Flawed Victory
In an era supersaturated with first-person shooters, pick-up-and-play lunchbreak games, and motion control, might we have to admit that we have long surpassed the era of insert-coin joystick fighters? It’s 2012, and it’s hard not to notice the lessened impact of traditional fisticuffs simulators on the mainstream gaming market. While the latest Mortal Kombat reboot did wonders to revive a clearly idea-less genre, are the newest instalments of Tekken, Soulcalibur and Street Fighter adding anything beyond unwanted new characters, bizarre plots, and tacky or nonsensical game modes? Or are critics taking an unwieldy, catch-all viewpoint of innovation and erroneously applying it to a selection of sturdy game titles that doesn’t need change?
In this week’s Friday Roundtable, the gloves are off and the hadoukens are primed. Join Sony/Microsoft correspondent and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks enthusiast Sebastian Force; PC/Sony correspondent Chad “Single Stroke” Morelock; and PC correspondent/fighting-game conservative Ryan Crockett as they discuss the current state of the fighting genre.
Remember to share your thoughts in the comments section below!
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Sebastian:
So here’s my problem with fighting games: every time a new one releases, everyone gets excited. An updated version of their favorite fighter! But often, there aren’t really that many differences between the last fighter and the current one. Any steadily releasing fighting game is really just adding characters and opening/ending movies.
In Tekken 6, Jin declares war on the world. Uh...
Tell me, was there really that big a difference between Tekken 5 and Tekken 6? I’ve played both, and I really can’t see any. What about the difference between Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV? Even though it’s cheaper, it just feels like they’re shafting customers who bought the first edition of Marvel vs Capcom 3 when a bit later they release Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. I’m not saying this is new: I loved Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay.
While I would gladly debate the relevance of an “arcade mode” in today’s gaming culture, what I really hate about fighting games are the bosses. Every major fighting game’s arcade mode goes like this: fight ten people, and the eighth one will be a bit harder, the ninth might be a challenge, and the final boss is so completely overpowered, ridiculous and cheap that you throw your controller down in frustration and quit. Am I really the only one that experiences this? Why is this necessary? Innovation in the fighting game genre could be as simple as just making the difficulty a tad less like running into that laser wall in the Doom movie.
I guess that’s what I’m really looking for in fighting games now. Innovation. A reason to be fighting. The one truly innovative fighting game in recent memory has been the Mortal Kombat reboot. That set out with a story, characters we all knew, and gave them motivations. Its story mode was absolutely fantastic, tying practically all the games together. I hear complaints saying that the fighting isn’t “deep”, and while I disagree, I almost don’t care. I’d be much happier with a more limited amount of combos and a reason to be fighting, or a real story, than I would be with the deepest and most thought-out combo routines.
Is it just me?
Mortal Kombat's 2011 reboot made breaking people's sternums entertaining again.
Chad:
Mortal Kombat is the only fighting game I’ve purchased since, hm, probably Tekken Tag Tournament. A fighting game really has to wow me for me to consider picking it up. I’ve always liked Tekken, but that’s kind of been the exception to the rule. Fighting games have never been my forte since I’m not particularly dextrous or good at remembering complex button combos. But if I stick with one, I can usually do well enough.
But the problem in general is, like Seb said, a lack of innovation. Other than shaking up the character selection and making the visuals nicer, is there really a difference between Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter IV? Capcom in particular is guilty of turning out numerous versions of essentially the same game, a habit which dates all the way back to their first success in the genre, Street Fighter II. After the original, there was Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter II Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, all of which were essentially different versions of the same game.
I think that part of this problem stems from the fact that fighting games have become something of a niche market. While they were huge in the early ’90s, they’ve largely been sidelined by the first-person shooter. Arcade-perfect console ports don’t matter anymore when a majority of gamers have probably never been to an arcade. Besides this, the niche fanbases can be quite excluding to new players, and the fact that experienced players are going to wipe the floor with newbies is pretty likely to alienate the new blood.
Do recent fighting games - like Soulcalibur V - need to innovate, or are they fine as they are?
Ryan:
I suppose I’ll be the voice of dissent in this conversation, as frankly I don’t currently take any issue with the fighter business model. It’s a genre of video games that peaked early. We haven’t seen any innovation because there can’t possibly be any innovation, or at the very least there doesn’t have to be. The fighters we have now, or the most popular/successful ones at least, are perfect in every way possible. You couldn’t get a better fighting game than the fighting games we have now.
Street Fighter - the real man's fighting game, or elitist fetish?
Consider StarCraft. There exist millions (maybe not millions) of people who still play the original StarCraft despite the fact that a fully functioning, better-looking sequel with more features has been released. The competitive video gamer is a finicky sort, and any innovation at all on something he’s already invested massive amounts of time into isn’t going to be accepted very easily. Whether or not fighting games can really survive in the market beyond this generation remains to be seen. I think this last batch of games has pretty much satiated every desire a fighter fan ever had, and it’s going to be hard for developers to convince people to keep buying into the genre when it’s already been done so well.
I’m not a big fighter player. Heck, I think the last one I played for any amount of time was Street Fighter II, but I absolutely love watching expert players play fighters. Whenever there’s a tournament stream, I’m there. The matches are just so fast paced, the crowds just so excited, and the gameplay so complex yet somehow easily digestible by anyone regardless of their experience with the genre. Some of the most exciting moments in e-sports have come out of fighter tournaments, I can’t see how you can justify calling the genre stale.
Sebastian:
But there’s such a massive amount of room for innovation. Some of my favorite games are fighting games that were actually innovative enough to change it up a bit. Remember Power Stone for the Dreamcast? That’s a fighter. Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks? It’s an “adventure fighter,” and a ridiculously fun game. There are plenty more in the adventure fighter series that were extremely popular, from Shenmue to Yakuza.
Mortal Kombat showed that there is way more room for innovation than just a deeper combo scheme. There’s no reason for Tekken 6′s story mode to exist when they could have made something like Mortal Kombat, which has both.
Bushido Blade says "kinjiru!" to your fancy combos and HD graphics.
Chad:
I don’t think it’s impossible to innovate or change up the formula. Square’s Bushido Blade for the PlayStation took a more realistic and less dramatic route, consisting of realistic weapon-based combat where a single stroke could win the fight. Rather than focus on combos and fatalities, it focused on form and accuracy. It was still a one-on-one fighting game, it was just one without health bars and hadoukens.
Innovation in the fighting genre is a rarity. A lot of tournament players seem to want to play the games sterile, under perfect conditions. I think the 2011 Mortal Kombat did a good job throwing this out the window with the Test Your Luck mode, which randomly assigned status effects to the fighters (ranging from simply making them lose health gradually or disabling special moves to removing their limbs), which can really force you to adapt and rethink your strategies. The element of randomness really helped make for a fun and unpredictable mode of play. And that’s my biggest problem with fighters – predictability. If I, on a whim, decided to pick up Street Fighter IV, I know exactly what I’m getting.
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Share Your Thoughts: We’ve shared our thoughts and now it’s your turn. Has the fighter been K.O.’d? Is it a shade of a bygone, arcade age? Or is it still swinging perfect haymakers and roundhouse kicks?
