Something wicked this way comes...

E3 2010 is over. I paid about as much attention to it as I usually do, mainly seeing it as a medium for various technology and games related companies to advertise their mediocre, unoriginal and sometimes terrible products as revolutionary and innovative. While some bits of media did hold my attention to higher than usual degrees, some seemed a little lacklustre and not very well thought out (e.g. Sony's Move and Microsoft's Kinect campaigns).



:S

Certain games have piqued my interest however and are making me think ahead about what I will be doing/playing a year from now. I will be upgrading my PC when Crysis 2 hits shelves, being the benchmark game for the next generation of gaming, but what components should I be looking at? I have recently revisited both GRID and Crysis (the original) on my PC which both ran slightly worse in Windows 7 than they did in XP 2-3 years ago. This makes me think about the performance differences DX11 could have and the graphical horsepower I will need to run games smoothly on a modern OS. Memory wise, 4GBs will be the bare minimum and with at least decent DDR3 speeds and clock rates (all unknown at this point). Quad core or Dual core? Should I try a SLI/Crossfire setup?



These questions all bare a familiarity to me when I made my gaming PC over 3 years ago, a machine that has lasted me to this point (and admittedly still works fine). It will undoubtedly take me into a fourth year (at which point I will retire it), however the hours of research, benchmarks, comparisons and opinions will inevitably take place several months from now. It should be something I look forward to, but at this point in time I see it little more as a bump in the road towards playing more games that do not truly satisfy my gaming needs.

The truth is, although I look forward to certain titles, part of me knows they will just end up on the shelf to my right, collecting dust alongside so many others. They will entertain me for maybe a week or two, some maybe a month, but they will never be what Unreal Tournament, Half-life, Quake 3, Total Annihilation and Red Alert were back in the day. The problem is I know exactly why...

There are too many games. For someone like me with a genuine interest in so many types and genres and the technologies used to create and run them, these games do not hold my interest for any great length of time. I am never 'stuck' with them like I used to be back in the day. There is also the fact that the vast majority of these games are not actually anything new. Oh they may offer some fancy new weapons or gameplay mechanic for killing your foes, but really, when every game does it, it kind of becomes expected lest it fade away amongst the flow of similarly done games.

There is also the fact that many of these games, particularly First Person Shooters, are evolving gameplay features that eventually become hybrids of each other. The 'ironsights' evolution is a classic example. Why does every FPS game need to have ironsights? Aiming a real gun (which I have performed countless times) is so incredibly different then what is portrayed in games it is almost laughable. Especially when using a scope. Unless you are a cyclops, aiming down a rifle in a game does not look or behave anything like it does in reality. So why attempt to emulate this feature again and again? Why burden an already slowing down genre (in terms of game speed) to badly portray this need to aim a rifle like a 'real soldier'?


Cover systems are another thing. It kind of started with the original Gears of War, but it is hard to place with so many other games borrowing the idea. This need to point out, focus and lock players into a messy system of hiding behind conveniently placed chest high walls and peek-a-boo corners is revolting. What happened to simply pressing crouch or even having lean buttons, or better yet, making a player's character actually move fast enough so their pudgy ass doesn't get blown off every time its hanging around a corner? Needing to press a button to sit behind a wall and then behave differently (take less damage, never die, cannot be seen etc) is incredibly unrealistic and something that should be abolished.

To an extent I do know the reason behind these control nerfs that are now seen as 'features' in the industry. Console gaming. But I won't bring up that point again, at least not in this post...

Nevertheless, I will end this post off on a good note. Although I think Rage, Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm will be both less appealing and successful than their respective companies previous franchises/titles, there is still hope for the genre of fighting games and RTS. Mortal Kombat is coming back and looking as gory as ever, and MvC3 is definitely something worth looking forward too. RUSE is also looking quite promising and should add a new take to an aging RTS scene.



Sooner or later, time will tell ...

Tinman Vs Hotpies - The Ultimate Showdown

A few days ago one of my old housemates and I tried SSFIV online for the first time. The following is probably one of our better replays (close fights, not so terrible combos, Ultras etc...).



On that note I also recently purchased a Blackmagic Intensity Pro for the purpose of recording HDMI and component video from various sources. It is still not working 100% however, but it is currently better than my previous setup.

Ride to ruin and the world’s ending!!!

In an effort to do something different on this ‘blog’ for once, I have decided I would instead comment on something other than games. While games and gaming are one of my most frequently engaged hobbies/interests, it is not however the only one I have. Another happens to be anime. However, only slightly.

There is a lot of anime out there that, while I don’t dislike, I don’t see myself watching addictively at any point. I am a fan of serious anime, or anime where things are set in a semi-realistic universe in which characters don’t react and behave ridiculously with their faces turning stupid all of a sudden (aka. Sailor Moon style). I was never into Pokemon or Dragon Ballz or any of that ridiculous nonsense, mainly because to me they seemed a bit too outrageous (and a little childish). No offense to anyone who is a fan though…

Neon Genesis: Evangelion is undoubtedly my favourite anime. It is debatably the best anime of all time. I won’t bother explaining the story because that would be a task within itself, but you should know that the story is nearly 15 years old. One of the first animes to strike an oilwell of success in western countries, it definitely struck a chord with my being when I first watched it on SBS at age 12. I held it in very high regard and still do today. Yes, I am a fanboy. Fuck you.


Nevertheless it is also the topic of this post. Evangelion Rebuild 2.22, a modernised and slightly different take on the original story was recently released on DVD and Blu-Ray in Japan after a cinema release nearly a year before. The Rebuild series of movies intend on bringing the franchise back, one last time, telling the story the way the original series director (Hideaki Anno) wanted to tell it. In my opinion, the movies have been a stunning success and are revolutionizing how anime is made. The level of visual detail, musical score, voice acting (Japanese at least) and minor plot changes have so far made for some incredibly epic and suspenseful story telling. That’s even with knowing how the story goes, or at least how you think it’s going to go…


Simply put, I like epic films. To me they are timeless in their message and infinite in their replay-ability. Any film that at some point creates a spine-tingling moment of overpowering awesomeness is in my opinion, an epic film. Some examples from movies include the last march of the Ents in The Two Towers, the charge of the Rohirrim in the Return of the King and the Dragon opening fire in Avatar. Why am I bringing this up? Because the Evangelion Rebuild movies do it as well.


Maybe I’m just sentimental and nostalgic about watching the original series over a decade ago, but I did find Rebuild 2.22 (and 1.11 before it) to be quite epic. Although a large number of the Angels were squished together to form singular battles, the fights themselves were really quite cool with interesting additions. I don’t enjoy being a critic of anything as I think being a critic is to purposefully draw negativity to things that should really just be enjoyed for what they are, for better or worse. That said, I do have a minor disappointment, that being the level of interaction given to Asuka’s character. The fiery red haired bitch (my favourite character) seemed to almost be given a background role. One of her big fights in the original series was replaced by Mari, a new female character who also seems under developed.


She does have a nice ass though, so I guess she can be forgiven. I suppose it is difficult to fit both the original and new content into a 2 hr sitting. Unlike many forum posts I have read, I actually enjoy and approve of the new story (so far), mainly because it seems even more serious than before. It also helps to view it from an ‘alternate universe’ perspective. Although it certainly has its ‘bizarre’ scenes, the whole Japanese madness that is prevalent in lots of anime is well toned down here which in my opinion appeals to a larger, more adult demographic. Having watched to final ending to 2.22 (after the credits) I am really quite interested to see where they go from here. I really hope they don’t go the way of End of Evangelion …

… but part of me kind of wants them to.

Below: An old AMV I made using original series/movie footage

Awesome Sauce

The following video is awesome:



I could explain why, but I think I might let the viewer determine it for themselves.

I think I might have a random 'awesome sauce' post every now and then just to make things different. Well, not really.

And sif its not a SF4 video. My fucking blog, I can do what I want. BITCH!!!

The Frag Video

Ah yes. One of the reasons for many hours of staring at screens in either bewildered amazement or tedious boredom would be because of the 'Frag Video'. I quite like them. Well, the good ones that is. I have much respect for skilled gamers and well edited footage. I have often considered making one myself but have never really dedicated both the playing time and editing time to make anything noteworthy. The only heavy editing videos I have done in recent years were the two short WoW machinima vids which are becoming quite dated at the moment. There is also the fact that I am in dire need of updating my editing tools. Photoshop CS 2, After Effects 2 and Premiere 2, while fantastic products just don't cut it when comparing it to the quality of videos coming out nowadays.

The good videos that is. You will often wade through many a terrible 'frag' video on Youtube until you stumble across one that is worthy of attention. While there is nothing wrong with making a short video for you and your friends to reminisce about, avidly advertising something online for people to download and watch on a registered video site can be a deathwish if your video is crap. I can understand many people don't have the time/resources to make great videos, but as long as you understand that the general viewer wont find your 'amazing skills' that interesting to watch, you will save yourself a lot of disappointment.

So, what is a frag video? There are many answers for that question, but in my opinion (and I consider this a subjective topic) a frag video is a short to medium length video showcasing two things in particular: The skills of the player/s in the video and (to a lesser extent) the skills of the video editor. The video editing component is not entirely necessary, but generally speaking the quality of a frag video will be higher if the video editing is more polished. However, it should be noted that video editing in itself is not (and never was) difficult. There is skill in creativity, but not skill in execution. Given time, a decent video editor can make any piece of footage look amazing.

So with that out of the way, what makes a good frag video? For me (again subjective) the answer is quite simple. Pace. Sure, a video can present the amazing skills of some random dudes, and the editing may be pretty and top notch, but if it doesn't fit the pace of the footage or the chosen music it accompanies ... it becomes incredibly boring. A boring video ceases to be an entertaining one and, in my opinion, ceases to be an effective frag video.

Here are some examples of great frag videos. I would highly recommend watching them on Youtube themselves (double click videos) and watching them in HD if possible.



Quake 3 frag videos are not hard to come by. The pace of the game itself and the amazing shit you can do in it pretty much begs users to make frag videos. In Mecurial we have a fast paced edit with a likewise techno/acid music theme that, in the world of Quaking, fits very well. Shaolin Productions editing is suitable and more importantly, incredibly well synced to the visuals and audio track. Did this video take time to make? Most certainly. Was it worth it? Certainly most.



What's this!? A WoW frag video!!?? Preposterous, how can this be possible? Easily. WoW is a slow game. A very, very slow game, in all considerable aspects. If you want to make a frag video, why not just speed it up? Easy! In Boneshock's first video he did just that, synced it to an ... interesting metal track and did a fine job on the editing. Depending on your taste, this can be entertaining enough, if you are not the kind of person that requires looking at health bars and spell casts to understand what is going on. Unfortunately, this type of video is NOT the type of video you will frequently find on warcraftmovies.com. Most of those videos are lame and uninspired footage of someone doing the same thing the last guy did, but with different music. Most of these videos are Arena videos, and they are usually horribly boring. I can understand someone's joy in making a video about something they consider amazing, but again, advertising it for the world the see and expecting gold is ludicrous.



TF2 is a fantastic looking game for frag videos, and this video shows it quite well. Again it is synced well and has the same qualities of those before it, if a bit more on a dramatic and epic 'theme'. Unfortunately, these sort of frags come all too infrequently in a game like TF2 which may make these frags seem godlike in the eyes of someone who doesn't know any better. As many of these frags are the result of flukes or luck rather than true skill one can be fooled into thinking TF2 is as fast paced and 'bouncy' as a game like Quake 3. It aint. However this should not detract from the fact that the video and the frags it contains are really quite entertaining.



It is difficult to make a Frag video of a fighting game. Most of them turn out to be combo videos, which while impressive, don't really fall into the same category (at least in my opinion). The above video is about the best example I can find of someone creatively trying to make a video using fighting game footage for the sole purpose of entertaining the viewer. For a veteran player, most of the moves will be simplistic, but for a newbie I imagine the video would look more like a trailer if anything. That is not a bad thing by any means and I personally salute this editor's effort at exploring the possibilities of footage editing for a still relatively new game.

There are many more examples I can display of great frag videos, but I believe that will do for the moment. Also, I do not really enjoy being a critic :S.

Successful LAN Checklist

One can argue that LANs are dying as of late in recent years. They would not be wrong. Often the reason for LANing in the past was because of games not being suitable on the slow connections a decade ago, combined with the proximity to the dedicated server. These factors would often convince people that gathering a group of like-minded individuals into a building for digital entertainment over faster and closer networks was a good idea. They were right.

Of course, the speed of connections today and the games people play are one of the reasons people don't LAN anymore. Hell, some games do not even support the feature in general (Modern Warfare 2, upcoming Starcraft 2), which is really quite sad considering their origins. There is also the fact that the vast majority of games released in the last few years are terrible for LANs, massive in size, no AI/Bots other than singleplayer, requiring 50 security and authorization checks per second and even requiring a constant internet connection. Why not just play at home online?

It is difficult to argue against, but there is one very good reason why people should still LAN. Because they are social events. Yes, you are doing something you enjoy with friends who also enjoy doing it, in close scream-in-your-ear proximity with the capability to easily reflect on awesomeness later. Who wouldn't enjoy that? I can only think of two types of people. The first would be someone who doesn't like other people and the second would be someone who doesn't have any friends.



So providing you do choose to LAN in the future (which you should), there are 5 simple rules that I believe everyone (hosts, participants, guests) should follow to make the experience not irritating for everyone.

1. Headphones. Put them into your sound card and cover your ears with them. Not everyone wants to hear you play the same Queen or Linkin Park song over and over again at full volume. Having speakers on low-medium volume playing the currently played game is fine, but please, consider the well being of the people surrounding you.

2. Many Games. Depending on the duration of the LAN this can vary in size from 0 to ... lets say 10. Playing the same game over and over, while mind blowing for some, can get incredibly boring for others (especially those who are perhaps not that great or are new to it). Screaming "HEADSHOT!" into your friend's face for the 23rd time, while exciting for you, may be both uncomfortable, tedious and deafening for them.

3. Bring discs/files. If you are suggesting a game to play, consider the accessibility of the game for everyone. Wanting to play Doom 3 deathmatch when you don't have the discs, or a cracked version, nor do they and there are 5+ players (Doom 3 DM is 4 players) is worthy of submission to failblog.org. If a game can be bought off steam and files transferred, great. However, if the game costs $90 and you are the only one who has it, fail.

4. Don't be a faggot. Don't cheat. Sitting in a room with several other testosterone induced individuals can be a very a hairy situation. You are there to have fun with friends and getting upset/emo about what happens in games is a real mood breaker. This happens the other way around as well. Boasting and/or inappropriate trash talking can grant you both contempt and punches to the face. Coop gaming is always good neutral ground.

5. Have a plan B. Things will break. Operating Systems will magically uninstall, cables lost, save games deleted, routers explode and of course, networks will shit themselves. Calm down and relax. Unless you are the host, you are moving a piece of hardware (that shouldn't and normally never is) several kilometres to run at an unknown location. You cannot possibly expect things to work smoothly. Bring an extra LAN cable, a copy of your OS, an external HDD with your drivers and DEFINITELY your own power board. NEVER rely on another person. People are shit!

If everyone was to follow these 5 simple rules at/prior to every LAN I can guarantee that the experience will be enjoyable for all!

Going back to school...

Super Street Fighter 4 was, among other things, released in Australia on my birthday. I have only just recently won my first ever Super Street Fighter 4 fight online. It was against an equally ranked Korean dude using the character Juri.

Here is the video:


I was both incredibly noob and unskillful, but nevertheless I am proud of it. For me it was the most intense and satisfying achievement in gaming in the past year or so. It took me an embarrassing number of tries to get there but I finally beat someone. I am now on the ranked global ladder.

It is really quite bizarre. Amongst my closest friends I would probably be considered reasonable at the game. Certainly able to beat most of them without a hitch. I go online and I get completely and utterly destroyed. The difference in skill between my friends, myself and the average online player is astounding. Despite the fact they are usually rated 1000+ (as opposed to my measly 56 or something), fighting against them feels like an uphill battle from the first move to the part when I am dying in a ball of fire or flying off the screen into oblivion. It is like an entirely new game, one in which I am at the bottom of the food chain.

I remember this feeling. The looking at losing screens again and again, while obviously irritating, does stir an enjoyable competitive fire in one's soul. The knowledge that you are playing an extremely skill based game and that you are not exactly that great at it. Indeed, the last time this happened was nearly a decade ago, back in the year 2000...

The game was Unreal Tournament.

I was what you would call an FPS noob in those days. I was foolish in thinking that control over mouse and keyboard was skill enough. Half-life singleplayer and UT against bots were no trouble, surely human players wouldn't be an issue? Wrong. First online deathmatch game? Bottom of the list. And again. And again. And again.

Oh eventually I got better. Generally speaking I would say I am decent at hardcore FPS games in general. But it was a long road taking many months. Even though I have had breaks I can still come back and cause some serious issues for veteran players of them (eg. Quake Live).

Although I do not plan on taking SSFIV too seriously, it is refreshing and astonishing to find that it is a game where the skill ceiling is far greater than I initially thought. Significantly greater, in fact. For example, the video below shows a typical method for landing Ryu's Ultra successfully on enemy players. This method is said to be pioneered by the professional Japanese fighting game world champion Daigo Umeharo, the Beast.



It may not look like much, but this player is pulling off a light shoryuken, focus attack, dash cancel into 2x quarter circle forward All punch. That is seven individual movements and approximately seventeen 'buttons' (both directional and attack based) being registered all in under a second. Beethoven much?

I will never be able to do that, at least on the default controller. It is just interesting to see quite visually how a professional gamer plays a fighting game as opposed to John 'fAtality' Wendel in a game like Quake 3. There is a big visual difference relating to both mental and physical precision and dexterity. Two elements I admittedly lack when playing any sort of game.

A friend of mine, one who I consider to be one of the best gamers I know, has again started training his mental agility in the form of playing Ut2k4 against progressively higher scaling bots. It is interesting to see as he posts his results as it is something I would like to try out with SSFIV on hardest difficulty. Although I am certain I will get trounced, it will definitely help towards both becoming a better player and (to a degree) a better person too. There is nothing more humbling than losing again and again only for it to pay off and for you to eventually succeed. Who ever said games never taught people the harsh rules of life were wrong. Or drunk.

Despite all this, there is some less pro-gamer oriented news. A large number of my friends and myself have bought the excellent tower defense game Sol Survivor off Steam (some earlier than others). At a mere $10, it has provided more hours of easily coop-able entertainment than some larger brand titles I have bought in the past. It is definitely worth picking up if you feel like some light casual/social gaming at a relaxed pace.

And last but not least, Starcraft 2 Beta. A good friend of mine encouraged me to pre-order the game from EB and providing 85% of the necessary files, I was able to install it without a problem. I am getting some strange frame-skipping every few seconds however, but you cannot not expect that in a Beta. So far I am stuck between two worlds. Part of me wants to argue that Blizzard took nearly 7 years to make a game that to me looks like the original game with a 3D facelift. The other part is saying to stick it out, learn a race (currently Zerg) and try it out competitively. Maybe I will grow to love it. Strategy games have never been my forte so I do not expect to do brilliantly ... but we will see. Oh yes, we will see.....

Blender - 5 reasons to use it

It's been quite awhile since I talked about something either work or uni related. At the moment, beginning the initial stages of my PhD, uni is going to quite rapidly become my work. I say 'become' and not 'is' because I only just recently acquired a cubicle and laptop to work in/on and am therefore expected to come in to uni to work (instead of bludging at home).

I also tutor. Currently I am teaching students (who are generally pretty good) on the finer aspects of Games Design and the basics of learning a program called Blender. I have been referred to as the 'Blender Guru' but I can honestly say I am quite the noob when it comes to the more aesthetic components of making games. As I am a programmer at heart, my knowledge of texturing, lighting and modeling in games is simplistic at best.

What I have noticed however is that, like last year, there seems to be this incredibly unwarranted and unfair generalisation amongst certain groups that Blender sucks. I am not sure where or how this originated but it has me baffled as to how this decision has come to be. Most of the students commenting negatively about it had not even used it yet. When I did the subject (when it was in its first iteration), we were practically forced to use the program Blender (with only a few exceptions). As my only Game Design tool experience up to that point had been the Unreal and Quake engines (and usually just level design, Unreal Script/QuakeC), I did not exactly see the requirement of using Blender to be a chore. Over the semester, there were mixed views on the engine. However towards the end, having even only scratched the surface of it, I came to the conclusion that it really wasn't that bad. My reasons are explained below.

Note: The videos contained after each point have nothing to do with the actual point's content. They are for demonstration of Blenders capability only

1. It is < 15mb
I do not know of a smaller tool that can do what Blender does for the size it is. I would really like to know, if not just to compare the two. For something that you can literally download within seconds (providing you have a good connection) and transport and install without a hassle, it is difficult to find fault with the mobility and convenience of the program at all.



2. It is free!
People nowadays like money. I like money! It keeps me alive, and living is good (I think). If you look at competitive products (e.g. Unity) you will notice there is a large difference between them. While there are free distributables of certain engines that you can pick up (e.g. UDK), the additional products necessary to make a game (such as modeling programs) are not exactly free themselves. All of this adds up, and not just money wise (refer to point 1).



3. It is not (that) hard to learn
It is not a difficult program. There are thousands of people who have successfully made models, games and machinima using Blender and so can you! I personally think the hatred of Blender's unusual UI stems from simple unfamiliarity with an interface in general. It does not function like Maya or Max, nor is it designed to. When Word 2007 came out I hated it with a burning rage. Eventually however I got used to it. The same thing can be said with using Blender. You just need to use the middle mouse a lot.



4. You don't need to be a programmer to make functional content
I once used an engine called Torque to make a game. I was the programmer. I'll be honest in saying it was a pain, not because it was difficult to code (pfft) but because of the level of abstraction the engine and its entities allowed me to have control over. Everything was prebuilt and the ability to change stuff without going through and radically changing the game dynamics was very limited. I did not really end up making the game I wanted. Blender on the other hand doesn't give you all that. It gives you a physics engine, an empty game loop and the ability to create and apply logic/script to objects in this virtual space. It is a very empty and abstract game environment. The difference is that applying control and game dynamics does not require copious amounts of code as there are tools set up to do it for you at will. Making an object move in Blender from a keypress is dead simple (logicbrick system). Making an object move in Torque was still simple, but required actual code (obviously). Making an object move in an game engine coded from scratch (OpenGL, D3D) is much, much more difficult. Compare 50-100 lines of code to a few mouse clicks and you will see what I mean.



5. It is a sufficient enough tool
For the expectations of the unit I am tutoring, Blender is a more than suitable tool for creating the games we expect students to be making. As nice as visual aesthetics like detailed textures, high polygon count models, fancy lighting and shadow effects may be, if they are not accompanied by a working game with a working game mechanic, they are all for naught. This is Advanced Games DESIGN after all.

The thing about Fighting Games

First of all I just want to say that I am aware of the nature of my last few posts being primarily about fighting games. Although I don't promise this will be the last, I am aware that it is certainly not the first. Additionally this post is inspired by this article on The Escapist, discussing the nature and future of fighting games (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_246/7327-Fighting-Games-A-Tapped-Out-Genre).

Over the recent 7-9 months I have been very interested in fighting games, primarily Tekken 6 and SFIV. I would argue I am terrible at both, and depending on who you talk to, my friends would probably agree. Presently I eagerly await Super SFIV and will undoubtedly buy it the day it comes out. Out of all of my friends, both school, uni and random, I am the only person I know that actively anticipates these sort of games (besides one other chickzor, but she is special).


Super SFIV Trailer


Recent discussions with friends have led me to believe that they have never really been in to fighting games, or ever have in the past. This is fair enough, although I find it astonishing considering the number of fighting game titles released over the years. Surely they would have bumped into one in the odd occasion...

But this post is not about my friends, rather the gaming community in general. As the mentioned article points out, there has been a slow decline in interest in fighting games over the years, even with the new iterations and reboots as of late. I do not have enough evidence at my disposal to agree or disagree with that proposal, but I will say that the learning curve of fighting games is a major turn off for certain people. Simply put, for newcomers, fighting games have evolved into something that is incredibly difficult to pick up in a single afternoon session of gaming.


MvC2 Combos (Check out last 1.5 mins for awesome sauce)


This is also (at least in my opinion) where the whole issue lies. People nowadays, for whatever reason, do not want to dedicate time to learning a new and complex method of control for every fighting game on the market. This is completely understandable. Even I have not put in anywhere near the hours I used to in Tekken 3 as I have in Tekken 6 (seriously like 1/10 of the time). This perspective, while justifiable, is also flawed.

Fighting games to me have always shared a resemblance to tournament shooters (Counter Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament etc...). They are not about completing a storyline or singleplayer campaign. They are not even about unlocking attributes/characters or grinding currency to slap on new funky looking pieces of crap (something Tekken has unfortunately fallen to). Fighting games have always been about finding a character(s) you are comfortable with and getting better at using them. There is a peculiar Zen-like quality to mastering a character's technique, something akin to when you are on top of your game in a tournament shooter. It is very challenging, especially for the first time, and to an extent, harder than anything an FPS game can throw at you. FPS games carry over the accuracy, the situational awareness and tactics of their related brethren and do not require as much mental transition as learning something entirely new (like a fighting game's mechanics). Fighting games on the other hand offer a much higher degree of challenge (assuming you are attempting to learn them properly) and it is this challenge aspect that people should be focusing on when learning them.


SFIV Ex-Focus System


Nowadays people do not like challenge. They do not like looking at screens where they are told they have lost and to try again. People really do expect to faceroll fighting games and win! If you look at the games of today, appealing to such larger demographics (older, younger, soccer mums etc...) this is a perfectly understandable marketing technique: make games that anyone can be successful at to attract more buyers. When you throw a game, such as a steep learning curve fighting game into the mix, you break the current trend and people who may give fighting games a go for the first time will come to the conclusion that they are too hard or complex to learn. Therefore they hate them.

However there are those who find this challenge aspect of fighting games appealing and rewarding. Whether your pride is immune to losing (or you simply have none), you may find that there is a rich and rewarding experience in playing a fighting game, both properly and skillfully. This skill does not just rely on remembering input controls (hell you could barely call a DPS rotation in WoW 'skill'), often an excuse for resorting to button mashing. It is about 'fighting' your opponent, human or cpu, blocking and evading instictively and applying what you have learnt into brutal (yet beautiful) combo attacks for mega-awesome-wtf-bbq-pwned-nubnubnub-damage!!!


Bryan Fury Combos


And that is essentially where the fun comes from...