Violent Fighting Never Ends, or why the 2D fighting game never died.
Posted by: Sheba in UncategorizedI love this genre and much to my pleasure, it never died. Even in its darkest hours, it has not gone extinct, thanks to the offers from the doujin scene.
While it may not enjoy the popularity of the early 1990s, or when Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter and Tekken has overshadowed them, there were still people picking one up for some games with their friends. Why? Why does it refuse to die when 3DEE is the rage, when nerds can just pick SC4 to play Yoda and Darth Vader?
A lot of parameters set the 2D fighters apart from their 3D counterparts, jump speed and amplitude, the presence of a corner, special moves, etc…
I think that the reason why the 2D fighters refuses to die is because of one antagonism at its very core. An antagonism that 3D fighters has trouble and often failed to give to 2D fans.
Rushdown vs Keep-away
It’s stupid as it sounds, but it is not. I dare you to show me a 3D fighter that has the tool to enable fight at a distance, without involving poking, because 2D fighters too have poking. It is like redoing the eternal fight between close combat against shooting. A 2D fighting game is the clash of the french cavalry against the english bowmen (example) again, on a more non-lethal, personal scale. Or the heroic cavalry charge against the guerilla skirmish.
Both fighters will try, in their own ways, to dictate the rythm of the match. The rushdown will try to rape the keep-away guy with his superior mobility, hurtful combos or high damaging grabs (if it is a grappler). Keep-away guy will try his best to win thru attrition, knockdown, higher priority moves, projectile traps, you name it. Of course, depending on the game, the characters’ styles are either well distinguished or diluted.
Just like how battles in history were won thanks to the clever use of the terrain, the both fighters will try to use the space of the screen at their advantage, horizontally with the distance between the sprites and the corners, but also vertically. Can a 3D fighter give that? Maybe, but a ring out just doesn’t give the same sensations as a well planned corner trap.
Thus, the both styles are here, and will exist as long as the demand is here, and people will enjoy to theory craft about it as long as there are still offer. Keep-away-ers will always love to shit-talk about the rushdown guys as long as they love to do it, and have something (a game, a character, tournaments) to back it up. And same goes for the rushdown folks.
Traps
You do not have the same kind of traps in the 3D games and the 2D games. The existence of the fireball or shit meant to keep the opponent at bay (Goenitz’s twisters) in the 2D games enable a kind of trap you will never find in the likes of Tekken or Soul Calibur. The “Just As Planned” face of someone who has successfully trapped his opponent in the corner and pinned him down in the desired place is something completely different from the accomplished Ivy player or the Mitsurugi scrub.
It’s not hard to throw fireballs and keep away with kicks
it’s not that hard to do fire ball over and over again then kick a few times . I hope D dark is on this game so I can show you a real beast.
How is this guy good? He constantly spams a load of Hadouken. The guy is aweful.
good?…all he does is spam hadouken.
This is the comments you see in youtube videos of Street Fighter 4. These guys are the same guys who picked up Marvel vs Capcom 2 and mashed button to win until they got assraped by Magneto/Storm/Cable/Sentinel, they are the same guys who picked up Sol Badguy, scored a few victories and got owned by Eddie, they are the same people who would frustrate Soul Calibur players by picking Mitsurugi and Nightmare and abuse the same strings to knockdown and deal large chunks of damage. And they eventually gave up.
These guys got it wrong, oh so very wrong. For one, not everyone plays in the same pace, not everyone plays for COOOOOOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS, and not everyone want to win through reckless abandon but sometimes with well thought out gameplans. Secondly, people does age. The fire of the youth would be no more, reflexes would be not what it used to be, so these aging players would like to fall back on characters that offers them the tools fit for their aging way of playing, and maybe relearning the basics, and they have become wiser or more cunning, and would enjoy spanking these little scrubs that knew nothing more than COOOOOOOOOOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS.
Throwing fireballs and dictate the pace of the fight require more skill than most of people would admit. In a sport context, it is like comparing a Italian/French football team (Or Germany of 1980s-1990s) with the more flamboyant Brazilian football team, or the Spanish football team. While the Italian, French, playstyle appears to be boring, when it is well played, it is a beautiful game mechanic at work.
The keep-away style define what the 2D fighters are. Its necessary antagonism with the rushdown folks are what kept the genre still alive and still burning.
The combo systems, sub-systems can be as flashy as they can, as long as the antagonism is still present, the 2D fighters will still have players and will still live.
In my opinion, the 2D fighters will truly die when one of the component of the antagonism keep-away x rushdown will finally die out and be diluted in the game systems, to the point that people only play in one style. And sadly, it’s often the style that cater to the uneducated crowd, combo combo combo. Do you really want all the fighting game characters to play poke poke poke > Confirmed Hit > BnB > knockdown > Reset? Do we really want that?
Do Soul Calibur deliver moments like this or that? I dont think so.
PS: This was written in answer to this. My opinion on these guys commenting in youtube? Fuck them, they have totally missed what made the 2D fighters so differents from Tekken adn Soul Calibur.
Tags: Video Games
Entries (RSS)
Yeah, I know better than to expect common sense from most Youtube idiots. My main problem is that Capcom made SF4 in such a way as to appeal to idiots like that when they can’t even appreciate what makes 2D fighters tick. It may be a solid fighting game, but that will be lost on the audience they have targeted.
>> not everyone plays for COOOOOOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS
LMAO I wish people can understand this.
Problem with 2D fighting sometimes is, it’s way less accessible than the 3D ones. A guy can sorta mash buttons in SC or DOA and still get some interesting stuff without as lot of effort, while making such a simple thing like a Fireball may take a while to do it (you know, the motion, the animation sequence and the recovery time).
Also, people can’t just understand there are a lot of ways to play a game. To tell you some examples I’ve encountered in 2D fighters:
-Super Street Fighter II Turbo: people getting pissed because you play entirely by turtling and punishing with special throws (specially against faggots like Balrog). People can’t get the fact that a guy can also play cheap against them with T.Hawk or Zangief and, in the process, raping them.
-KOF98: people getting pissed because you are playing against them only using poking, projectile traps (lol SF2 tactic) and zoning. People, it’s not like using Daimon and abusing his fucking throws are the only way to play the game (among other cases), and if you keep on playing like that, one day someone will figure out a way to beat your crap.
-Guilty Gear XX: “ZOMG WHY DID THIS GUY BEAT ME IF HE DOESN’T USE COMBOS, ROMAN CANCELS AND LOOPS? IT’S IMPOSSIBLE AND I USE SOL’S GIANT FIRE PENIS”. Gawd, personally I think it’s stupid when someone attempts to make complex lolomgbbq shit with a character… and still lose to more simple and stupid shit like, in example, using Ky’s or Venom’s highly simple but solid projectile games.
Guess today’s people can’t accept the fact that fighting games can be played in very different ways :/ 3D fighters don’t really help in changing that idea (except for Virtua Fighter, which is the only 3D game that actually forces you to not use blindless, button mashing crap).