El Fuerte’s ultra 1 is still the most blatant abuse of the idea of physics in Street Fighter 4. Dude literally flies up for no reason! At least every other super (even his ridiculous U2) can have some explanation for their wacky shit. He slams the opponent into the ground then suddenly levitates 20 feet into the air.
In Street Fighter III, my favorite thing is still Necro’s taunt. The fact that it juggles stunned opponents is just insult to injury.
Ok so if it’s about aesthetics why are they removing all the additional animations found in previous games and have less? Why are there only one win pose now? They have idle pose animations but if you leave two going in training mode they are all set to the same timer. It’s kinda lazy programming.
Hit boxes do matter to appearance. If they could show the back of a character naturally in a fight and have the hit and hitbox match correctly then that would be an accomplishment.
With the mirror application now, all they have to worry about with animation is having the hits and reeling animations match in one direction. If a move came from the opposite direction they would have to animate it in a different way to have the momentum match.
They are using a 3D rendering program. They could do more (so much more) but they are going by the rules that they have to hand draw everything pixel for pixel and fit it all on a low memory board. This isn’t the case. In a lot of ways they have bigger shoes to fill with the upgrade in technology. They shouldn’t be limited to thinking in 2D only for visuals if it’s capable of so much.
In MK you fall in the direction you were swept from it’s not the best animation but atleast they are attempting to utilize more of what the technology is capable of. I expect if Capcom did this it would look way better because I have faith in their art direction and animation skills but they don’t want to go that route? I would love them to try. But seeing the expectations so low from the player base they don’t need to.
By all means keep the gameplay 2D but so much can be done that they stubbornly dismiss trying because that would show their ass… No pun intended
This could be the chance and opportunity to add more aesthetically. But we all settle for less and call that aesthetics.
Because having characters always face the player like in a sprite based game helps make the game feel more like a proper 2D fighting game. It’s something that’s affects how the game feels more than just having varied win animations (which most people end up skipping anyway - heck, in Injustice, people would end the match even before the KO notification came up due to how long the unskippable animations were).
I mean, it’s not just Street Fighter. Look at other 2.5D fighting games, including those made before SF4 such as Battle Fantasia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFyKy-6_e7E
Even non-traditional ones like Smash and the 2D Naruto games did this as well. IF you think it’s an issue, then it’s something you’ll have to bring up in FGD since it not just a Street Fighter thing.
I think it’s mostly because they want the character’s front side (chest, etc.) facing the players as it kinda looks nicer.
So our characters are constantly changing handedness and what not. Yeah it made sense when it was obviously a matter of memory and flipping a sprite is an obvious solution instead of drawing a whole new set of sprites for a different side.
But at the same time I think they could have done more and gone further overall. I’m optimistic about 5 and I appreciate a lot of the artists’ work that went into the game. Some of the expressions are really beautifully done, Laura’s face is great in action (minus ahegao), Vega’s win screen is perfect…
Some of them look pretty bad though. I think Cammy’s lips are tragic and Mika’s mouth looks pasted on.
Mixed bag. I think overall the game looks nice but it’s just a bit generic imo. The whole ‘ink’ kinda thing (swirly globular stuff) is also played out at this point and I have no idea why they kept it going into 5. Lacks a little creativity and spark overall but the good bits kind of make up for it enough for me.
You should have as many varied animations as possible as memory allows. We the players are ones tapping start to skip those unskippable screens. I rather have a favorite than no choice at all.
Also if they wanna go by feel of a 2D Sprite game you can’t have that feel without the extra stuff they showed with its animations and character.
I think Capcom does more with less, the restrictions of hardware made them concentrate on presentation and mechanics. They don’t have that pressure anymore. It’s like they need a reminder on how to be a starving artist. Look at how tight alpha 2 looked for its time. Look at how concrete 3S holds up to this day. They went to the limit of that format. I don’t think they are doing us a service by cutting off the accents they could add to push the hardware they choose to produce it.
The accents and extra stuff they crammed into those old games came from fully experimenting with that 2D format. They aren’t experimenting with pushing that limit with a 3D engine by duplicating and emulating past 2D games. The tricks that worked back then was like a shark in a kiddy pool compared to other companies. Capcom was ahead of the pack.
Everyone has caught up graphically now and they are recessing into a niche instead of keeping up that artistic spirit of the past. Yes, fine keep that mirror aspect to it but don’t zoom in on the same ONE animation with the same predetermined camera angles EVERYTIME. You can’t skip those super animations by hitting start unfortunately.
That shit matters if you want your stuff to look good over time. They have the resources and the man power. They aren’t some tiny company unable to finance the work.
The Thing is: When SFIV came out critics all over the world praised the art design, the character models and the stylish ink effects during animations. And I thought as well that SFIV is pretty.
But that was 7 years ago, graphics changed a lot and especially seeing footage of SFV can really influence your opinion of SFIV graphics. The new Unreal Engine improved the character models a lot, they all look really smooth.
Still can’t understand much the hype for the graphics of SF4 and xTkk. The ink effect was ok (nothing that we didn’t saw in Okami, btw)… but everything else?
How those totally ‘scratched’ style of textures can be considered good in any way? You had the work of drawing every single character and then just kinda have to ruin everything with this “effect” that, basically, makes the character look like a bug lol.
I think people were just too excited for a new SF after so many years…
Imagine if they remade SFxT on SF5 engine. Holy shit would that be awesome
If they remove the Gems and set clear tournament rules, so game would have a chance to survive and not get killed by it’s own content again.
I would buy it right now.
The characters from both sides would look so awesome with SFV graphics.
I never liked SFxTK’s chain combos and the fact you can’t play 1 vs 1, it made it repetitive as hell and made it feel like in autopilot.
Are you saying you can’t throw giant fireballs from your hands?
Ki is a concept prominent in some martial arts/mystic Eastern philosophies related to martial arts.
I don’t think soda and a banana mix well either. You know what happens when you drink Sprite and eat a banana, right?
[details=Spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA6z19grwoE[\spoiler]
Sorry - snipped your post for brevity, and just addressing the general points you’ve made the last few posts.
I don’t feel that the Capcom of 2015 - or even the past decade compares to the Capcom of the 1990’s. Back then they had numerous plates spinning, they were experimenting with various game engine styles for fighting mechanics, and various graphical styles. Everything was experience building and would eventually feed back into Street Fighter in some capacity.
Then in 2008 they went all out trying to recapture that SF2 lightning in a bottle, and well - SF4 happened. In that time they managed to crap out one more kusoge Mehvel title, with a completely different, but equally gross looking graphical style. Thankfully Darkstalkers was spared the modern Capcom (and related subcontractors who would do the work - Dimps, Eighting, whatevs) treatment.
Capcom really doesn’t have what it takes anymore to deliver that top notch 90’s fighting game quality. They are too financially strapped to do anything other than wring every bit of life out of proven commodities, and play very conservatively with creating more games that will appeal to console gamers and those with so much nostalgia for SF2 it prevents them from actually just playing SF2.
I also get the impression Harada has taken Ono under his wing, and a lot of what Capcom is doing these days is in an effort to appeal to Bandai-Namco for an inevitable merger when the Sony-bucks stop flowing in.
Nothing lasts. The dinosaurs, Rome, Capcom - time destroys everything.
Now it’s fun to sit back and watch folks who weren’t there in 1992 pretend Dhalsim wasn’t some goofy stuff, like the goofy stuff they complain about these days. 
Which by comparison, isn’t all that goofy compared to the 90’s era output.
As far as aesthetics goes, I think the only thing that bothers me is Birdie. I don’t even mind that he’s fat but I hate how they made him gross. It wasn’t necessary to make him scratch his ass and flick boogers.
He’s Earthquake now
“A fat American ninja who burps, farts, and pulls a turkey leg out of his pants and eats it”
http://www.fightersgeneration.com/characters/earthquake.html
We need to send a T-1000 back in time to stop Ono’s promotion after his work on 3rd Strike as Sound Producer.
Sim was Cap version of him
http://www.lettera43.it/upload/images/08_2014/l43-film-cinema-ambienti-140822201716_big.jpg
Dhalsim and Blanka were part of the weirdo portion of the cast.
But if you thing about 3rd Strike, where we have Q, Oro, Necro, Twelve and Gill (don’t get me wrong I love most of them)… you’ll see that Dhalsim and Blanka were also exceptions, not a tendency.
Yea. I do really like his redesign. I think it suits him and looks awesome, but I could’ve done without the gross factor. I never really understood the appeal for the gross factor, just like I never understood the over-the-top goofy aesthetic(fuerte/blanka).