fighting games

Daigo Vs. Justin At the Super Street Fighter IV Launch Party

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Last night, I was feeling a bit under the weather and I passed out the moment I got home. As a Street Fighter IV enthusiast, this kind of worked in my favour as I woke up just in time to catch the Super Street Fighter IV launch party taking place in the west coast.

The main event was a must-watch for those who follow the scene, as it featured two of the top Street Fighter IV players, whose rivalry has led to arguably the best Street Fighter matches of all-time. When they did battle last night, they went back and forth and finished with probably the craziest ending possible. Click through to watch the final round!
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Metacritic and My Video Game Collection

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Hate it or love it, review aggregators are becoming an increasingly important service for consumers of just about anything. In the video game space, people like them because it gives them a quick and quantifiable way of knowing what games are good and what games suck. The counterpoint to those people are those who don’t feel that aggregates tell the whole story and put an emphasis on a number rather than the context from which that number is derived from.

I’m not here to choose sides. Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to take my XBOX 360 and Wii game collection, full retail games only, compile all of their Metacritic scores and see what the results say about my game stash. I must preface that this is far from scientific and that my collection has changed since I compiled these numbers.

With that said, lets hit the results.

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Pick Up Post: I Got The Magic Stick

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After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to purchase an arcade joystick. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV happening in a few days (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 having just been announced), I figured now would be the right time to finally give this arcade joystick thing a shot. As a long-time pad player who has always struggled with joysticks in the arcade, this is a bit of a risky investment. The market for joysticks varies wildly, as the prices can go as low as $30 and as high as $200 for products that do the exact same thing. All of the joysticks also vary wildly in features, build quality and the ability to fix/mod the joystick yourself.

As much as I would like to immediately jump to the top-of-the-line MadCatz TE stick, I’m not ready to invest $200 on a controller that I may never find as comfortable as a regular controller. With everything taken into consideration, I ended up putting down the money on this arcade joystick.

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Game Design Talk: Soul Calibur IV and the Apprentice

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Within minutes of first playing Soul Calibur IV, the game has already figured out how to infuriate me. I’m not even close to being a good player at any Soul Calibur game, but I did play enough Soul Calibur II to beat the game on normal difficulty with every character. Having been out of practice, I decided to get reacquainted with the systems by starting out in Arcade mode.

Up until the second last level, I was doing just fine. But it was then that I was pit against the Apprentice.

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Game Design Talk: Turning the Difficulty Up To 11

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I’ve been putting a lot of time into Street Fighter IV for the iPhone and I’m still having a lot of fun with it. I’ve gotten to the point where I can consistently hit 19-hit combos with Ryu, which is kind of scary, considering the fact that I can’t do that on the real thing.

Thinking I had mad skills, I decided to try playing the game at the toughest difficulty setting. On normal, I could beat the game with Ryu in under 8 minutes. On “Grueling”, it took me 25 minutes to get to the final boss. It was tough, but I didn’t mind the experience. It still felt somewhat fair.

It was when I got to M. Bison that the experience took a turn for the worst. If you’ve played a Street Fighter game, you probably can empathize with my pain. I spent another 30 minutes just trying to beat him before I finally broke through.

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Making It Another Blockbuster Night

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Yesterday, while on my way to my girlfriend’s house, I passed by another Blockbuster. Having pillaged every Blockbuster in my city, I decided to check out the Blockbuster close to her house to see if I can find some gems in their clearance bin. While their selection had no shortage of old sports games, generic shooters and crappy movie-based games, I did pick up some stuff and there were other games worth noting.

Hit the break to see what I found.

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Street Fighter IV on iPhone Makes Me Eat My Words

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“…like the thought of eating a steak topped with ice cream, the recently announced Street Fighter IV iPhone port has made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. I can’t imagine this being anything but an absolute nightmare to play.” – Me.

Up until the recent release of Street Fighter IV on the iPhone, I expected nothing less than garbage from this mobile port. In my previous post, I provided a bunch of reasons to support my initial feelings towards the final product. But then, the positive word-of-mouth online began to bubble. As a Street Fighter IV junkie, this was enough to push me over the edge and give this $10 app a shot. To my surprise, Street Fighter IV on the iPhone does very well considering the platform its on, providing players with a fun fighting game that controls well enough.

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Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: I Take It For A Ride

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A few weeks ago, I vented my thoughts on the possibility of me purchasing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars. I was interested in the game, but maybe not enough for me to buy it. However, it was also an opportunity as a core Wii owner to show the world that I will buy hardcore games if companies put them out on the platform. This moral dilemma also hit me shortly before I lost my job. With all of the things stacked against it, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom seemed out of my grasp for the time being.

Street Fighter IV and Why iPhone Game Controls Suck

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If you’ve been following my blog for the past few months, then you’ll know that I am a huge fan of Street Fighter IV and a fan of iPhone games. However, like the thought of eating a steak topped with ice cream, the recently announced Street Fighter IV iPhone port has made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. I can’t imagine this being anything but an absolute nightmare to play.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom – Time to Get Pringles?

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I don’t think I’ve ever been torn about a game like I have been for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. With this game, I can put together a fairly solid case for why I don’t want it. I’m not a “Versus” series style of fighting game player. My only experience with this style of fighting game was with the XBOX Live release of Marvel vs. Capcom 2. After years of wanting to test my chops in one of the most popular fighting games of all-time, I finally came to the conclusion that I’m awful at that style of game. I end up mindlessly mashing buttons and randomly doing traditional Street Fighter special move command inputs and hoping for the best. It’s cool to see all the flashy action on screen, but I didn’t find the fighting satisfying enough for me to commit to getting better. My only experience online with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was an absolute disaster, where I didn’t win a match and at times, didn’t connect a single hit on my opponent.