Blazblue

Games

[AC] [360] [PS3] [PC] [VAR] Blazblue -Calamity Trigger-

Moderator: JC Denton

Unread postby El Chaos » 08 Jun 2011 00:43

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... 056#p13056

Recap wrote:Continuum Shift II Plus para Play Station Vita, sucesora de PSP, anunciado:

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/ne ... 51178.html

"Plus" por el soporte para control parcialmente táctil con el 'touch pad' trasero (cómo te quedas...) y nuevos escenarios propios de un mal juego de PS2.
User avatar
El Chaos
Insomnia Staff
 
Joined: 26 Jan 2009 20:34
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Unread postby icycalm » 21 Sep 2012 15:02

About a week ago I sent a PM to this guy on Shmups, asking whether he'd be interested in expanding this post of his into an in-depth review of Blazblue:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 48#p828248

DragonInstall wrote:Like I've always said.

Guilty Gear does everything better than BB. Character design, balance, gameplay, music. There really isn't anything I can think of that BB does better except in the graphics department(only in resolution, still prefer looking at GG since the character designs and moves in that game are better looking). And no both stories are shitty :?

BB is just a watered down version of GG. Like going backwards in terms of what GG established as an excellent fighting system.

Although I am sort of interested to see how the BB team wants to speed the game and make it less long combo heavy. But it's much too late at this point since GG is coming out on live / psn so at this point all my fucks for BB are gone.

If you were really into GG then it's really hard to play BB without getting annoyed. I seriously can't get hyped in any BB matches.

I'm not even nitpicking when I say BB does everything worse than GG, it's a HUGE downgrade. So much so that I started playing SF4 which is completely different from GG. That's how disgusted I was with what arcsys making a mockery of the GG system. Claiming BB was the new GG is fucking bullshit.


It's interesting to me because from time to time I hear similar grumblings about the game, but I've never seen anyone attempt to substantiate them. It's also interesting because all three major fighting games seem to have retrogressed with their 720p installments. I have a review of KOFXII sitting around somewhere that explains this, and of course SFIV is SFIV.

So, since this guy hasn't replied, I am putting this out there in case someone else can help me. If you see anyone analyzing Blazblue's problems anywhere, go ahead and link them here for me. If all else fails I am going to SRK and starting a thread where I'll ask people to do just that.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby El Chaos » 21 Sep 2012 16:04

Here's the promotion video for ChronoPhantasma, the next installment: http://youtu.be/ZnFtSHWsY5Y?hd=1

New characters, new stages and new moves for existing characters. As with Continuum Shift II, it'll be available for Taito's online arcade platform, NESiCA×Live.

Pictures and news over at Postback: http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... hp?id=1682
Last edited by El Chaos on 29 Apr 2013 18:42, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
El Chaos
Insomnia Staff
 
Joined: 26 Jan 2009 20:34
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Unread postby Lord Knight » 21 Sep 2012 22:22

Every GG player will give you a different answer to why BB is inferior to GG, depending on the aspects of GG he liked that were ruined in BB. Many of them will be about uninteresting characters and such, but I'll cover the main ones that refer to mechanics:

1. Slower pace, which makes the game less fun.

2. FRCs were a bit hard to do in GG, so they removed them completely from BB, leaving only the regular roman cancels. Blazblue has a buffer mechanic where you can perform a special and hold the button, and for 5 frames, the character will automatically do the special when he is able to, to make wakeup reversals easier to perform. They should have implemented a similar system with FRCs, where you can press and hold the buttons before the FRC window, and when the window kicks in the FRC will come out automatically if you were holding the buttons. But instead they had chosen the bad solution of simply not having FRCs anymore, and by doing that they also removed many interesting tactics you could do with your super gauge. Now in BB the super gauge is mostly used to buff the combo damage, and not for pressure and various tactics which GG FRC were used for. (FRCs were very meter efficient, and could even be used after whiffs.)

3. 4 buttons instead of 5. This may not seem like a big deal, but 1 less button means each character has less normals to work with. Add to that the removal of close range and far range S attacks,and the 4th button is a drive button, which is not something that can always be used in pressure strings, and result is that the pressure game in BB looks more simplistic, with less options when compared to GG. In fact, simple jab pressure was so good in BB that in later revisions they started limiting the amount of "rapid fire" jabs you can do to 3. And jab pressure is still THE thing to do with some characters at high level. This does not happen in GG.

4. The throw system is HORRID. In GGXXAC, which added throw escapes for the first time, throws are very short ranged, have 0 frame startup (similar to Street Fighter 2) and a 2 frame window to tech. You can't really react to a 2 frame situation so the throw system was based on prediction.
In BB throws have bigger range, but 7 frames of startup, and a tech window of 13 frames. These overall 20 frames make the throw system based on reaction instead of prediction. Players will not be able to tech throws 100% of the time, but it's still a very degenerate mechanic. How throws are done is an important aspect in a 2D fighting game, so it's a shame to go from "throws done right" to "throws done horribly wrong". There's also an aspect of throwing an opponent in the middle of a combo. With 27 frames of tech window in this situation, it's just another pure reaction test and does not add any interesting decision making to the game whatsoever.

5. Overheads- In GG the standing dust attacks were a general balancing tool. Almost all of them were made bad on purpose, to be used only as a last resort to breaking defense. Something that will only work once in a few matches. In BB, combined with the ineffectiveness of throws as a mixup tool, overheads now play a big part in breaking defense. Instead of working hard to set up a pure 50/50 jump-in mixup (due to reason #6), now you can easily enforce a reaction based mixup. If the opponent has good reactions to both the throws and the overheads, you cannot break his defense unless he falls asleep or something.

6. Wakeup system- Blazblue adopted a wakeup system similar to 3D games. Get up early, get up late, roll forward, roll backwards. But by giving you more options of getting up, they removed the importance of getting into an advantageous position in the neutral game, AKA "momentum". Instead of setting up various okizeme tactics to reward the knockdown you worked for in the neutral game, you now get either nothing or being limited to spamming 2A jabs above the opponent lying down since it's the only way to ensure your continuous offense.

7. Guard break system- Guilty Gear had a cool guard break system where the more you block, the more your defense lowers. There's a gauge that measures that, and when the gauge reaches its peak, every regular hit attack becomes gains a counter hit effect, making that moment where you fail to defend somewhat deadly. BBCT replaced it with a bad seesaw system, which was later changed to a "primer" system, which was not as bad as the seesaw one but still bad. The guard bar was made out of units called primers, and every character had a special move that removes primers. Barrier usage could prevent the last primer from depleting and prevent a guard crush.
So it basically goes like this: Spam said move until last primer, then spam it again until the barrier gauge is depleted, and then spam it again to guard break. GG's system worked really well with the game's flow, but BB's system feels gimmicky and forced.

8. Some combos are too long and take forever to finish. (Not as extreme as games like Marvel vs Capcom 3, but still enough to piss off Guilty Gear players.)

It's not that BB (especially the latest version, Extend) is an abomination of a game, it's just really hurts falling from the top of the genre, to such mediocrity.
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby icycalm » 21 Sep 2012 23:05

Finally, now we are getting somewhere.

Now post your opinions on character design, graphics, music, and any other thoughts you may have, and I'll stitch everything together into a review and send you a tenner to buy yourself a couple of drinks on me for being so helpful.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 21 Sep 2012 23:08

Also, whatever you know about balance, primarily for the original game, and as a footnote on whether ArcSys has been improving it with all these updates or worsening it. If you don't know too much on this, reporting popular opinion will do almost as well.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Lord Knight » 22 Sep 2012 00:32

I thank you for the kind words but this part will be much harder for me to write, as I'm really bad at talking descriptively about aesthetics, so feel free to rephrase everything if you need to.

While mechanically each character feels unique like in GG, the designs themselves (how they look and sound) feel bland. Toshimichi Mori (BB series' producer) said once in an interview that BB's character designs were made to cater to Japanese tastes. But that's exactly how they ended like- They feel like a bunch of Anime clichés. They also talk way too much during the fight, and repeat the same sentences multiple when they get hit by combos.

But that's where the bad part of the aesthetics ends, and the guy you quoted who said "everything is worse" seems to let several bad aspects blind him towards everything else.

The sprites are done in the same way GG sprites were made (high resolution but few frames per move) and they look fine in my opinion. The stages are nice and vivid, and overall an improvement compared to some of GG's stages. Rachel's stage specifically has petals flying around as you move around her rose garden, which is cool.

The music is the same Daisuke Ishiwatari style of music GG players know and love. The only difference is the styles he explores here. If GG offered a mix of power metal, heavy metal and hard rock, BB is mostly in the power-symphonic realm, with an occasional visit to other styles like Carl's jazzy progressive metal theme.

Now back to mechanics- The list of problems I gave were present in all of the series' titles. The first title, Blazblue Calamity Trigger, had some awful mechanics besides the ones on the list. You had a burst every round, but using it made you take about 1.5 damage for the rest of the round. The damage was too big already and this only made things worse. The character balance was bad, full of 7-3 and 8-2 matchups, and even a practical infinite was present. In the Insomnia rating scale, I'd say this is a 2 star game.

Later sequels removed the stupid burst rule, and mostly handled character balance, which improved greatly all the way to CS2 1.10 AKA Extend. They also tweaked some system rules, like advantage after instant block, but all the main problems I covered on the list remained intact. So I'd say BBCS, BBCS2, and BBCS2 ver. 1.10 (That's the arcade name. The console ports are called Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend.) all deserve 3 stars, with Extend being the best in the series.

And just to make things clear- This user and the PayPal account that paid for it are not mine. I had some PayPal problems and couldn't pay for my own culture.vg user at the time, so a friend paid for his old user and let me use it, and I gave him the money back at a later date. He himself does NOT visit the website anymore and does NOT use this user anymore. We are fully aware that you don't want 2 people using the same user. We have respected this demand and we will continue to do so. If there's still a problem, please let me know and I'll take care of it. So if this review ever gets published, it does not represent Lord Knight's opinion, but my own. I'll just send you my name and paypal in a PM or an e-mail, if that's ok with you.
Last edited by Lord Knight on 22 Sep 2012 01:19, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 00:59

First off, fix the goddamn paragraphs in your post. How hard can it be to do this?

Second, I don't think you understand what a two-star fighting game is like.

Here's a one-star fighting game:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/ds/windyxwindam/

A two-star fighting game:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/naomi/jingistorm/review.php

A three-star fighting game:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/atomiswave/h ... review.php

There's no four-star fighting game reviewed on Insomnia yet (though I sometimes think of bumping Hokuto no Ken up to four, because it's a really fun system -- even though the game is broken to the point of being competitively unplayable. The single-player is fun enough, and the aesthetics cool enough, to compensate for that).

And here's a five-star fighting game:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/custom/arcanaheart/

So it seems to me that original BB is three stars, and the better sequels four. Check out those reviews I linked you, think about it a bit, and let me know what you think.

As for the account thing... Jesus fucking Christ I don't even want to deal with this. It would have been better if you hadn't told me anything. How am I supposed to fix it now? I guess I could give you a new account and suspend Lord Knight's, but I don't think the forum software would allow me to transfer your posts over to the new acccount. Anyway, I'll take a look and see what I can do. Just email me your PayPal address and tell me, in this thread, how you want to be credited for the review. You can choose between a username (which I will use also either for your new account, or rename Lord Knight's account with it), or your real name or a pen name. But Jesus fucking Christ you guys. How hard can it be to pay 20 miserable fucking euros once every goddamn year?
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 01:09

Post fixed (I am having browser/connection issues).
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Lord Knight » 22 Sep 2012 02:33

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?f=13&t=22 ... 251#p12251
The original owner of this account posted only once, in the "Introduce Yourself!" thread, and you can delete that post if you'd like as it won't have any effect on the thread anyway. So you can just rename the account "N T" and use that name in the review. ndvnymn@hotmail.com is the PayPal account. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regarding the reviews you linked, if Arcana Heart is a 5, what grade will get a sequel that improved upon it? Still a 5, with the improvements being mentioned in the text? If so, then I guess you can give BBCT a 3 and its sequels a 4. That will make GGXXAC a 5 star game, despite being slightly inferior to its prequel, GGXXS. (But still better than the best BB title.)
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 02:45

Lord Knight wrote:Regarding the reviews you linked, if Arcana Heart is a 5, what grade will get a sequel that improved upon it? Still a 5, with the improvements being mentioned in the text?


No, I would increase my scale to 6 stars, just for the sequel to Arcana Heart. And then add another star for the next sequel, etc. That's how IGN got to their 100-grade scale. They started from Pong, lol.

Fucking aspies. Have you even read anything I've written on this site? 5 means "highly recommended" -- that's all. There are THOUSANDS of fucking five-star games, that doesn't mean that they are OBJECTIVELY, SCIENTIFICALLY "EQUAL" for fuck's sakes. It's just a helpful goddamn sign to help you sort through tens of thousands of videogames without having to read an encyclopedia everytime you want to pick a game. Jesus fucking Christ.

Lord Knight wrote:If so, then I guess you can give BBCT a 3 and its sequels a 4. That will make GGXXAC a 5 star game, despite being slightly inferior to its prequel, GGXXS. (But still better than the best BB title.)


lol yeah, and with this kind of thinking Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is a one-star game lol. Anyway, if I keep going I am going to start abusing you so much you'll end up hating yourself for shutting up and taking it, so let's just drop it for now. Thanks for all your wonderful analysis of BB anyway. As for the account issue, I'll let you know how I'll handle it once I decide.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 02:48

Also:

Lord Knight wrote:That will make GGXXAC a 5 star game, despite being slightly inferior to its prequel, GGXXS.


XS is the PREDECESSOR of AC. Google "prequel" to find out what it means.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 03:13

In fact, going by your evaluation of the changes between CT and its sequels, I'd say even CT is a four-star game. The changes are not really so fundamental as to justify an entirely different rating. Because consider this:

Hokuto no Ken is practically unplayble competitively, yet I still gave it 3 stars (and I am even thinking of bumping it up to 4!) If you would give CT 2 stars, as you initially said you would, you'd have given HnK 1 star.

But then what would you have given to Windy X Windam and Jingi Storm? -1 star. -2 stars?

Whatever "competitive" players would say, a fighting game can also be very fun to play in single-player mode, against computer opponents, for a few days or weeks, until you've beaten all of them and gained a decent grasp of its system -- no matter how broken, or unbalanced the system may be. A broken or unabalanced system can still be extremely fun to play and experiment with -- and then a minor revision can fix its problems and make the game viable for long-term "competitive" play. But that doesn't mean that every game that's not viable competitively is a 1-star game, and that by changing ONE TINY LITTLE RULE DETAIL a game will suddenly jump from 3 stars to 4 or 5! If you act in this utterly asinine manner you are essentially saying that all the mechanics and the aesthetics of an extremely elaborate, beautiful game that took a team of extremely talented individuals several years to make IS WORTH 1 OR 2 STARS AT MOST, and then some tiny rule change that some fagot aspie proposed IS WORTH AN EXTRA TWO OR THREE STARS!

Meh. I really don't think I am getting through to you, nor would I get through to anyone on SRK. Is fucking Blazblue in the same category as Hokuto no Ken? Because that's what we'll be saying if we give it 3 stars. And I am under no circumstances going to lower HnK to 2 stars (i.e. to Jingi Storm level) in order to avoid the Blazblue rating seeming ridiculous.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 03:28

Here, I will explain it to you in autistic terms, so you can understand it.

4 stars translated to a 100-point scale is 60 to 80. Get it?

So Blazblue -Calamity Trigger- is a 60 game. And its sequels become progressively better to reach 65, 70, 75, etc. all the way to the latest version, whichever the fuck it is, which gets 80.

But back in my scale all these numbers equal 4 stars, which means "recommended", and which is less than Accent Core and its immediate predecessors, all of which get 5 stars, meaning "highly recommended", but more than Hokuto no Ken's 3 stars, which means "good, but has been done before, and much better". Get it?

And if you need me to I can explain it also in a scale out of 1,000, or 1,000,000, or a quadrillion or whatever
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 04:48

And here, for what it's worth, are my observations of Calamity Trigger, based on 3-4 hours of playtime, in singleplayer mode, of the US 360 port sometime back in 2009:

1. The large sprite size and widescreen setup make the action feel a little cramped. There's no sense of vertical movement, and I suspect the whole aerial aspect of Guilty Gear will be either altogether gone, or greatly diminished.

2. This, combined with the slower general pacing, makes the game feel quite heavy, plodding, etc. The direct opposite of favorites like ST, MVC2, AH, and yes, GG. Then again I had only played the game for 4 hours or so, so I figured maybe there was stuff I didn't know which sped things up, and maybe also jump-moves/dashes, etc. which improved the aerial aspect. But I guess my initial assessment was correct.

3. The incorporation of 3D elements in 2D backgrounds is the best I've seen so far, lending a great sense of aliveness to the stages, and making the all-2D stages of recent high-res fighters feel relatively "dead" in comparison. I guess it's difficult to include a lot of animation to hi-res 2D backgrounds, so this is a good solution when it's pulled off well -- and in Blazblue it certainly is. Still when the camera is zoomed in on certain stages (only a couple of them, can't remember for sure which ones right now, though I think it was the samurai dude's and the goth girl's) you can see some huge-ass polygons, even if just for a few seconds, which REALLY destroy the stage's beauty. They should have seen this and fixed it by adding a few more goddamn polygons, or moving those elements around so that they are not in the way of the zoomed-in camera etc. But apart from that I really have no aesthetic issues with the game -- but this, again, is based only on 3-4 hours of playtime.

So that is all I personally got. But I am certainly looking forward to exploring it at least a little more at some point in the future.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 05:02

Anyway, maybe we should go with 3 stars. I don't know, and it's hard to decide when I don't really have a personal opinion, and am simply going by hearsay. And the fact that you only seem to be aware of a couple of fighting games isn't helping.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Lord Knight » 22 Sep 2012 05:39

There seems to be a misunderstanding here. I made a mistake and misused the website's grade system and that's why it looks weird from your point of view. I think every dedicated fighting player like me would have done the same mistake, so I'll try to translate a fighting game player's way of thinking to "Insomnia language".

As dedicated fighting game players, most of the games we end up trying are 4s and 5s to us. The aesthetics are usually "good enough" for our somewhat low standards, the systems are fun to explore, the games are responsive and playing them feels good on the basic level. I can't remember the last time I played a fighting game that has a similar lack of quality to a single player game that gets 1 and 2 on this website. But when we talk about 5 star games all day, the only way to have any sort of actual discussion is to use a magnifying glass on the scale and start nitpicking over specific rules that make one game better than the other when two good players are playing each other. It may be similar to IGN giving grades like 93 and 94, only that unlike them we can really FEEL the differences, even if we can't slap a number on them. Maybe it's not fit for a game review, but for an effort to make a "top X fighting games" list that has actual thought behind it.

So if I understand your standards right, both HNK and all the Blazblue games should be getting at least 4 stars and a game like SF4 should probably be getting less since despite it being a better game compared to utter crap like Tattoo Assassins, I still find it slow, boring and tactically stupid, and the 3 revisions it got later didn't change that. On the other hand, a Hokuto no Ken plus a rule update that makes sense will be worth 5 without any question, as it already got everything else that makes a fighting game fun besides that missing part. I hope that makes any sense to you.
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2012 05:58

Yes, that's more or less it. Your second paragraph especially nailed the issue perfectly. You are very clever and articulate, I am glad I didn't ban you.

So if SF4 is a 3 to you, according to Insomnia's rating scheme, it makes sense that BB would be a 4, and with my review of KOFXII giving it again a 3, BB would be the best among the three major 720p fighters -- though still inferior to great titles of the past like SF2 and 3, AH and GG. This is a rough ranking to help us impose some order on the chaos. Isn't order great? Don't you feel much better now?

Now go and write a review of SF4 for me, when you get the time, and post it in the review section :)
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 24 Sep 2012 15:48

I ordered the US 360 versions of CS and EXTEND after watching the Chrono Phantasma trailer Chaos linked in his Postback thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_O9VIUmmiQ

Aesthetically, at least, they've come a long way since CT. The first new characters and stages in CS were pretty bland, I thought, but CP looks amazing, so I am really looking forward to it. In the meantime I'll go methodically through every previous installment to prepare myself for it, and also see if I come up with anything to add to the review. Too bad I was never that big into GG, so it's hard to make comparisons on that score. I was just getting into Accent Core the last few weeks before I left Japan.

On another note, I am trying to put the review together now, and we need some positive comments at the end. You can't spend a couple of pages piling up the criticisms and then end up by recommending the game with nothing to balance them out. Right now, the main positive I got is that, out of the three main 720p fighters -- SF4, KOF12, and this -- this is easily the best (though that doesn't take into account KOF13, because I haven't played it), both mechanically and certainly aesthetically (Mechanically you got the stripped down KOF12 and the retrogressive SF4, and aesthetically you got the ugly SF4 and the upscaled sprites of KOF12, as well as the latter's rather bland background and general art direction). That, for me, is enough of a reason to give even the original title, with its limited roster and all its flaws, a light recommendation. But if you can come up with some more mild praise for the end it would help a lot.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Lord Knight » 25 Sep 2012 00:17

Blazblue's aesthetics are good and the characters themselves are unique and fun to play. It's exciting to experiment with mechanics like Tager's magnetism drive, Rachel's wind drive and Bang's shuriken bumpers and Furinkazan mode. It's just that the general system hinders the experience.

What do you mean when you say "three main 720p fighters"? The way I see it, the genre has been blowing up with new titles and revisions of old ones in the last few years, and I don't think I can pick several titles that really overshadow the rest in quality nor in importance. Well, you could say that SF4 is important because it was very influential, but not in a good way. It turned the fighting game scene into an "eSports" community replica, which is the worst thing that can happen if you really like playing fighting games with other people. I decided to dedicate one paragraph (just one!) to rant about it in the upcoming SF4 review, but I'd really like to read your StarCraft and Counter-Strike reviews first, since they touch on the "eSports" subject.

KOF12 was like getting drunk and waking up in bed next to a hideous woman. It was an experience KOF players chose to pretend it never happened. But then KOF13 came along and improved upon it in every possible aspect. I really like looking at this colorful game in motion.

Other than that you have the latest Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Melty Blood, Guilty Gear, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 9 and some additional, smaller titles.
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby icycalm » 25 Sep 2012 00:50

When Blazblue -Calamity Trigger- (the game you are reviewing) came out, the only other 720p fighters out there were KOF12 and SF4. That is what I mean. There was also Battle Fantasia (whose location test I covered here, by the way), which was the first 720p fighter out of the gate, but though I have heard a few good things about its system -- i.e. that it is an old school, SF-style of fighter, but in a good way -- it's not the kind of title to get anyone too excited. Though seeing how underwhelming the other two turned out, I am actually considering spending some serious time with it at some point. Then again I find its art direction rather bleh, so I don't know.

But anyway, this is what I mean. On top of the fact that...

Lord Knight wrote:Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Melty Blood, Guilty Gear, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 9


... I will do my best to ignore the fact that half the games on your list BELONG TO AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GENRE THAN THE ONE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT YOU GODDAMN FUCKIN' DUMBASS, while Guilty Gear and Melty Blood do not have 720p versions (if you don't know what 720p is Google it), and I'd be surprised if P4 were not a quick license cash-in either. So you basically only have KOF13, MVC3 and Under Night, and the latter is not even properly out yet.

Anyway, you seem to have serious issues when it comes to evaluating games: the rating scale issue we already discussed, the genre issue evident in your latest post, and the temporal issue I sort of just explained to you: that you cannot expect a game released nearly half a decade ago to measure up to current standards -- though of course some of them might do so, or even exceed current standatds, this is not the normal situation, nor is it the expected one. In every review you have to take into account the historical angle, to at least some extent, and not go around slamming, say, 1960s sports cars because they are slower THAN THE CARS WHOSE CREATION THEY INSPIRED -- and if you yourself are incapable of doing this, then I will do my best to modify your texts to take this into account.

Again, all this doesn't mean that in a review of an older game you shouldn't take into account newer ones -- on the contrary, that's something you should do (IF you can do it, that is, which in the case of Under Night, for example, would be a little hard since you haven't even played it). But always keeping in mind the circumstances in which the game was created, and never having unreasonable demands on it and its developers.

In short: is there, to your knowledge, a better 720p fighter currently out there than the Blazblue series?

(P.S. Don't answer this before you look up what 720p means. And yes, for fuck's sakes, I mean TWO-DIMENSIONAL fighter FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.)
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 25 Sep 2012 01:11

As for the "eSports" angle, I personally don't see how it's relevant, or even what it would mean to turn a fighting game into an "eSports game" or whatever, apart from fagots playing with retarded neologisms because they've nothing better to do with their time. But perhaps I am missing something, so don't you worry about what I'll be saying in reviews I haven't even written yet, and go ahead and write everything you deem relevant. Then I'll take a look at it and if there's something wrong with it I'll point it out and we'll fix it.

Don't try to guess what I will think about what you will say, like that retarded Ghetto moron, is what I am saying. That is reactive thinking, and it's always bad. The point is for me to keep hammering at the bad shit in your thought process -- not until you figure out what I think is bad, and thereby come to avoid it -- but until YOU YOURSELD COME TO SEE IT AS BAD, at which point you'll have internalized my way of thinking and you won't have to think about me or need me at all. That's how proper learning works -- everything else is monkey business.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Lord Knight » 25 Sep 2012 02:48

I'm actually really angry at myself right now after realizing how stupid my post was, so thank you for pointing it out. It seems that, like you said, I do need to get the bad thinking punched out of me, one mistake at a time, but I'll do my best to learn from each and every one. The part where I mention 2D and 3D fighting games in the same breath, despite being different genres, is another fighting game player habit that I'll make sure to shake off. This conversation has been very helpful for me so far.

BBCT is indeed better than SF4 and KOF12, but I haven't played Battle Fantasia. I doubt it would top Blazblue but I do think it's worth checking out, if only because not many SF-style games are being made nowadays.

Going back to the present, UNIB came out in the arcades a few days ago and while the backgrounds are pretty shitty and the character design is uninspired, it looks extremely fun to play. It tries to be a ground based game while still being fast paced and having chains. I'm interested in seeing how it turns out. The Persona fighting game is actually quite good, if you don't hate the source material. In one sentence I'd describe it as a "Guilty Gear Lite with some JOJO elements".

The "eSports" issue has nothing to do with the review of the game itself. I wanted to mention it there just to explain the game's reception despite being such a stale title that does not deserve any special attention. It's something I have an urge to express my opinion about, not unlike what I have to say about the game itself. If even that single paragraph is too much, you can just remove it as it won't have any effect on the review.

I'd like to see the final version of the BBCT review before it gets on the front page, to make sure everything is alright. The list above contains problems that remained throughout the series, but CT had a few extra problems that were later fixed, which I haven't talked about in detail, like the bursts and the seesaw guard bar.

The seesaw guard bar problem was that some characters could abuse the system and get you stuck in a long string of attacks that forced a guard break. The burst's penalty was that using it disables your barrier gauge, and make you take a lot more damage for the rest of the round, so it was used ONLY when you were about to lose the round anyway.
User avatar
Lord Knight
 
Joined: 21 Jan 2010 22:39

Unread postby ksevcov » 17 Apr 2013 06:06

http://gematsu.com/2013/04/blazblue-chr ... is-october

BB-Fami-Scan_04-16_002.jpg

BB-Fami-Scan_04-16_001.jpg


BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, Arc System Works’ latest entry in the fighting game series, will hit PlayStation 3 in Japan on October 24, this week’s Famitsu reveals.

The magazine also reveals new playable character Kagura Mutsuki (voiced by Keiji Fujiwara).

The game will consist of three scenarios: Chrono Phantasma, The Six Great Men, and The Seven Agencies.

Pre-orders will include the downloadable character Yuuki Terumi (voiced by Yuichi Nakamura).
User avatar
ksevcov
 
Joined: 07 Mar 2012 21:43
Location: Riga, Latvia

Unread postby alastair » 23 May 2013 04:39

http://gematsu.com/2013/05/blazblue-chr ... ut-trailer

BBCP-Trailer_05-22.jpg
BBCP-Trailer_05-22.jpg (231.38 KiB) Viewed 27161 times


Arc System Works has released the latest trailer for BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, coming to PlayStation 3 on October 24 in Japan.

The clip shows new characters Kagura Mutsuki and Yuki Terumi, as well as returning characters, and is topped off with a preview of the newly announced BlazBlue: Alter Memory anime series.

Watch it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skzYwVE6tBM
User avatar
alastair
 
Joined: 01 Nov 2009 14:29
Location: Victoria, Australia

PreviousNext

Return to Games