Αν έχετε βαρεθεί, όπως και εγώ, την απίστευτη παπαρολογία τελευταία με την ψηφοφορία για τους 100 "Μεγαλύτερους" Έλληνες του (παλιότερα σχεδόν αξιόλογου) τηλεοπτικού καναλιού ΣΚΑΙ, τότε αυτό το blog είναι ό,τι χρειάζεστε.
Δεν συμφωνώ με τις απόψεις τους για όλους τους υποψήφιους, ακόμα και αν δεν είναι να πάρεις την λίστα στα σοβαρά. Όταν βέβαια από την άλλη, στη "σοβαρή" λίστα βρίσκουμε γνωστούς δικτάτορες, τότε τρέχα γύρευε.
TL;DR Version
Τι κόλλημα έχουν με το soundtrack του Street Fighter IV σε αυτόν τον ΣΚΑΙ τέλος πάντων?
Showing posts with label street fighter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label street fighter. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2
Thursday, December 4
[Game Review] Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (STHD for short) could have been a legitimate candidate for the "Game with the longest name ever" award, if not for that Penny Arcade game. It is, however, the favorite for receiving the "Most often remade" award, currently numbering... Actually, I lost count.More importantly, though, it's also one of the prime candidates for the "Most finely-tuned and balanced competitive game ever", and that one is something to brag about.
Enough fancy talk for now, though. Time for a little history lesson. Given that the first edition (oh, there’ve been a few) of Street Fighter II, called The World Warrior, came out seventeen (17) years ago, and the last version, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, came out fourteen (14) years ago, quite a few people may have missed on the behemoth that this game was back then. Not only did it shape the entire fighting genre for years to come, as countless imitators appeared overnight, it also became a new benchmark for success in the market.
At a time when videogames were still ignored by the mainstream, SF2’s protagonists Ryu and Ken were amongst the few characters alongside Mario and Sonic to be recognised by anyone except the most dedicated of gamers. SF2 not only managed to revitalize the Arcade (the what?) scene, where it created huge lines of people waiting to play that guy “that just beats everyone!”, it was also the first arcade game to be ported (almost) perfectly in a home console, in its 1992 SNES version*.
Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, it was the first competitive game to achieve such unprecedented popularity. There were games were it was much more fun to beat a human opponent than the CPU before (*2) but never before was a game so perfectly balanced for competitive play, nor had its multiplayer aspect as its focus. I’m probably going to get crucified for this, but I’ll argue that had it not been for Street Fighter II, the entire competitive aspect of gaming would have been vastly different, and games such as Quake 3: Arena and Counter-Strike might have not been as popular.Just look at the early FPS games, none of them had anything more than an afterthought of a multiplayer. Technological issues were obviously a factor here, but competitive multiplayer in FPS’s didn’t become a factor until after the popularity of fighting game (and SF2 in particular) tournaments.
Now that the history lesson is over, let’s take a closer look at this specific version of Super Turbo. As you may have guessed, the “HD Remix” part refers to the game being redone for a contemporary audience. The graphics were redone in High Definition, from scratch, by UDON Entertainment, also responsible for the successful Street Fighter comic books, the music themes were remixed by the people of OverClocked ReMix (*3), and the gameplay was rebalanced by long-time Street Fighter tournament player and gaming developer, David Sirlin.
This means this version is a labor of love from people who love Street Fighter and “get” what made it great back in the day, and why it is relevant even today, more than a decade since its release. Their intentions, to make this new version the best possible. The result is a game that looks, sounds and plays great, even without nostalgia clouding our judgement. STHD is a great game with our current standards.So, without further delay, on with the lists:
Things STHD does right:
- It’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo, for the HD generation. As corny as that sounds, it’s true. Gorgeous high-definition graphics, a remixed soundtrack that works wonderfully in a contemporary environment and the tried-and-true gameplay of Super Turbo, a game that’s still being played competitively today, with some enlightened changes that make it even better (*4). It’s an amazing remake of what’s undeniably a classic game, it’d be hard for anyone to ask for more.
- Another thing about the music, the folks at OCRemix managed to make even Sagat’s theme sound good. I never thought that was actually possible.
- Yet another sidenote on something mentioned earlier, the changes made to the gameplay and certain movement inputs succeed in making the game simpler (so that you don’t have to worry about actually performing the move but rather when to perform it) but never make the game simplistic. You still have to have the muscle memory and timing needed for pulling off a 7-hit combo, button-mashers need not apply.
- The online multiplayer is amazing, which is a needed change after the atrocity that was Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting on the Xbox 360. Capcom had an entire beta test devoted to getting it right, and through the use of GGPO, they succeeded. There’s the occasional laggy match every now and then, but for the most part it’s very smooth, even when playing across continents.
- You can’t see which character your opponent selects on online multiplayer. This is HUGE. So many times people would cheese it out, waiting for you to pick a character after like half an hour, so they could pick a counter-character. One of my favorite changes.- There’s no denying it, Super Turbo is still one of the best fighting games around, and this enhanced version only adds to that. It’s intuitive, easy to pick up yet demanding enough to challenge most players when it comes to mastering it.
People that had either forgotten about this fact through the years, or had never spent any time with SF2 back in the day, now have the perfect opportunity to remember/find out what the big deal is(*5).Things about STHD that aren't that hot:
- For all its smoothness, there’s a few bugs plaguing the online multiplayer part. The music sometimes stops abruptly and you have to restart the game, health bars have the tendency to disappear leaving you clueless as to how much life either player has, and there’s also a few random disconnects as a fight is about to start. The latter is particularly annoying in ranked matches, as it counts as a defeat. Nothing a patch wouldn’t fix, let’s hope one is on the way.
- The animation is unchanged from the original, as this would have required remaking the entire game from scratch. As a result, it looks kind of strange at times, but you get used to it eventually.- Being a rather delayed project, means that STHD was released very close to the next real chapter in the franchise, Street Fighter IV, which is coming out in late February. As such, STHD may be seen by some as merely a prelude to SFIV. Their loss, however.
- No other single-player modes other than Arcade (Story) and training. I confess, I’m just grasping at this point. A survival mode or such would have been neat, but it’s hardly a glaring omission. Multiplayer is the game’s selling point, after all.
Things I just don't get:
- The lack of a real demo is rather perplexing. The Playstation3 version has no demo whatsoever, while the X360 version got the Ryu/Ken multiplayer-only beta version offered earlier this year with Commando 3. Not that you need a demo for what is essentially a fourteen year old game, but it could help convincing those sceptical newcomers.
The above signify that on George's Intention-Meter, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix receives of the title of:
The Genuine Article
The Genuine ArticleTL;DR version:
Seriously, just listen to this music:
If you ever loved Street Fighter 2, chances are it will remind you why it was that great back then, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it. If you were never a fan, well... what’s your excuse? As I said earlier, there’s a reason why people are still playing this game, in tournaments or otherwise, and why it makes so many “Best Games Ever” lists.
Go on, try this shiny new version. You know you want to.
* In fact, it’s still Capcom’s best-selling game, even after all these years.
*2 Hell, its prequel was one of them!
*3 You can download the full soundtrack at their website, too!
*4 I can actually do Hooligan Throw now.
*5 One thing I find particularly amazing is seeing how many people this release has brought back to this game. Styles of play differ for each version of SF2, and people using them are very distinct. You can tell when somebody hasn’t played SF2 since, say, Champions Edition, and seeing them back in a SF game just brings a smile to my face. I’m weird like that.
Monday, October 13
[Gaming] Keeping "Street Fighter" Relevant
(A.K.A., how the Street Fighter series is shaping up for a spectacular comeback)
Staying relevant for a prolonged amount of time is no mean feat, for any product, in any industry. The videogame market is no exception to this, in fact this applies to both different genres and different franchises. Platformers, adventures, role-playing games, they all had their proverbial moment in the sun several years ago, and at that time, each respective genre dominated the sales charts as well as gathering excellent reviews. Nowadays, their appeal mostly limited to a niche* audience, with the odd excellent game coming out every now and then, only to remind us that every rule has its exceptions, few though they are.
Same goes for gaming franchises that used to be huge, such as Tomb Raider. Even though TR has recovered from the near-catastrophe that was the early 00’s and Angel of Darkness, it’s nowhere near the sales behemoth it used to be in the mid-90’s.
The fighting game genre is amongst the ones that enjoyed massive success initially, only to slowly wither away with the years. Starting with Street Fighter II back in 1992, which inarguably started the whole fighting game craze and also breathed life back into the arcades scene, the genre had its last massive commercial and critical success with 1999’s Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast, a game which became the flagship of Sega’s last entry in the hardware market. Since then, it’s all gone downhill**.
That’s not to say that the genre hasn’t had any worthy recent entries, games such as Virtua Fighter 5 for example are as good as any of the classics from the 90’s, if not better. However, mainstream appeal has been all but lost for contemporary fighting games, a side-effect perhaps of the merciless milking of the genre in the previous decade.
The Street Fighter franchise is no stranger to neither declining popularity, nor milking. As a matter of fact, it was pretty much the franchise that invented milking, given that SFII had five different versions of the same game, while the subsequent Street Fighter Alpha/Zero and Street Fighter III series had three each***. That’s excluding the various spin-off series, such as the Marvel Vs Capcom and Capcom Vs SNK.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising that people were eventually tired of Street Fighter. It also didn’t help that the SF games took place exclusively in a two-dimensional plane, when 3D graphics were the new “it” thing in the late 90’s.
Another factor that played a big part in the eventual decline of SF’s popularity was the eventual sequel to the supremely-successful SFII, 1997’s Street Fighter III: The New Generation. Not only did it take Capcom two years to come up with the definitive, balanced version of the game with 1999’s 3rd Strike(*4), it was such a radical departure from its predecessor that mainstream audiences felt overwhelmed with its complexity.
To make matters worse, the majority of its characters suffered from a complete lack of charisma (an unfortunate trademark of late 90’s Capcom design), which only alienated casual audiences even more. Let’s not forget that most people are more likely to choose a character that looks “cool” than a freak show, when first playing a game.
The game itself was fantastic, and inarguably a worthy follow-up to the franchise, but that mattered little when only but the most hardcore fans could appreciate it for what it was, and also the only ones that could pull off the most difficult combinations of moves.
So how do you go about making people interested in a franchise again, almost a decade after its last appearance? Firstly, you have to remind them why they cared about the franchise in the first place. Capcom succeeded in doing this about a year ago, when they released the first teaser of SFIV, which featured the quintessential street fighters, Ryu and Ken sparring as they always seem to do.
It was enough to get several people excited, but this was only the beginning. Soon after, they released the first in-game trailer with actual gameplay, revealing to us that most (eventually this became all) of the original fighters from SFII would be featured in the game. One might accuse Capcom of playing it safe, instead of creating an all-new cast as they did with SFIII, but you can hardly blame them for giving the old fans of the series a cast they already know and love.
When it comes to maintaining relevancy, it’s always important to keep your original audience. And that audience is mainly made up of people who remember E. Honda as “That Sumo guy that does that handslaps thing”, rather than the vocal minority that knows how to spell Tatsumakishenpukyakugodonlyknows(*5).
Naturally, you can’t just stop there. SFII is sixteen yeas old and SFIII is a mere five years younger, several of the people that used to play both games frantically back then have probably moved on from videogames all together. Not to mention that the videogame market is vastly different these days, the audience is almost nothing like it used to be.
In other words, you need to reach an all-new audience, an audience that probably grew up on different games than Street Fighter. The way used by Capcom to reach this audience is two-fold.
The first thing they had to do is teach this audience why SF was simply that damn good. In other words, they had to create a game that plays like a dream and is appealing to both a novice and a seasoned player. The way Capcom went about doing this was by reinventing the old SFII gameplay, doing away with several of SFIII’s features, such as the parrying system. Initially, I had voiced my displeasure over this, since I am a big fan of SFIII even though I pretty much suck at it.
Seeing where Capcom is coming from though, it makes perfect sense. As the recent Edge review so cleverly put it, for most players a combo is nothing more than a jumping kick followed by a sweep kick(*6). With that in mind, SFIV is built around a system that is far more forgiving when it comes to creating combos than its predecessor, but is still so deep and intuitive that experienced players will always have the edge over a newcomer, as it should be.
The best gameplay in the world, however, won’t mean a thing if people don’t get to actually play your game. And for better or worse, the best way of doing that is a strong presentation. If you get people excited enough through a trailer, they’re more likely to take a further look, while if they only see a generic “From the makers of a game that was huge fifteen years ago!” teaser, they’re more likely to pass it by.
In Street Fighter’s case, it’s not really that hard to make people care given its legacy. Many videogame fans may not know that Ken Masters is Japanese and not American (true story), but most of them would have a good idea of who he is, and subsequently would be more willing to play a game with a familiar character, rather than "Generic Bulky Male #11378", given the right stimulus.
At this point, I have to confess that the above paragraph is nothing more than a pretty clumsy attempt of declaring my unrelenting love over the brilliance that was the new SFIV trailer from the ‘08 Tokyo Game Show.
While certain members of the vocal minority I mentioned earlier complained about its content being composed of mostly seen-before footage, that view is ignoring the fact that this is a trailer meant to appeal to the oh-so-important masses. It is incredibly impressive, superbly edited, with the combination of in-game footage, computer-generated segments and anime working wondefully together, and the remix of Ryu's theme is phenomenal.
It is, in other words, impressive enough to appeal to both old and new fans of the franchise, as well as people unfamiliar with it.
Watch the trailer for yourselves here:
TL;DR version:
Capcom has managed to get people excited about a franchise that hasn’t seen an update in more than a decade. That is no mean feat, and more companies should take a note of how to revisit an old, beloved, franchise.
It also helps that Street Fighter II was pretty much the game of forever (there’s a reason why it’s still being played today, and why Ryu’s theme is just that good), but Capcom always managed to build on its success, even when they were releasing new versions of the same game every year.
* Oh gods, that word again
** For example, if Tekken 2 had been announced as multiplatform during the Playstation/Saturn/Nintendo 64 years, the entire Milky Way galaxy would have exploded by the amassed nerdrage. In direct contrast, the recent announcement of Tekken 6 for the Xbox 360 was met with what can be described as a collective “Oh. Cool.”
*** There was no Street Fighter EX series, that’s just rumors spread by people made out of pure evil. There was only one game, Street Fighter EX2 and it was actually pretty fun.
*4 It’s always a charm
*5 It’s Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku
*6 Sadly, I'm one of them
Staying relevant for a prolonged amount of time is no mean feat, for any product, in any industry. The videogame market is no exception to this, in fact this applies to both different genres and different franchises. Platformers, adventures, role-playing games, they all had their proverbial moment in the sun several years ago, and at that time, each respective genre dominated the sales charts as well as gathering excellent reviews. Nowadays, their appeal mostly limited to a niche* audience, with the odd excellent game coming out every now and then, only to remind us that every rule has its exceptions, few though they are.
Same goes for gaming franchises that used to be huge, such as Tomb Raider. Even though TR has recovered from the near-catastrophe that was the early 00’s and Angel of Darkness, it’s nowhere near the sales behemoth it used to be in the mid-90’s.
The fighting game genre is amongst the ones that enjoyed massive success initially, only to slowly wither away with the years. Starting with Street Fighter II back in 1992, which inarguably started the whole fighting game craze and also breathed life back into the arcades scene, the genre had its last massive commercial and critical success with 1999’s Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast, a game which became the flagship of Sega’s last entry in the hardware market. Since then, it’s all gone downhill**.
That’s not to say that the genre hasn’t had any worthy recent entries, games such as Virtua Fighter 5 for example are as good as any of the classics from the 90’s, if not better. However, mainstream appeal has been all but lost for contemporary fighting games, a side-effect perhaps of the merciless milking of the genre in the previous decade.
The Street Fighter franchise is no stranger to neither declining popularity, nor milking. As a matter of fact, it was pretty much the franchise that invented milking, given that SFII had five different versions of the same game, while the subsequent Street Fighter Alpha/Zero and Street Fighter III series had three each***. That’s excluding the various spin-off series, such as the Marvel Vs Capcom and Capcom Vs SNK.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising that people were eventually tired of Street Fighter. It also didn’t help that the SF games took place exclusively in a two-dimensional plane, when 3D graphics were the new “it” thing in the late 90’s.
Another factor that played a big part in the eventual decline of SF’s popularity was the eventual sequel to the supremely-successful SFII, 1997’s Street Fighter III: The New Generation. Not only did it take Capcom two years to come up with the definitive, balanced version of the game with 1999’s 3rd Strike(*4), it was such a radical departure from its predecessor that mainstream audiences felt overwhelmed with its complexity.
To make matters worse, the majority of its characters suffered from a complete lack of charisma (an unfortunate trademark of late 90’s Capcom design), which only alienated casual audiences even more. Let’s not forget that most people are more likely to choose a character that looks “cool” than a freak show, when first playing a game.
The game itself was fantastic, and inarguably a worthy follow-up to the franchise, but that mattered little when only but the most hardcore fans could appreciate it for what it was, and also the only ones that could pull off the most difficult combinations of moves.
So how do you go about making people interested in a franchise again, almost a decade after its last appearance? Firstly, you have to remind them why they cared about the franchise in the first place. Capcom succeeded in doing this about a year ago, when they released the first teaser of SFIV, which featured the quintessential street fighters, Ryu and Ken sparring as they always seem to do.
It was enough to get several people excited, but this was only the beginning. Soon after, they released the first in-game trailer with actual gameplay, revealing to us that most (eventually this became all) of the original fighters from SFII would be featured in the game. One might accuse Capcom of playing it safe, instead of creating an all-new cast as they did with SFIII, but you can hardly blame them for giving the old fans of the series a cast they already know and love.
When it comes to maintaining relevancy, it’s always important to keep your original audience. And that audience is mainly made up of people who remember E. Honda as “That Sumo guy that does that handslaps thing”, rather than the vocal minority that knows how to spell Tatsumakishenpukyakugodonlyknows(*5).
Naturally, you can’t just stop there. SFII is sixteen yeas old and SFIII is a mere five years younger, several of the people that used to play both games frantically back then have probably moved on from videogames all together. Not to mention that the videogame market is vastly different these days, the audience is almost nothing like it used to be.
In other words, you need to reach an all-new audience, an audience that probably grew up on different games than Street Fighter. The way used by Capcom to reach this audience is two-fold.
The first thing they had to do is teach this audience why SF was simply that damn good. In other words, they had to create a game that plays like a dream and is appealing to both a novice and a seasoned player. The way Capcom went about doing this was by reinventing the old SFII gameplay, doing away with several of SFIII’s features, such as the parrying system. Initially, I had voiced my displeasure over this, since I am a big fan of SFIII even though I pretty much suck at it.
Seeing where Capcom is coming from though, it makes perfect sense. As the recent Edge review so cleverly put it, for most players a combo is nothing more than a jumping kick followed by a sweep kick(*6). With that in mind, SFIV is built around a system that is far more forgiving when it comes to creating combos than its predecessor, but is still so deep and intuitive that experienced players will always have the edge over a newcomer, as it should be.
The best gameplay in the world, however, won’t mean a thing if people don’t get to actually play your game. And for better or worse, the best way of doing that is a strong presentation. If you get people excited enough through a trailer, they’re more likely to take a further look, while if they only see a generic “From the makers of a game that was huge fifteen years ago!” teaser, they’re more likely to pass it by.
In Street Fighter’s case, it’s not really that hard to make people care given its legacy. Many videogame fans may not know that Ken Masters is Japanese and not American (true story), but most of them would have a good idea of who he is, and subsequently would be more willing to play a game with a familiar character, rather than "Generic Bulky Male #11378", given the right stimulus.
At this point, I have to confess that the above paragraph is nothing more than a pretty clumsy attempt of declaring my unrelenting love over the brilliance that was the new SFIV trailer from the ‘08 Tokyo Game Show.
While certain members of the vocal minority I mentioned earlier complained about its content being composed of mostly seen-before footage, that view is ignoring the fact that this is a trailer meant to appeal to the oh-so-important masses. It is incredibly impressive, superbly edited, with the combination of in-game footage, computer-generated segments and anime working wondefully together, and the remix of Ryu's theme is phenomenal.
It is, in other words, impressive enough to appeal to both old and new fans of the franchise, as well as people unfamiliar with it.
Watch the trailer for yourselves here:
TL;DR version:
Capcom has managed to get people excited about a franchise that hasn’t seen an update in more than a decade. That is no mean feat, and more companies should take a note of how to revisit an old, beloved, franchise.
It also helps that Street Fighter II was pretty much the game of forever (there’s a reason why it’s still being played today, and why Ryu’s theme is just that good), but Capcom always managed to build on its success, even when they were releasing new versions of the same game every year.
* Oh gods, that word again
** For example, if Tekken 2 had been announced as multiplatform during the Playstation/Saturn/Nintendo 64 years, the entire Milky Way galaxy would have exploded by the amassed nerdrage. In direct contrast, the recent announcement of Tekken 6 for the Xbox 360 was met with what can be described as a collective “Oh. Cool.”
*** There was no Street Fighter EX series, that’s just rumors spread by people made out of pure evil. There was only one game, Street Fighter EX2 and it was actually pretty fun.
*4 It’s always a charm
*5 It’s Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku
*6 Sadly, I'm one of them
Saturday, December 29
AHHHHHHH! (Street Fighter 4)
I already had several updates planned for tonight, since as of today I'll be away for Holidays and won't update for a while.
But then I found out about the new in-game Street Fighter 4 videos that were released yesterday (hey, I'm slow) and well, my priorities had to change.
Some people complain about the art direction of this game. I want some of what they're smoking. Don't expect any other sort of critique from me, I'm as biased as a fanboy can be when it comes to Street Fighter. I grew up with the damn genre, screw you and your objectivism.
Video #1:
Street Fighter IV `Hadoken` HD (WMV)
Find the second video here.
But then I found out about the new in-game Street Fighter 4 videos that were released yesterday (hey, I'm slow) and well, my priorities had to change.
Some people complain about the art direction of this game. I want some of what they're smoking. Don't expect any other sort of critique from me, I'm as biased as a fanboy can be when it comes to Street Fighter. I grew up with the damn genre, screw you and your objectivism.
Video #1:
Street Fighter IV `Hadoken` HD (WMV)
Find the second video here.
Monday, October 22
Evo moment #37
No Daily Show video today, but since there's a lot of buzz about Street Fighter lately, it's the perfect opportunity to revisit one of the most memorable fights from the latest game of the series, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike.
During the semi-finals in Evolution 2k4, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, perhaps the most recognizable Street Fighter player in the world, fought Justin Wong, famous for his turtling (read: highly defensive, low-risk taking) style. Daigo was playing Ken, Justin was playing Chun Li.
The result was perhaps the best example of "skill" in videogames, as Daigo's comeback parry-sequence/combo is just insane. If you've never played the game it won't impress you as much, but just think that between each parry of Chun Li's/Wong's super move (that flashy thing), Daigo had less than a second to react.
You can find the complete video of the fight here.
During the semi-finals in Evolution 2k4, Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, perhaps the most recognizable Street Fighter player in the world, fought Justin Wong, famous for his turtling (read: highly defensive, low-risk taking) style. Daigo was playing Ken, Justin was playing Chun Li.
The result was perhaps the best example of "skill" in videogames, as Daigo's comeback parry-sequence/combo is just insane. If you've never played the game it won't impress you as much, but just think that between each parry of Chun Li's/Wong's super move (that flashy thing), Daigo had less than a second to react.
You can find the complete video of the fight here.
Saturday, October 20
Early Easter!
My, oh my. Can you say Street Fighter 4 teaser trailer?
Too excited to actually make a real comment at the moment, but this is huge. It's ten whole years since Street Fighter 3 was released, and eight years since Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike (which I still play religiously.)
Exciting times to be a gamer, no doubt.
Too excited to actually make a real comment at the moment, but this is huge. It's ten whole years since Street Fighter 3 was released, and eight years since Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike (which I still play religiously.)
Exciting times to be a gamer, no doubt.
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