I agree that anyone at Tubby’s could learn any fighter they wanted to. I don’t think you can say on average this applies to any SF4 player, though. And maybe even if they were capable of it, the time investment is so large that not everybody wants to learn a new fighter.
I don’t really like the words “dumbing down”, but rather “make accessible”. SF4 isn’t as super hardcore as past games, but at a high level it can be played with skill and excitement (ie, the top level game is not super dumbed down, imo), but it’s also accessible to new players. I really do believe that if SF4 had a learning curve like CvS2, the game would have probably succeeded with the hardcore crowd but failed with everyone else, and would have been a net loss product for Capcom. It certainly wouldn’t have convinced them the market is ready for them to make MvC3 and 3s online and SFxT and…
Yeah, Odin Sphere is pretty neat, but it’s very repetitive (get ready for 40 hours of the same thing). Muramasa is pretty similar… 40 hours of mostly the same (beautiful) thing. And, of course, they’re both steeped hugely in Japanese mythology, so there’s lots of really weird stuff happening with the story. They’re not games for everybody, but they ARE really stunning graphically.
If you like the mechanics in Odin Sphere you’ll probably manage to get through it. I lasted about 5 hours before I caved, though. :lol: My friend Adam stuck with it though, and he showed me all the mid- and end-game stuff.
Vanillaware makes some really pretty games and the game mechanics are well done but incredibly repetitive. I quite like the storylines for their games as well. I think the creator originally did a game on the Sega Saturn called Princess Crown and the main character got reused in Nippon Ichi’s La Pucelle (also a good game).
Vanillaware games have really lush visuals and a lot of details is put in the visuals but the PS2 couldn’t handle a lot of things on screen and had a ton of slow down issues. If you play it on your PS3 and use the PS3 processing powers the slow down is lessened or removed. Odin Sphere is a really good game but the gameplay is increidbly repetitive but challenging and fun. There’s a few ways to gain experience fast like getting 90 materials (really easy to do) and then synthing that with some vegetable to get any potion and when you synth with high materials it drops a ton of experience. As Ricky said it’s incredibly repetitive and I had to play the game three times because I played the Japanese version first (didn’t finish it), then played the english version but memory card crashed, and then finally finished it on my 3rd try.
You should also give Grim Girmoire a try if you come across it. It’s made by Vanillaware but it’s an RTS instead of a action game. Surprisingly, the game mechanics and controls were well thought out to make a console RTS work. Of course, it’s incredibly simplified and doesn’t focus a ton on macro/micro as say Starcraft or Warcraft 3.
I played a bit of Muramasa and I enjoyed it but I don’t have a Wii and I don’t want to buy one just to play it. Pretty glad they are porting the game to the PS3 but not sure if that’ll get released state side. I’m assuming the only reason they are porting it is because of the Move.
Constantine is a sick movie
I’ve got it on HD DVD hahaha
my fav movies
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. Lord of the Rings trilogy
8. Pan’s Labyrinth
7. Dark City
6. Avatar
5. WALL-E/The Incredibles
4. Groundhog Day
3. Iron Man
2. Minority Report
Spirited Away?
just about all of Miyazaki’s movies could be on this list tho. Something about his flicks just feels so right to me.
Odin Sphere HD could be cool. I’m going to play through it on my PC which makes the game look way better and sharper and should get rid of most of the slowdown… I just like how he game systems fit together so well… the way it made me think was fun
"This tree grows sheep?"
“This tree grows Phozons on its own, which makes other trees grow?”
“I can plant two phozon trees next to a sheep tree to make it grow!”
“I can eat the sheep to recover HP, and that makes my hit points level up!?”
even the alchemy is fun somehow… I haven’t enjoyed crafting since Star Ocean 2 pretty much, and I only liked in SO2 because you got seriously broken items that made the mid-game really easy
but man I don’t often play other games… Grim Grimoire is not going to be played by me :lol:
my gaming career basically breaks down like this
2004 and prior - only made maps & mods for Half Life/Duke Nukem 3D/whatever else
2005-2006 - only really played guitar
2007-2009 - only Halo 3
2009 on - only Street Fighter IV
with only very brief breaks for Mass Effect, ME2, and Half Life 2/ep1/ep2 :lol:
Fucking walls of text eveywhere! You guys are nerding out hardcore!
Which Tits (Two in the Shirt) shirt should I wear tomorrow?
[LIST]
[]Brooke Banner - All White Everything
[]“Most Official”
[]Love TKO
[]Breast Cancer Shirt
[/LIST]
So good. I’ve thought for a while it actually might be better than Genei-jin (in SF4), just based on sheer potential for resets (and the damage itself is probably as good as GJ?).
i can attest to that cody, i go through phases of games that im uber hardcore about
2001-2004 - tribes/tribes 2
2004-2006 - WoW (:()
2007-2008 - mostly spent this year working, getting drunk, playing in bands/hockey. but when i did play games it was either halo3 or dota
2009-now - sf4
as addicting as tribes and WoW were, they aint got shit on fighting games. bar none the most fun gaming experience you can get in a place like this
Let me know what you decide to get when you upgrade cody! I’m feeling the 2600K as well, so now I gotta figure out what type of build I want…
I think micro ATX, and see how much power i can cram in there while maintaining decent temps. I’ll probably stick with ATI though, for that eye-finity pipe dream (I gotta rock the low-tier too, lol)
Tetsu: Yeah, it looks like any upgrade nowadays requires a whole new processor+mobo+ram combo.
Haha, this is hilarious (from SRK’s front page): [media=youtube]oWTWHUzQ4m4&feature=player_embedded[/media]
The guy does a great editing job and he’s pretty funny, and having gone through the pain myself, I can appreciate it. I’m gonna watch the other entries in the series too, lol.
Hahaha I was a victim to WoW too. As much as I like fighting games, I must say that WoW is the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game. Unfortunately, the fun : time invested ratio is piss poor.
The reason is because in CvS2, the block stun inflicted by an attack is equal to its hit stun. Meanwhile in SF4, the block stun inflicted by an attack is lesser than its hit stun. There are exceptions of course but they are very few. AFAIK, SF4 is the first SF to do it this way. That’s why mashable reversals work so well and that’s why old school players had such a tough time with this concept.
In SF4, now the attacker has to be extra careful about holes in his block string and the safety of his normals, lest he eat a mashed reversal. In CvS2, the attacker’s combo doubles as a true block string so he can just keep chipping away without fear. This obviously favors the defender in SF4, which is a bad thing, right? However, this creates an extra mind game between the players. Attackers baited out reversals. Things like hit confirming, frame traps, option selects, became more important. I think this makes offensive pressure more interesting than in CvS2, where the attacker is encouraged to use a true block string to safely chip away at the guard meter and no mind game takes place.
While getting smoked by a mashed reversal DP is not fun, there’s nothing glamorous about getting s.HP’ed to death by Cammy either. If you thought Balrog’s jab was bad (3f, +5 on block), Cammy’s fierce is 3f, +10 on block. Put her in a run groove and let the scrub tactics begin!
As for CvS2 being a better test of skill, I was fairly competitive at CvS2. I never had to learn footsies. My reactions sucked. I had no patience. All I had was good execution, and sucked at every other Street Fighter skill. I beat players who were better than me because of my big combos and consistency with Roll Cancel. Nothing else. I wasn’t required to learn many basic SF fundamentals until SF4 came out. I never realized how bad I was at SF until I played IV. I’m not sure how much you played CvS2 and I certainly don’t speak for anyone else, but this weighs heavily on which of the two games I think is better on a competitive level. That and I also think executing combos is harder in SF4 than in CvS2.
I know block and hitstun are virtually identical in older games; that’s partially why you can’t mash a dp after blocking someone’s jump in.
As for CvS2, I guess I took the exact opposite approach to it. I never took it especially seriously; my competition back in university was pretty limited and most of us just played by ear. I never learned to RC, never learned the fat A combos, didn’t play Sagat, Blanka, Cammy, Vega, Sakura, Bison etc. I just applied the fundamentals from older SF games and it served me well enough. Coming here and playing the competition in Calgary was a wake up call at first, but I could actually still hang because I had a more solid footsie and spacing game than most other players who banked on a lucky shosho for their wins. I think the same goes for Marvel funnily enough. I’ve played loads of people online who know all the Mag resets and how to fly around the screen tossing tons of shit, but their basic game is surprsingly lacking; to the point where I can throw alot of them around like a sack of potatoes. Needless to say I’m pretty shitty at Marvel.
I know all the past sf games have their quirks and I’ve had varying enjoyment playing them because of it, but I still maintain that SF4 broke the mold in all the wrong ways. The things I hate about it were not in any other game to any appreciable degree, namely:
[LIST=1]
[]tiny blockstun (exacerbated by #2)
[]mashable specials
[]enormous reversal window
[]risk free quick rising
[]worse position off a crossup than a front on jump in
[]no need to time deep jump ins ever
[]ridiculously huge tech window
[]Crouch teching so you can attack while teching throws :looney:(wasn’t so bad in 3S because throws were faster and harder to tech)
[]no(fewer?) throw invincible frames on wakeup
[]jabs are still king despite an artificial limitation on chained normals that’s incredibly easy to get around.
[]fucked up jump arcs
[]FADC dp to make blocked dps safe. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the fucking things didn’t lead to close to 50% damage.
[]Getting rewarded with a move that does 50% damage for getting your ass kicked (K groove notwithstanding, but at least that ran out)
[]Piss easy (usually unintential) auto-corrected reversals (that potentially lead into 50% damage)
[]Trading with said piss easy (usually unintential) auto-corrected reversals that lead into 50% damage for free because you fucked up.
[]Invincible backdashes to promote even more defensive play.
[]Weakening the fireball game because new players would find it too difficult to get around it (although this has been the trend for all games after A2).
[]Completely fucked up hitboxes, making certain characters completely immune to certain attacks. Also certain attacks just completely go through your opponent after certain specific setups.
[]Move shortcuts so you can just crouch and do a dp at the drop of a hat to react to the already floaty jumps. Consequently jumping in becomes more difficult so they have to make dp’s shitty to compensate which leads to dp’s trading into ultras which are there the give shitty players (the illusion) of a fighting chance. (see how it’s all intertwined?)
[]As a bonus, shortcuts also tend to fuck up alot of characters more than it helps them (e.g. Gouken, Seth…).
[/LIST]
So yeah, CvS2 has bullshit, but I still like it better.
