From E3. This is not hand drawn. These are 3d Models. We have entered an era where the 3D 2D fighters look as good as the hand drawn ones. Just look at these guys! Some chick disgorged from the bowel of some monster and a kid that fights from a hospital bed robot. All I can say is holy shit.
Millia Rage Vs Ky.
I’ve had my eye on YOMI, a card game that emulates video game fighting games in paper form for awhile now. I initially assumed there was no way anyone could make an actual fun game out of this. From experience as I’ve tried two of them from the olden days (Video Fighter [below] and Heavy Gear) as well as the goo,d but too simple, Brawl.
YOMI is available to play online and I gave that a go and it was just OK, it piqued my interest further, but I didn’t think it was all that great from playing the online version, which is exactly the same as the card game except you can’t read the cards. You can technically read them, they just aren’t the focus of the game enough compared to when they’re in your hand. This is huge detriment for a new player because I can say after playing the physical game that YOMI is absolutely superb at pulling off what it’s trying to do and it’s not well represented in the online version since the cards are small and not in your face. So if you are going to give it a try, I would recommend playing with pieces of paper first.
The core mechanic, well it’s just rock paper scissors between Throw, Attack and Block/Dodge. Seems simple? It’s crazy complicated. The rock paper scissors part is just the most basic mechanic. You play a single card each turn. Based on what you played and your opponent has played you can possibly play more cards to combo, extra defense, etc. and this is where the game gets crazy and the rock paper scissors mind game turns into a mechanic that works brilliantly instead of putting you to sleep as it should. Each character deck that I’ve seen (played about 6 of them) plays very differently. Some characters are good throwers, some rush down with tons of small attacks and combos and others set you up for a big hit the whole match. After just a few plays, one notices the huge depth of the game.
Hand management is huge, card flow is huge, and knowing when and where to lay down your big combos is something that will take hundreds of games to master. I am simply shocked that someone was able to pull this off and do it so brilliantly.
As a game, once you have a single deck of one character, you can play– forever. That character likely will never get any other cards you can buy (unless there is a team fight expansion that changes out cards) so if you just want one character to play, your cost of entry is 12$ and never anything else. You could enter a tournament and win and be a champion with just that 12$ spend as YOMI is not about buying up cards and making decks like Netrunner or Shadowfist then playing, it’s about learning a character completely, just like a fighting game on the boob tube.
I’m not a huge fan of the art– it looks sort of like knockoff anime to me rather than the real deal, which Video Fighter and Heavy gear also had issues with. The overarching brand is ‘fantasy strike’ so it seems like the characters in the game are in some sort of Lodoss War style world. And a Panda? I guess… again, a minor quibble, especially since many of the characters are really awesome looking— they’re just not Last Blade 2 awesome.
Those of you physically near me, trust that you will be coerced into playing despite your hatred of fighting games.
We’ve come a long way in the game since this night, but here’s 30 minutes of madness. Note– ridiculously, we have NO super powers at this time, which means we need to do a super powered video soon.
The video is supergreat but on the Wii U? Really?
I got into the beta of DOTA2 awhile back and after installing my only experience with it was waiting for a match to start and then quitting after about 2 minutes. Given that I played the early versions of DOTA as part of my (and everyone else’s) Warcraft 3 addiction, I didn’t think I was missing much. How good could it be? It’s a bunch of WC3 heroes fighting each other on the same map over and over and over again and I’d done that before. Plus, I remember it being pretty boring compared to a straight up WC3 match– you do only control one hero after all.
However, I’m eating a bit of crow meat now–I’ve played some handful of matches here and there and am largely hooked– every time I win one of those boxes, I buy a 2$ key (the game was free after all so I feel I owe them something!). So my few and dear readers, I will likely post a terrible amount of DOTA stuff in the next gaggle of months until the addiction passes. The realization that I liked it hit me last night when I actually called it the Cosmic Encounter (the best board game ever made) of video games– in that the basic premise is very simple and easily understood, but the sheer asymmetry of the number of heroes turns it into something completely different every single time. What’s more, even if you suck really bad, you can still contribute to your team if you have a basic understanding. Going into a server assuming you will be THE carry in the game is setting yourself up for disaster, but pushing lanes, support and ganking are doable with just a bit of practice.
Please note the most popular video game on the planet is effectively a DOTA clone (League of Legends) so the addictive qualities speak for themselves.
Anarchy Reigns. Best way to describe it is Twisted Metal without the Cars or an insane Power Stone. You run around and punch people and use specials and it’s pretty crazy. I jumped right into Multiplayer and after two rounds– the greifing began. When in a multiplayer Deatchmatch room that requires X amount of slots (say 4), it’s possible for a single player to bomb the whole lobby by constantly entering, selecting that they are “ready’ then un-readying it before the timer countdown locks the room. This happened for about 8 minutes before I quit and went to the campaign game. Gamers will grief whenever they can, naturally, but this type of shit should have been foreseen. The game has been out in Japan for a long while now. You can’t tell me NO Japanese tried this same shit to bomb a lobby?
Anyway, the rounds I got in were chaotic, but fun. I’ll put up a full review when I get through a mess more of the game.
Ah the new fighting game smell! I can’t stop myself– ok well I have– I didn’t go in for Skullgirls or Arcana Heart nor the Tekken vs Street Fighter malarkey–but I have a weakness you see, even if a game is so far from targeting my demographic group of ancient occidental old men, if I hear it’s good, I just have to try the fucker. Despite the fact that Virtua Fighter 5 is Marianas Trench deep and I have yet to come close to mastering even one character and despite the fact that while I have played 40-50 matches of KOF 13 online, I haven’t even scratched the surface of that game in the least. These two reasons alone, not even counting Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Blazblue, are enough to say “never buy a new fighting game,” but again, I cannot stop.
So here we have Persona 4 arena by the same people that did Blazblue (and hence Guilty Gear) and it’s about some high school kids that go inside their fucking televisions and fight each other in some strange show. They fight with swords and guns and folding chairs but more importantly, they fight with these strange robots called ‘personas.’ Now, just like Guilty Gear and Blazblue, it’s expected that the plot of any fighting game in this type of insane genre will also be insane so there you have it. Going inside TV’s, fighting on TV, using strange robots (are they robots?), saying stupid stuff in high pitched voices, beating up their friends and asking if they are OK afterwards, etc. Anyway the game is based on some extremely popular RPG series that I’ve never played. While the character designs are great, they just have to LOOK good, it doesn’t really matter what they say or do because despite any type of ‘plot’ it’s still just a fighter and that’s all it has to be.
Gameplay wise, from my initial plays, I would say the game is a bit less insane than the Guilty Gear series and certainly less than Blazblue. One thing that is noticeable off the bat is the ease of combos. You can pull off some insane combos with just pressing the same button and with some mix ups, the combos can hit into the 30’s pretty easily. I haven’t studied the system enough to really know why or how this works, but I shall because, so far, it is quite a fun game. While I like Blazblue and really liked King of Fighters 13 for awhile there, there is something about each that just doesn’t grab me–both are very very difficult games to get good at. KOF has never been combo friendly by design and Blazblue is really a massive amount of memorization because combos are so long and most of the good ones have multiple cancels within them. Whether it’s the hop-tech in KOF or just the insane amount of combos you have to pull off to win in Blazblue, I’ve been in the market for something that is a bit more grounded, but that doesn’t have the screen mobility constraints as Street Fighter 4. Granted, kids going inside TV’s and fighting each other is pretty off the wall, but the fighting system, maybe because of the easy combos, doesn’t smack me in the head like Blazblue saying “you will never be good enough at this to enjoy it” yet.
The roster is mostly chicks with various weapons with a few dudes peppered in there. There’s only one effeminate guy in the group which is good because, you know– Bridget from GG was a pretty tough pill to swallow when you found out ‘it’ was a boy– and with so many female characters, I was afraid this would turn into an Arcana Heart/ Skullgirls that I would simply embarrassed to play in front of the family or friends. There are enough dudes to go around and while not filled with grim swordsman that I would like (ala Last Blade), there are some GIANT AXES in play to make up for it, in fact two of the characters are named AXE. Since these are high school kids, it’s not like any of them are very badass, but some of their personas ARE. One design looks like a greek statue holding a globe with the chest cut out and a dude sitting inside on a chair another is a massive demon that bursts out of the ground. The personas aren’t on screen all the time, but when they are it’s pretty fawesome.
So fuckall I am glad I got this. I’m probably going to only get to play against my kids but I will go online and get my ass kicked this weekend. Every once in a while you will get matched with someone that is near your level of play so I’m hoping that happens. If not, it’s fun to see the fireworks as one gets run down.
Platiunum games was being very coy not announcing that Bayonetta was in the upcoming punching game Anarchy Reigns, but they finally let the sexy cat out of the bag which means I get to make a post with a bunch of pictures of Bayonetta and her booty. I think you’ll agree this is a good thing. Like I said, this is going to be a SLEEPER hit if it’s anything like the amazing and astounding Urban Reign for the PS2. People won’t buy this until a year or so after release when all the copies go for 100$ or more, so get it right away when it comes out and you can see THAT ASS!
As an aside: I did throw down some (albeit single player) Urban Reign last night, Anarchy Reigns spiritual successor and it is still one of the best PS2 games there is. If you have a PS2 sitting around and want to find a use for it for a few weeks, Urban Reign is where it’s at.