this is somebody's post quoted from another forum. I thought it was cool so i thought i'd share it here:
thoughts?
It's for the zen awesomeness that happens when two skilled players go up against each other. I live for competitive or semi-competitive play; "semi-competitive" can just be two friends in the living room saying, "Let's kick some ass." Basically just fights where I don't have to hold back.
Let me explain: My favorite fighting-game moments are when you go a full 30-seconds or so, throwing out all sorts of attacks, without actually damaging each other. When two really skilled players fight each other, you can have spans of time where it's all jumps, dodges, rolls, parries, counters, guard impacts, whatever. But it's fucking awesome.
This is why I like Soul Calibur II. I haven't played too much of Soul Calibur 3, but I wasn't impressed. The thing with SC2 is that everything about it is unashamedly epic, from the campy intro narrations "A SWORD DESIRES A HERO... AND A HERO DESIRES A DESTINY" to the sweeping John Williams-esque score. Then, when two awesome players fight each other, it's like a fuckin' kung-fu movie. You leap into the air and your opponent runs under you; you sidestep a slide kick and they parry your counter-attack, they duck a high attack, you flip kick over their low attack. It's like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it RULES.
My top faves are Soul Calibur 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Guilty Gear X2, Street Fighter: 3rd Strike, Project Justice and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Each of these games has its own style that just kicks ass.
There's something really similar between SC2 and CvS2, but they're still very distinct gameplay experiences. I think CvS2 is really timing-oriented, and while SC2 has a little bit of that, it's more about flow and paying attention to your opponent's playing style. This is because, in Soul Calibur 2, I've seen really experienced players get whomped by newbies because newbies have no patterns. In CvS2, though, you'll almost never see a newbie get further than a couple of minutes against a veteran who's actually trying to win.
thoughts?