The Fighting Game is Back(?)

Street Fighter IV is holding the world in a vice grip of awesome.  The next entry of the King of Fighters franchise was announced as a console-exclusive (a digital-only console exclusive at that).  The developers of the Guilty Gear series are dropping BlazBlue on home consoles in Japan, with a North American release come this summer.

Is the fighting game back?

The fighting game never went away mind; it just kind of…slept.  The better fighting games were the fetish of niche audiences and competitive gamers while the not-as-complex titles were choice games for those wanting to show off their HD tvs (the Soul Calibur series) or, ironically, wanting a good family party game (Super Smash Bros. series).

However, and I’m sure Capcom’s marketing department played no small role in this, the wake of Street Fighter IV has re-ignited wide-scale fighting game culture.  People who haven’t used terms such as “turtling,” “zoning,” and “corner trap” in years are using them with a casual ease; joystick controllers are selling out as soon as they are re-stocked–or are fetching extortion-level prices on eBay and Amazon Marketplace; little kids are walking around practicing their Hadoken stances and first-person shooters are feeling suddenly betrayed.

Is it too early to declare the comeback of the fighting game?  I don’t think it is.  Much like its grandfather, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter IV seems to have awakened in everybody their competitive instincts and attention to craft; it has re-created a culture of not just gamers, but people living for the thrill of victory.  Sure, Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 and every sports game ever made has done plenty to turn us friendly, humble gamers into trash-talking frat boys, but there is something about a fighting game that feels so pure, so organic: no team to watch your back, no shadows or sniping spots in which to hide, no respawns.  If you lose, you lose: there is only the next game.

It’s all produced a high that’s pretty hard to beat, and like a caffeine addict that has just mixed together equal parts Mt. Dew Voltage and Red Bull and then shotgunned the resulting mixture (I call it a Green Psycho, by the way) the only way to keep the high going is to keep feeding the beast that eats your brain.  The guys in corporate will see this, and like drug dealers they’ll keep giving us our smack.

Think about it:  around the time Street Fighter IV starts to feel old, we’ll have either the new King of Fighters or BlazBlue–or both–to occupy us.  I’m betting that these games will sell a sweet mint, prompting more publishers to put out more fighting titles.  Peripheral manufacturers will (hopefully) step up the arcade stick supplies, which fighting junkies both new and old will snatch up.

I predict that by this time next year, fighting games will once again be a genuinely viable market, not just a place for the occasional diversion or for a place for programmers to show off their fantastic boob-jiggling physics.

Of course, the tactical shooter has become what non-gamers think of when one says “video game,” much like the platformer was once the standard-bearer for the medium.  You don’t steal that kind of thunder: the inevitable Gears of War 3 will come, as will the next Halo FPS (I mean the one after ODST, the one I’m sure that Microsoft is working on as we speak), and a new Unreal game.

Don’t be surprised however, if a big-name publisher snatches up the Mortal Kombat franchise (you heard that Midway was considering selling it, right?) and reboots the franchise, bringing back the fatalities, the simple yet intense combat, and the total lack of humor for which the first two games were famous–completely devoid of silly kart races and useless pseudo-RPG modes.  When this happens, then both of the major fighting franchises from the nineties will have returned to their roots, bringing back old fans while attracting new ones.  That will be something to see, and will be the definite indicator of the fighting game reclaiming its old glory.

Street Fighter IV: A Wall of Awesome

As I said in my most previous post, I’m regressing back into my childhood lately (I’m already looking forward to Friday’s trip to the comic shop!) and re-connecting with the things that made me smile when I was a kid.

Have I been smiling tonight.

First things first: Street Fighter IV is practically review-proof.  It’s a fighting game with smooth, tight controls on even a stock Xbox 360 pad (something I thought impossible), complex and deep strategies that make each fight far more than a button masher, and the most balanced difficulty I’ve ever seen in a console fighting game (the computer still cheats, but it’s possible to catch the CPU in a mistake quite often).  The most skilled player will be able to throw down in epic battles straight out of kung-fu movies; noobs can enjoy fair and challenging competition.    Training mode allows you to customize a CPU dummy to your liking, so you can practice those tough moves and combos.  As for a tutorial, you won’t find it here.  What you will find is the Trials under Challenge mode: a sweat-inducing workout that has you executing progressively harder techniques.  Make it to the end, and you’ll be able to dish out sweet beat-downs with precision–and feel the better player for it.  In short, this game does everything right, including multiplayer (sorry: versus mode).

Not only can players go one-on-one in either ranked or casual matches through Xbox Live,  but get this: you can capture that old arcade feel in Arcade mode.  Turn Arcade Requests on and you might get a new challenger step up (through the magic of the Internet!) while you’re wailing away on the computer.  This happened to me as I was fighting through as Ken; it felt incredible and took me back to memories of the old arcade (that has long since closed down) here in my hometown mall.  The only thing missing was the taste of fountain sodas and the smell of stale popcorn, the buzzing and whistling of a dozen other arcade machines, and the trip to the toy store and pizza stand afterward.   The thrill of victory still felt sweet (I won two matches!) and the sting of defeat still smarted (I also lost two).  Connections in the matches I played were solid and free of lag.  Since where any fighting game truly shines is in competitive game play, this was make or break for Street Fighter IV.  I can soundly say that Capcom made it.

I only have one complaint: unlocking characters.  I never really understood why fighting games made you unlock any but the most powerful, game-breaking characters.  There is no reason I should have to play through Arcade mode to play as Cammy or Sakura (or, God help me, Dan).  Having to unlock Akuma and Gouken make perfect sense, but a Japanese schoolgirl and…Dan?  Seriously?  Thankfully, “Easiest” difficult is just that.  It’s a cake walk–and playing through the Arcade mode on this setting unlocks all the characters just fine.  As long as you can keep the computer from cheating (it does!) then you’re good.

There is so much in Street Fighter IV that makes me smile, I could go on and on and on.  I could talk about how good it feels to land that last crushing blow against Seth and hear the announcer calmly yet firmly announce “K.O.” as you watch the living weapon fall in slow-motion to the ground (sound familiar?  It’s what happens when you beat M. Bison in Street Fighter II).  I can talk about the tension of both you and your human opponent being down to *this* much life and exchanging a flurry of blocked blows until he sneaks one in past your defenses and your jaw drops in shock as you hear the wails of your character.  I could talk about the characters we’ve grown up with finally being represented in 3D in a way that is in line with the character design of previous games, and I could talk about the music being at once familiar and fresh.  I could talk about the opening cinematic, the closing credits, and everything in between, but I’d rather you go out and buy the game yourself and experience it first-hand.

I’m level250geek on Xbox Live.  As the back of the box says: let’s do this.