Tatsunoko Vs Capcom Impressions

[marurun]

Wow, this game looks really uninteresting to me. The 3D characters are only ho-hum and the fighting action looks like nothing new over what Capcom's been offering on VS titles for years. Seems to me Capcom is stuck in a rut.

[elvis]

I hope they add a few buttons for Marvel Vs Capcom 3.

3 attack buttons (plus function/partner/dust/whatever) is rapidly becoming the standard again. Most of the doujin fighters are going that way, and it seems the big companies are following.

I don't mind either way. I liked MvC's layout as much as MvC2, and TvC feels fine too.

Seems to me Capcom is stuck in a rut.

Hardly. 3 major fighting game releases in one year (SSF2T:HDR, SF4, TvC) is not what I'd call "stuck in a rut". The last few years where a total lull, and I'm glad to see this sort of thing coming back to arcades and home console.

[marurun]

Hardly. 3 major fighting game releases in one year (SSF2T:HDR, SF4, TvC) is not what I'd call "stuck in a rut". The last few years where a total lull, and I'm glad to see this sort of thing coming back to arcades and home console.

Yeah, it's good they're at least making "new" fighting games again, but...

An HD remake of SF2, a 3D SF fighter that supposedly plays a lot like SF2, and a VS game that looks very similar to previous VS games? That is definitely "stuck in a rut". Or perhaps it's more like stuck in a groove on a record player, wherein you keep hearing the same line from the song over and over and over...

Maybe I'd love all of those games, but this is not the innovative Capcom of times past. Let's review, shall we?

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior - 1991 - Highly innovative, basically created the modern fighting game

Darkstalkers - 1994 - Mixes (b-style) horror and anime together for over-the-top fighting.

X-Men: Children of the Atom - 1994 - More serious approach to over-the-top fighting. Introduced multi-tiered fighting arenas via arena damage.

Cyberbots - 1995 - Very unique fighting game with customizable robot combatants.

Street Fighter Alpha - 1995 - Not as innovative as the other games I've listed, but it did revitalize interest in Street Fighter by changing the art style to anime and using a modified form of the play style introduced in Darkstalkers.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter - 1996 - Introduced the VS series and a number of spastic gameplay innovations.

Red Earth (Warzard) - 1996 - Introduced RPG elements and simplified roster.

Pocket Fighter - 1997 - Simplified fighting system and SD characters.

Street Fighter III: New Generation - 1997 - A break from previous Street Fighter II titles, overhauling the fighting system and introducing almost completely new characters.

Rival Schools - 1997 - 3D fighting with tag team fighting and team moves. Mechanically something of a knock off of the VS games only in 3D, but still interesting due to the setting, characters, and individual mechanics used (less combo/spaz heavy).

Tech Romancer - 1998 - Creative take on 3D fighting games with "fake" giant robot kitsch.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - 1998 - Bold take on 2D fighting using stands.

Street Fighter II variants carried them for almost 3 years, but they did start innovating again afterwards, with lots of new contributions to 2D fighting in settings, style, and play variants. Other than Tech Romancer and Rival Schools their 3D games didn't innovate very much. I mean, they have a history of recycling games with minor updates and they did that quite a bit alongside their innovative titles, but now I see little fighting innovation and creativity coming out of Capcom. They either ignore fighting games or simply retread the same old paths. Capcom has, as far as I can tell, not contributed anything innovative or unique to fighting games in the past 10 years.

[Japhei]

Hardly. 3 major fighting game releases in one year (SSF2T:HDR, SF4, TvC) is not what I'd call "stuck in a rut". The last few years where a total lull, and I'm glad to see this sort of thing coming back to arcades and home console.

Yeah, it's good they're at least making "new" fighting games again, but...

An HD remake of SF2, a 3D SF fighter that supposedly plays a lot like SF2, and a VS game that looks very similar to previous VS games? That is definitely "stuck in a rut". Or perhaps it's more like stuck in a groove on a record player, wherein you keep hearing the same line from the song over and over and over...

Maybe I'd love all of those games, but this is not the innovative Capcom of times past. Let's review, shall we?

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior - 1991 - Highly innovative, basically created the modern fighting game

Darkstalkers - 1994 - Mixes (b-style) horror and anime together for over-the-top fighting.

X-Men: Children of the Atom - 1994 - More serious approach to over-the-top fighting. Introduced multi-tiered fighting arenas via arena damage.

Cyberbots - 1995 - Very unique fighting game with customizable robot combatants.

Street Fighter Alpha - 1995 - Not as innovative as the other games I've listed, but it did revitalize interest in Street Fighter by changing the art style to anime and using a modified form of the play style introduced in Darkstalkers.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter - 1996 - Introduced the VS series and a number of spastic gameplay innovations.

Red Earth (Warzard) - 1996 - Introduced RPG elements and simplified roster.

Pocket Fighter - 1997 - Simplified fighting system and SD characters.

Street Fighter III: New Generation - 1997 - A break from previous Street Fighter II titles, overhauling the fighting system and introducing almost completely new characters.

Rival Schools - 1997 - 3D fighting with tag team fighting and team moves. Mechanically something of a knock off of the VS games only in 3D, but still interesting due to the setting, characters, and individual mechanics used (less combo/spaz heavy).

Tech Romancer - 1998 - Creative take on 3D fighting games with "fake" giant robot kitsch.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - 1998 - Bold take on 2D fighting using stands.

Street Fighter II variants carried them for almost 3 years, but they did start innovating again afterwards, with lots of new contributions to 2D fighting in settings, style, and play variants. Other than Tech Romancer and Rival Schools their 3D games didn't innovate very much. I mean, they have a history of recycling games with minor updates and they did that quite a bit alongside their innovative titles, but now I see little fighting innovation and creativity coming out of Capcom. They either ignore fighting games or simply retread the same old paths. Capcom has, as far as I can tell, not contributed anything innovative or unique to fighting games in the past 10 years.

Have you even played any of the games you are saying has Capcom stuck in a rut?

Super Sf 2 HD remix: Excellent port of the original game with enhanced graphics and network play. $15 dollar download. Can be shared with 5 PS3 systems if wanted. Really deep and unforgiving a great game to pick up and play.

Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Godly Versus fighter simplified for the mainstream but does not alienate its core audience. Flashes of brilliance here and there and quite possibly the most jaw dropping Wii game graphically. I have had alot of people come over and play it so far and it does take some time to get used to but they all loved it.

Street Fighter 4: Reports from my friends say it looks amazing and plays just as well.



Come the frig on man. Do you even own a next gen console or are retro only? Stuff stays the same but evolves for the better. Innovation is there if you look for it. But how can you judge without even playing it. VIDEOS?

Thats my opinion

[elvis]

Yeah, it's good they're at least making "new" fighting games again, but...

An HD remake of SF2, a 3D SF fighter that supposedly plays a lot like SF2, and a VS game that looks very similar to previous VS games? That is definitely "stuck in a rut". Or perhaps it's more like stuck in a groove on a record player, wherein you keep hearing the same line from the song over and over and over...

*snip*

OK, let me put it to you this way:

Where exactly do you want Capcom to "innovate".

The word "innovate" is grossly over used these days. IMHO fighting games that try to over-"innovate" come off gimmicky and shallow. Capcom make fighters with loads of depth. I think if anything, releasing games with minor gameplay tweaks (like SSFT2:HDR, which had much of the fighting engine and characters tweaked to make the game more even, and try and bring more usable characters into the top and middle tiers) is the way to go.

Fighting game companies that go for outright "innovation" always end up making games that are broken. Look at MK vs DC. It was out three days and a whole stack of infinites were found. The game is utterly broken beyond belief, and won't sell anything more than a few copies of christmas to kids who haven't yet been bored to death by the MK "ultra violence" gimmick.

I'd much rather see slow and steady tweaks to games. Again, SSF2T:HDR is a great example. Clever character tweaking, improving inputs and moves to make execution easier for new players but not penalise hardcore players, and bringing the tournament online with good netcode and ranking battles. These are all things that are brilliant additions to an already fantastic game. Well worth the cost.

TvC and SF4 are the same. Tweaks on old gameplay that was already good. Going nuts and changing the whole system up risks making a lot of mistakes. SF2 was fun, but ultimately flawed. Ditto for SF2:CE. It wasn't until HF that Capcom got the balance of the game right.

Same again for Vs games. The early X-Men titles were fun, but flawed beyond belief. It wasn't until many titles later that they were better optimised for tournament play. TvC is a further evolution of the versus series, with more tweaks.

So again I ask: what would you like to see. What major "innovation" do you want in a 2D fighting game? I hope you don't say something like "3D side stepping" (a gimmick which kills long-range games and makes all projectiles null and void).

I'd honestly love to hear what you or anyone else would consider worthy of adding to Capcom fighters that (a) hasn't been done before and (b) won't break good gameplay (and no, there is no sarcasm in that statement).

[racketboy]

Yeah, you really have to define "innovate" in this case -- especially if you're ignoring graphics.
There's only so much you can do to a 2D fighter without changing the genre.
It would be interesting to see Capcom make a good weapons-based fighter.

[Ack]

It would be nice form them to make a 2D weapons fighter that hits the mainstream, something to compete with Samurai Shodown.

But you know what I think would be cool? 3D throws. As in, you throw a character into the foreground or background, and the stage swings around 90 degrees to reveal the other axis of the room.

[marurun]

My critiques were not that the games were inherently bad, just that they are uninspiring, and in the case of CvT, particularly uninteresting. I am, in fact, very glad to see SSF2T:HDR. I think their return to fighting games is a good thing, but I was hoping for more. After years of SF2 variants Capcom broke out into new play styles and intellectual capital. What we have here is mostly rehashing old intellectual capital. I think I prefer to see a balance of old and new. Sure, polish and revise that which we already know and love, but give us new universes with new characters from time to time with no ties to the old.

What I've read about SF4 makes it sound like a smaller change over the SF2 variants than SF3 was, 3D graphics aside. And while Capcom vs Tatsunoko adds new Tatsunoko fighting characters, none of these series really introduces much that we haven't seen before in some form or another.

I don't have a current gen system and SSF2T:HDR is the only game in Capcom's lineup that makes me regret that, frankly.

I should note that while I do consider some types of graphical changes significant (as often in style as technical), the 3D move and the move to HD are themes that have already been tread. Guilty Gear was one of the first series to move away from low-resolution sprites locked into a roughly 320x240 screen and Capcom has already played with moving Street Fighter to 3D with the SF:EX series. Capcom did good jumping to 1080p high-res rather than wasting time in intermediary resolutions, at least.

[racketboy]

In TvC, I'm mostly excited about having more fresh characters to play with and the graphical style is cool. Is it something that will be good for tournaments? probably not, but it's something that looks fun so far.

[fastbilly1]

I just hope it is better than the last Tatsunoko fighting game...