As a side note, I had a lot of fun putting in more time in USFIV again. I think in ways I like it more than V-I think V's roster with some of my 3 favorites+Necalli give me more characters I'd like to mess with(besides my usuals), but USFIV these days is just feeling so much more complete to me. Like V is still going through patch madness, and still, IMO, feels like it's missing a little something even if I DO find AE a definite several steps in the right direction. (That, and I do feel I like the way Claw played in older games a bit more.)
Onto the stuff!
So yeah, we've had a bit of Week-1 Tierlisting. Remember what I said; it's all fun to do for the hell of it, but don't take these things too seriously. I'm not against seeing them, I'm more against taking them too seriously at first until things shake out.(Even the dudes themselves said it was pretty much for fun. It's everyone else that takes these things too damn seriously.)
Too Much Hype?
Next up is a discussion about hype, hype aversion, and what I don't want to see happen with DBFZ.
Okay, so Sajam had a clip from a stream which I'll link here. It's not too long; about five minutes. He starts by going on about twitch haters going into streams just to hate stuff(I don't even get Twitch culture nor can I even pretend to understand it), but when he discusses DBFZ and that he's worried the game may have too much hype about it-I have to agree with him. DBFZ right now is being hoisted up as being the savior of all things Fighting Game, and I reckon it's just going to be another cool fighter. I mean maybe a damned good and popular one-but I don't think it's going to cure world hunger or anything.
And I'm afraid when/if it doesn't end up as the wasp's testicles of fighting games people will feel let down. I don't WANT that to happen. But hype aversion can be quite a strong thing. Here's hoping people's ideas for the game stay realistic. (Oh yeah, and snobs need to stop scaring off the new blood. Jesus, I'm old, cranky, and believe you gotta take some L's to get better, but don't be needlessly cruel in mocking them if they can't complete a goddamn combo challenge. We should be better than that.)
But yeah I think he nailed it. Gameplay wise I'm not too worried(I don't think it's going to be the best balanced fighting game, but it'll be mad fun and be fantastic.) But let's cross our fingers that expectations don't get raised to crazy-high, life-changing levels.
What's with the SFxT talk?
So around twitter lately I've been seeing more and more SFxT talk these days. It's been going for a bit now but it's picked up again. People saying they'd buy it again on PS4, discussing its strengths and discussing how they miss the game despite its flaws.
And I have to wonder how a game that went through a LOT of scrutiny now became more accepted? Hell, I find myself sort of shrugging at Capcom's business practices there. (The P2W gems were a little harsher for me, tbh, but neither thing was *great.*)
I reckon, though-and I had tweeted about this a bit but I can discuss it longer here-that compared to lootboxes and gacha, some on-disc DLC is sort of...tame in comparison. It's kinda lame, yeah, and if it hadn't been on-disc I think people may not have even looked twice at it. But I believe this and the gems-again, the P2W aspect was sort of meh to me(though tournaments can and do ban them understandably) really gave it the bad launch; other things did affect it too(like time-out syndrome at first, where matches would often end in time outs and drag on seemingly forever.)
However, they worked on patching balance bits, again, gems were able to be banned from tournaments and eventually the game became pretty fun! But...the launch sort of already did its damage, trust had been damage, steam and momentum were lost...and yeah.
Years later, now that people can sort of dust off the previous downsides, they're able to see the fun game underneath-and that brings me to why I think this game is starting to get a little hype surrounding it again; I think, between stuff like this, DBFZ and so on, people just want to have some 'fun', over the top fighters in the mix of all of the 'srs' ones they play. The game did have some cool gameplay aspects besides that, but I think a little case of 'don't know what you got' is coming up or something. I don't know the exact reasons, but that's my guess; it's just a case that now that most of the overlaying crap had been cleared away people suddenly say 'Damn, why can't I be playing X/Y again?'
I will say if it popped on PS4? I'd buy it too.
My own personal revisiting of USFIV
So I had gotten the urge to put time into that again. It actually still has a fairly thriving little community(its 200-250 average Steam players is actually better than some newer fighting games, and it filled up its 180 cap at EVO Japan IIRC), and I can understand why; by the time they finally got to Ultra the game played pretty tightly and was decently balanced.
I think there are aspects I like more about IV, and aspects I like more about V(when it comes to the newer games, I will always state my top 3 SFs are in no particular order Alpha 3, 3rd Strike and Super Turbo). Aspects I like more about IV is that as of now it simply feels like a more complete game; it had six years, four expansions, and lots of balance patches, so that's only natural. Also, I admit-I actually like old Claw's design and moveset a bit better overall. (Plus lots more costumes and such from then.) it does have a bigger overall roster with some good stuff(Claw, the Final Fight crew, Rose, others.)
On the other hand, I really don't like how they ignored some very popular characters(Alex, Urien, Nash a couple others), and brought back others just because of easy recycled content(I don't want to hear anything about Nash being dead, they brought him back a million times already, they could have done it again). That had me pretty salty at the time, I admit(I had long since gotten over it; in fact, the me of 2013 even was different than the me even of 2015. I dunno why but I had more roster salt in the early 10s than I did later. I suppose its why I can have some sympathy for people missing characters but have little patience for people who spam developers; I would have never gone that far.) Finally some MUs could get to almost redonk 3S levels too once you got to stuff like Hugo and Sagat(though Valle STILL managed to body Bonchan in '15!) Its balance was pretty decent though. I liked Claw's balance a lot; a solid mid tier(FINALLY, christ he had it rough in the first couple versions), but counterpicked several top tiers.
V has some neat re-imaginings. I straight up love new Nash more than Alpha Nash in terms of gameplay. The arcade mode content is great fun to unlock, and some of the new artwork as I mentioned is fucking beautiful, like this piece:
On the other hand, the gameplay does lend itself to leaning toward characters who can perform a big ol' CRASH comeback, Claw feels like he's fun and has good tools but he's not as 'cohesive' as he used to be in that it feels like the devs aren't sure on how to revamp him like they were say Nash, and I feel the game still is a bit...unfinished in ways. 2nd V-Triggers without 2nd V-Skills, CAs or reversals feels a bit off to me; like the game is almost there, but needs still a little more time in the oven(spoiler alert; this tends to be SF games in general. I mean c'mon how many versions of each one gets released?)
So IV has been providing me with some more entertainment lately. I'm really pumped for the 30th, like I said.
Azzy's Learn Someone New in 2018 Challenge
I also decided to challenge myself a little by learning a new character in a few fighting games. This isn't for a main or anything(just a fun sub type), but it's to broaden my horizons a bit. The only 'rule' I'm keeping for myself is that it has to be a character type I'm not used to maining(hence broadening horizons.)
In Guilty Gear, I've been starting with Zato-1. I've of course fooled with most of the cast but I decided to hunker down with this guy. I don't really play puppet characters, so this seemed like an interesting challenge. It's been pretty fun so far!
Over in Tekken land, I was considering Gigas at first(I usually don't go with low-tier big bodies), but decided on Steve Fox, since I generally don't play boxers. So here's hoping this goes well too! I always liked dabbling with him before, so I figure time to actually learn him.
Finally in SFV I'll go with FANG. Weirdo that he is, he's generally not my style of character which makes him perfect. (I'm experienced with charge characters already so that part isn't too new, but his whole general 'schtick' is.
-----
ANYWAY I hope you enjoyed my random bit of rambling. I hope to do more of these, maybe as filler when I can't figure out something useful to actually write about.
I also want to thank everyone for dumping a lot of birthday wishes on me. It makes getting older so much easier you guys <3
See ya all soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment