I used to really hate fighting games, but after playing a lot with a friend, I really grew to love them,
Although, my preference for fighting games lies with the short and quick round based fighting games. Games like Bushido Blade 2 where a round can be won in a single blow. Hell, I’ll pop on Karate Champ every once and a while. I would really like to get into Fighter’s Destiny on the N64, but I wouldn’t have any competition and I don’t like playing against the AI.
Got really into Street Fighter IV and Soul Calibur IV. If a fighter has a grappler, I’ll probably be playing them. Spin to win.
There is no shame in having to drop the AI difficulty down in Mortal Kombat. MK has always had some of the cheatiest AI out there, peaking with MKII which doesn’t even pretend to be remotely fair after the first couple of arcade mode fights.
I got pretty close to getting into fighting games back when the first BlazBlue came out and I bought it on a whim, but ended up not putting in the effort and falling out of it. Now the closest I get to fighting games is occasional Smash 4 at a friend’s place.
I want to be into fighting games, though, but at this point I have no idea where to start, nor do I know what kind of fighting game I’d like the most (Tekken? SFV? Guilty Gear?). Plus I’m old and didn’t really grow up playing them, so I’m intimidated to play online.
I like watching tournaments, though. Fighting games are easily the most watchable competitive game type for me.
I play fighting games every now and then, but I’ll admit it’s in a super duper casual sense (In the “I just play it with friends and I don’t even touch Online play”).
Its mostly Smash 4, but I’ve been trying to get into other fighting games like Skullgirls, Soul Calibur and Tekken (Probably grab Tekken 7 when that comes out.). That being said, I’m not so casual to the point where “That guy” who button mashes. I know the button layouts, I just can’t combo/special-move/tech to save my life.
While I’ll never be “in” in the competitive sense, I’ll never turn down watching a tournament or two, usually EVO. High level play in these sort of games is facinating to watch.
If you are a Tekken fan I would recommend picking up Tekken 7 Fated Retribution when it comes out this summer, not only is it a great iteration of Tekken, it also seems like Namco has put a lot of effort into making sure the package is full of features and no corner cutting on interface and other ‘quality of life’ stuff like load times, etc. (And if you want a game that’s currently out this is true of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 as well, which has tons of characters and a really great offline ‘arcade’ style game mode called ghost battle, where you get to pick between some potential opponents who are all AI ghosts taken from Japanese arcade players. This mode also emulates the arcade style unlock system for customizing your characters. There is also a lot of people playing Tag2 online on any platform, even WiiU.)
While getting super good at Tekken is difficult, I tend to find it is probably the most broadly appealing fighting game around (barring maybe DOA5, which is also good, but has much less character variety since everyone is basically the same Real Doll with a different wig and costume). There is also a lot of guides and videos on how to play different characters for any Tekken game, so it’s easy to find which five~seven attacks you should learn and then feel like you are in control of what is happening.
I would also say Street Fighter, but a big issue people are having with Street Fighter 5 is how barren it is in terms of game modes and also how tedious it is to get from game to game (online interface; long load times; even offline load times are artificially lengthened to mirror those online, etc). So, while Street Fighter is a good game for what you want in theory (relatively small move list, few mechanics, not too demanding on inputs, good player-base in case you want to play online), there is a bit of a hill to climb to get invested in SF5 because you basically only have online/offline versus game modes, and it’s very slow moving getting from match to match.
If you like DC comics and/or Mortal Kombat I’d also recommend the upcoming Injustice 2 which is coming out around the same time as Tekken7, but idk anything about those games other than they tend to have a lot of stuff in them and Netherrealm is real big on putting out stuff post-release.
I’d say go into Tekken rather than SFV if you’re a beginner. The SFV inputs aren’t demanding on paper, but there’s a lot of motion overlap and the timing to link moves is very strict. It’s easier to get feedback on your inputs in Tekken, even if the drawback there is that all the characters have an obscene amount of moves.
EDIT:
So I started a forum group called “Punchfolk” for people on the forums who enjoy fighting games. If you’d like to join, the link is here: https://www.lp.zone/groups/Punchfolk
It’s basically there to help people find other fighting game players more easily and share contact info to play online. You can also send a message to @Punchfolk if you want to ask all people interested in fighting games for an event/stream/get-together.
So after two months of banging my head against the wall in Street Fighter V, I think the game finally clicked with me. One session per week and some good advice from friends helped me improve quite quickly. It gives me hope that I might be able to actually learn the basics of Tekken 7 when it releases…
I played SFV for the first time just yesterday and it felt… not great. I don’t think it’s a game I’ll be putting any serious time into. Especially considering that I just picked up Jack-O in Guilty Gear and I need to focus on all this free real estate I’m throwing everywhere.
The thing with Jack-O is that she tends to have good match-ups against a lot of the high tier characters, but then a lot of the low tiers can really ruin her day. I’ll probably be switching back and forth between Jack-O and Raven depending on who I’m fighting. At least until Arcsys finally brings back my butterfly boy.[quote=“RealSovietBear, post:61, topic:131”]
But yeah, I don’t think SFV feels great if you’re coming from ASW or SNK fighting games.
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I prefer airdashers more, but I played a /lot/ of SF4 and SFxT (v2013 is a good game I wish people still played it) and SFV just feels… ???
To me at least, it feels like playing it on a high level is playing it in a way that makes sense systemically, but doesn’t really flow visually? It’s hard to explain, but it’s kind of how the proper way to play Quake 3 is bunny hopping and mad acrobatics, rather than walking on the ground and jumping.
I am kind of enjoying SFV but I can’t really say I like it? I like it when I play the way it wants me to play, because the matches are more fun in that case, but I don’t really like the way it wants me to play?
I like Virtual On a lot as well as Virtua Fighter (in spite of only playing a little of 3). Also Guilty Gear, MVC and Blazblue…basically any ArcSys fighter, even that hilarious Fist of the North Star game with the basketball infinites.
I wish VO had more of a crowd, and I’d love if Sega would port that XBLA version of VOOT to Steam since the Dreamcast version isn’t based off the “M.S.B.S. 5.66” version like the XBLA one. Last year I got to play the original game on Saturn with the twin sticks and it was a lot of fun.
Gundam VS also kicks all sorts of ass and has a similar play system to Virtual On (the weapon ammo/dash vector changing mechanics)
You’ve spoken my language with Virtual On/Gundam Vs being considered fighting game-esque.
Probably the few kind of fighting games I’d give a serious thought of “I’d try to play this competitively” because of their gameplay/control schemes are easier for me to parse than typical fighting games.
