So, in case you didn't know, my recent game addiction is a 2D fighter titled Blazblue (not pronounced as it's spelt, and apparently the Japanese pronunciation is different than the American pronunciation). So, in my normal fashion, I went and looked up reviews, where most places said "THIS GAME IS AWESOME!" in many more words than that. However, once I got to GameInformer, I noticed that their numerical rating was much lower than the 9.5 average that every other place had (namely, a 7.75/10). In theory, I'm fine with this--not everyone is going to like a game, and so long as they give valid reasons as to why a score is given, I can live with it even if I don't agree. However, this was not the case with GameInformer. Their review consisted of three pretty small paragraphs, while every other place had pages (on a fucking fighting game to boot)!
Not being quick to judge, I read the review myself (it didn't take long--it was short), where they stated that they didn't like the inclusion of the story (yes, I will admit that it's story is kind've convoluted, but if you don't like the story, then just play the arcade mode....), stated that it looked gorgeous, and finally that the combat system is hard to pick up, mainly because each character has a special mechanic that goes with them. While many reviews, as well as personal experience, contradict this last point (sereously, I've never seen a fighting game where noobs have picked it up and kicked my ass so quickly....), I thought to myself, "Well, fighting games in general can just be hard to pick up and get good at, so maybe their complaint stems from that..."
Well, I then re-looked up the Street Fighter IV review, and my soul was crushed. SF4, just so you guys know, got a whopping 9.375/10 on GameInformer (that number is the average of the second opinion and the normal review), talking mostly about, for it's five, chuncky paragraphs about how the nostalgic feel of the game, the fact that characters work mostly the same as their past incarnations (thus making it easier to just "pick up", or as they say, "...familiarity with a character’s moves will ease the transition into the new mechanics."), and that the new characters, while they look ridiculous, offer something new, "They are pretty stupid characters, but I love the way they fill combat gaps and force you to learn new techniques," and finally ending by essentially saying that, while grasping the whole system and mastering the game would take a fuck-load of time, you don't have to master it to enjoy the game.
Now, to make my point clear, let's compare the points they made about SF4 to the points they made about BB:
- BB looks amazing--no such thing was said about SF4, in fact, they pointed out that the new characters in SF4 looked bad.
- They stated that, in SF4, that doing a Hadoken is as simple as doing a quarter-circle forward and then punch, making it pretty easy to pick up. I would like to point out that, in BB, most combos are carried out using the very same method, and that BB is actually more forgiving when inputting these combos (unlike SF4).
- For SF4, GI states in it's conclusion: "Fighting games can be intimidating. Many are littered with impossible final bosses, overwhelming character selections, and complicated mechanics, but Street Fighter IV is a distillation of everything the genre does right. It delivers the intensity of competition and the thrill of victory, all through elegant techniques that are easy to learn and difficult to master." which is contradicted by the very game they are reviewing, as the final boss, Seth, is really fucking hard to beat because he has a move to counter just about everything any character can do, it has a rather hefty roster of 25 characters (note: BB has a roster of 12 characters), and it has moves that are so hard to pull off that I've had friends who have said that, "I play better [as SF4] when I stop trying to do stuff and just hit buttons".
- SF4, with all of it's "simplicity", uses every single fucking button on the controller (minus the left two triggers, if you aren't counting buttons mapped to multiple button presses): Square being light punch, triangle being medium punch, R-top trigger being heavy punch, X being light kick, Circle being medium kick, and R-bottom trigger being heavy kick, and then having some button combos do specific things: Square and X together for a charge attack, Triangle and circle together to grab, as well as specific moves (like your Ultra Combos, which are not to be mistaken with your Super Combos, and some random teleports) requiring you to hit L-M-H attack together after a sometimes obfuscated (or simply just hard to actually pull off) d-pad combination, and then it has some extra, high-level stuff you can do that also requires multiple button presses (like insta-cancels). BlazBlue, on the other hand, has a very simple control scheme, the D-pad for movement, square, triangle, circle for l-m-h attacks (respectively), X for "drive attacks" (which employ the characters' special mechanic), triangle and circle at the same time to grab, and then all three attacks at the same time to do high level maneuvers (insta-cancel, gaurd counter). Go measure how long it took me to tell you BB's commands versus SF4's. I dare you.
- SF4 is not balanced. To put it bluntly, there are characters in SF4 that suck fucking balls, and characters that are just better. BB, on the other hand, is incredibly well balanced. Sure, some characters are harder to use (Carl) than others (Nu-13), but if you were to take a character skilled at playing Carl and have them fight someone who was equally skilled with Nu, it would be a very close fight. For SF4, no matter how good you are, Balrog and Zangief are simply a whole lot fucking better characters than Guile.
G'Night and G'Luck.
