Kurruptions Gaming Roundtable Discussions

But unlike a good book, there actually are events that definitively happened. It's just your job to look it up on Gamefaqs.

Half Life could have that Franz Kafka appeal where you can read lotsa stuff into it and there's no defined answer...but since it has a sequel and a few expansions, it's got definitive canon.
 
I think it is kind of funny that everyone who complains about Half-life having a bad story are the people who only played the first one. The people at Valve admitted that for its time it was impressive, but they didn't really think they put their A game forward for the story, just the engine, and were impressed that people would become attachted to the sciencist and security guards in the game. Half-life 2 took so long because they wanted to do their best.

I feel like Halo only really does great stuff with its plot when you are in the first person, because it is all the stuff you don't have to sit through and listen to. When the arbiter stops at one of the halograms of truth and says "you don't control me anymore!" or you run into one of the npcs talking to another. That stuff is good, everything else always seems like it is referring to something that happened in the books, like the fall of Reach or something else random.

I also enjoyed the on going civil war in Halo. I believe the entire thought behind not taking anyone besides the elites was that the rest kept believing in Truth, IE their past. The elite got tired of everything when the arbiter was sentenced to death, eveyrone else stayed with truth because they either still believed or because the elites had been the only ones that had been bread to think about things. In Halo 2 you were supposed to figure out that one of the sides "won" but I never really got that, and Halo 3 just made it seem like the elite just "left" everyone else.
 
To be fair, I was the only guy actually criticizing Half-Life's story. And like I said. It's not any worse because of its lacking in that department.

And hell if I know.

Though I don't have a clue wtf is happening in Halo 3's story.
 
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so no one else can pick up the slack huh, alright your vote for game of the year thus far. Bioshock, nothing else has come close to its greatness.
 
I haven't played Bioshock yet, but as of now my vote would be for Orange Box. Portal may just be the funniest game ever made. I have been known to be guilty of hyperbole though.
 
I dunno. Forge single-handedly made Halo 3 pretty damn jawesome in my book. Though I would've liked a more-powerful level editor, Forge allows for some good stuff.

The real game of the year is Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, though.

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2d fighting games forever!!!
 
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Haven't played Orange Box or Bioshock yet but I intend to. Then I can see which of the three big FPSs is my favorite. Halo 3 is pretty strong, though. Metroid Prime 3 is in the running, too, but it's still not on the level of the first one. This is definitely a good year for FPSs.
 
While this is true, I'd have to say that this year is the year of the fighting game. After a completely dead 2003, 2005 and 2006, we had a new Guilty Gear, the announcement of the remade Street Fighter 2, Puzzle Fighter 2, King of Fighters XI and, soon, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum. Not to mention Tekken 5 DR on the PS3, the announcement of Soul Calibur 4, and, perhaps most of all, Street Fighter 4 being confirmed to exist.
 
Most of those games will see the light of days in the year 2008 spuds. As far as orange box is concerned, I deem to disqualify it due to the fact that it's a freaking collection of games from 06 and 07, not counting team fortress and portal. As far as fighting games are concerned, that's the new topic for next week, so wait for me like you wait for Jesus. Anyway, Bioshock over Halo 3, easily.
 
Most of em came out in 2007. KOFXI, NGBC, Tekken 5 online, Guilty Gear Accent Core, Virtua Fighter 5 all came/are coming out this year.
 
Well it's been a long time coming, this weeks topic is fighting games.

I F*****G hate fighting games. Don't get me wrong, I was raised on street fighter 2, still enjoy street fighter 2 and have fond memories of great games. Street Fighter 2, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat 2, Weaponlord, Samurai Showdown. Hell even the Ninja Turtles had a badass fighting game, my problem is that fighting games became too damn complicated, they are now pretty much non-accessible unless you've been raised on them, I pretty much blame this on SNK. Don't believe me, rent a copy of Guilty Gear. In order for fighting games to have the type of success they once had a balance has to be found. Otherwise fighting games will stay as the niche genre they now are.
 
I am with you halfway on that.

The mark of a good fighting game is being able to counter what the other person is doing. SNK did start to throw in insane move combos and almost random button presses in the middle of a move so that a lot of them felt impossible to pull of consistantly. KoF did it incorrectly by making the game near impossible for a new player to pick up. Virtua(l) Fighter does it right by allowing both simple to pull off, but damaging combos, and longer more complicated and more rewards ones as well. The balance is the block button. If you figure out the combo halfway through you can start block the rest of it and get out.

From what I remember Killer Instant and Mortal Kombat were more of a beat'em up game with only a vs. mode.
 
those two were indeed fighting games, beatem ups are more like final fight, and before spuds edits anything id like to say killer instant was the s!?t!
 
Random? Random?! Nonsense! Just because a fighter requires lotsa buttons to be pressed doesn't make it "random." Sure, sometimes you can just mash buttons out and you'll get a combo. But that's like saying you can throw a box of chicken broth, a jar of peanut butter and a cheeseburger into a pot and get soup.

Fighting games get a bad wrap from most gamers. The issue doesn't lie in how they're impossible for a new player to pick up, it's just that they're they require precision, which is something that's tedious, boring and time-consuming to acquire. The fighting games that do allow for easy execution and have the "pick up and play" element just plain suck.

Soul Calibur, for example, once you distill everything to the one best strategy, becomes nothing more but a poke fest. And not in a good way. If you pull up a tourney vid of Soul Calibur, all you see is Xianghua doing her crouching A or her uppercut B. Repeatedly. Soul Calibur boils down to two of five characters doing the same two moves again and again and again hoping that one hits, and that they hit enough to kill the opponent. Are there elaborate combos and juggles and massive command throws? Yup. But does any of it matter? No. Like so: http://youtube.com/watch?v=p_WXb8cVs68

Watch the Sophitia. Note what they do.

King of Fighters really doesn't have all that much to it in terms of crazy abilities that everyone has. There's short jumping, rolling and one or two more, varying between games (be it cancelling, guard breaking, just defending, alpha countering, etc). The 99-2k1 era brought the assists and the 2003/XI/XII era brings in tag matching. But that really just adds diversity and the whole cool-looking stuff to the game (while adding another dimension to some characters).

Guilty Gear is really the game that brought out a lot of stuff. The thing is, Guilty Gear is way, way, way out there as the most-balanced fighting game, ever. In tournies, literally every GG player is used, compare to Street Fighters where between three and five are used out of a cast of 20+. GG really does have a whole, whole lot. Every character fights entirely differently from other cast members, it has modified gravity, damage scaling, alpha countering, roman cancelling, green blocking, bursting, a far-more-complex guard meter, and all sorts of other stuff. While it might scare away most players, in all likelhood, they'd be scared off when they learn that you can't just make things up as you go along in Street Fighter 2.

Killer Instinct was something similar to Soul Calibur, but it ended up getting broken into pieces by the silliness that is the combo breaker. Because of it, everything boiled down to one move. Seriously, a KI match where both players actually know how to play the game is one of the ugliest PsOS you'll see. Like So:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sC-sofTQ3ZI
 
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and thus my point is proven. There is simply so much s*^t going on that fighting games are so inaccessible! I'll give you Virtua Fighter as simply having the best balance while at the same time....well it's easy to pick up, hard to master. Lets not forget this is a series that moves are timed by frame! I remember the glory days, Guile was the true character of choice, scorpion and sub-zero were icons, and snk was barely starting to be a contender, but with everyone trying to come up with a new exciting feature the casual and startup gamers were left in the dark. I own most guilty gear games, and damn are they impossible.
 
VF is really not that much more easy to pick up than any fighter and it's hard to master. You're going to get rocked just as quickly, easily and convincingly in VF as you are in any other fighting game by a player of greater skill. It's just that it doesn't look as flashy as being Dust Looped in GG.

Really, VF is probably the least-interesting fighter on the market to simply pick up and play. It feels like you're fighting chest deep in mashed potatoes and the game just plain feels slow and clunky (it isn't slow and clunky, but it feels that way when you don't know what you're doing). The same goes for Dead or Alive, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 3, King of Fighters, Garou, Fatal Fury, or any other fighting game. You're going to get completely rocked unless you invest hella time into it. Though really, this should apply to any game.
 
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True, but once you start mastering one character, Virtua Fighter becomes so much more! Unlike Guilty Gear where even when you memorize Sol Badguys moveset you still have to learn all those different counters, supermoves, guards, etc. and the practice mode isn't even deep such as the one seen in Virtua Fighter 4 *Sorry, haven't played 5 yet*