I’m one of those people who is a major fighting game fan. I also have a great fascination for real life fighting and the martial arts (both west and east). I’m a member of the SCA –the Society of Creative Anachronism, a realistic historical society that tries to tell both realistic fighting and realistic lifestyles of the medieval ages. I have trained (I’m not that good) in heavy weapons fighting (think knights in shining armor type of fighting) and rapier fighting (musketeer like fight generalizing but the closest). When I play a video game that involves weapons, but I have to say realistic damaging in fighting games, I do not like. Its one of those things where I will get a lot of crap for this, but when it involves weapon-like fighting in fighting games. I have to say I prefer Soul Calibur to any other weapon fighting games.
I bring up this topic of realism in fighting games because of Spoony’s Deadliest Warrior review (a. yes I’m behind on the latest news I know and b. I’m doing this because it is something I have to get off my chest). Sometimes I expect a game to suck toting realism and realistic graphics being the selling point. What this means is when I hear it is that the games designers are focusing too much on the look of the game rather than how it plays, the story of it, and are just wasting time making a generic game idea just pretty. However in this case I was somewhat interested in the realism here. Simply because its not going for realism in looks but realism in design and play. There have been little games that tote on realistic fighting, save a few Virtua fighter and bushido blade. So I was interested on the game overall, then I played the damn thing and had an epiphany. As cool as an idea is to have realistic fighting in a game, there comes a downside to that. That is short matches, blind luck winning, and just feeling cheated. Like last time I’m going to break all these points into mini section and talk about them as they pertain to the real life fighting and true good fighting games.
A. Short Matches
This one is self-explanatory but because I like hearing myself talk… um, write, I will talk about it. One of the things that are equated with fighting games is that they are easy to play hard to master, and are quick fixes for twitch reflexes. Most fighting games about one to three minutes completing a match. This is enough time to give you that jolt of twitch reflex satisfaction, but short enough to make not make in tedious. However in real life (and in the Deadliest Warrior) this is not the case, since most of the time in a real life fight (and I mean a real life fight not an arena fight) the idea is to end the fight as fast as possible because normally your never attacked one on one, it’s usually a one against many. So when you fight, you want to end a conflict with one person as quick as possible so you can then switch to the next person and end him so you can switch to the next, and rinse and repeat. This especially true when your dealing with weapons, tools made that to kill people in one swing, thrust, what have you. So when your doing this in video games your not going to have as much fun, simply because when you have a one swing or one punch knock a person down it isn’t that fun. It doesn’t fill that twitch reflexes because its not long enough, and its so short that you’ll not comprehend what won, and you need the replay to show what killed them rather than having the replay as a glory shot of you winning. So it just doesn’t work.
B. Blind Luck
So when it comes to fighting games there is a small bit of skill involved of getting a win. There are times when someone wins where there’s no skill or due to a lucky shot. This is a blind luck moment and in most fighting games there is a small bit of blind luck win that slip in. However when it comes to real life blind luck, rarely happens as well. Seriously the fighter who is more skilled is going to win most of the time. However, when doing a realistic fighting game like I said earlier and usually has one shot kills, so when you mash buttons in the game its not going to be of skill most that makes you win. It is usually going to be the guy who get the lucky shot in wins, and when it comes to the ratio of lucky wins in a regular game its usually 1:10-20, meaning that in the ten to twenty matches its usually one that wins out of luck. While in more realistic games (such as deadliest warrior) is usually 1:2, meaning that half of the fights are one by pure luck. That is a ratio that is unforgivable. It makes the game shallow, short, and easily put down, and if your just want the game to be just sold (like I’m guessing with spike games the shallow cunts) then it doesn’t matter. However if you wish to make a game that you can always pick up and can play for just hours upon hours (like capcom and everybody else) then this isn’t what you want for your game. What you want is a game that you can play for hours, and has some depth to it. So people can build skills towards it and have fun more harnessing skills.
C. Feeling Cheated
Finally we get to the last part of realistic fighting. When you get down to it that life is not fair, and you will be cheated in life multiple times. In fighting, this also holds true. Due to armor or just pure bad luck, you will be killed. More or less being cheated of showing your skills. The reasons for this are as I said above, due to one hit kills and blind luck. However, when playing a game, games are supposed to be fair, they have rules. So when you break those rules, it feels bad and like the person is cheating. In the deadliest warrior game, your not allowed to show some skills, that one hit kill, the pure luck involved, its feel wrong and most people feel cheated (shorter than others but you get the idea).
So when you get down to it, realism is one of those things that probably should be excluded in fighting games. Now I’m not saying that you can’t have spots of realism or inspiration of realism. I’m saying that its probably not as good to have a fighting game based around realism. There are always exception to the rules, I know that. However the only exception I’ve seen that makes me reverse all this is Bushido Blade. Sadly, that’s one of those exceptions that you have to say ‘that is an exception to the rules sadly there won’t be as many like those’. So in the end realism shouldn’t be as much of a concern as it should for having fun in a game.
One last thing I have to get off my chest is more or less to say “Fuck you Spike Games”. Don’t play this “Oh we are small game company, and thus we can’t make good games like capcom can.” Fuck you, your back by Spike TV, a national television channel. Who is also owned by fucking Viacom. So don’t say this bullshit of how your small and insignificant. Fuck you, your being lazy and trying to get out that you made a crappy game.
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