fighting games

Street Fighter IV: Volt Review

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Street Fighter IV for iPhone is hands-down the best fighting game available on iOS. You could even make a solid case for it being one of the best iOS games, period. Despite my initial thoughts that it would suck, it won me over in a big way. Up until the release of Volt, Street Fighter IV on the iPhone has been a near-daily ritual of mine.

While Capcom made a number of huge updates to the original, they’ve decided to release a new app this time around. I would have much preferred paying for this as an add-on to the original, but I can’t complain too much when I was able to get it on sale for $0.99. Regardless of what you paid for it (and/or if you have the original), is Street Fighter IV: Volt worth a purchase?

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Pick-Up Post: Mortal Kombat Season Pass

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One of the most recent developments in DLC is the idea of paying for a set of content up-front and receiving a discount on the set rather than buying the components of the set separately. From a business perspective, this makes a lot of sense, as it’s a lot easier to ask me for $15 now rather than four payments of $5 spread out over 8 months. It also makes sense from the player’s perspective, as we get stuff at a discount.

Case in point, the Mortal Kombat Season Pass. There are four DLC characters scheduled for release at $5.00 each. However, if you buy the Season Pass up-front, you’ll get all four characters for $15, which is a savings of $5.

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Mortal Kombat Gets Patched on XBOX 360, Online Play Improves

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The new Mortal Kombat in my eyes was a pretty fantastic game with one fatal flaw (no pun intended): crappy online play. It would take forever to get matched up with anyone and if you did get into a match, it was always a laggy mess. At Mortal Kombat’s best, it was as laggy as Super Street Fighter IV’s worst. As much as I wanted to deep dive into the world of Mortal Kombat online play, it was an unplayable mess. Without good online play, I had basically no one to play against.

If you’ve been disappointed in Mortal Kombat’s online play to date, I’ve got good news for you.

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: How to Deal With Cross-Up Attacks

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With fighting games experiencing an upswing in popularity, there are a lot of new players getting into fighting games and fighting game veterans taking on new games. With any new fighting game you take on, whether that’s a mainstream hit like Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat, or a more niche title like Arcana Heart 3, comes a learning curve that’s usually steeper than that of most other video games on the market. Playing against the computer or playing with your friends of similar skill is fine and dandy, but if your goal is to play these games on a competitive level against anyone is going to take some smart training and elbow grease.

The good news is, a lot of the knowledge you’ll learn in one game is transferable to the next, which makes learning fighting games as a whole a task that’s not as daunting as it seems on the surface. It also makes it possible for someone like me to write a somewhat-one-size-fits-all guide to fighting games that you can apply to any fighting game you play.

I’m not sure how far I’ll go with this series of posts, but for my first attempt at this, let’s talk about fighting games from a defensive perspective. More specifically, how to deal with cross-up/cross-over/cross-under attacks.

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Novril’s MS Paint Guide on How to Beat Phoenix

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YouTube user Novril is back! I loved his first MS Paint video guide on how to beat Sentinel, and this time he’s back with a great guide on how to beat Phoenix. It’s comforting to see that much of the Phoenix knowledge I wrote about a few months ago is in here, but he also has some great strategies I wasn’t aware of until watching this video.

Also, the MS Paint style and charm are pretty funny. I’m looking forward to newer installments of this series, as I think the world needs a guide on how to beat the over-powered Yun and Yang in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. Anyway, click through to see the Phoenix video and share your appreciation with Novril if you enjoy this series!

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Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Review

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The Street Fighter IV series has had an incredible run. Having single-handedly bringing the genre back from the dead, Capcom rode the wave of success by releasing Super Street Fighter IV, which was an excellent update to the original. In fact, Super Street Fighter IV was so nice, I bought it twice. Now, Capcom is closing out the Street Fighter IV series with Arcade Edition, which is available now as DLC for Super Street Fighter IV owners for $15, or as a separate disc for $40.

In a time when with new fighting games such as Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are stealing the spotlight, is the latest iteration on the Street Fighter IV worth your time?

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Out Now – Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition

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Though the eyes of most gamers are focused squarely on E3, the fighting game world gets a major release today. If you own a copy of Super Street Fighter IV, you can now purchase Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition as DLC for $15. The update will feature four new characters (Yun, Yang, Evil Ryu and Oni), new balance changes and a number of major upgrades to the replay channel.

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Mortal Kombat Review

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It’s been a while since Mortal Kombat was relevant. Say what you will about the series’ consistently good sales, but when the genre fell out of relevance with the mass market, Mortal Kombat did, too. However, when Street Fighter IV single-handedly revived the genre, it was only a matter of time before Mortal Kombat came roaring back. And roar back it did. You, as gaming consumers, made it the number 1 selling game in the US in April, selling over 1 million copies.

Is the latest in the MK series a return to form? Did it sell solely on hype? Or does it take the series to the next level?

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Impressions of Mortal Kombat’s Story Mode

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Historically, fighting games have done a poor job of providing a good single-player experience and a horrible job at telling a story. Even 20 years after the release of Street Fighter II, the majority of fighting games simply boil down to fighting opponent after opponent, until you’ve beaten everyone in your path and receive your character’s ending. This does not make for an interesting one-player experience, or add any context to why you’re fighting opponent after opponent. To be fair, the BlazBlue series has tried to expand its single-player experience with a story mode, but that game’s story is so poorly written and presented that only the hardest of hardcore anime fans would find any redeeming value in it.

With that said, Mortal Kombat’s story mode is a breath of fresh air. It’s presented in a way that makes perfect sense to the mythology of the series and to the player in control. What makes it so great? And what could have been done better?

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Early Impressions: Mortal Kombat’s Fighting Game Mechanics

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When you think about Mortal Kombat as a series, you think about blood and fatalities. Do you think about it’s rich and deep fighting game engines? Probably not. Mortal Kombat has traditionally, been a fighting game series built primarily on style over substance. For Midway/Warner Brothers, this lead to consistently good sales throughout the series history among more casual fighting game fans, but the hardcore have pretty much shunned it. Case in point: Super Street Fighter II Turbo is still being played at major fighting game tournaments this year, while the entire Mortal Kombat scene has virtually never had any sort of tournament scene to speak of.

I loved Mortal Kombat I-III, but having grown into a hardcore fighting game player these last few years has really coloured my perspective on those games in hindsight. I can still have a ton of fun playing the Street Fighter II series games of the same era, but those early Mortal Kombat games just don’t have the depth of gameplay to hold my attention nowadays. With that said, Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat, said this new one was aiming to cater to the hardcore crowd. I’ve only spent a few hours with it playing the story mode, tutorial and some versus matches with my coworkers, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to pass final judgment about the game now. But what I can tell you about are my experiences with the game so far, is that from a gameplay systems perspective, this is probably the deepest Mortal Kombat ever.

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