More pics at the Magic Box. That Benimaru wall impact kick (page 5, 2nd pic) looks painful…
Not one to sit on the fence on aesthetic matters, here’s my 2cents…
The Udon artists will never hold a torch to the Capcom artists. SSF2T HD has to be the ultimate case of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Firstly this notion of Udon ‘improving’ on the origonal sprites thats going round bothers me for two reasons. Firstly, they’ve drawn them in a completely different style so any direct comparison becomes very subjective, whatsmore Udon’s trademark style itself is a simple aggregate, they’ve added x to y and not even come up with the sum of the parts. For all the flashy photoshop filters and lighting effects, they’ve never some close even to the idiosyncratic creativity of even one watercolor sketch by Bengus, Akiman or any of the pixel mules at Capcom
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=4930603&publicUserId=5533646
Secondly, even judging the artwork by itself, its not nearly as well drawn as the CPS1 art. Lots of the frames I’ve looked at are very poor structuraly, whole sections look really flat. Its like alot of the fan art you see, drawn by people who’ve only drawn, and drawn from, comics and illustrations and dont have a grounding in life drawing. Furthermore it takes innumerably more skill to depict say, a pivoting torso, muscle striations or consistent facial characteistics in a total resolution of 384 x 224 than it would in 1080p. I’ll always remember seeing an unfiltered (non-scanline/tv) display of SF2 on a PC emulator for the first time. I was totaly shocked to see how few pixels the image was made up of, thats because the Capcom pixel artists are masters of suggestion. Like masterful brushstrokes, just a few pixels can be suggestive of so much more… Just take a look at the incredible muscle-bone structure, light sourcing and foreshortening on T.Hawk’s legs, compared to, what ironicaly, Udon have paraded round as one of thier main comparison images. They’ve even got the fucking origonal to work from FFS!!
http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/thawksprite1.JPG
To me, if there is any ‘improvement’ over the origonal artwork, (just as with thier photoshoped comics) its purely technological. Its HD so its gonna look good on Ur giant cribs $$$ flatscreen LCD yadayada…
Back to KOF XII - SF4.
KOF XII. First off lemmie say I’va always hated the KOF (origonal) character designs, but this games is beautifly crafted even those look good to me. This is just stunning, beautiful… The only thing that bothers me is the insistence on the use of rendered contact stars, fireballs etc and hardware lighting effects. Just look at the 2nd image down on this page:
http://www.the-magicbox.com/0803/game080320b4.shtml
Why do they do this, its been a constant since the jump to higher resolutions on GGX, HNK etc… To me it looks stylisticaly inconsistent and hacked in, like some gatecrashing Killer Instinct mugen projectile. If they simply drew these things like the rest of the artwork, and applied a subtle transparency effect, it would help towards a much more cohesive overall effect.
SF4, oh dear. I’m not against the 3d, by now weve all seen many beautiful stylistic directions that a 3d-2d SF could take, from hyper naturalistic rendering of Virtua Fighter to the paintily swirl of Okami. But what they’ve come up with is just so tepid… The style has neither the impact of the naturalistic 3d fighters, or the ‘character’ of the cartoony Alpha and SF3 renditions. The characters look ok in tight close-ups, but out in the play mode view, I cant help but think that this looks like a next-gen SFEX. Whatsmore, this game ‘is’ more like a SFEX game (ie 3D rendition) in spirit than a true sequel, with so many recycled elements, so many hedged bets. And that C.Viper character is a SFEX (or Rival Schools) character not a SF one!!! With its safe sell re- iterpritation of old elements it has neither the panache of Alpha or the boldness of SF3. A real dissapointment…
You DO mean Udon’s not as good at GAME art, right? If so, it’s time to break out the pitchforks and torches.
Hell no. As I’ve already stated, Udon’s style is a simple agrigate, all the elements of which, were not only stolen, but also done better at source.
The only thing Udon do better than Capcom, or any of thier other benefactors, is ladel on Photoshop filters and lighting effects.
who cares. Udon still did a pretty good job on the game.
Regardless of whether SFIV feels like an EX game, its still gonna play just like a 2D SF game. I still feel people are a little bitter that this game went to 3D instead of 2D. Just shows that people have no faith in Capcom.
Thts true…but consider this…the EX series didnt take off too well so they are basing it on that…plus Street Fighter 4 has absurdly high expectations…
People have waited almost a decade for SFIV…Capcoms whet quite an appetite they may not be able to feed…
Crayfish- Excellent post…repped. :tup:
ST HD is in 1080 I believe. I wonder if XII will be the same.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare any of these games against each other, though I suppose it’s inevitable. They all have radically different goals.
KOFXII is trying for the “ultimate 2D fighter” and they have completely reworked their entire art pipeline. They started from animated 3d models then hand-drew over them to get both the silky smooth animation and hand-drawn look. This is very effective, but also fabulously expensive. KOFXII is probably about as good as a 2D game can get, which IMO validates Capcom’s decision to use 3D in SF4 (see below…)
SF2 HD is a low budget downloadable title. Capcom explicitly locked down the scope to just redraw over existing artwork and not add any additional animation frames or art. You can critique Udon’s effectiveness in this capacity, but SF2 HD would never look as good as KOF XII, even with perfect artwork.
SF4’s goal is nothing less than a reinvigoration of the whole SF franchise. To do this they need a dramatic new look that they can evolve and keep to date through the inevitable revisions and spin off games. 2D sprites are static. Once rendered, they’re expensive and time-consuming to change. The first set of screenshots certainly were uninspiring, but the latest shots look much better. The art style for this game is very much in flux – Capcom is still playing around and moving more towards the inky, impressionist style. Hopefully they will keep pushing in this direction. Another important fact: most say the game looks much better in person, and that a lot of the detail is lost in videos, even the HD gametrailers.com vids. We probably won’t know how good or bad SF4 really ends up looking for another few months.
It’ll exceed expectations. Capcom could’ve easily slapped together a game and called it SFIV and I truly believe they took their time on this game. You can tell they really want to appease the fans and not disappoint.
True. When ever I asked a Capcom player why they don’t like KOF, it’s almost always about the graphics and animations. This is a valid reason, or an excuse to not play.
Was this confirmed? I mean the only site that said this was Kotaku and it probably was so that they could cover their asses by saying it was in 2.5D even when the gameplay trailer came out.
Plus I don’t really see why they would do such a thing (though I could be misinformed).
I’m having Dark Geese on the show tomorrow, but ANYONE can post their thoughts on the game. The thread is here. Just need a mic, even a cheap one will do. Remember, Skype is free, so no excuses. 
Nice post inkblot.
I wish we had some gameplay info already.
As for topics that some of you were complaining about, (like the kof12 sf4 WHO? Thread, since I changed the title myself…) the topics the way I see it is…let the SNK cats rock. Its pretty obvious that 1) lots of people on this site feel betrayed by capcom including myself, regardless if they had to pander to the mainstream or not.
-
its pretty obvious that regardless of what we say or do, capcom has obviously won the internet and marketing war. They are also a much much larger company than SNK too. Its already pretty much set in stone which series is going to sell more. Since capcom has way more money more resources etc. With that being said this doesn’t mean that kof12 is goint to be let out in the cold - in fact that’s far from the truth. I just hope the genre and number of players expand.
-
its pretty obvious by reading posts who’s in it for the fighting game community as a whole and who’s a fanboy. Just ignore the trolls…
And as for SNK players bitching about getting shitted on by capcom players you do have a point…but I play games with little girls in them trying to get niggas hype which is a lot harder 
Sabin wins the thread(s).
On the war of the games stuff, does anybody really really think that this
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=259722
looks better than this?
lol some tiny screenshots compared to some big ass hi-res images yes this is a fair comparison
That’s not fair. EVERYONE knows Viper looks sexy… and yeah SF4 graphics have improved. Much better.
But you know what looks better than both? Millions of dollars.
Coum. Well, those are from the game. You could just as well say
lol some great looking game compared to some not-so-great looking game yes this is a fair comparison.
Anyway, I find it very cool that some people want to play KoF XII. I find very disturbing that some people wanna reject SFIV. The game isn’t even out, and the hardcore community is fighting to split itself so hard that Brawl will soon be all that’s left.
BTW, I think KoF XII looks pretty cool. Don’t see the need to bash SFIV, since that looks really cool too (better in the pictures above imo)
uhh what? the KOF screens are way downscaled from the native resolution of the game, whereas those SF4 screens are in the games native resolution. that isn’t a fair comparison.
I was bothered about SF4 using 3D graphics myself when I first heard, but I feel the results were good, and there are people who got to play the game (still unfinished) that say it’s better than what we’re seeing on the net. And it plays just like a real SF game. I don’t care if the graphics are 3D anymore.
<----- As you can see, I now fully embrace it.
KOFXII appears to be the best-looking 2D fighting game yet. I don’t care for KOF, but SNK has taken a really bold step in investing the time and effort into XII which I applaud them for. They can afford to because they don’t have the bigger audiences tuned in like Capcom does.
The graphical style for each game is good for what it is. They’re totally different; there’s no sense in comparing them.
And… isn’t it just FUNNY that these fanboys bash SF4 when, by their standards, SS Sen is looking “just as bad?” Lol
The hardcore only comes down to about 20 individuals anyway.
SS Sen?