Technically that "doing the same thing over and over again" argument can really be applied to any game genre. Especially racing games.

Fighters to me are okay but when you bleed the same concept for like 8,000 sequels it does get tiresome.

Like KOF I love the series but when i see so many of the same game with the same vanilla teams it tends to make me feel bleh after as while so for the most part of me even like the series boils down to who they put in the game and not how the actual game is played. Mortal Kombat started to have that feeling after deadly alliance at least in my eyes.

Skill is that abilitly to use your experience effectively.

You may have experience and no skill - you'll lose
You may have skill and no expereince in the game - as your halo story proves - you'll win
You may have skill and experience - you'll win and do it with style

Well technically KOF switches things up on you in every game.

94- Standard 3 on 3 team fighting
95- Customizable teams
96- Super Moves
97- The EX gauge which lets you trigger it to get attack and defense buffs
98- Sidestepping
99- 4 characters+Striker
2000- Strikers that can be switched for NPC characters
2001- Super move gauge that changes depending on how many of your 4 man team is designated a striker
2002- Dream match with selectable opponent teams in single player
2003- Tag teams with the team leader being able to do extra powerful super moves
XI- Pure defense
XII- Critical counterattacks

Also I heard KOF13 is gonna be the most technical savvy KOF game in the series. Like this is a hardcore fighters paradise game.

Well Virtua fighter was the first 3D fighting game created, so it was alone on the market at the time of its release. Unlike street fighter 2 which had hundreds of terrible clones made after its release (trust me there were so many rubbish 2D fighters released at the time it got ridiculous), Virtua fighter only had Tekken follow it in the early years because very few company's had the resources to make such a complicated game. Later came games such as Fighting Vipers, Last bronx, Soul blaze, DOA, and they were all far from crap. The only bad 3D fighting games I can think of is FX fighter and Toshiden.

Fighting games never went back to 2D. Street fighter series, KOF series etc has always been in the 2D style (and dont bother with the SF EX series) Both styles have existed at the same time will shared success in many parts of the world.

If you wanna play a very balanced fighting game were you can really master the fighting system here are some examples that me and my friends have been playing for many years.

Street fighter zero 2 and 3.
Virtua Fighter 2 and 5.
KOF 98.
SC 2.
Vampire Savior

For just pure having friends around for un-serious fun try these.

MVC 2
X-men vs street fighter
MSH vs Street fighter
Tekken series
SC series
DOA series.

I agree racing games are also like this though like I was saying I don't think people play racers for the same reason. People like to feel like they really are behind the wheel of that Mercedes. Personally I never cared at all so I don't play racing games whatsoever.

Sneez, you make a good point but I would disagree with your first conclusion, as least as far as fighters go. I think in the fighting genre, if you have experience and no skill, you'll win. That's the whole point I've been trying to make!

I'll respectably agree to disagree with you there but I guess thats the fun of having people with different opinions lol

Well hey, I could be wrong. What do I know, I'm just some guy.

Blacktually, I kind of like where you're going with the "skill vs experience" argument. It shows some thought behind the argument, rather than "it sux cuz i dont like those gaymes" that's so prevalent on forums in the realm of sports games.

But in a lot of ways, that's a testament to the fighters that blacktually change things up every now and then, even subtly. I'd argue that experience is a MAJOR factor in EVERY genre, but in fighting games, I have to again go back to the "16-bit wars." A large number of games were borderline identical, especially many of the early SFII updates. The worst, though, were those carbon copies like Fighter's History. Point is, so many fighters didn't bother changing ANYTHING from SFII that you would very often see a guy with zero experience beat the tar out of somebody who owned said game. The SKILL was what won the day when they didn't innovate. If you change it up just a tad , you'll notice that starts to change a little, which gets closer to supporting your argument of experience over skill. Still, it's very hard for me to swallow the idea of it taking NO skill.

Wow, let me start this post by saying you're incredibly ignorant and I DO NOT respect your opinion. As everyone has already said, you're just making sweeping generalizations that can be applied to any game genre. You're not stating facts, just an ignorant uninformed opinion that would probably be better off kept to yourself.

I can be like you and say the same things. In FPS's you still just run around and shoot people. In racing games, you just drive a car. In RTS's, you still just build armies and attack others. In RPG's you still just level up characters and go through a story. In puzzle games you just solve puzzles. Just that most of us know that if you think that, you're retarded, and obviously a casual gamer. It doesn't matter what you say to defend those arguments, because the person making those arguments doesn't know the game well enough to understand the many subtle intricacies that can completely change the way a game plays. So this post will most likely be pointless and fall on deaf/retarded ears, but I still have to post.

Good 3D fighters: Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, Soul Blade/Calibur, Zeno Clash, Fight Night, and let's not forget how awesome the new MK looks.
That's just off the top of my head. Yes, some fighters reverted back to the 2D style, but how does that make them bad? They just play better that way, nothing wrong with 2D style. YOU may not like it, but many other people do, which is why they're becoming so popular again.
There's your argument that they don't take any skill. That's so wrong that my balls hurt. My balls literally ache with pain because of your ignorance. Not only do fighters take a lot of skill, they also require quick reaction, and knowledge. You need to know what move counters what, what moves chain into each other, what style a certain character has, and what style they are strong, or weak against. You need to understand the subtleties and rhythms of each character and move. Mashers only win against mediocre players (like yourself), any decent to pr level player will wipe up the floor with them. Fighting games take a shit ton of skill, and if you think otherwise, not only are you wrong and a bad person, you're an idiot.

Then you say there is no story in fighting games, and when that is shot down you say it’s because during the actual fight there is no story being driven? That’s just retarded,first off, the fight is part of the story, no matter how simple of a part of the story it is. Secondly, almost ALL games do that. The story is in a cut-scene or animation of some kind, then the gameplay occurs. Some games make the two intertwine and combine better than others (half-life, uncharted), but it doesn’t mean that games that don’t constantly drive the story during the gameplay have no story at all. There are plenty of fighting games that do drive the story during the fights with quick dialogue exchange, or cinematics between each fight, and even smaller details. For instance, in Street Fighter Alpha 3, each character has a little opening animation before the fight. Some characters have special animations depending on who they face. Like when you play as Ryu against Sagat, normally when Sagat opens to a character, he just laughs. When he faces Ryu, the scar on his chest glows very quickly, those that know the streetfighter storyline know what that’s about and albeit a small detail, it references the history between those two characters.

You’ve already admitted that you never mastered a fighting game, it’s the same as admitting you don’t like it because you’re terrible at it. To make it worse you hate an entire GENRE because you’re not good at it. Really, take everyone else’s advice and do a little research on the subject before you go write an article that’s going to make you look stupid.

Sugargene, does someone have to be good at soccer to realize that it sucks? Does someone have to be good at school to say they hate it? The argument that because I have never mastered a fighter is why I think it sucks is stupid as hell. If I wanted to, I could pick up any fighting game, put some time into it to gain the necessary experience, and compete on a high level. I just don't want to do that. The games are boring and repetitive. They are a waste of money. They aren't FUN. All the other games you mentioned aren't boring, they are different every time (except maybe racers which I agree with you but I already explained that most people don't play racers for the same reasons, they play to feel like they are actually driving sports cars).

I've grown up with fighting games. I still remember playing Primal Rage as a kid and picking the raptor because he had this bite attack that if you hit your opponent one time, you could mash the button over and over to keep hitting them and they could NEVER geta way. Hell, just playing Burst Limit recently I found out you can spam the charge up attack and get perfections on the hardest difficulties. Yeah what a great genre that requires so much skill! I have been around "professional" players and watched a lot of bouts being played both in person and online. Even on this site I've heard a lot about fighters because they are Joe and Tom's favorite genre I believe.

I am hardly uninformed about the topic. Would you say that a sports reporter knows nothing about sports because he doesn't play them? Would you say that a science reporter doesn't know a lick of science because he himself isnt' a scientist? The only reason anybody is saying so is because they can't refute the arguments and are in denial so they simply try to discredit the writer by saying I'm not qualified enough to say what I say as if that would even make the arguments any less true in the first place. The only "credential" or "piece of research" that I am missing would be to master a fighter myself but as I already explained, you don't need to be good at something to draw obvious conclusions about it. If anything, it makes me completely unbiased towards the genre which makes the arguments even MORE valid. Everything you metntioned about needing to know what chains into what etc isn't skill, it's EXPERIENCE. Did you even read the article or did you just get so angry at someone making the assertion that fighting games suck you went into reply mode? You are the biased one here desperately trying to defend your favorite gaming genre from being outed as obsolete.

when you bring this whole super competitive and over strategic element to fighting games then they do suck. It's kind of like starcraft. I would go online to play with people but they take it so god damn serious as if winning a 1v1 or team game is the only thing that matters in life.

anyways I am not a huge fan of fighting games because I didn't grow up playing them. I have played the smash bros games and love them but other than that I don't play fighting games. I actually might get Marvel vs Capcom 3 when it comes out.

YES, without being really good at soccer you won't be able to appreciate it to the fullest extent. Not only that, but it's natural to hate something because you suck at it. If you're like any normal person, and you're playing a game on a competitive level, and you lose then you're not going to enjoy yourself, but that's not the big issue. The big issue is saying that a genre of game sucks because of that. That's not ok, that's ignorant and insolent. You could say, "hey fighters are not my sort of game." and most would respect that, but instead you just say that they suck in general when clearly there are millions of people that love them. It's just a stupid comment to make.

If you don't master a fighter, then you only know the basics of the game, and only knowing the basics can cause the game to become repetitive and boring. For instance, using street fighter 3 third strike(because it's the fighter I'm more familiar with). If someone comes at me with a jump kick, I can do a number of things to counter or defend that. I could just do an uppercut and try to hit him with priority. If I do that he could parry it and go in with his own attack. If he does successfully parry I could parry his counter and so on (I've seen incredible parry battles in that game). Otherwise Instead of using a priority move on him, I could just block and try to throw, I could just dash away and keep defensive. I could try a special move in hopes that he won't be able to parry all of it. Those are just a few of the choices I have when there's a fucking jump kick coming at me, one of the simplest moves in the game, now I have to decide what I'm going to do in less than a second. Is that not depth? The answer is yes, yes it is.




Yeah? That just means you didn’t know the game well enough to counter that attack. While it is true that there are some broken fighting games out there that are unbalanced you can say the same thing for any genre of game. EVERY GENRE HAS UNBALANCED GAMES. I could make the same argument for COD4 (don’t even get me started how broken and exploited this fucking game is, and yes I’m very good at it), for SC2(zerg currently at a disadvantage), for L4D2(another incredibly exploited game, although very fun), name a game so long as I played it enough and I guarantee you I can pick it apart and tell you what issues it had. That’s why games are constantly patched on PC, they fix errors, and constantly try to balance it. You know what else that means? It means players are constantly finding new ways of playing the game the developers didn’t prepare for and have to rebalance. That’s depth man, intentional or not.


Number one, science reporters are usually prominent scientists, dumbass. Secondly sports reporters are all different, some having played the sport and some not. The point is, even the ones that don’t play the sport enough know a great deal about the sport so your argument is yet again, retarded. Trust me, you are not knowledgeable enough to compare yourself to either.



That’s just it you’re drawing “obvious” conclusions. You’re looking at the surface of the game, and picking out what only the amateur can see. Because of that you’re blind to anyone’s argument as to why the game is deeper than you think. It’s because you literally cannot see the depth, just as when I watch football, all I see is a bunch of giant men running a football back and forth across a large field. Even though I’m not a sports guy, I’m not dumb enough to go around saying sports suck, they’re repetitive, lame and take no skill. I know well enough that there’s an incredible amount of strategy that goes into picking plays, using certain players and so on.




No, it just makes you uninformed. You can have all the experience you want, shit I know about a lot of the combo’s ken has in SSF4, and I can only perform half of them. I’ve been playing streetfighter for close to 12 years now, by your logic, I should be unstoppable. No, because fighting games take much more than experience, you need to have finess, hand-eye coordination, and rhythym/timing. All that experience does for you in a fighting game is make you more familiar with it. Do you think experience would allow you to pull off something like this?



Or is it maybe that these players spent hours, days, weeks learning the rhythym of the game and of each move to do that?

I just got word that Xander is too busy playing puzzle quest to reply right at this moment, he'll be on in a few hours.

damn, shit just real up in here....

1. i think fighting games could be fun if they offer a very innovative aspect of the game that appeals to not only fans of the genre but people that are looking to get into fighting games

2. I can sort of see where Xander756 is going with this because I also think most fighting games are repetitive. It's basically like you just fight a lineup of guys with some bonus stages thrown in there and a weak story that you probably won't care about, but that's only if you are playing a single player story mode.

3. why talk about fighting games and if they suck or not? you guys should be talking about sports games lol.

hey shutup I play puzzle quest, and so does your mom!!!

It was a reference to Olly's video -_-, but you're right, I'm not better than that