I love how you attempt to mock me in about twice as many words. Never mind the recycled insults.
You seem to have an awful lot of emotional investment into such a shitty game. I mean, I never said a damn thing about Street Fighter or it’s characters until now. And yet you’re ranting about everything from the gameplay to the character design. And then the thesis statement on a melty blood character. Chill, biscuit.
I am quite aware of how character archetypes work and effective use of psychology to create depth in a story. Fact is, brohan, evil is an abstract absolute. It’s easy to laugh at pure evil because it’s a caricature of human psychology. It’s much easier to be horrified by something with qualities you understand to some extent. I mean, the fact that you are looking for depth where there is none to be had is rather hilarious. Diving into the shallow end, as it were.
the best part is how you basically invalidate your own post. You’re raving about SF being a shitty cartoon, and then you try to prove a point using a shitty cartoon for an example. and the winner for logical faux pas of the thread goes to…
Did you actually take my comment about Max seriously? The joke being of course that a sociopathic character does not necessarily a respectable villain make.
(Also Sam and Max is not a cartoon. The cartoon is an offshoot of the comics/games and isn’t nearly as good as the original material due to being dumbed down for younger audiances. And the games are not shitty in any way shape of form.)
SF is not a shitty cartoon. It’s just shitty. It could use to be more cartoonish if anything to give it some much-needed charisma! I mean there are a few standouts in the cast but for the most part they are all ugly, boring beefcakes and besides, I’ve noticed that if SRK is anything to go by, a great deal of SF fans could care less about character design, so it makes sense for a game with boring characters to attract a crowd who is intimidated by more flamboyant, creative character designs or can’t see that these characters are pretty uninteresting to begin with. Although I suppose all that is subjective eh.
Also, nobody cares about realism. Ash Crimson can get away with looking pretty and being a badass because he’s an anime character. That’s what’s cool nowadays. Since when did character design have to be based on real world ideals in order to be appealing? In fact, it’s more appealing for the fantasy aspect if it’s not. Leaves much more for the imagination to play on.
In Japan, maybe. Over here, fuck no. There’s no excuse for a man of any lifestyle wearing his hair like a chick in a '60s spy flick.
And it’s not a question of homophobia. No self-respecting homosexual would EVER do that to their hair unless they were intentionally going for full female attire.
But that’s just me being facetious. In all seriousness, I don’t think you’re being any more objective about the merits of (late-model) KOF character design than other people are about Street Fighter character design.
Personally, I have a SLIGHT preference for Capcom design simply because I don’t think Street Fighter design is quite as stuck on characters being FASHIONABLE and their designs present a much better balance between Eastern and Western comic sensibility in terms of body proportion, capacity for caricature, etc. Characters like Blanka are especially great because they really defy not just fashion snese but most video game players’ conceptions of physical attractiveness and fashionability. They’re dirty and weird-looking and proud of it. KOF doesn’t have much in the way of ugly characters except Chang and Choi (both of whom have kinda been back-burnered in recent years).
And just to nerd out a bit more on villainy, I just don’t like the fixation on utilitarian villains doing the wrong thing for the “right” reasons. They just seem like whiny little bitches to me. I find villains much more entertaining who are thoroughly evil and NEVER have to say they’re sorry, like Bison. That unrepentant killer instinct gets me much more hype for killing my opponents in-game – especially Guile and Chun-Li, who are a pain in Bison’s ass both in SF canon AND in mechanical SF4 matchups. EVERYONE is beneath Bison, and I respect the hell out of that.
you know what is funny, i just remembered that bison is a transexual in potential, considering that he wanted to use cammy as his new body and all that
SNK and Capcom’s character designs both consist of goofy animu stuff to be honest. I don’t think Ash looks any dumber than Iori or Gill/Urien does really (and Iori/Gill/Urien look dumb to me).
Also, it might be that I have high standards of “badass” but I don’t find anyone from the fighting games I know of particularly badass (especially the bad people). They’re all pretty corny/goofy to be honest. So I wouldn’t go on about about a decreased amount of badassness or argue one company does it better than another.
Yes and no. Of course background story is part of character design, BUT it should influence the final look of the character and the look should reflect the background story. You can’t design a character in a certain way and then just add a completely different backstory that has nothing to do with the character’s looks.*
That’s like making crappy art and then offering a huge explanation as to what it’s really supposed to be about. I know a lot of artists get away with that, but I’m pretty sure most of them think it’s bullshit too.
*Of course you can do this to lead your audience to think, for example, that your character is good, when really he’s evil, but even that comes down to backstory influencing design. Usually characters like this will also later on adopt a more evil look, once they’ve shown their true selves.