Unlike the rest of the world, this pandemic has mostly been a time for me to step up my involvement with fighting games rather than take a step away from them. Being stuck at home meant I had access to a wired connection instead of dorm WiFi, so I’ve netplayed a lot over the course of the pandemic.
Most people took the absence of offline events as a hit to their motivation to play the genre. Not only do most of the popular and beloved fighting games have trash online, but the human aspect of fighting games keeps a lot of people invested, and not being able to physically be with their peers also hurts their drive to play. As someone who started out as netplayer with no real locals around, this did not affect me one bit. In general, I’m kinda used to this sort of thing. I like very niche things and not a lot of people in everyday life share the interests, so going online to partake in something I like is not something I’m against or uncomfortable doing.
I just wanna take some time to ramble about the games I’ve played.
Dead or Alive
So, I actually got to play a good bit of DOA before the pandemic. I spent the summer of 2019 in Rhode Island playing it offline while I was doing research over there, and there was a buddy in my dorm in my home state who liked the game as well. Still, I’ve played a lot of DOA over these last couple years and learned a lot.
Compared to the 2D games I play, DOA is pretty “boring”. There’s not as many crazy mechanics or wild things characters can suddenly do. It’s a slower, more system based game. Not to say it doesn’t have its zany bullshit, but what I’m getting at is that DOA kinda made me focus on basic things I hadn’t had to focus on yet. Whiff punishing, slower neutral, not overextending, etc. It was a really good thing for me. Getting beat up by Hajin & Smurf was rough, but it showed results when I played other people. I got the dogshit beat out of me by Smurf a whole lot, but whenever I had to fight random Honoka player #465, they got cooked.
Playing DOA made me more solid of a player, and I’m always gonna put respect on its name for that.
Fighting EX Layer
Gameplay-wise,I didn’t necessarily take anything away from my time playing FEXL, but I had a damn good time. It was the other game alongside DOA that I was primarily netplaying at the beginning of the pandemic.
The game has some pretty fast neutral and some pretty cool design decisions. The gougi system is really cool, and juggle combos in this game are some of my favorite combos to do in any fighting game, period.
I got a lot of love for FEXL, even if I’m not actively playing it. The community still puts on for the game, and the devs, even as I type this, are still doing fun stuff with the game. I gotta emphasize how much I appreciate Arika. They donated money to tournaments for this game, and they continue to update it even though the playerbase is pretty small. FEXL is a game that really gives the people that like it a lot to love.
Samurai Shodown
SamSho is really fun. The game can almost be crack at times. I mean this for both Samurai Shodown 1019 and Samurai Shodown V Special. Now, for obvious reasons, I was able to play way more V Special than 2019.
SamSho for me is really fun because even though it’s not as crazy as Guilty Gear or Skullgirls or whatever, it is not slow enough to be boring like Street Fighter. Movement is really fun, and the life or death nature of the game makes your interactions with your opponent more intense and telling of where they’re at mentally. V Special also has the added bonus of using it’s rage mechanic in a more interesting way - you can go all in on Rage and have the added damage and weapon flipping super or you can deplete your rage to gain access to the “state of nothingness”, which basically acts as a screen freeze and also gives you access to your issen during said screen freeze.
Samsho is just a lot of fun, man. It truly hits that sweet spot of “I can understand this very quickly” and “I can play so much better” that all these new fighting games are desperately chasing.
+R
As someone who loves Guilty Gear Xrd, +R getting rollback was the closest I was gonna get to Xrd getting rollback, so I jumped on it like a crack addict. While my friends just decided they’d rather play Xrd, I was content to stick with +R. +R gives me the Guilty Gear feeling I crave at a way more accessible rate than Xrd can. It’s fast, it’s crazy, there are a lot of variables, and there are a lot of things to get good at. I fucking love it.
I cannot understate how hard team French Caliburst pimped out this game. This game went from shit ass netcode and a bare-bones training mode to having -
- The best training mode in any Arc Sys game
- The most convenient matchmaking in any fighting game I’ve played
- Godlike lobbies
- Netcode second only to Skullgirls(out of the fighting games I have played)
As long as +R is around, I have a game I can sink my teeth into. I can always find some sick shit to do or some aspect I can improve on.
Virtua Fighter
I love DOA, so it makes sense that I love VF since DOA borrows a lot of its design philosophy from VF. Virtua Fighter is to Dead or Alive what Guilty Gear is to BlazBlue. It’s the big bro who lil bro got his style from.
I prefer VF to DOA since VF is more “honest” with its RPS. DOA takes and changes aspects of VF to create its own thing that is similar, but still its own. Normal hit in VF is good, and CH is even better. Normal hit in DOA is ass cheeks, but CH is godlike. Strikes beat throws in both games, but DOA specifically punishes you harder by making the strike in this scenario a Hi-Counter Hit, which hurts even more than regular Counter Hit. VF has normal strike punishing while DOA punishes almost exclusively with throws. There’s more, but those are the ones that make the biggest impact for me.
I take a lot of what I learned from DOA into VF and it works well enough, but VF also works to drive in something I didn’t implement as well during my time with DOA - focus on what your opponent will do, and not what they can do. Both games have a lot of variables and options. You’re not gonna cover every option; you just can’t. There’s no point in stressing yourself out over it. Just focus on what your opponent has shown they are willing/likely to do, and try to beat that. It sounds simple, but it took a long time for me to start doing this. I’m kinda a paranoid person, so I think about my opponent’s counter-play a lot. Playing more VF got me narrowing it down to what my opponent shows me, and that’s something big for any fighting game.
Skullgirls
I owe a lot to Skullgirls. This game is the reason I’m playing fighting games at all today. It was cheap af and ran on toasters, and I only had a laptop with Intel Integrated graphics. This game was my first real attempt at trying to understand a fighting game. I say all that, but I will admit I have been on and off with the game since I got exposed to other fighters, mainly GG. Nowadays, I’m messing around with it properly more and more, learning more and getting better every time I come back to it. I’m currently playing at least one session a week with a buddy who also loves the game but hasn’t been able to commit too much time to it either; we’re both in that realm of “I know how to play fighting games, I’m just not great at this one,” so we’re kinda perfect sparring partners for this sorta thing.
Skullgirls gets really crazy really fast, which is to be expected of a team fighter. There’s a lot of variety to be had, not just in character choice, but team composition. Wanna use Cerebella’s command grab as an assist? go right ahead. Wanna have two DP assists? More power to you, my nigga.
Skullgirls is kinda like Guilty Gear in that the more I come to learn and like about fighting games as a whole, the more I like the game itself.
The New Blood
Strive
“Damn, I wish Guilty Gear was more popular.” Monkey’s paw begins to uncurl
As much as I wish it was, Strive ain’t for me. The game isn’t bad by any means, but I am definitely not the target audience, which is fine. Ever since they started showing gameplay for the game, it has been clear as day that appealing to people that like Guilty Gear because it was this crazy cool game where a lot of shit could happen was not their priority or even their plan. Someone whose name escapes me right now said it best - “Strive is for Guilty Gear fans rather than players.” Strive is made for the people who either never heard of Guilty Gear in the first place or people who liked the designs of GG characters or the idea of playing GG, but didn’t actually play the game for one reason or another. That’s not to say there’s nothing here for people who already liked gear or that there aren’t people who like the older titles and strive, but aside from the RC system, Strive doesn’t really offer me anything interesting. A lot of the fun I had was “generic” fighting game fun and not anything that I felt I could only get from playing Strive, if that makes sense. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t play the shit outta the game when it first launched, but it got old kinda fast.
Melty
I like Type Lumina a lot. People like to complain about the way shield works, but honestly, coming from DOA, where people could parry your shit while in hitstun, this is not that annoying. That’s just me, though.
What really surprised me about Melty was that I liked so many characters. I only really wanted to play Ryougi and Nanaya in the previous iteration, whereas in TL, I wanna play Tohno, Arc, Ciel, Powered Ciel, Noel, Saber, and Vlov. It’s a system based game, but the characters really do leave an impression on you and have a lot to like about them.
KOF
Okay, I only got to play the betas, but KOF XV is fun. The best thing that I can say about it is that it feels like the other KOF games I played, which is a good thing, because KOF is a damn good fighting game series. I’m kinda broke right now, so I couldn’t get the game on launch, but what I played in the betas was fun, and what I’ve seen from tournaments has been really good to watch. Good shit to SNK. Now make the next Samsho have rollback, I beg you.
DNF Duel
I’ve already talked about DNF Duel on a different post. Game good.
End Point
I’ve gotten to play fighting games a lot over this pandemic, more than I did before it, honestly. I’ve played and learned a lot, and it felt good talking about some of these games.
I’m not too invested in the next wave of the big name fighters, but otherwise, I’m sitting pretty. +R, Skullgirls, DNF, etc. I got plenty holding me down on the fighting game side. I’m gonna keep having fun and keep learning.