Evening. Street Fighter Four has been out for almost two weeks at this point of its life cycle. We here at Turbo Button feel this is an appropriate time to give an actual grown- up perspective on the online system and the burgeoning community that are developing around the game. Its fuckin maniacal to get the game on day one, play three rounds and jump on gamefaqs and say how "broken" the online system is and how every "asshole" Spams as Ken, and how Zangief was accidentally left in the game as "unbeatable" and then encourage everyone to buy a real game like Persona 4. BUT wait too long, and you end up missing out on getting any message out to a community beyond the hardcore, who don't want to hear what you think anyway. So in the next hopefully less than 100,000 words I will attempt to analyze the Technical Merits, the Online Community, and some general comments about Capcom's Online choices and where I hope and think they should go with the system.
Lest you think that I have no qualifications to speak about Street Fighter, a revered franchise with a long lineage of excellent players and an extraordinarily robust yet fiercely insular community, feast your eyes upon a short montage of my greatest fights so far.
I hope that settles any discussion. Before going on I want to address things about Fist of the North Star, why it is great and why it actually relates to Street Fighter
(1) Kenishiro fucking rules. There is really no badder assed anime character than the seven scarred man himself. He touches people, says some crazy shit and they explode. The show is insanely violent, to the point that you feel bad for the bad guy having to deal with Ken
(2) I have it on good evidence that one of my fellow contributors to this site absolutely hates Fist of the North Star, and I simply can't get enough of it.
(3) Fist of the North Star was on for like Thirty - years (and I think is still on) and spawned like four live action movies (three Korean and on Australian) showing its mass - appeal and staying power.
(4) If you watch enough of the early Fist of the North Star you can really see atype of incestuous relatinship between the art and cocnept design of Street Fighter. (Kenishiro looks EXACTLY like Fei Long from SFII Turbo and of course the Street Fighter II animated film
(5) The focus on the exact nature of Kenishiro's moves,and how they fit into a style and how the show likes to describe teh eaxct name of the punch just used and what it does named them and how his main opponent and BROTHER Yagi countered them with an the same style (like Ken Ryu type shit or really Ryu Akuma) looks like a connection to me.
Ok Before getting into the review lets talk again about "Reviews"
As Doug has pointed out, our reviews and “looks” like this will not have any number based rating system of stars, fruits or rupees. We believe philosophically that such determinations (1) Are meaningless, particularly coming from a mysterious and generally anonymous internet observer (2) Unfairly categorical to the particular product type that a game presents, for instance while something like a car many clearly objective features with which to analyze [handling, braking, acceleration, mileage, cost etc) and few subjective features making a number system a reasonable approximation of such important objective features. Providing a number to a product like a videogame, which has few objective factors (does it work, is it a game, camera maybe, controls maybe) is kind of silly. It would be like walking up to the Mona Lisa and giving it a 10 and then walking up to a sweet picture of Wolverine and give it an 8. What the hell does that teach us? More importantly, it does not give us any viable information with which to base our purchasing options. Perhaps your tastes are more wolverine than Mona Lisa. Instead we will try to give you as honest a claim as we can about our experience with the game, and let you decide whether you jibe more with games I like, games Doug likes or games the Shadowman likes.
For the purpose of fun, and in light of the great videos I have been finding, I will rate elements the way Kensihiro rates lives, by giving them a number of seconds left to live, more seconds = better less seconds = worse. And remember this is Kenishiro we are talking about.
Technical Merits
Technical Issues
(LAG) – Although all online games suffer and the experience is ruined by the presence of laggy internet connections (I can’t explain how maddening it is to be in a great game of L4 dead only to find yourself running in place inside of a dumpster.) The presence of lag in two dimensional fighter could be disastrous. Particularly in a game like Street Fighter where the elite players, and the make believe elite players like myself, have based their strategies on the number of frames of animation a move would take to connect, or how many frames to recover, frames of impact etc. etc. and you get the picture that if Capcom dropped the ball on online lag free play, like Ubisoft did with the previous Rainbow Six game, the hardcore fan-base would leave and go back to Street Fighter II HD remix or join me and like five others playing Third Strike. Even the amateur or casual player would be endlessly frustrated if their fireballs took three minutes to connect or their hadouken or shoryuken, and then found themselves battered by moves that merely appeared.
Thankfully in my nearly 200 ranked matches, dozens of player matches and the several dozen private matches, I have only experienced one really laggy game. Capcom has implemented a strict connection speed system for joining matches, matches are made based on an assessment and equalization of connection speeds, and the bandwidth is shared between the two. This system works very well indeed. The movement is crisp, the in game animations are as precise online as they are off. Even when my wireless connection is weakened due to idiot neighbors, I am paired with equally impaired players, and this is all described to me as I begin any online adventure.
As far as lag goes, Kensihiro gives the online lag control
60 seconds to LIVE
(Matchmaking/Lobby System) Much has been said about the current match making system that is currently employed by Capcom, most of it negative. In essence the syetem employs two different avenues for your online gaming pleasure. (1) the traditional lobby system, in which the player selects Xbox Live or PSN battle, ranked or player [playa] and then selects a player name with a description of his connection speed and battlepoints if ranked. (2) the Kleva Kidd Arcade request system. This system allows you to set your “status” prior to beginning some single player arcade good times. The status setting informs the game what type of match you are searching for, ranked/playa and what is most important o you, connection speed, language, or similar skill. Then you simply begin arcade mode normally and the game will match you up and you will be thrown into an online battle.
The major problem with the matchmaking is that the traditional lobby system is broken. Strangeley joining a lobby is the slowest way to an online match. Capcom has announced it will patch the lobby system soon with its Tournament Patch coming later this month, and believes that he lobby system is having difficult due to the extreme popularity of the arcade request system funneling online resources away from the lobbies. The waiting time to get into an online match via lobby is too long, particularly when you are all jacked on “thredrenaline” to fight the internet. Although its not Gears of War 2 long, it is certainly too long.
However, all is forgiven by the arcade request system. Capcom correctly marketed this as one of its key sell features with good reason. For one the system does feels spiritually similar to standing in an arcade only to have some rapscallion plunk two quarters into the machine to challenge your leadership. The announcer wildly announces that a new challenger has entered the ring and all normal arcade play is stopped, if Capcom could also include the old sound effect Street fighter 2 used when quarters were plugged into the machine (I used to count to ten between quarters to bust balls) it would be a perfect recreation. Particularly where you are requesting ranked matches, and your battle points are on the line, it really does feel like the old rush of the arcade, and is a pleasant change from looking at some dope’s awful gamer tag with x’s in it, while the game loads. Also positive about this style of online matchmaking is that between arcade and the online challenges you are constantly fighting. This is good for two reasons (1) It allows you to kill two birds with one stone, getting online achievements and offline at the same time and (2) Serves a purpose similar to batting practice, where you can work out all your kinks and strategies against the AI, putting you in a solid rhythm to take on the webz.
(Some closing thoughts on matchmaking) In looking at the online matchmaking as a whole I would have to say that I eagerly anticipate the additions and fixes in the coming tournament pack. Athough the arcade request system rules, at tmes I feel as if I am just going through the motions in the arcade to wait for a match, its like being forced d to play something twice at times. Similarly the addition of a nice arcade bracket system is always awesome. Street Fighter 2 HD showed that when something as small as cartoon fireworks is on the line each game is more intense. If this could be integrated into a larger structure of tournaments, perhaps with Capcom or Xbox Live hosted online tournaments (wit the winner getting a special icon or emblem etc literally keeps me up at night.) I would however also like to see the ability to create a “room” in player matches. Much like Street Fighter 2 HD and most of the games out there, including Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter and Mortal Kombat v. DC. If you have more than one buddy online at a time, the need to start a match, with one, quit out then create a new match room to start another is odd and makes such playing choppy and not fun. A simple room system with a 6 person max and the ability to view the matches ahead of you would be great.
Kenishiro thinks deep thoughts of heaven and earth and gives the matchmaking system
30 SECONDS TO LIVE (he wants a room system and tournament play)
Give it to him or he will do this
Man that was intense. Back to the review.
(Ranking) Being the Best is one of the driving forces behind the fighting game genre. Since the advent of X – Box Live, most fighting games have had some sort of ranking system. The Third Strike was insane, giving you a world all time rank and a weekly rank and a player rank. Street fighter 4 Implements the Battle Points system. I like it. In ranked match you gain BP for winning with style, added BP for beating a player out of your league. You lose BP for losing. That is all. It’s a clever and simply integrated system, and it does in fact put you in a place. Much like a credit score, some days I am great and some days I blow so I find myself right now at a steady 800- 1000 BP. If I could ask for one thing it would be to show the player’s Battle Points constantly as a part of their Xbox Live Gamertag or when you join them in a match. If I could ask for two things it would be culling the numbers onto a list so I could see what 800 points means in terms of overall rank.
Kenishiro gives the rating system a solid…
50 SECONDS TO LIVE (he then looks away wistfully into the sunset)
Captain Intangibles
(Community) One of the most intangible elements of any online gaming experience, and arguably the most important is the community of gamers that support it. For example, I believe that the Gears of War Community Ruined what could have been a fun online experience by overly exploiting the shotgun roll part of the game, making it a fundamentally different game online than the fun tactical shooter it was offline. On the other hand, in a technically bad game, Shadowrun, was improved by an active and good community. The community of gamers showed a genuine dedication to supporting the online game play and always sought to reinforce the fun team based elements of that game by constantly organizing specialization of classes on each team (extending to the messageboards where organized team play was discussed sans bitching ), to get to the best parts of the game play experience. So far the Street Fighter 4 Community is GOOD with some reservations.
For the most part its always exciting to get in on the ground floor of a new over vamped fighting game engine, where you can observe the actual development of skills and techniques in the community. Street Fighter 4 presents an enormous potential for such new development by simply retaining the basic formula and adding ultra moves to balance game play and the focus attack which could open up years of future development. In my matches I have seen an enormous amount of truly skilled technique, showing a dedication to the form and allowing others who want to actually observe and learn. More importantly, in the player match especially its fun to see a variety of good players who USE A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS. The game is built on a rock paper scissors format and the different characters add the dressing to this simple base.
In ranked matches, having a bunch of different characters is very rare. Although this is a cause for complaint on EVERY FORUM on the internet. Looking at it logically yields logical results. Ken and Ryu offer low barriers to entry to the game and an extremely balanced skill set, that is why 90% of the net uses them in ranked matches, and it gives most players the best opportunity to win. However, 80% of the internet uses Ken and Ryu wrong, making it too easy to win most ranked matches. BUT when a solid ranked match comes along, particularly with someone using a different character, it is a treat and it give sthe game that intense on the edge feeling it should have. Please note this is not a complaint if this think called “Ken Spamming” (doing the fireball over and over again or doing the fire shoryuken over and over again) these techniques really should not work, but if they do why wouldn’t you do them over and over again. Seeing a good Ken is still fun though. Player matches are different animals all together, winning, and the repetitiveness of ranked matches is thrown out the window at times to explore the fighting system and the new characters, and have been pure fun while ranked matches feel more like work, not necessarily higher competition.
For the record I main Sakura. Shadowman (and admittedly nubile young girl when it come sto strtee fighter minas Sagat) And America’s Son Doug Masters mains America’s other son KEN Masters, which is fine since he also has a pretty good Balrog these days.
What’s also good about this game is the gem of running into a player who gives you a gentlemanly “good game” message or an anguished complaint that I was “wayyy cheap”, which is what I imagined Live would be when it was invented. The boards around this game could truly be improved, I can’t stand fighting game talk about spamming, it literally makes no sense, its not an exploit if you can pull a move off many times in a row, its hand eye coordination (unless you rock the turbo button). Lets talk about good games and bad games and lets organize some goddamn tournaments. I have but one actual complaint. When you select your character select your character, don’t leave the cursor on them until time runs out. I don’t know if that’s what all the kids do these days ( i broke balls back in the day but face to face) but its embarrassing, and somehow I always imagine that person as being Soulja Boy, whom I wish only aids.
Kenishiro gives the community
45 SECONDS TO LIVE (cut the shit with the character select screen)
I’ll see you on the webz Gamertag RenMckormack
And I'll give you seven seconds to live, take that time to think about your sins…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment