PhillyG wrote:
The Mount and Blade series. Many people don't like it because of the graphics but the combat system is fantastic.
And that to me says alot about what's wrong with the industry these days. That game is pretty great overall, but it didnt garner as much of a following as it should have. I definitely agree it's very underrated.
They are making a sequel though! Albeit slowly. Still, I look forward to it.
Let's see.... games that I think are underrated.
Well, first off, fighting games made by Arc: Guilty Gear series, Blazblue series, and Persona 4 Arena. Guilty Gear is pretty well known, so it might not count, but I'm listing it anyway, because I can. But yeah, these dont get the attention they deserve. It's not that there's anything wrong with them.... as it is, I personally consider them the best fighting games, period, and I've played LOTS of fighting games, that being my main genre and the one I'm best at. But the reason why they're underrated is simple: It's because Capcom.
SF4 and MvC 3 came out, and..... suddenly, people werent paying attention to these that much anymore. And the thing about Capcom's fighters, for me, is that they're BORING. Overall, the pacing in pretty much all of them is way too slow to hold my attention. Now, to be fair, I have a warped sense of speed. Damn near EVERY game, period, is too slow by my standards. Not just this genre. But with many fighting games, they're at least moving at a decent enough pace that I dont find my interest wavering. Not Capcom's though. SF4 for instance. You could almost just call it "Footsies: The Game". I remember one very specific match at some tournament or other, which was Rufus VS Zanghief, and the vast majority of the match didnt consist of, you know, fighting.... instead it sorta consisted of each character staying on their respective side of the screen, and sorta..... dancing in the vague direction of the other. Every now and then one of them would almost stick a foot out at the other guy sorta maybe. And then immediately resume dancing. The match didnt end until Zanghief randomly appeared to get bored of this, and waddled over and just did a couple of throws on Rufus, and that was it. And this was a TOURNAMENT match. I still have the video of this one saved somewhere, since it's my favorite example of why I dont play Capcom's fighting games very often. SF4 as a whole tends to not really allow much aggression, has very stilted movement for most characters, and is more about simple pokes and interrupts than anything else. You do combos in it, but they're short and typically not very hard. Though, again, to be fair my idea of "hard" is also warped. I'm still used to really long FRC combos in Guilty Gear, which are *VERY* hard in many cases. Some of SF4's combos will still be plenty tough to most players. And there's little in the way of aerial combat. Special moves and such also tend to repeat, appearing on multiple characters, as opposed to each having truly unique moves.
Arc's games do away with all of these problems. Combat is fast, you can play super-aggressively or defensively, mixups and combos are long and complicated, and typically you have MANY options available to you, you have great freedom of movement, in that airdashes, double jumps, super jumps, and many special moves and abilities that dont actually attack, but instead allow unusual movement to occur, all of these things make getting around quick and smooth, but they also make it so that the ENTIRE SCREEN is used for the fight; whereas SF4 the characters are grounded for the vast majority of the time. And the aerial combat, wether it's air VS ground or air VS air, allows for just as many possible options and combos as the ground combat. Add in the very creative characters with movelists that are truly unique to each, and..... yeah. For me, there's no question at all as to what the best in this genre are. And the cast of characters just makes it even better. Bridget remains my favorite character of all time period, with Noel Vermillion coming in at number 2, and I also really like Labrys as well. But really the entire cast of each game is good.
The one and only problem these games have.... and I suspect is part of the reason why they're not played as much as they could be.... is their difficulty, which ranges from "very hard" to "utterly absurd". They have NASTY learning curves.... Guilty Gear in particular. Capcom's games do have the advantage of being far more accessible to newer players. Persona though took some good steps towards making the learning curve less horrible, but it's still a very hard game to learn properly.
Oh, and before anyone says "Oh, but MvC3 does all of these things too", my problem with that is a little different: it's like Capcom decided to try that formula out.... but didnt QUITE understand it, and went COMPLETELY overboard with it. The combos, for instance. Damn near every character there is has at least one combo that can do 100% damage to most other characters, particularly if certain helpers are on their team. This type of combo is by far the most frequently used. And while the combo system and such might fall within the range of what I like in fighting games, the EXECUTION of it does not. This type of combo....... they're long. Really long. TOO long. They're so damn long that they hit the point of being dull, as half of the match seriously seems like one player (the one getting hit) is just WATCHING the other player (who successfully landed a blow to start the combo) do stuff, for quite a good amount of time. The movement can be an issue too; characters can jump SO high that it just.... well.... WHY can they do that? It just seems unnecessarily exaggerated. And ranged attacks.... it's too easy to cover the whole damn screen in the things, and spam the funky crap outta them. All in all, this one just exaggerated the concepts that I like far enough that it makes me stop liking them entirely. I will play SF4 sometimes, but MvC 3.... I tried to like it, I really did. I kept with it for some time. But then my interest was just dead.
Now all of this doesnt mean that I think Capcom's fighters are bad (well, SF4 anyway).... I think they're decent enough even if I dont play them all that often. But I definitely find that Arc's are far better. But simply not recognized enough.
28 Nov 2013, 10:35 pm
(seriously)
