My favourite fighting game is Marvel vs Capcom 2. A small part of this is down to the sheer level of absolutely insane hype that is tied to the game, as well as the fact that pretty much every good character is from the Marvel universe, but most of it is down to two things:
- The lack of comeback mechanics
- The sheer variety of playstyles
With regard to comeback mechanics, I'm not a fan of them in general, even as someone who they will directly benefit. I don't like being actively rewarded for doing badly, whether it's through major damage boosts at low health or when I'm down to a limited number of options, or the more overt huge bar that fills up as my health bar goes down that lets me attempt some sort of Hail Mary play that may or may not win me the game. Ironically, I feel that the inclusion of comeback mechanics such as X-Factor and Ultra Combos actually diminishes from the excitement felt from a real comeback, such as one seen in something like Starcraft or Marvel vs Capcom 2, where any disadvantage can quickly snowball out of control and comeback mechanics are completely non-existent.
As for the variety of playstyles. Despite the vitriol poured on Marvel vs Capcom 2 by people who have not played the game widely, running up to someone and forcing them into an infinite combo for ten hours is not the be all end all strategy in the game. While rushdown is powerful and a dominating strategy, there is also zoning from characters such as Cable, Spiral, Blackheart and Dhalsim, who all play in vastly different ways, one hit kill team hyper combos such as Juggernaut/BBHood/Iron Man, chip damage trap teams such as Strider/Doom. Players could use whatever they liked (within reason) and more of it came down to player skill than anything else.
I suppose what I'm getting at here is that I haven't been happy with Capcom's recent offerings, part of this was down to the poor netcode and real life issues making it hard for me to go to tournaments, another part of this was down to the aforementioned comeback mechanics, and rushdown being king in Marvel vs Capcom 3. So when I heard that MikeZ, a pro fighting game player was planning to make a fighting game that was a 'spiritual successor' to Marvel vs Capcom 2, I was interested enough to consider buying it on release, but not enough to read up on any of the hype or pre-release details, though there was enough good will from somewhere to make me buy the game close to the release date. After trying out the game for a couple of days, I'm very, very happy indeed with it, and I'll just take the good points in the order that I encountered them.
The art style is the first thing that I laid my eyes on. I'm not an art expert so anything I say about it will make me sound like an absolute imbecile, but it looks clean, unique and extremely interesting. The characters look like they've been cribbed from other sources rather than created from whole cloth. It's quite simply one of the nicest 2D games I've seen in ages, and unlike some of the others, I don't feel like I've been put on some sort of police list by playing this, at least not yet anyway.
Next up was how the game designers were clearly catering to high level players, as well attempting to get low level players who wished to improve to a higher level. The most clear sign of the first was how this game uses what is known as "the good type" of button configuration. A player just has to press the button they want to bind a move to, and that's it, no more individually selecting buttons from a list, or cycling through configurations, or tedious button checks. Another example of this is an extremely small, but major gesture, in order to pause in a versus match, the player has to hold down the button for a longer than normal period of time. This prevents unnecessary pauses during tournament games, something which is sometimes punished with forfeits or even disqualification.
With regard to the latter, an extremely robust tutorial system has been put into place, teaching players the basics such as moving, how to execute moves, throws and how to block, before moving onto more advanced concepts such as airdashing, combos, stagger and wakeup attacks, and then, finally, and most importantly of all, teaching players those important concepts, such as hitconfirming and mixups. it does this in an intuitive and simple way, just telling them to watch the opponent and react to what they do. While I'm very, very happy with the system put in, there is one very major problem, it's quite simply unfinished, some of the important and high-level concepts are left out, which is a shame, since I'd love to see how they'd be taught and to actually learn something from it.
At this point I actually began to play the game, and while I was initially taken aback by the low number of characters available, I quickly found one that fit my playstyle. For the record, my playstyle involves standing as far back as possible and making the opponent navigate some sort of obstacle course made up of fireballs, shields, powerful ranged normals and summoned abilities, if I get some sort of teleport so I can make them do it all over again when they get close to me, then that's a bonus. Needless to say, Peacock fit me perfectly. On the other hand, one of my friends enjoys playing characters that spend time and using their abilities getting close to you and nullifying your attacks, and then making you suffer with throws, mixups and extremely damaging moves, which meant that Cerebella suited him. Other players were fans of rushdown, harassing their opponents, or something more versatile, and there were characters for them as well.
Actually playing a game with him was easy enough, we just invited each other to play, set a frame delay based on our current ping, picked our characters, and started to play. After each round we could choose to begin another one instantly and just carry on without interruption. There were no noticeable problems with the netcode, which would be surprising since it was GGPO style netcode, something that a large number of players have been asking for in almost every fighting game with online since the inception of GGPO.
Once we actually got to play though and I was able to use the extremely versatile assist system (which allows you to use any move short of a Blockbuster/Super Combo as an assist) to find essentially another projectile that Peacock could throw out to cover an angle that she was susceptible to attack from, I was able to have a series of very fun, rather close matches, where we both used our different playstyles to try to win, and since there weren't any sort of major comeback mechanics, or anything especially janky, we never really felt cheated or annoyed outside of the opposing character/team playing to their strengths and having to find ways to deal with it. Needless to say, it was very fun indeed.
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| Peacock has six projectiles that fly across the screen at different trajectories and speeds and hit the opponent. All of the coloured areas on here represent a different projectile that will be thrown out as part of the 'obstacle course'. Being hit by any of them causes you to eat a super which throws you back into the corner to begin the obstacle course all over again. |
While mentioning this is a formality, the controls were completely fine, I never unintentionally did a move and most of the times I failed to pull of a move or do a combo I knew this was down to my own shoddy execution than anything else.
While I am happy with almost everything in Skullgirls, there is one major problem, namely that the game is unfinished, posssibly due to it being rushed out. There are several examples of this, which I'll talk about in increasing order of severity: Firstly, an extremely minor gripe, you're unable to see the movelists for your characters without going online to the official website and downloading a .pdf file to look at, while this could be slightly more convenient if you're the type of person who has their computer and television right next to each other, or if you don't mind printing off the .pdf and just popping it next to you, it'd be slightly annoying if you want to know how to do certain moves, or how certain moves even work (Peacock's level 3 Blockbuster beginning from her throw and her Shadow of Impending Doom increasing in power if you hold it down). As I said though, it's not major, but the annoyance is still there.
Secondly is the problem that bugs me the most. Quite simply, the tutorial system is incomplete. I talked about this earlier, but it's still something I'm not happy with, largely because I'd love to see how they planned to handle teaching some of the more difficult concepts in place in fighting games.
Finally is the online play. While I've mentioned already that I'm happy with the netcode used and the ability to choose your own delay, there are slight problems. The most important of these is the lack of any sort of lobby system in place at all, and if you've read what I've talked about before, you'll know how much I care about this. You're limited to one on one fights which no one else is able to watch or interact with. It's rare that a game has a worse version of spectator mode than Marvel vs Capcom 3, but here it is. Additionally, joining a ranked game is slightly annoying due to having to constantly requeue if someone disconnects before the game begins. To solve this problem though, the player could quite simply opt into an automatic match finding system while in training mode or arcade mode, similar to Arcade Edition or Marvel 3.
While the problems do seem rather major, there are two things that have to be kept in mind, that also serve to diminish the severity of them. They don't affect general offline play (including tournaments), and they can all be fixed via patching or free DLC. Their website does claim that there will be free updates, and I don't think it'll be too much to ask for that a lobby system, ingame movelists and a completed tutorial system will be among them.
In conclusion, this game is absolutely fantastic, but quite simply unfinished in the learning resources and online play department, if you don't mind doing just online 1v1s or play a ton offline and are looking for a nice change from Capcom/Namco/SNK/Arcsys/Netherealm fighters, this is a definite buy.
Summary
Pros:
+ Variety of characters and flexibility of assists allow several different playstyles, allowing almost any player to find their niche.+ Interesting art style that manages to carry its own unique style, as well as looking very nice indeed.
+ Inclusion of GGPO netcode allows online games with a minimum of complaint.
+ Gameplay is extremely solid and tournament players were kept in mind from things to button configuration to comeback mechanics.
Cons:
- Clearly unfinished content, namely tutorials and offline movelists- Lack of online lobby system.
