Fighting games had lost their imagination.
This is what I thought after playing SF4 for a year. I wasn't even close to the fighting caliber that I am today, when I was half my age, but even I knew we were living in a golden age of fighters during the reign of the Playstation and Playstation 2.
We had the Marvel vs. games, the SNK vs. games, familiar characters were tweaked in small and large ways (from Ryu's knife kick in SF3 to Akuma's demon flip in CvS2 [credible?]), and many new franchises waiting to happen. We had Rival Schools, Vampire Savior, Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear and many others. These games received their chance during this renaissance. But what happened was what normally happens, a status quo is established and trends set in.
So for the past decade we've been stuck with the "Safe" releases. More versions of the same Guilty Gear XX, more incarnations of Tekken (which ended up "Breaking" in the most recent version) and a long drought of any kind of Street Fighter.
Enter Street Fighter 4. Street Fighter 4 explodes and brings competitive fighting to the casual player. Anybody can become "an expert" of the game if he wants to learn. While Arcsys was innovating with HD sprites in their new venture, "Blazblue", the complexity often mistaken for "button mashing" nearly dammed the river that was soon to burst forth in a torrent.
Thankfully it didn't stop with SF4, and the current version, Super is born and thriving. With such a vibrant cast it is much the better game in so many regards (though some skeptics remain). Capcom is buzzing with activity, with rumors of a TVC port, MVC3 coming out with crispy 2.5 D action, and more fighting news around the corner. Arcsys has news too, and with Continuum Shift, Blazblue's "fixed" newest version, one can only hope it will be Guilty Gear's big jump to the current generation of consoles.
Imaginations running wild, it is once again looking like it did a decade ago. Who will be added in the arcade version of SSF4? A trial mode for Blazblue to teach people the nuances of this complicated fighting game, with their own DLC characters. One thing I leave with you, dear readers. If your characters are not in MVC3, so what? If Rolento gets snubbed in the SSF4 arcade version, so what? Look beyond "what is safe". Even if MVC3 is full of movie tie-ins that feel shoe-horned, it's new content to be explored and enjoyed. Don't boycott a game because your team isn't in it, you should support it because it's new and different and you don't want the same ol' same ol' every time. (cough) dynasty warriors (cough)_
Friday, July 16, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Playing to Win vs. Anything to Win
I am a big fan of Sirlin's Playing to Win article. He's got a lot of things right in it. you can check out the blog here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw
I want to take a new stance on this topic and subdivide things a bit. Playing to Win's idea is that no tactic is scrub, if it beats you, it's up to you to overcome it. Many "scrub tactics" are actually well calculated, and should you break it, they have a deeper game then you'd think. That is what Sirlin of hints at in parts of his article. I want to divide the Playing to Win group into 2 catagories. Playing to Win and Doing ANything to Win.
Doing Anything to Win is the most common strategy for competitive online play for Super/Vanilla Street Fighter 4. It can be as simple as exploiting difficult to counter tactics (such as Blanka balls or dhalsim "yoga sniper") to as complex as polished shenanigan tactics. This is the type of stuff Sirlin says is not scrub, and I am with him on this. These people have their specific game down, and even though in tournament play it wouldn't work, they can win some points with it online. These people will do anything to win, even if it includes making their game two-dimensional in the process. This is not in the spirit of Playing to Win.
Playing to win is using every tool, glitch, combo, mixup, shenanigans etc in your characters arsenal (within tournament guidelines) to win. Sometimes it can overlap "Anything to Win" but never coincides with it. If you favor a tactic for extensive amounts of time, you will eventually find yourself in that rut when you most need to back up and change your play style. Playing to Win conflicts with Anything to Win in this spirit. Unfortunately, online you will find yourself fighting opponents that do the same thing over and over, which may, in some cases, force you to do the same thing over and over. But this is usually only a few matches here and there.
By the same token, I come across players that like to "teach me" how to counter something, so they do something over and over again till I am so furious I am yelling at the screen. This private lesson does nothing but aggrivate me (I'm trying to play to win, versus an opponent who is not) and hurt the other persons game in the long term. It's up to me to figure out the way around the tactic, i will do that on my own time not while I'm fighting to win.
Playing to Win is the most fun prospect in gaming I have come across, but only after I started really thinking about it.
I want to take a new stance on this topic and subdivide things a bit. Playing to Win's idea is that no tactic is scrub, if it beats you, it's up to you to overcome it. Many "scrub tactics" are actually well calculated, and should you break it, they have a deeper game then you'd think. That is what Sirlin of hints at in parts of his article. I want to divide the Playing to Win group into 2 catagories. Playing to Win and Doing ANything to Win.
Doing Anything to Win is the most common strategy for competitive online play for Super/Vanilla Street Fighter 4. It can be as simple as exploiting difficult to counter tactics (such as Blanka balls or dhalsim "yoga sniper") to as complex as polished shenanigan tactics. This is the type of stuff Sirlin says is not scrub, and I am with him on this. These people have their specific game down, and even though in tournament play it wouldn't work, they can win some points with it online. These people will do anything to win, even if it includes making their game two-dimensional in the process. This is not in the spirit of Playing to Win.
Playing to win is using every tool, glitch, combo, mixup, shenanigans etc in your characters arsenal (within tournament guidelines) to win. Sometimes it can overlap "Anything to Win" but never coincides with it. If you favor a tactic for extensive amounts of time, you will eventually find yourself in that rut when you most need to back up and change your play style. Playing to Win conflicts with Anything to Win in this spirit. Unfortunately, online you will find yourself fighting opponents that do the same thing over and over, which may, in some cases, force you to do the same thing over and over. But this is usually only a few matches here and there.
By the same token, I come across players that like to "teach me" how to counter something, so they do something over and over again till I am so furious I am yelling at the screen. This private lesson does nothing but aggrivate me (I'm trying to play to win, versus an opponent who is not) and hurt the other persons game in the long term. It's up to me to figure out the way around the tactic, i will do that on my own time not while I'm fighting to win.
Playing to Win is the most fun prospect in gaming I have come across, but only after I started really thinking about it.
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