An article I wrote about why I think fighting games suck. DON'T KILL ME. Just sharing my honest opinion.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13078-Xbox-360-Examiner~y2010m8d12-Why-fighting-games-suck

While I respect your opinion I kinda gotta disagree with you on it,

a few points -
1) Saying a genre tried something new and it didn't work so it went back on itself is a bad thing is wrong.
2) Saying that players of fighting games require no skill is a tad insulting and arrogant
3) Franchises have been around for years and the core gameplay is the same ie football games, hockey, racing, CODesque titles. Fighting games are just the same ase these so if your saying fighting games suck you might as well tar the whole gaming industry with the same brush.
4) Your article comes across as being written by someone that never did master a fighter or was good at it and got constantly defeated by his little brother who'd never played the game before.

If your article was titled "Why I don't like fighting games" would probably have been more accurate.

thats my opinion

This.

Haha no I have definitely never been constantly defeated. I've obviously never "mastered" a fighter though because I don't bother to play them. Like I said, fighting games are just boring and in my mind require no skill. It's all about rock, paper, scissors memorization. When you do this, I do this to counter. That ain't skill and really it ain't that fun. Why would I bother playing a genre that I feel is for noobs?

Okay, dude. Go on Youtube and look up video of any fights that go on in EVO. That shit requires a shitload of skill, skill I wish I had.

Do you not count execution as skill? Yes you know all the moves and all the counters but can you execute them at the exact right part? Another thing you totally disregard is the amount of thinking/mind games that can be involved in fighting games. Calling something for noobs because you are not good or don't understand the intricacies is rather dumb.

I think that arguing by saying that I'm not good the game so thats why I don't like it is dumb. It's like when I rip on Halo 3 and then people tell me I just suck at it. When I politely point out my 2.7 k/d ratio they are baffled at how I can hate it. Is that the only thing that you guys can think of?

But what about... yomi?

Oh man, so many points I should probably hit blow-by-blow at some point, but I at least agree on innovation being an issue, primarily in the early to mid '90s, when 2D fighting games were milked dry on the SNES and Genesis while the Neo-Geo made worthwhile ones and some companies eventually followed suit and tried something different.


However...


The single biggest error I see the young'uns shitting out of their mouths is how fighters take no skill. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Street Fighter II... the ORIGINAL SFII... is like modern day chess. There are still things being discovered about it. To this day. Memorization of bullshit came a little later, around say MKIII, when nerds went to arcades and tried to memorize every move, Fatality, Babality, Animality, etc., which Midway flooded the game with to distract you with content instead of the bare-bones gameplay. You know what happened? The nerds got their asses beat by the guys who stuck to basics. In SFII, understanding matchups, pixels, priority, and so on meant the difference between staying on top and putting in another 25-50 cents. Do you know how to fireball? Great. Do you know how to Dragon Punch? Great. Do you know that you can override various moves in a 0.03 second window and execute certain patterns that the opponent will be fucked unless he can do the same? It's skill. Hardcore skill.

A cousin of mine graduated high school in June. His buddies bashed the older Mortal Kombat games, saying "It's all mindless button-mashing." Yet they backed down when I offered them to put that to the test. I can beat said cousin over and over. I never lose a single round. He knows all the moves. So do I. Worst part of it is, I admit I'm barely above mediocre in skill. Very good against most, but against the best, I can't win a single round. That's how skill works.

Saying something sucks because you don't like it is about the most retarded thing anyone can say. It's like saying somebody is a fucking idiot because they were born with taste buds that liked vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream. It's purely subjective and makes you look like a second grader. Hopefully you take some pointers from the posters here and work on your journalism and editorial skill because from what I read, it's lacking.

pretty much what psycho gorilla said. I'm amazed at how there's only a handful of combos for each character in Street Fighter IV (which means you can memorize a character's movelist within a few hours) yet it's a lot more complex then I realized. watching the game at EVO this year proves it, really. heck, even watching tutorials like this series improved my game 100% and proves there's a lot more to the genre then just "attack the other guy with the same moves".

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but after reading your article you come off looking like you never did any serious research into your topic.



I'm pretty sure Namco doesn't think so, seeing as how both Tekken and Soul Calibur have been doing just fine.



I'm not sure if you noticed but there have been plenty of developers that have done this with other franchises and genres. Mega Man 9, Braid and Limbo all share more in common with platformers of the late 80's and early 90's than they do with other platformers from the past ten years. All of which have been pretty successful.



This whole paragraph is based on what seems to be a lack of effort put into any real research. Most fighting games in the past 15 or so years have had story elements that carried over from game to game. It isn't just a a collection of generic ethnic characters thrown together for the sake of things. Street Fighter for example has a storyline that ties Ryu to Ken, Sagat, Akuma and Gouken. Tekken has centered around Heihachi, Kazuya and Jin Kazama. Tekken Tag and Marvel vs Capcom series had free flowing tag systems set in place to have up to 3 on 3 matches. Capcom vs SNK had Ratio matches were you could fight against several characters all alone. Hell Tekken even developed a story mode similar to side scrolling beat em ups and has had this mode in their games for the past few years along side of a traditional arcade mode.



Aside from the fact that they were released 18 years apart: game engines, combo systems, supers, characters that move at 60 frames per second, online gameplay, focus attacks, focus cancels, coherent storylines, etc. That's not even taking into account the progress the series made in titles between those two releases.



You could use that argument for any genre of gaming, but you'd be wrong every time. No matter how much practice you put into a game if you lack the ability to strategize and read your opponent you're never going to be able to play on the professional level of say gamers like Daigo and Justin Wong. There's a reason why they make a living off of playing fighting games and you and I don't.



Only against a player who isn't good at fighting games and lacks the skill to counter it.

I could go on to dissect the whole article but at this point it would be beating a dead horse. I'm not trying to be a dick here, but when you write an article that is meant to be read by the public you can't get away with broad generalizations. You have to provide some form of proof or validity to your argument, even in an opinion piece. And to do so you have to actually research your topic thoroughly before you even start to write it.

Dude, do your home work before writing such an article. Even though you have a right to your own opinion some of the facts you stated are false. The transition to 3D fighters was a disaster you state???????????????????? .Virtua fighter for example has the most in depth and perfected fighting system of any fighting game ever made, FACT! The virtua fighter series has been played religiously in Japan since its original release back in 93. In Tokyo they have arcade floors dedicated to just Virtua fighter where people come to hone there skills after a day at work or school, almost like going to the gym. This may be a Japan and Asia only thing, but the same could be said for FPS games which have never been that popular in Asia as it has been in the west.

Like to add:

I suck at fighting games but I still like playing them. No matter how easy learning the move sets are, you have to learn to be able to pull them off correctly at the right time, which is where the hard part comes in. I love Soul Calibur, Tekken, MvC, Bloody Roar (Yeah, I still remember that series), Street Fighter and so many more because it's pertty fun to get better and better at them as time goes on.

Are you still talking about fighting games or shall we not include some RPG's, puzzle games or strategy games in that statement



your opinion, I think FPS are more noob-playable than a fighter, especially the Call of Duty games where skill is equally rewarded as noobworthity.

If you don't like them, fine, don't play them. No-one is forcing you to sit with your hands nailed to a controller and made to play.

PS I like fighting games, not very good but I hold my own. Im not a racing car game fan but I'm not going to rush out and right an "article" saying they suck cause its been the same style of game for 20 years - you go forward and win the race : game over. Not my cup of tea but I understand why people enjoy them.

Antman nails the research nail on the head for me.

I never said they suck because I don't like them. You are right, that wouldn't make sense. I don't like them because they suck.

How are my journalism and editorial skills lacking? Because I said something you disagree with? That is one of the stupidest statements I have ever heard someone utter.

Sure Antman, Virtua Fighter was good. Does one game disprove the rule or is it just an exception? There were a few good 3D fighters but 90 plus percent of them were just garbage. That is why fighters NOW have gone BACK to 2D. Or did you think it was just for no reason at all?

FPS games are more noob-playable you say? That is quite funny I must admit. I see people who are bad at video games pick up FPS and they wander around, not knowing where they are going. They are bad at aiming so they lose gunfights and they are generally just unsure of what to do so they die over and over and over. I know a guy who has a 0.2 k/d on MW2 after playing about 100 games!

Meanwhile, people can just mash their way to some wins in fighters. I'm not saying they can do this against highly experienced opponents who know how to beating mashers, but against an average joe mashing CAN and DOES lead to wins. This just goes tos how how little skill really is involved.

0.2 k/d ratio means he's still getting kills, purpose of the game right there, and he's a noob. Button bashers win one round, yeah they won a round, purpose of the game right there and he's a noob.

Whats the difference?

person has a 2.6 k/d ratio means he's skilled, person has a 5/1 w/l ratio means he's skilled

What's the difference?

Not really. Tekken 6 didn't even break a million sold on the 360 and Soul Calibur 4 barely did. Just fine? If any other genre of game sold like that it would be considered a flop.



The problem here is that the games you mentioned are arcade games, not full retail versions. Maybe it's worth it to pay $10 for a retro-styled game but is it worth $60?



Much of the story you just brought up there is learned through mediums OUTSIDE of the game, like animated shorts, comics, shows, etc. Maybe there is some brief explanations before or after each match but by and large the story of the game is "here is an opponent, beat his ass and move on to the next."



You can boil everything you said down to different moves, different graphics, different characters. That isn't really much of an advancement in 17 years. (Street Fighter II released in arcades in Japan in 1991. Street Fighter IV was released in arcades in Japan in 2008. That is 17 years. And you accuse ME of not doing research?)



The reason people make a living off playing fighting games and you don't is simply because they choose to devote a lot of time to gaining the experience to do so. That and actually chose to do so. I believe that if you actually wanted to, you could do it. It's like poker. The major difference between a poker pro and an aspiring poker pro isn't skill, the game is mostly experience to know how to play hands and a large part luck. It's funds. One pro player
once said that anybody who has enough money to join their first major tournament could go pro because after that, they should be able to win their way into other tournaments.

If you practiced at the same level, intensity, and duration, as someone as at a fighter, you're going to be at least AROUND their "skill" level. If you did so in other genres, such as FPS, you can still be much much worse. Here's another anecdote but bringing up Halo again. When I first picked up Halo, I was a god. I demolished people who played THOUSANDS of games when I had only played dozens. People thought I lied
and trained in secret at home. No joke. If someone tried to pick up a fighter and face someone with thousands of games of experience, they would get owned. Why? Not skill, experience.



Again, you're confusing skill with experience. Just because you know what to do doesn't mean you are actually skilled at a game.