouch.
Fun things:
There was a huge ~2GB patch update that accompanied the release of Geese, which contains every single cutscene in every single Tekken game including ones from Pachislot games. I had fun using my millions of gold unlocking cutscenes which I had never seen before!
Continued Tekken gripe:
Anime fighting games have had the idea of the combo meter going dark if the combo was escapable at some point for over a decade now. Tekken normally doesn't show a combometer outside of training mode, but it baffles me that they don't have this feature inside training mode.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Sat 2 Dec 13:58] |
| | "Re(1):You cannot escape from Desk" , posted Wed 6 Dec 05:00
quote:
YO! Geese. Damn, that is cool.
Kōhatsu also celebrated accordingly.
One of my favourite things about Geese is that he has the ability to jump off a wall that is behind him, which I don't think he has ever had the ability to do (?), but when he does so, he performs a Souther-like pose!
Also, the "1,2,1,2" combo that results in a super is meant to be a riff on the auto-combo system added in KOFXIV, where if you mash A when in close, your character will do a unique chain combo that will automatically cancel into a super if you have the meter for it.
Finally playing KOFXIV, the QCB+1/2 chain move and its followups are a thing from KOFXIV, including the fact that only the punch followup is a true combo, and that all three are super cancellable! He didn't have the glowing blue energy on the first hit, though.
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| | "Re(2):You cannot escape from Desk" , posted Wed 6 Dec 09:06
quote:
Also, the "1,2,1,2" combo that results in a super is meant to be a riff on the auto-combo system added in KOFXIV, where if you mash A when in close, your character will do a unique chain combo that will automatically cancel into a super if you have the meter for it.
I knew the idea sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it to a particular game. Even though I own KOF XIV, I never got around to playing it much, and I never bothered with the autocombo and thus forgot entirely about it.
I admit that I wasn't thinking about KOF XIV much anyway due to the Raging Storm motion. Since Tekken 7 used the classic motion, I figured they weren't drawing anything from KOF XIV.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(3):Still Burning" , posted Sat 9 Dec 22:38:
I don't really want to lose any characters, even the newer SC5 ones. I feel like most of the new SC5 characters (aside from P&P) didn't get a fair shake in terms of story exposure. We learned so little about them aside from the basics of their profiles. Leixia might as well have literally been Xianghua with how little effort they made to portray her differently. Natsu got more characterization from her appearance in PxZ2 than anything in SC5. Viola's entire existence hinged on whether or not she was Amy and even that simple question wasn't answered. I still don't know what Zwei's point was. Xiba... well, actually I don't think Xiba's appeal would have been any better if we knew more about him considering how one-dimensional he is, but who knows. Aeon doesn't need a story, he is adorable and should never be forgotten. Elysium was just kind of an empty randomized shell so it didn't really matter what her story was. As for the P&P pair (twins? I forget), Pyrrha fared better in terms of moe appeal but I feel like Pat's character development isn't truly complete unless he gets a complete character with a less douchey personality. There's only room for one douchebag in SC and his name begins with R and ends with a phael.
Now just for the hell of it (and because Maou mentioned Tira) I feel compelled to talk about other new characters post-SC2.
Tira was... definitely a product of her time. Technically she's not the first character with an invented weapon; a huge deal was made about Ivy's weapon at the time of SC1 because Namco really made it look like a legitimate thing that could have existed, a testament to fantastic design. Meanwhile Tira was kinda the opposite of that. It suited her insane personality and the moves mostly made sense, but boy did it look silly and difficult to believe.
Zasalamel and Setsuka made a lot more sense but came off as safer ideas. Still Zas was pretty solid and cut a stoic and recognizable profile, and people could consistently make Shaq jokes about him. As for Setsuka, I thought she was a pretty cool character in SC3. SC4 was the problem; I didn't like it when they turned Setsuka blonde. That change felt vaguely xenophobic, like they didn't want to fool anyone into thinking she was actually Japanese, and it kind of turned the character visually into a gauche mish-mash of Mary Poppins and Yojimbo.
Just going to skip over the special "generic" custom styles in SC3, although I do think the roster of SC could benefit from having an archetype like this guy in it.
I actually really liked Hilde's Saber-inspired design, but the fact that she was one of the only new, original non-boss characters that could be carried over to other titles speaks volumes about why I had issues with SC4. And Algol was just... Algol. I'm still not sure what that guy was. He attacks with floaty swords and bubbles and his throne and sometimes his pelvis and he's a king I guess because the game said so. I think the point at which Algol was conceived was where the story of SC officially lost me.
Dampierre is a wildcard but in my eyes Dick Dastardly can come back any time. His randomized success/failure mechanic makes his matches unpredictable and fun for everyone. And of course he must continue to be voiced by Shigeru Chiba.
Where am I going with this? Hmm. Oh yeah, big roster. Let's just have a big roster please.
[this message was edited by Gojira on Sat 9 Dec 22:44] |
| | "Re(5):Re(10):Still Burning" , posted Wed 13 Dec 02:41
quote:
I am not specifically a Rose fan but I certainly remember who my Zero2 zealot friends cared about.  
I know I am in the minority but I would have preferred a premium re-release of SFZero3 in the vein of Ultra Street Fighter II, let's say one improving the integration of Upper characters, souping up the World Tour mode, fixing the balance issues with V-Ism, including all backgrounds from the Zero series and adding some additional settings akin to System Direction, rather than a certainly useful and suitably legit but hardly thoughtful collection of Arcade ROMs.
I'm constantly surprised and then maybe unsurprised by how the version of SFA3 that they AREN'T re-releasing isn't the PSX home version, given that that's the one that was the best-seller. It's probably easier to just dish out the arcade ROMs on an emulator, but nobody in North America cared about the game back when it was new and in the arcades. But then again, they've made multiple re-releases of the game on other platforms (DC, PSP) with the PSX content (namely, World Tour mode), and sales were middling (but they were on the DC and PSP, so what did they expect).
Only a tiny group of people in North America could really make use of the most egregious gameplay glitch in SFA3, which was Crouch Cancelling, and the group of people in North America that would care about such a thing is probably large enough that it would be neatly divided between those that think it should be fixed and those that think it shouldn't be fixed while both being equally irrelevant.
In conclusion if World Tour mode were added to SFV everybody would be happy, the end.
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| | "Fighting Ex Layer" , posted Wed 13 Dec 17:58:
Fighting Ex Layer unfortunately doesn't have a lobby for the beta so we won't be having a lagfest!
...Next time, space cowboy.
So far the game seems pretty fun and very pad-friendly thanks to its SNK vs Capcom2 EO'ish simplified inputs which is default by setting-- you can basically do moves with just a direction + button. It takes some getting used to since the player needs to go neutral on the d-pad for a moment, but in terms of gaming advantage, the tradeoff is huge compared to the traditional command based input since it allows for some tactics that otherwise won't be possible.
The Indian Zangief Darun is extremely powerful thanks to this system-- imagine a Zangief that can do pile drivers with just   . What's more, the right gem selection can have him toughing through attacks with hyper armor to deliver 70%+ damage depending on the situation. Brutally running through unaware projectile spammers is pure bliss.
Thus far, all I've been encountering have been mostly Darun and Shirase, which makes sense since Darun seems simply overpowering and Shirase is the only female character. And Shirase I swear, is the first fighting game character that I've encountered who's been designed to fight like an Antonio Inoki taking on Muhammad Ali. I've never played the Fighting Layer series that much, but I can't recall seeing Hokuto playing with mostly low attacks and slidings.
Ironically, in some ways this Fighting Ex Layer kind of feels more like a KOF game than KOF14 because of its strong offense, speedy gameplay and input buffers. With a small publisher like Arika being able to use UE4, I really wonder the detailed reasons as to why SNK decided to go in-house with their graphics engine. Perhaps things may have been different if their development was off by an year.
[this message was edited by Professor on Wed 13 Dec 20:00] |
| | "Re(1):Fighting Ex Layer" , posted Wed 13 Dec 19:01:
quote:
Ironically, in some ways this Fighting Ex Layer kind of feels more like a KOF game than KOF14 because of its strong offense, speedy gameplay and input buffers. With a small publisher like Arika being able to use UE4, I really wonder the detailed reasons as to why SNK decided to go in-house with their graphics engine. Perhaps things may have been different if their development was off by an year.
Yeah, that had to have been one of the most bizarre decisions of all.
Maybe they thought that it wouldn't have been as hard as it was, or that there wasn't a proven hardcore fighting game title made yet that used a 3rd party engine? They probably didn't have solid knowledge about UE, and at the time, I wonder if the developer support for UE was all that strong in Japan.
Guilty Gear Xrd wasn't revealed to the public until mid-2013 in trailer form, with the first full release early in 2014. It started development prior to 2011, so it took about 4 years to make.
KOF XIV wasn't as visually ambitious at Xrd and deliberately wanted a less cartoon look/feel, which is ironic given that that is what UE natively excels at. Given that development began prior to 2014, Xrd had not yet proven itself as a technically competent title.
wikipedia cites that the developers were concerned about their lack of knowledge of UE, and concerns of budget and risk.
The first concern is legitimate: without conversation with ArcSys, it's impossible to know how painful it was to make Xrd from a purely gameplay perspective, nevermind the extreme visual content. However, the evaluation of it being cheaper and less risky to write their own engine for this is eyebrow-raising. Developing an entire game engine from scratch is one of the most expensive, highest-risk things you could possibly do!
[this message was edited by Spoon on Wed 13 Dec 19:02] |
| | "Re(9):Fighting DBZ Layer" , posted Mon 15 Jan 17:21
I've tried the beta test as well! But as you probably know, it's pretty much Login-FighterZ at the current time and the devs haven't yet figured out what's causing the bottlenecks.
It's possible to log in and get to the lobby with enough tries (protip: set your controller on rapid and leave it around til you've successfully connected), but even if you do get to the lobby, the matchmaking servers are also down so you can't do much aside tutorial mode or watch replays from early access players.
The tutorial mode has given me plenty of hands-on time so far though, and yeah-- this is certainly an Arc Systems' air dasher game and it has very similar combo rules.
I was assuming it'd be a really simple game, but there's actually a lot to learn in terms of system, although you don't need to use them if you're just playing casually. In that sense, the game reminds me a lot of Persona 4 Arena, which could be played and be quite enjoyable with just basic controls, but also offered a lot more for higher level players.
It also means the system will allow for utter slaughter if a newcomer matches up with an experienced player. Of course the same can be said about any other fighting game, but unlike Street Fighter which runs slow and has low damage, this game is fast and offers strong tools to break down the opponent.
But of course that's only if players match up with a player that's beyond their strengh, and I expect that'll come less with this game since Dragonball is, well, Dragonball. It'll probably have the biggest casual player population that we've seen in the broadband era.
The tutorial should certainly be played since it goes through the systems that makes the game actually feel like "Dragonball"-- flying at your opponent, rushing punches into them and kicking them into air, teleporting behind them, etc. Very fun. I think there's so much controls though, that to a lamens player it might feel akin to learning how to manually fly a Boeing 747.
As for the server's regional breakdowns, it seems different depending on location. for Japan, there's simply 24 lobbies and the areas aren't specifically broken down as Ishmael said. I can only assume that they split the servers that way for the US so that people won't complain as much about lag coming from physical distances. I wonder how it is in Europe.
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"Re(3):un-PREDICTABO!" , posted Tue 18 Jul 03:55
"Re(4):Kompromania" , posted Thu 20 Jul 23:33
Super Combo in the Zero series was.
Maybe *** stands for Kei
Why is this bothering me so much 
"Re(7):Still Burning" , posted Mon 11 Dec 08:38
