The Blog Roll: A Love Affair With The Fighter Genre
The fighting game genre has always been a harsh mistress for me. For every happy memory I have of the genre there’s about 3 bad memories that shortly follow.
From a young age I became interested in fighters and my first experience with the genre was (unsurprisingly) Capcom’s Street Fighter 2 on the Super Nintendo. From the first minute of the game I was hooked. The characters looked visually interesting, the environments dazzling and the action thrilling. Playing solo was fun but lets face it, fighters are meant to be played against people and not AI.
Playing Street Fighter 2 against friends (and some times family) is still one of my most treasured video game memories. Booting up the game and selecting our favourite characters before arguing over which level to fight in was tradition. Button mashing in a desperate panic was also tradition.
In the process of pressing all the buttons in any given order a special move would normally be unleashed, leaving me and a buddy in a stunned silence. ”HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!” was often the question on our lips, and the answer to that question was ALWAYS ”no idea’.
A classic match-up if ever there was one
Even with a limited knowledge of the game and its controls each match was always a great slice of fun. These sweet natured days were numbered however as I began to grow up.
As time went on, and I played more and more fighters, my longing for victory became stronger. Button mashing was no longer a style I felt happy to use, it had become ‘messy’. Instead I would try a few characters out and learn the move sets.
By time I came into possession of Dreamcast I had a decent amount of knowledge of Soulcalibur. I wasn’t a master by any means but I had learned at least a few moves for each character. Suddenly playing against friends had become more of a practice session than just a few games in the name of fun.
Losing felt a lot worse, victory felt less meaningful, it was a strange feeling. For the most part I would be able to take down most of my friends, this resulted in the game becoming a little boring for them to play. Understanding the game had ultimately led to the ‘fun’ of the game being drained away.
Was Voldo the cheapest character in Soul Calibur?
The likes of Capcom Vs SNK, Street Fighter 3 alpha and Marvel Vs Capcom had returned all the fun of fighters. I applied a much more laid back approach to these fighters in order to keep the game fun for my friends to play against me. By this time in our lives we preferred to learn the game rather than button mash, this led to competitive, but fun, matches.
It seemed the perfect middle ground and a great time to enjoy some top class fighting games. The enjoyment of the genre (and fighting friends) hit its peek with Marvel Vs Capcom 2. Given the popularity of the PS2 all of my friends owned the system and Marvel Vs Capcom 2. This allowed everyone to stand a fair chance of learning the game and forming an effective team.
Many a battle was fought, plenty a laugh was had, this was the highlight of my time with the fighter genre. There was always a giddy feeling when it came to each team being down to their last member. A single hit would decide the match, the aftermath involved boasting and looking back at the action.
I had went from casual matches with friends, that were all about the fun, to competitive games of knowledge and technique. One day (well when I got my own computer) I just stopped playing fighters.
From 2004 to 2008 I honestly cant remember playing a fighter for more than a few days. I kept an eye on the genre, watched it develop, but I never got back into the swing of things. 2009 saw the return of the franchise that started it all for me, I am of course referring to street Fighter.
Street Fighter IV was more touchy feely than expected
The fourth entry into the franchise was a first day purchase for me. After a first few runs on arcade I
decided to hit up the online options. This is where things got rough.
A large segment of players from overseas had been playing Street Fighter 4 for roughly a week. This earlier release date had created a huge divide it terms of player skill. Time after time I was matched up with players who had already learned the mechanics and moves of a number of characters.
My arse was getting well and truly kicked.
I was now feeling the way my friends did when they used to play Soulcalibur against me; it wasn’t fun. I tried to learn the game, learn some strategies, but alas my efforts were met with more defeats. Only a few of my friends had bought Street Fighter 4, this limited my chances of casual fun matches. When they did happen, more often than not, I’d end up winning purely because I had learned some easy moves of a certain character.
My friends soon began to grow tired of playing me and I was once again forced into playing online. While I did improve my overall play, the huge gulf in skill and experience was still too much to overcome. I enjoyed Street Fighter 4 a lot, I kept it in my collection in order to play when friends came over or my father fancied a game. Online I was nothing short of a easy win for any given player.
Akuma wasn’t impressed with Deadpool’s newly announced game
For a large length of time I kept my activity within the fighter genre strictly offline. Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Mortal Kombat (reboot…or 9 as some wish to label it) became my fighter of choice. While Marvel Vs Cacpom 3 was a little light in terms of content, Mortal Kombat was jam packed.
With plenty to do in terms of single player I was more than happy to play Mortal Kombat offline. The lure of playing online is hard to resist however, and yet again I found myself being beat down by veterans. All the enjoyment I had experienced with Mortal Kombat offline was now being replaced with defeat and defeat.
The sheer amount of spam I became the victim of was heart breaking. Seeing Stryker spam his ranged attacks over and over killed my motivation to play Mortal Kombat online, it was nothing short of brutal. I was awful at the game, but my lack of enjoyment online killed any motivation to improve.
Fast forward to EVO 2012. I’m sitting at my desk browsing Twitch TV, and I’m once again interested in fighters. After watching the majority of the Marvel Vs Capcom 3 tournament my interest in the game resurged. I knew for a fact I was going to lose, and lose hard, but either way I was going to try my hand at the online portion of the game.
Get over here…something, something
My assumptions were proved to be correct, I did in fact get my arse kicked (again), but I didn’t mind. I oddly didn’t mind losing. My competitive nature had taken a back seat. With my rediscovered relaxed nature towards the game, I began to sit and learn….how to lose.
While defeat is never fun it did allow me to experiment and tinker with my team selection. Before I knew it I was presenting a viable challenge to some players, some times even winning. The thrill of the fighter genre rushed back, everything I remembered had returned. In a moment of nostalgia I dragged my father into a game and began to play. It was like being young again playing Street Fighter 2 for the first time.
My love affair with the genre has been long and eventful. It’s had highs and lows; at times I had fallen out with the genre only to make up with it some time later. Learning to handle defeat is key to enjoying the fighter game genre, whereas expecting victory is a recipe for frustration.
Remembering why I loved the genre in the first place was key to recapturing the thrill, enjoyment and fun that I had all but lost.
this is more like a rant of how you have no value for Fighting Games.
Fighting Games to you is more like Marmite, sometime you hate it and you love it, but you can’t decide if you should just stop buying it or keep buying it and just love it!
You can’t keep doing the same thing you are doing now because it feels like whinning.
Like buying Call of Duty and keep complaining the Online is broken or it’s the same game.
Either stop buying the game, or buy it, love it and get better at it.
I myself have my personal vendetta why I dislike FIghting games. I much prefer me vs A.I but over the years i preferred me vs human. The reasons why I dislike Fighting Games vs humans are the ones who promote the ‘Play to Win’. They are the ones killing the enjoyment; and the fact that Many Fighting games are just darn broken and support spamming.
Dead or Alive 5 looks like the game that would prove to me if I should still keep buying Fighting Games or not. Mortal Kombat is an amazing game, the best FIghting Game to date. Just like you pointed out, there are spammers in the game, and it’s not Stryker spammers. It’s Cryrax spammers and N00B, and not to mention the cheap Scorpion users. Things like this annoys me because developers do not balance out all characters.
Scorpion and Cryax can be spammed, not to mention that annoying Lui Kang. NO different to Dead Or Alive and how the NInja characters are always the most over powered.
So if a developer can create a balanced fighting game, then I’m still game and I’ll have reasons to become better and not blame anyone when I lost.
InJustice looks like an amazing game, i’ll keep my eye out for it. The more I see the game in development and how it’s less broken, the more I’ll look forward to the game and just keep in the Fighting Genre regardless if DOA5 disappoints me or not.
If i had ‘no value’ for fighting games then i would of:
1) Not bothered to write this
2) Not bothered to play any fighters after my first experience with them
3) Bought any fighters in the last 5 years
I have little no idea how this piece is me whining. It starts with a positive and ends with a positive. I assume you were expecting me to just say good things about my experiences with the genre?
With your misinterpretation aside, every fighter has that one ‘cheap’ fighter, it’s just the nature of the genre, same way each shooter has that ‘cheap’ gun etc
Both DoA5 and InJustice are already per-ordered.
Ignore xino as the guy is pretty much pariah in the fighting game community and simply lives to keep posting troll posts like that in peoples blogs (and his own).
Oh right
i guess i took the bait! nice site by the way!