Titan you’re taking SRK way too serious IMO. :encore:
Everybody tends to see anyone disagreeing with them as if the other party is shoveling shit their way or overly p.o.'d or something. If ppl think you’ll be offended by a neg rep, they’ll do it, bc it easy and anonymous and kinda funny. In fact expect to get a few more :]
Don’t worry about it, stick around and keep posting bc the Marvel 2 crew needs that low tier dedication. You’re well on your way through the ‘proving period’ which is a reality like or not. Pretty soon the game will click in a new way and you’ll really be helpin people out.
Back to the topic though–
Meditations on Marvel 2.1 or ECGief Tells It Like It Is
Here’s why Marvel is a special case (and why I can really appreciate Shoultz’ apprehensive position on the future of this new generation of ports)–
It goes like this-- the more you knowledge you accumulate about this particular game’s engine, the more you realize that it’s a fuckin MIRACLE of accidental game design that everything came together the way it did. This is NOT Super Turbo-- the product of years and years and years of a heavily played international sensation, painstakingly balanced through trial and error through multiple revisions. This game was never meant to be taken as seriously as it is, but it wound up being the most balanced utterly broken game ever. Unless you count the NES SF4 bootleg-- which has 2 versions of Rambo in it and 1 button infinites all around and a combo engine that makes Marvel actually start to look like ST but I digress.
There’s very little imo in terms of, for lack of a better term, “Advanced Tactics” that were designed to function as they do. Particularly Unblockables, Guard breaks and Infinites. This is not to say that these phenomenon were not known before Marvel, but insofar as they apply to each individual character, ya, there’s no way 90% of these were planned out in terms of balancing the character roster. Look at who was nerfed big time from past versions-- Akuma and Wolvie’s vitality is piss-poor (and shit-- they even split Logan in two to tone him down), they totally had certain characters figured for high tier that are just ass in comparison to characters that are mad broken for the randomest of reasons.
Look at the wealth of unblockables in the game. These are all based off of programming quirks that even the well-trained eye of seasoned Capcom ppl missed (i.e. they’re paid to look for this and have been for version after version). For the most part they’re due to either breaks in hitboxes (that allow you to set up situations where the game sees an active hitbox w/o first seeing start-up-- which is the “you can block this” trigger more or less) OR they’re a product of the dreaded Frame Cycle. This is simply the process by which the Naomi/Dreamcast translates the 72 frames/sec that it likes to process info at into the 60 fps that we know and love. My numbers could be off, but the point is that 1/5th of the frames in the game are not displayed visually or for gameplay purposes. This is why Doom/Tron/Chun are bwoppin people free at random.
It’s been 10 years, and every time I play Marvel, I figure out at a minimum 5 or 6 brand new ideas that send me in 5 or 6 new directions. And the deeper you go the more your understanding of what it possible with the way the game works evolves and eclipses itself. And if Joo the Japanese combo wizard can do the same thing, that speaks volumes about what a miracle it is in terms of the wide-open freedom of approach you get in the game. At a high level you really can create your own conditions for victory, which IMHO is the most underrated and hardest to implement feature of any game of any type, ever. I don’t wanna be asking myself whether the burly Hulk set-up I just lashed together Mac-Guyver-style with a cellphone, spit and pages from a phonebook is gonna work when I boot up the PS3 later, but the bottom line is, I’m gonna have to come tourney time.
Why have I put ppl through this random technical Marvel rant? Because Marvel is an incredibly fragile game. If you fuck with it, it will hurt you. And yeah, asking Capcom to balance and plan a 56 character roster is a stretch-- shit they didn’t even do it the FIRST time. It’s impossible unless you have a 10 year dev cycle. You can bet that they took a minimalist approach to this port bc they knew all of this. Definitely went for the change nothing we don’t have to approach and of course there’s a lot that went awry and a lot that remains to be fixed that will NEVER be fixed as of now bc they can’t be fixed by way of a patch-- i.e. would mean taking hundreds of steps backwards in terms of programming and creating a whole new build of the game. If I’m not mistaken this included the busted d+normals as well as the XBox lag.
I love Capcom, but the reality is that both versions of the game shipped in an embarrassing state and this has left a sour taste in the mouth of the peeps who have been students of the game like we like to get about our Street Fighter. Even if the original release was up to par with where the patch is at now, they still couldn’t please everyone bc PS3 and XBox aren’t DC just like DC wasn’t a NAOMI unit even if it was damn close.
So yeah, they’re doing their best I’m sure, but their best is not my best or Joo’s best or Shoultzula’s best or the random ‘OUR’ who love the game and randomly can’t sleep because Marvel is doing something retarded and we wanna know WHY. In this case ‘OUR best is better than their best’ for the simple fact that nobody at Capcom loves the game like the guy who’s been breaking the game wide-open for 10 years nor do they have 10 years to spare making it a flawless port.
In the scheme of the whole scope of the game, its a pretty damn good port, but ‘future of the game’ be damned it’s no DC version yet, nor will it be soon and that’s a fact.
P.S.
Didn’t see Zach’s post while I was crafting my masterpiece. He’s right though, and I hope my thoughts came out proper-- I have nothing against anybody involved in the porting of the game (or anybody at all). Ppl in the industry don’t even have the time to play games. Same thing in the comics industry, who has time to fool around when you spend 60 hours a week at work and about half that sleeping, on a good week. Although comics has the leg up bc you can read those while taking a dump while not everybody can afford an Astro City for the bathroom.
