Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Street Fighter II is the classic that truly kicked off the entire genre.  HD Remix is a gorgeous update to the best version of said game.  As most gamers are aware, this game captured the arcade scene of the early nineties, devoured millions upon millions of quarters, and nearly made “shoryuken” a household term.  While the gameplay feels understandably dated (relying too heavily on a game of meaty attacks and reversals), it’s still the best fighter of its era and remains surprisingly playable to this day.  Whether you’re a SFII virgin or a seasoned vet, it’s certainly worth revisiting to see where it all began (in glorious HD, no less).

Samurai Showdown II

Another golden oldie- Samurai Showdown is different kind of 2D fighter, and it peaked at the second entry.  The gameplay is slower and more defensive; special moves are almost all useless, and combos are nearly nonexistent.  Instead, this weapons-based fighter was all about timing- bide your time and find an opening to land a heavy attack for some significant damage.  This gameplay philosophy is further illustrated by the inclusion of just defense, a technique in which you defend at the exact instant your opponent attacks you.  If done right, it leaves the opponent wide open for you to attack.  In truth, the game hasn’t aged as gracefully as Street Fighter II, but it’s fun to play simply for the unique experience it offers, and to play the game that put Capcom’s chief genre rival, SNK, on the map.

The King of Fighters 2002

Choosing one King of Fighters game over all the others may seem somewhat pointless (they are all fairly similar), but ‘02 offers something the others don’t: the (nearly) complete roster.  All the best characters from the series’ tremendous cast are present, offering the most complete KoF experience you can get from a single game.  So what exactly is the KoF experience?  Well, it’s basically the opposite of what you’d get out of a Street Fighter game.  The focus is less on controlling space and fighting from all ranges, and more on up-close and personal, combo-heavy combat.  The characters each have an impressively large set of special moves as complicated as they are unique, with some characters taking days, or even weeks to master at a basic level.  The input on commands is more demanding, or more finicky, depending on your perspective.  All that adds up to give the games a steep learning curve and a reputation of being for serious fighting fans only.  However, the experience can be quite rewarding if you’re willing to put in the time.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

The Street Fighter Alpha series is a prequel to Street Fighter in terms of  story (not that the story is all that important in a fighter), but a true successor in terms of gameplay.  Alpha 3 is the best in the series both for the impressive size of the cast and for depth given by its “-isms,” the variations of the super meter that gives each character three distinct play styles, dependent on both the style and skill of the player.  Scrubs may stick to X-ism for the simplicity, having only one solid meter and a single super move, similar to Super Street Fighter II Turbo.  Intermediate players may prefer A-ism, which gives their super meter three levels and three unique versions of each super move for more flexibility, similar to the previous Alpha games.  Experts can use V-ism, which allows normal and special attacks to be strung together as long the meter lasts and the player can keep it going, to its fullest potential.

Last Blade 2

SNK’s lesser known weapons-based fighter is different in every way from Samurai Showdown, but almost entirely more fun in practice.  Like Alpha 3, and like its predecessor,  it offers unique play styles for each character, the main ones being Power and Speed.  Power is easier to use, makes the character’s attacks more damaging, and grants access to their second and more powerful Desperation Move, but in return does not feature many combo possibilities.  Speed is all about the combos, allowing the player to link several normal and special moves together, and to use speed combos similar in execution the Alpha 3’s custom V-ism combos.  The game is great to look at and easy to get into, but takes time to master, making it one of SNK’s best efforts overall.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2

It should be noted that 2D fighters fall into two distinct camps- there are the slower, more technical games like Street Fighter II and The King of Fighters, and there are the over-the-top, super-flashy and blindingly fast games at the other end of the spectrum.  For players who prefer the latter, this game is the messiah.  It features a tremendous cast of Marvel and Capcom icons- everyone from Ryu, Jill Valentine and Mega Man to Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Incredible Hulk.  Gameplay was whiplash inducing, allowing you to swap out characters on the fly from your team of 3, string together huge combos (if your reflexes could keep up), and execute several super moves in sequence or simultaneously.  The downside: for those who prefer the former style of 2D fighter, the game can prove more frustrating and confusing than fun.  Also, the soundtrack (featuring mostly mellow jazz tracks in contrast with the hyperactive action) is a love it or hate it experience.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves

Garou: Mark of the Wolves (a game set in the near future of the Fatal Fury universe) is, in the opinion of this writer, SNK’s best fighter to date.  It’s relatively simple with a small but balanced cast, easily executed specials and supers, and a smooth, easy to get into feel.  The presentation is superb- characters animate well, the voice work is well done, and the gameplay feels heavy, responsive, and satisfying.  Due both to the animation and sound design, every hit given and received feels like it has a real and painful impact.  Really, Garou doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done in other fighters.  It simply does everything very, very well, providing a fun and addictive game that keeps the player coming back for more.

Guilty Gear X2

Play any version you’d like of the heavy metal brawler, just make sure you play it.  Guilty Gear has the distinction of being the only non-SNK or Capcom developed game on the list and one of the only noteworthy 2D fighters of the last decade.  It boasts flashy hi-res graphics, gameplay speed that falls somewhere between the two camps, and some stunning depth.  The cast is large and completely off-the-wall crazy in their designs, and each brings a unique play style to the table.  It might be the only 2D fighter with a comprehensive story mode and plenty of other robust single-player modes, just in case you don’t happen to have any friends on hand.  Unfortunately, as is typical of the genre, the game isn’t very newbie-friendly, but it’s great if you’re tired of Capcom and SNK’s games and you’re looking for a different flavor.  If you’re a fan, keep an eye out for the team’s next project, BlazBlue, later this year.

Capcom vs. SNK 2

The dream match-up between the two biggest names in 2D fighting turned out just as great as it sounded.  The cast is fifty-strong, featuring mostly characters from the Street Fighter and The King of Fighters series’, but also a few from Samurai Showdown, The Last Blade, Rival Schools, and Garou.  There are six “grooves” (selectable styles affecting both the nature of the super meter and well as the characters basic moves, like dashing, running, air guards, parrying, just defense, and dodge rolling) lifted from the various games the characters hail from.  In addition to this, it features the option to customize and build your own groove.  The gameplay is about what one might expect from a Street Fighter/The King of Fighters crossover- skewing towards the slow/technical end of the spectrum, far away from the frantic gameplay of Marvel vs. Capcom.  There are the expected balance issues that come with a mash-up of this type, and the sprites were dated even for their time, but it’s an overall impressive and definitive entry in the genre.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike

If you’re skipping straight from Street Fighter II to Street Fighter IV, you may want to give this forgotten gem a try.  It’s been called the greatest fighting game ever made, and for good reason- deep, intiutive gameplay, amazing animations, a strangely fitting hip-hop soundtrack- it’s all here.  The inclusion of a parry, executed by tapping forward at the instant you’re attacked to eliminate both the chip damage and your recovery time (thus leaving the opponent wide open), and EX moves (upgraded special attacks that use up a bit of your super meter- these are also featured in Street Fighter IV) are simple and surprisingly effective methods of adding depth to the gameplay.  Both the control and the character animation are the smoothest in the genre.  All of this together make Third Strike both one of the easiest to pick up and ultimately deep and rewarding fighting games there is.  Unlike its sequel, the game has only a few returning characters from Street Fighter II (only Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Akuma), instead featuring a totally different and, in my opinion, better-designed roster of characters.  Third Strike is available for the Playstation 2 as part of the  Street Fighter Anniversery Collection, so be sure to check it out if you need a break from SFIV.

Well, chances are it was all of those things combined, but the whole easy-mode thing probably stuck out the most. There’s a mass of games falling prey to this idea, theory, and concept that games need to be far more accessible to help penetrate the market more. Developers around the world are doing research groups in order to meet the demands of people who will never play their games anyway.

What spurned this sudden desire? Well, truth be told, it’s not that sudden. There’ve been varying difficulties in games since the very beginning, it’s only now–since the launch of the Wii–that Nintendo’s enforced upon the industry this concept of accessibility.

Is this good? For the Wii, it is. With the demographic consisting entirely of people who’ve never played games before and a lack of any games at all, any titles they do release have to be playable by quadriplegics.

What about the other systems, though? Are there games out there for people who’ve played video games since they were four? If they were the people buying the majority of titles, then perhaps there would be, but the market seems to suggest that it would like to exclude this “loyal” fanbase. This hasn’t stopped them from clamoring for more, though. At every instance possible, those of the hardcore demographic raid message and image boards and pollute the HTML code with cries of injustice. In this digital age, the developers are apparently listening.

Their solution, however, is not the most sound. For developers who want to attract all audiences, they’re incorporating this idea of “easy to pick up, tough to master,” which is perhaps only self-serving. When this new design philosophy is implemented, it often degenerates into half of the game being way to easy, and the other half either being not hard enough or simply too hard because the player just wasn’t prepared for it.

Do you remember when Super Mario Galaxy really picked up the pace? Me neither. I remember near the end of the game, some purple coin collecting taking me a fourth try, but that’s it. That was the most exciting part of the game, and the part most people take home with them. We all remember Luigi’s Purple coins.

Fighting games are probably the only genre that comes close to achieving this lofty goal of “anyone can play.” Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe did have a somewhat simple and satisfying battle system, and some brutally timing-specific “pro moves” that only dedicated players would be able to work into combos. Street Fighter IV is also touting an ease of accessibility with the inclusion of a “challenge mode” that’s supposed to let you learn the most basic attacks up to the best and most complicated combos in the game. The problem with both of these games is that if a person has never played a fighting game before, they’re going to be totally lost regardless. It takes some time and a little bit of skill to learn how to do “shoryuken” and super combo motions, and for some people those may not be things they’re willing to dedicate to a game where there are already thousands of players online just waiting to obliterate them twenty times over.

The problem is, nobody knows how to make these games fun for everybody anymore. Why can’t they just realize the answer’s been right in front of them the whole time:

Difficulty Settings

My God, it’s so simple! Change certain things about the game depending on a selection made at the beginning, or make difficulty options  interchangeable during the game that alter how hard the game plays and make it accessible to everyone! Brilliant!

I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept to understand. Metal Gear Solid 4 got it just right, and nobody noticed. “Professional” reviewers don’t even get it. The majority of those who reviewed the game knocked it for being far too easy. “What is the point of stealth when you can just shoot everybody?” How can you get paid big dollars to review things, without having played the whole game? Unless it’s a joke review, I see no reason for it. Anyone who’s played the game on anything but the first three settings knows the game considerably ramps up the difficulty, making it very difficult to simply shoot one’s way out of situations. The game is not perfect by any means, but to knock it for freedom of choice is just ridiculous. Hell, it even rewards you for playing the game without killing anyone. The whole review process has always been bizarre to me.

What spurned this angry discourse? One of my favorite developers has betrayed me: Criterion just announced what the details are for their free content update.

Click to watch.

Essentially, they make the cars at the beginning of the game much slower and harder to crash, give you more time to do a stunt run, and make every billboard, smash, and jump fluorescent and colorful. Why? I’d be fine with this if they’d included all of this as an optional selection on the menu. If they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, they could have called this new stuff “normal” and the old stuff “advanced.” Why hurt everyone?

Perhaps I’m overreacting, and I need to wait for the release, but I’m just really sick of having to deal with this. There are some games that are still pretty brutal: Dead Space and Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix, but they’re few and far between. I’m not asking to get maniacally raped in every game I play; that’s just frustrating. I just want the option to choose whether or not I get raped.

Is that so much to ask?

However, this post is actually about a franchise that is also being revamped. Granted, it’s a lesser-known series, but it still has a strong following. The King of Fighters has always held a place in my heart, at least. Whether it’s the ever-changing game mechanics that are fresh in each and every iteration, the sheer amount of characters that is ever-growing still, or even the sprites and animation that each have so much care, detail, and attention attributed to every single one, this fighting series has remained a strong underdog in this shrinking market.

With the latest chapter, SNK Playmore has taken it upon themselves to finally update the graphics from the more-than-a-decade old set they’ve been using for the last 11 or so games, in addition to other titles of theirs not a part of this particular series. Rather than going into the details of the full HD rendered sprites and the soft shadow and lighting effects, here is a fat truckload (go to page 2) of videos from the first location test for the game. I feel these three are the best.

Everyone’s wearing green. There are two matches in all of these videos, so stick around for some rad Goro Daimon action.

Hell, yes, Andy!

The background work here is just fantastic.

Of course, SNK Playmore ain’t the only doing this sort of thing. Arc System Works, famous for the Guilty Gear series, is putting out a new title with the same sort of treatment because there’s a licensing dispute over Guilty Gear with SEGA. Personally, I prefer the KoF XII style and work. BlazBlue seems to look exactly like the old series: exceedingly cartoony (animeish?), relatively stiff, and altogether far too small. But this is just my opinion on the matter, I should really let you make your own decision.

Which do you think is better?

Created in the same stylized cel-shaded 3D animation with all the inkbrush strokes and splatters as in all the trailers, this excellent piece of eye candy depicts both Akuma and Gouken in a battle so fierce and violent that the earth literally breaks up around them, sending them into a fiery abyss. And even then they continue, trading world-quaking blows as if nothing had happened. Gouken seems to get the upper hand, but then Akuma reveals just how much of a magnificent bastard he is and does that move we all know and love.

Forget the Legend of Chun Li. If the studio could have just gone with CGI, maybe got some assistance from Capcom, then we’d have an awesome movie on our hands. It may not be more ‘Hollywood’, but at least you’d be doing the series the justice it deserves.

These packs are, of course, officially licensed, and Capcom itself hasn’t shied away from making use of the tools themselves.

The animations sure are impressive at the very least, and it’s nice to see Capcom continue to delve into the community, especially the American and European communities, which most Japanese developers tend to stay away from. Hopefully more developers and publishers will make similar attempts without jumping the shark.

Either way, Capcom continues to toy with my emotions.

Pick a game that you want a remake, got it? Now think, you’ve already completed the game at least twice, you defeated the bosses, saved the world, the princess, etc., so why would you want to do it again? There are new games out there waiting for you, new tales, new battles, you see? A remake is never going to be as good as the original, mostly because that it’s not a full remake.

Chrono Trigger DS is an example of this, it’s the same gameplay with the same visuals, with one extra dungeon and the portability; that’s what Square called a remake. Now, consider this: how much effort was put into the making of this remake? I bet that it was less than a month, yet it is going to sell more than a new, great game like Valkyria Chronicles.

On the other hand there are some good remakes, such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, which rebalances the game and has an option that disables said rebalances. Capcom hired fans to remix the music, which you can replace with the originals as well.

Even good remakes can harm other games,  mostly because of the price. Think with me, there are two games: a remake of a famous game and a new game from an indie developer. The remake costs half (due to the cheap production) of the indie’s price, so a lot of people will complain that the indie game is expensive because you can get a remake of a famous series for half of the price and huge quality. So why would you buy the indie game?

We gamers should stop encouraging developers to remake a game, it takes time and creativity off of more interesting games. We should control our fan boy feelings and forget a little about the past, for the good of the future of the gaming industry. The nostalgia glasses always make games look better, so why cry and fight for a remake?

Notes on the Reviewer

The author (myself) is a fighting game enthusiast and has been following the material within this article for some time. He played the games in his youth, and does have a strong sense of nostalgia tied to his knowledge of the game lore within each. This is his favorite genre. He bought the first on hype, and the second after reading a review. Both games were played on the PS3.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix - The game is blistering fast. Every aspect of the game has you hurtling toward the speedy yet silky smooth battles that the game excels at. Those battles aren’t a cakewalk, however, as even on the “Easy” setting the CPU will put up a fair challenge, but the game has a very accessible online service that is just as fast as local play and offers a more equal challenge for those not up to the CPU.

It supports a beefy set of options that allows the player to customize the way it plays so that he can enjoy his particular play-style. The new HD remix mode offers some interesting balances over the original, but simplifies some commands that really didn’t need simplifications. This irks me somewhat–Zangief’s double 360 rotation is a staple to the series in all iterations–but I can see where this would be more inviting to new players.

Speaking of which, the game even includes several in-game help pages that offer some advanced play techniques and a practice mode that displays hit boxes to ease the transition a little more. With all the customization, though, it would have been nice to take the classic motions from the original game (which are included, but in their respective mode) and apply them to the HD Remix rebalance.

On top of that, the game doesn’t offer much in the way of a lengthy story mode aside from a handful of nifty redrawn ending slideshows, nor does it have any unlockables (press up for a toned down Akuma), but for $15, it’s hard to complain.

• Rundown - As an incredibly fast battle experience locally and online, this reasonably affordable fighter has several inviting features to introduce new players and the depth and classic challenge enthusiasts demand from a Street Fighter title.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe – I had a difficult time believing that I actually enjoyed this game. It turns out, I do. This is the sort of revitalization developers dream of. It takes the things that made the classics good, and the things that made the new games good, removes everything that didn’t work, adds several new features, and creates a Mortal Kombat worthy of the franchise title, as hard as it is to believe.

The fighting system is based on strings of combos centered around a character’s style of play. The combos are much less akin to dialing a phone and feel a little more organic than previous installations. Even the characters all feel fresh and unique, especially the DC characters, who don’t feel out of place thanks to the clearly well-thought-out story.

The story mode, itself, has a lot of high points and a only few downs. Speaking for the high points, the cinematics work wonderfully. They’re written in a way that stays true to the series’s sense of chicanery and the comics’ lore that removes itself from the serious (read: GRIMDARK) tone of similar titles, while also doing a fair job at subtly explaining why Superman can lose in a fist fight to the Joker. Also, the characters animate amazingly with movements and facial expressions that stay true to life and stray for the oft mentioned robotic stereotype. The voice acting is better at times but occasionally is bad in a way that made me wonder why they would ever choose that actor for any role.

The graphics look great during the aforementioned cinematics, but some of the backgrounds just look ugly and plastic. In the same way, the actual in-game fight models aren’t as detailed as the cinematic models, but they still animate well enough and perform some classic MK animations I’ve come to expect. To be honest though, the female models look incredibly disproportionate and get hard to look at after a while.

Although there are very few unlockables (two characters), there’s plenty of other modes, including a decent online, that offer loads of challenges and trophies, even though the story is meaty enough to justify a purchase. The Kombo challenge is a good (but occasionally infuriating) way of learning the more advanced maneuvers such as the pro moves and other tight bits of juggling and timing. And even though the game is rated T for Teen, it still delivers much of the brutality I expect, pushing the boundaries while not going too overboard, which is almost refreshing, really. That said, the Fatalities and Heroic Brutalities are just OK. Still, for $60, the game offers a lot for everyone.

• Rundown – A rejuvenating entry, MK vs. DC provides a great story and solid gameplay with versatility and depth that one doesn’t altogether expect from a Mortal Kombat game, much less a licensed one. It’s a solid fighter that anyone should at least try.

So, of the two, which is better? That’s tough. They’re two very distinct games that deliver very different styles of gameplay. Street Fighter is all about countering and penetrating your opponents offense and defense, while Mortal Kombat is more about stringing combos on your opponent to keep them defensless and get them down faster. Then there’s replay value: SF doesn’t have the many modes nor does it provide a decent story mode, but it’s online is probably the best for any fighter of this generation. Mk has alright online, but it’s bevy of modes, including the excellent story mode, provide an exhilarating and unrivaled experience among today’s fighting games.

If it came down to it? I’d have to choose Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix. That $15 price tag is hard to pass up. Do yourself a favor, though, and still pick up MK vs. DC. Rent it, at the very least. It’s an excellent game that deserves the attention.

No. Games are not art. Some are artful and transcend into a form of art in their own kind. As a whole, they are not.

In that same line: Movies are not art, music is not art, writing is not art, sculpture work is not art, and canvas work (aka art) is not art.

Art is a culmination of thoughts and intentions that are formed in some way physical, material, mental, or supernatural that the audience then recognizes and receives and perceives to be beautiful. This perception is based on recognizing the intentions and finding that they have succeeded, which indicates that art is subjective, of course. In very rare cases, intention is reversed due to a mistake on the artist’s part and by chance invents something new, in the way that new devices are often created.

For games, artfulness arises from completeness and wholeness. It is not the story that is the centerpiece (this is the first mistake for most). Video games are games, and in this regard they must be fun to be artful. They must offer full forms of gameplay that blend and uniquely exploit its own designs and complements its other parts, such as sound and story, which must then, in turn, complement the gameplay, effectively compiling a whole entity and not a set of pieces. Graphics do not need to be “artsy”, but they do need to complement the gameplay so as to fit to the game’s design. Likewise, the story has no need to “compel” the player to the point of tears or convince him of political standpoints. The story must, again, compliment the set of elements in order make the game complete.

• One example of art by intention is Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. In this case even the packaging is set up uniquely: there is so much to it, the game needs to be sold in two parts in order to deliver it effectively. The game offered a unique and interesting implementation of speed-based gameplay that blends with the fresh platforming on every level, sound design that plays to the theme and aesthetic of each stage while capturing the feel of the character of Sonic, a story that was quick and effective to offer just enough to drive the player and link the stages, and graphics that were as sharp and as fast the characters they portrayed. The game represents full-form art that has yet to be replicated today, that still has fans clamoring for more, and still elevates Sonic to a high, popular status despite his floundering as a character today.

• An example of art without intention (or by mistake) is Street Fighter II. The game was a pinnacle of fighting games, but what makes it artful is the glitch that allowed players to cancel out of attacks and into others, effectively creating combos for the first time, and essentially creating the fighting genre as we know it today. This–in addition to the excellent gameplay, unique fighters, memorable sound design, and fresh graphics–drove this game to the top of tournaments and reinvigorated arcades.

These are opinions, of course, and are relative to myself; I cannot claim them as absolute fact. If you disagree, then certainly post what you believe to be artful. Let me just first say that Okami does not immediately qualify as art. It is an imitation of an art form and an imitation of another game. By this design, it is not automatically excluded, but it lacks the other necessary components to drive it fully forward into the realm of art. Even so, It’s still an excellent game well worth playing.

Post your thoughts.