LoLSquad Fighting Game Night

Oh man, that shit was a riot to me.

Last night, I hung out with the LoL Squad (Shin Reiatsu's and My crew, not the WR squad with Laswagga, Liqigen and others), and we had a fighting game night.

Some people wanted to start playing more fighting games to "get back into practice on them" (... rolls eyes, lol), but I figured it'd be a good time to try a bunch of games I've never given a real look to, get some honest info about some games, and maybe stumble across a few new diamonds I'd never thought about.

So, here's some cliffnotes from EVERYTHING I played leading up to Fight Night and what we played there.

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Pocket Fighter: I've already played Pocket Fighter many times, and actually say it's a great casual game for avid fighting game players. So honestly, nothing surprised me about this. The only thing that caught me is that the LoL Squad actually wanted to try it FIRST when we started. Nothing to really say about it.


Street Fighter Alpha 3: Now, it's not that I've never played SFA3 before, but I've never taken a real look at it, for various reasons. I actually played this FRIDAY night with the WR-Fight crew (we still dont have a name, lol), and it never hit me how DIFFERENT SFA3 is compared to the rest of the 2D street fighters. Throws at PPP/KKK, having to air tech constantly, just, all sorts of small stuff that's never really CLICKED in my mind.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: Oh, my, god. This game is so f'n bad it makes no sense. I've never as much as TOUCHED a MK since I started playing games competitively (so, this is about 7 years or so), so I havent touched a 3D MK. Everybody's just said "They're bad, stay away," so I mindlessly agreed. However, since I was going into all of this open mindedly and casually, I figured I'd try it out and see if it was REALLY that bad.

Maaaaaaaaaaan that game lived up to the hype of fail. Wonky hit detection, wack combo system, clunky movement, and all sorts of random do's and don'ts (like, i can launch people and juggle... but I cant USE my specials when they're in the air...?). Na, I wont even bring this up to the WR-Fight Crew as a fuck around game.

Dead Or Alive 4: -shakes head-... O.K. To be fair, I started off biased against this game cause of the negative image it has on the fighting game community. The first 3 were nothing but counter fests which make me wonder why you'd ever really TRY a string without just launching first, but like I said up front "I'll give anything a real try through this."

Now, DoA4 surprised me. They did manage to balance the countering bs out. Now it's not so much spamming it as you straight have to know what's coming (so that you know when you CAN try and counter), and then guessing which one. The problem with that is then... why do you counter midkicks with forward and only midkicks? (I mean, unless I straight got lied to).

The BIGGEST thing that shocked me (and what set the tone for the whole DoA experience) was the opening round of the first game we played when I saw a damn cheetah hop off of a rock and smack a dude in the face. I kinda looked at the wii to make sure nobody slipped Brawl in while I wasnt looking. But yeah, Jahn Lee was on his ass, small chunk of life gone, before anybody could approach. That was just... weird.

And then water? ... and other stage hazards.... smh.

Then, when I got my hands on it, moving just felt awkward. Its not that I didn't know HOW to move, but it was actually just.. simpler than I thought. I wanted to try stepping stuff, but you dont really dash anywhere you just kinda hold directions and walk. So it was like "... I'm not going to really do a whole lot of movement games, .... so I have to... actually block and counter stuff, hmm."

In the end, I actually had some respect for it. I can see where DoA has it's depth, like it or not. The other thing I realized is that it really is a game of it's own brand. Like, I put it on specialist tier. To be worth any weight to it, you have to sit down and learn how to play DoA. It dont feel or play like anything, and there's a crapton of stuff unique to the game that you have to know. Such as, instead of baiting a counter and whiff punishing it, you want to straight THROW it for critical damage.

I dunno, it was just... odd.

King of Fighter 02 Unlimited Match: Honest to God, I've never sat and actually practiced a KoF. Kinda odd to hear knowing me, I know, but I just havent. Never had a real big draw to the series. I'll go as far as to say I'm honestly one of the casual "omg Mai's not here?" scrubs. But, this was as good as excuse ever to try KoF. Although we didn't actually play it on fight night, I did mess around with some other characters and find some more that I liked.

... like Vanessa. omg Vanessa is so smooooooooooooooooooth.

But the system itself? I can see why it's a love/hate kind of thing. 90% of it winds up being how you can get into somebody's face so you can wreck them, and I guess that doesnt bode well to people who like downback-fighting (read: SF4). I'm actually gunna try to throw some teams together, hop on GGPO a few times, and get an real feel for how the game goes.

Tekken 6: OK, this one is a short story. I don't really know shit about playing tekken. The one thing I know NOW is that, if you dont know how to play it, people mashing in your face is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge problem. I mean, niggas from the A dont lie when they say Tekken aint for scrubs. I honestly think I'da been better off mashing than trying to have a plan and being bad. Why? Because you CANNOT FIGHT FROM DISADVANTAGE in that game. You cant run, you cant n00b, you gotta straight block something.

I've got noooooo problems with that, infact, I like it. It's just, when you're playing with people who don't have a real clue what they're doing, you learn real quick how well you deal with stuff without crutches.

I didnt. I died. Again, and again, and again. looooooooooooool

DBZ: Infinite World This was another one that surprised me. Why? Because it's AFTER the Tencaiitchi trash (however you spell it. That series is so bad I dont care). I've kinda-of lost my care for DBZ, but I wanted to try this cause I've recently heard people (mainly ATL-Batman) talking about it. And come to find out, it's just Budokai 4. All the way down to some of the Goku combos I remember from Budokai 3 still working. The game was just fun to play. Made me sad that I didn't remember how to play Budokai at all, but this is another one that I'm gunna keep in my backpocket to mess around with from time to time. It was a nice stress reliever from all the seriousness.

Super Dragon Ball Z: Yeah, that game made by the SF team. It's ok, but nothing really feels stellar about it. Its another one of the ones I havent gotten to play with anybody yet, so I don't know ANYTHING about it, really. I'm just overall meh on it.

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That's really it for interesting highlights.