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[Sciros]

Their fighting mechanics aren't really any worse than Street Fighter nowadays, and in many ways much better. I used to disrespect it because it let you get too far with decent buttonmashing, but my bro and I are past that point and it makes a world of difference. DOA4 made some improvements in terms of that which are hard to appreciate without having played it much.

And dude you can save screens of a Spartan owning on Hayabusa (and vice versa) that look amazing
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Sciros == Oosh

[Mike]

First 3 DOA games definitely sucked, especially when put up next to Tekken or Virtua Fighter, though Tekken is a more apt comparison. DOA 4 has its moments though and they made a lot of subtle changes that enhanced the depth.

I think the Spartan character is pretty lame honestly. My 2 biggest problems with that game were online lag was atrocious a lot of the time and that one end boss was hella cheap and you had to figure out some cheap move to spam to beat her consistently. Annoying as hell. The online lobby setup in that game is pretty sweet though, lot of unnecessary stuff but it's still cool.
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[Sciros]

"Depth" isn't even all that big a concern for me as long as it's not the only thing that drives the learning curve. If twitch skills matter, then so be it. A lot of skill in DOA comes from developing a familiarity with character combos and in turn fast reactions to them. If you could recognize what combo your opponent was going into within a split-second you could counter him/her successfully a majority of the time. And that's not so much utilizing depth as it is using other skills. Kinda like Gradius doesn't have much depth but there is a concept of being "good' at arcade shooters like it.

A conclusion then is depth doesn't imply fun or quality, and fun/quality does not imply depth ^_^
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Sciros == Oosh

[Mike]

I definitely agree with that conclusion Sciros. I was just saying that I feel they did add some depth, and it was a good addition to 4.
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[Sciros]

Certainly. Though I think other additions to the game outweigh even the depth they added to the battle mechanic. They tweaked or re-designed a few movesets (Hayabusa's and Ayane's being particularly noticeable) for the better and it makes Hayabusa in particular a lot more fun to play. Since he is awesome, it makes DOA better ^_^

And the Spartan is 50% cool 50% lame. If it were Master Chief I'd say it's 100% cool but the fact that they made it a girl doesn't make sense to me seeing as nobody cares about Halo novels and everyone wants to see Chief square off against Hayabusa.
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Sciros == Oosh

[William Rehnquist]

Hayabusa armed with paper airplanes vs. Master Chief armed with a Needler and a dream. Who wins?

[Mike]

Master Chief loses, because only pussies wear BMX helmets.
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[Sciros]

Hayabusa does do scarier things than Cheef.
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Sciros == Oosh

[William Rehnquist]

Ori-ghost-mi?

*jumps off bridge*

[Anuj]

[Mike]

I don't think you're going to see any great online fighters coming out for 360, just a hunch. I'm also doubting anything great will come out for Wii besides Smash but who knows. PS3 is still the best bet for fighters unfortunately.
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[Anuj]

Yep, sadly, you're probably right.

Though, who knows, its difficulty to sell on PS3 may make them lean more towards 360...and release a better controller for fighting games on 360, cause, while I do like the 360 controller, but D-Pad and buttons are terrible.

And Wii will have a lot of good fighting games, just mostly VC games. The only question is online playability. The VC Controller could work well for fighting games. The Wiimote would be impossible for most fighting games though, yes, that is true.
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[Sciros]

Meh, I've been satisfied by DOA games much more than anticipated before I got into them more. I don't play them for long sittings, not nearly the sort from those good old Killer Instinct and KI Gold days, but they give me a half hour of fun at a time and that's about what I'm looking for nowadays.

If Rare were to actually make a *decent* Killer Instinct for 360, I'd be all over it.

Brawl, I'm seriously hoping won't be worse than Melee. That's in all honesty my real concern, because after 5 years there ought to be a pretty sizeable jump and I don't see it. I do see Solid Snake though, and I was *way* more excited about Spartan 458 to be honest :-/

Really, there's no fighting game franchise (Smash really doesn't count for me) that I am very pleased with. If they were to make a much more polished Guilty Gear then I might get into that, but the ridiculous single-player mode and poor character balance is keeping me from really playing it more. That and I forget I own it for my Xbox, heh.
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Sciros == Oosh

[Anuj]

[Sciros]

Well those changes to Smash you mentioned could have been done in about a year, or at most two. Five years warrants a sizeable change IMO. I don't really want to play the same game because I already have it and the Wii is compatible with it anyway.

As for Snake, well no it's not silly because while I don't give 2 craps about either Snake or Spartan 458, in the end I get to see a cool shiny Spartan vs a fuzzy generic-looking soldier guy that reminds me of Goldeneye enemies. If they threw in someone cool like Simon Belmont then I would be interested. As it is, I just see him laming up an already pretty lame character lineup.
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Sciros == Oosh

[Mike]

It may just be me, but I always thought Spartans looked hilariously bad. I mean bland army green tech armor and a freakin BMX helmet, lol, doesnt exactly scream creativity (nor does snake but at least snake has expressions, also, how awesome would it be if Old Snake was in Brawl smoking a cigarette all the time...).
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[Sciros]

I actually don't mind the Spartan design. It's simple but there's an elegance to it, kind of like a good SUV or something. The helmet is BMX-ish but I like BMX helmets so that works out for me. I'll be the first to admit that Spartans aren't very *creatively* designed but I still like the way they look, and DOA4's graphics definitely made the most of that. Snake still seems way more generic to me because I can at least tell Spartans apart from other scifi soldiers (which is more than I can say for something like Killzone; I can't draw a "Killzone" soldier in particular, and Spartans I could manage before I ever played Halo), but Snake is, without his game, just a dude in fatigues with bad facial hair.
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Sciros == Oosh

[Mike]

He does have that pimpin' headband (it's late for me, so I'm stupid and forget the correct term). Not very many crackas wear those.
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[Anuj]

Well, when we're talking about Snake, we're talking about one of the most developed characters in all of gaming. Easily one of the best characters in terms of depth and attachment (and one of the funniest). He's funny, he's smart, he's quick, he's a legend (literally), and he's 100% badass.
Kojima is an amazing master of creation with his work on the MGS series both in terms of gameplay and dramatic storytelling. I think it's safe to say that his involvement with MGS4 can largely attribute people's interest in the PS3 (much like MGS2 and the PS2).

Then we're talking about Master Chief, a character with virtually no depth or background whatsoever. Probably one of the lamest characters in all of games. He's 100% badass by a totally different calibur, as in, there is NOTHING else to him. He's a generic nobody, with a generic nobody of a name too (Master Chief? Come on.) Anything and everything happens and he's got his one-liner and that's it. The argument could be made that actions speak louder than words, which is fair, but his actions are defined strictly by that of the player and absolutely nothing else, which, while interesting on a different calibur, leaves nothing in the ways of character-driven interest.

Anyway, I suppose if we boil it down to just the look then we're talking about both fronts being pretty damn lame here. Spartan 458? Please. Spartan 371 with tits. They didn't even do anything cool with it, like give her alternate costumes, like a Spartan armor bikini or some shit. That would have been hilarious. But no no, we don't want to actually put Master Chief in the game, cause then when people play and suck with her, it'd be all, "man, Cheif gets pwned by Hayabuse and Kasume and Ayane" and crap, so they avoided that mess by doing the whole 458 crap. Anyway, despite the whole, they are both pretty lame comment, I think they both look pretty cool. Chief didn't really look cool to start off, but I've grown accustomed to it more and I do think it looks pretty cool. Same thing with Snake.

I think that what they can do with Snake in Smash will serve to have a lot of interest in the ways of easter eggs, slight references to story progression and dialogue, even perhaps some story development, not to mention that I know they will be very funny with all of it.

While MGS stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea, I know, it's faults couldn't really be attributed to any other factor. It's a very Eastern series, set in a Western-esque environment with more familiarities of the former than the latter. I know pretty much any and all appreciation that one could expect to garner from Snake and excursions would require that you have played or be a fan of the MGS series, so if you don't fall into either category, it's completely fair to not care about him at all, but he does deserve more than the flatnote of a character that is Chief (which just ain't gonna happen, probably). So anyways, what I'm saying Sciros, is that I know you haven't played any of the MGS games, but I do think that you should. I dunno, you probably won't because you've probably already seen enough to say that you aren't interested in it, but its quality really comes from some really new and creative things that Kojima has managed to with some otherwise done-to-death moments/ideas, and also from the small moments in the MGS games that might generally get overlooked in the more general and bigger picture of the series. You should play it.

Anyways, for me, it's like comparing Batman and... Iron Man...except in this case, Iron Woman...eugh, that would be horrible.
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[William Rehnquist]

On the real: I misread Master Chief as "Master Chef" for like 6 months after Halo came out and I had no idea who Master Chef was or what game he would happen to be in.

Also a Master Chef suit would be tits.

[Sciros]

Anuj you're getting hung up on what game these guys are [derived] from. Spartan 458 could have been an all-original DOA character for all it matters. Killer Instinct characters had no background to speak of but they looked cool enough to warrant being played as, and in a fighting game that's how much appearance matters.

Now, that having been said, I think you have an idea of just what I think of most Smash and DOA characters already in that regard. But as for Snake in particular, he really has nothing to set him apart from the most random average soldier. He interests me about as much as Bayman's commando outfit, except even less so because Bayman's outfit was still more hardcore.

I don't know why, in even starting to devote a paragraph to "looks alone" you didn't even talk about Spartan appearance and dwelled on it being a female rather than Chief :-/ So in the end you ended up not giving a fair "looks alone" comparison at all.

Now, the MGS4 Snake does look somewhat more unique (at least his face; his suit just looks nasty to me considering how old he appears though). But the Brawl Snake is painfully uninteresting.

He may even fight really amazingly and be fun enough to use by virtue of that, but it won't change the fact that he has John Doe looks in Nintendo's game.

And your Batman/Ironman analogy... well if Batman's costume was modern-day military fatigues then I guess it would be a fair one. Good thing Bats wears a cool Bat outfit
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Sciros == Oosh

[Anuj]

What is there to be said about the Spartan looks? I didn't spend too much time on the Snake look either because it's a meaningless discussion that boils down to ones tastes. I already said that they were both pretty lame in terms of standing out from the crowd. The looks alone paragraph was really just meant to say that it didn't matter for either character. You can't really say that one is better than the other considering the mediums they are from. The rest of it was just a tangent about it being Spartan 458 and not Chief, which is just another gripe I had with her inclusion in the game.

I focused more on the character backgrounds because it would actually serve to have more interest as a part of the individual character inclusion in a fighting game. Things such as moves, weapons, animations, etc. Snake has much more possibilities, though granted we're dealing with just that, possibilities, and we don't know what is really in store for us (but from what I have seen, I am excited); and Spartan has already served to disappoint, because the only real thing that she does that's anything Halo-esque, is the grenade tag thing (which, btw, I've only heard about, never seen).

Getting "hung up" on the games they are derived from is exactly what we should be doing. The looks they have is such an insignificant thing to focus on. I mean, the look is there, then they have to go somewhere with it. They didn't just design KI characters and then give them all the same move sets, no, they designed (for the most part) move sets that fit well with the character design. So, whereas with most DOA characters, this works (because most of them are more semi-realistic and more of a martial arts/realism focus), on the other hand we have Spartan 458, which being that it's in DOA, they can't do too many interesting things and still stay in the bounds they created, but still, it almost entirely negates the purpose of the character being in the game in the first place outside of that whole "hey look, Master Chief is in the game!" appeal that they were going for. And that leads back to the boring character that it is based off of in the first place. Master Chief has nothing interesting they can do with him without making him dual wield two pretty lame guns, hold a plasma sword, or drive around a warthog, or do some grenade tagging or something.

And Snake doesn't have John Doe looks, I'd say at least 75% of people that would consider themselves anywhere from casual to hardcore gamers would recognize Snake as Snake without even a moment of hesitation. Otherwise, the same could be said of Chief and his pretty generic futuristic space armor/battle suit look in...DOA... (which, btw, I think it's pretty safe to say, that in both mediums if you were to go to a group of people and ask them which character wasn't like all of the others, they'd point to Snake in Smash, and Spartan in DOA after a brief look at both of them). Though it doesn't really matter because ignorance is never really a good excuse for apathy or closed-mindedness or anything really.

And back to the Batman/Ironman analogy, if upon making Batman's costume a modern-day military outfit (which by the way, Batman would still be cool as hell in, and that's part of the point I am trying to make), they also lame-ified Iron Man's already pretty lame but not as lame as Chief's armor (which Iron Man would not be as cool in, because like Chief, though not as bad, pretty much all of the reason people like them is because of their cool armor), then it would be fair.

--
And on a side-note, we stopped talking about the DOA movie quite a while ago and normally I don't care, but since this thread is yielding a pretty good discussion that could fall into a pretty specific category, I'm gonna split it into it's own thread just in case other people were interested in what we were talking about now, but not interested in the DOA movie.
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[Mike]

People really think the Batman outfit is cool? Interesting.
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[Sciros]

Meh it seems to me you just love Snake and hate Spartan 458 on principle :-/ I am going wholly on visuals because there is literally nothing to be said about the fighting style of Snake yet. What little I've seen looks like standard military hand-to-hand with a point-blank rocket launcher thrown in It's not a lot to go on, and it's also not what I was talking about because like I am trying to stress, character background doesn't matter to me all that much.

If it did, I wouldn't like any characters I hadn't seen before

I still stand by my statement that Snake looks like a run-of-the-mill infantryman. If you say he stands out, then maybe that's because other video game protagonists just aren't quite as generic. Honestly, what is distinguishing about him? That he wears a headband?

You probably know that I have never "started to like" a character's looks just because he/she was in an awesome game. TJ Combo still looks silly even though he was my main in KI for SNES. Likewise, being in a crap game doesn't make me dislike a character design. So Halo and MGS series notwithstanding, I much prefer the Spartan design to the US Military design haha.
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Sciros == Oosh

[Commander R.]

Soul Calibur <Virtua Fighter<Street Figheter< Gundam Wing Endless Waltz< Smash

DOA=boobs

Care to check my math anybody?
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I wish my lawn were emo, so it would cut itself.

[Sciros]

You forgot Guilty Gear and Killer Instinct.

I'd replace Smash with GG < Smash < KI but I know most folks would put Smash on top. To me Smash is diferent though. It's like putting Mario Kart on top of racing games when I really can't compare it to Forza properly.
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Sciros == Oosh

[Mike]

I was never really big on KI, it was fun, but I both loved and hated the combo system. It was cool but WAAAAAAAAY too much button tapping. Way too much.
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[William Rehnquist]

I dug KI a lot but haven't played it much recently (re: the past 7 years), whereas Street Fighter has managed to stay with me since Capcom keeps releasing the same 6 year old games over and over. I would personally put GG and SF above Smash, but that's just me.

I would put DOA over Soul Calibur/Tekken and Virtua Fighter for the 3D fighters, but I personally just don't dig them that much. Also the better I got at DOA the less fun it became; it became more like paper-rock-scissors with better graphics and tits (Unless you are playing PRS with a girl or a fat dude). Then again DOA4 may have rectified this; I can't really comment because I have not played that one.

So for me it is...

Soul Calibur and Tekken, I just think those games are not fun. I don't like the gameplay mechanics. < Virtua Fighter = I only like powerbombing people with Jeffry. That's fun. Everything else I am eh on. < DOA is fun enough that I'll play it and enjoy it < Smash is good enough *ducks thrown debris* < Killer Instinct had Cinder and he was funny < Street Fighter & the other Capcom 2D games (Capcom v. x and Darkstalkers) were what I played a ton in my youth and I have kept a lot of positive feelings from this; much like how I liked Soundgarden when I was 12 and I can totally understand how someone would not like them very much but they are too far ingrained in my psyche to stop liking them < Guilty Gear which I think is tits.

AND NOW AS MEMBERS OF THE WU-TANG CLAN BECAUSE I AM BORED.

Soul Calibur/Tekken = U-God (SUCKS).
VF = Masta Killa (Just kinda there, not offensive but not great.).
DOA = Method Man (Frustrating. Should be better than it is.).
Smash = Ghostface Killa (The best thing still going and quite great, but I am not willing to put it above the other things. [Note: If Smash Brawl is the same leap from Melee as More Fish is from Fishscale then Smash is totally jumping KI and possibly SF.]).
Killer Instinct = GZA (Great back in the old school but I cannot say if it would hold up as well today [Seriously, pre-Wu GZA is the bestest])
SF/Capcom = ODB (Fun and goofy).
GG = The RZA (GOD.).

Apologies to Raekwon and Inspectah Deck.

[Anuj]

I think I like GG more than KI, but only slightly. I'm not really sure why, I think it's due mostly to how much more variety there is to the characters, and the sweet animations and such. While KI did have the best animations of its time, inarguably, I really do want a new one, and please please please make it 2D (but there ain't no way in hell that'll happen).
But, oh yeah, Smash better than both of them, definitely.

But I don't think I think of Smash as different as Mario Kart and most racing games...at least not anymore. Probably about 5 years ago, the fighting game genre was so bare and simplistic and straightforward, that somewhat beyond ordinary fighting games didn't fit in that field, but now, with so many varying styles of fighters out there, it all comes down to controlling one character (or more than one) versus another character (or group). Well, without items and on neutral stages anyways, haha. WITH items and on crazy-ass stages, then we're more in the non-competitive fighting game, genre. Which is entirely a different genre (nowadays).

Anyway, I like Tekken (5, most others before it sucked ass) more than Virtua Fighter, and Soul Calibur more than Tekken. While VF seems like it is a better game because it undoubtedly takes more skill and such, I just don't have as much fun with it. I've seen people who are bad-ass at the game and have a lot of fun with it, and it is definitely understandable.

So for me:

a bunch of other random fighting games including DOA and several other fighting games that most of you have probably never played < VF < Tekken < Soul Calibur < Marvel (yeah, I kinda threw this in) < KI < GG < Smash

Mortal Kombat sucks.
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[Mike]

For me, Mortal Kombat < KI < Tekken < Street Fighter < GG < Soul Calibur (only the first one) < VF < Bushido Blade (both) < Smash
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