A trend I’m noticing with a lot of newer fighters is that there’s a much larger focus on execution-related feats, chief among them being combos. Combos have been around pretty much as long as fighters have, but it seems like the ratio of combos-to-footsies is a lot more skewed in the former’s favor. Don’t get me wrong, I like landing them as much as the next guy, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more games in the vein of VSav/MvC2/3S/HF/KOF98 where you typically don’t need high combo execution to jump into the game, instead allowing you to focus moreso on getting familiar with your character’s toolset in the neutral game.
Its all about the comboz these days …learning really long ass combos, the game makers think thats what will make a game sell, but in the end the one closes to a old school game <boxing match>is sf4 take away the fadc and its sold way more then everyone else and not a deserted island… injustice is pretty close to. kof is classic and then all of a sudden there HD mode and it turns into marvel/anime…
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Short answer: No.
Not-as-short answer: There are actually quite a few recently-made fighters with less combo-centric gameplay. There’s even a [sticky thread](Detailed list of non-Capcom oldschool fighting games for the PS3/360/PC in this forum with a small list of them. I haven’t played any of them aside from Yatagarasu, so I can’t comment on their quality, but they’re there.
sf4 and dead or alive, injustice…i would say tekken but tag is a 1 touch of death combo game over at high to mid level,reason itz a deserted island also
Hmmmmmmmmmm…well the way I see it is…back in the day like ST…one poke did a decent amount of dmg…not like today where a single poke by itself does “meh” dmg. I guess combo’s are what “old school” pokes used to be in terms of dmg now they are just “flashier” so to speak. Which I is fine. I don’t believe in long combo’s…then again that’s subjective since I believe short combo’s are 2-15. Moderate combo’s are 16-30, anything past that is a long combo. But that also factors into what FG you’re playing. And that varies from person to/and game.
I dunno…it’s a good question.
aquapazza is pretty close, and a cool game , not alot of folks playing it…i played it for a few days and felt like oldschool even with the assists , but my pops got chemo and have had it and blazblue cp sitting there unplayed but a few hours each… Aqua reminds me of ST with assists.
get a disc while ya can think it was a atlus small limited run.have a feeling they will be hard to find asap
More like the games that are in the spotlight are the combo oriented ones. Aside from SFIV (which thanks to Capcom having no idea, is actually quite execution heavy), most games that aren’t combo heavy don’t get played at tournaments that much.
The Answer is inbetween yes and no. Fighter that get alot of attention and exposure are combo and execution demanding. How ever their have been fair amount of game that don’t do this and even promoite a more conservative play. Some even managing to find a ballance of both active and passive play . Execution is generally leinient how ever thier still quick decision making in some.
Game like Aqua Pazza and Phantom Breaker are meter heavy game. These game option are driven by resources which includes combo potential.
On the other hand you have game that still have long mterless combo but have other conditon to meet to do them. Game Like Battle Fantasia and recently console port Shin Kohime Musou does this with premptive strike like system. BF Gatchi drive or SKM counter hit system allow for extended combo potential if player can read or react to their opponent attck and punish accordingly. (some tools in Melty and AH in some respect does this too)
(had to make second pst since using ps3 browser)
Their are also game like Yatergasu and Darkawake/chaos breaker that dimishes combo as a whole( outside of combo driven characters)
While some are old , some other are pretty recent and think game like JOJO AS, Dengki, XRD, Shinning force fighter might developed in the same vein. Also KI3 deserve special mentioning.
While It seem alot of game are lowering emphasize on combos. How ever I think most game still game are fast pace driven where rush style normaly thrives on. Even some of the conservative games mention has this.
Every time that someone brings that X game is combo oriented i wonder if is that they are unable to gasp all the other aspects that are on the game.
I wouldn’t deny that some games have more emphasis on how you maximize your damage with the combos.
But at the same time those games still have all the other aspects that are important on fighting games.
Also, there are a lot of games that are more spacing oriented, the proble so far is that since they don’t have the sf name attached to them they tend to get ignored
P.S.
Play Battle Fantasia
Practically every fighter has a combo dynamic, some are just more obvious than others.
It’s what separates arcade fighters from simulators.
Being from a SF2 background, I definitely think games are too combo-oriented nowadays. Ever since A3, there’s been a trend in SF games to make combos a bigger and better part of the system, aka they inject more elements of Marvel into an SF game. Imo, they don’t belong together. Keep them separate.
This is largely why I feel that SF2 was a greater game that appealed to both casuals and experts. Simple mechanics, less reliance on raw training mode repetition, and more of a focus on strategy and fundamental gameplay.
I like 3S. 3S is the most combo-centric game I can handle. You don’t get more than ten hits unless you’re using a super and even in some cases, you won’t even get that (wuddup Alex). Now we have everyone except Tager in BB, everyone in GG, everyone in Tekken, everyone in Marvel, everyone in SG, everyone in KI, everyone in the big games has these long as dumb combos. Even in MvC2, combos weren’t long unless they were infinites.
I mean, yeah there is some level of neutral in these games, but only SFIV has the engine built around it. And then we have Seth and E.Ryu like, “Man, fuck this engine, I WANT 17 HITS RIGHT NOW.”
Games these days are hella combo-centric and that’s part of what makes them popular. We still have games to lean on: Aquapazza, AE, 3S (but y’all hate that so…), ST, etc. but it’s the nature of the beast. As graphics get prettier and easier to make pretty, games get flashier. What’s flashier than a half hour combo?
Don’t mistake longer combos with harder execution. VSav has hard links to get a special at the end of a chain, in 3S confirming Chun’s c.mk into SA2 is a must and it’s not an easy feat, doing jump-in 2in1s in KOF98 is really hard because of how unforgiving the inputs are in that game and you have insane shit like EX Kyo dash d.HP infinite.
And on the other side you have some Melty Blood characters which are the easiest execution-wise in the whole FG genre from my experience.
LMAO at GG having long combos, specially if you are grouping them with the likes of Marvel, Sg, BB, etc
I’m looking at this from an entry level standpoint. Yeah, there’s hard stuff to learn in older games as well, but it doesn’t really feel like they were built around it. You can jump right into something like 3S or VSav, figure out what pokes/specials you’ll need as part of your gameplan, and start playing. Easy to pick up, hard to master. With a lot of newer games it feels you need to learn extensive combos as a requirement. In games like that (i.e. Marvel) even though fundamentals are rewarded, you don’t spend a lot of time actually playing the neutral.
Imo, much of the difficulty in Marvel comes from the mindgames and how to handle “rock and hard place” type mixups.
Ok. Take GG out and put in KoFXIII (which I forgot in my original post).
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This is a misleading phrase because at entry level you have no idea what’s hard and what’s not. And in any game you’ll “get to play” more if you fight against a weaker rival. Even in SF4 you can spend your time stuck in a vortex, or eating fireball zoning.
The only difference is that in SF4 you’ll lose slower, but the dynamics of you barely doing anything while getting pummeled is the same.
As long as you include a couple strong characters that don’t have big combos it shouldn’t really be a problem