racketboy.com

There's too many versions of games for me to rank em all, but my thoughts on major entries/favorites:

SF3 - Is the best. A smallish roster of mostly weird dudes. Super fast. Parries. Great game. Love it. Ranks alongside Mark Of The Wolves as my favorite 2D fighter ever.

SF2 - Classic. One of my favorite games of my youth.

SF4 - I'm actually surprised at all the recent hate on this one. All I know is a played many, many hours of this one of the past five years or so. Good times. Oh, and I also thought SFxT was great fun. Underrated if you ask me.

Alpha series - fun and weird and unique. 3 is probably the best, but I find myself playing 2 the most these days (via GOG).

SF - The original game is pretty trash. It's just the controls. Ugh. I always wish for some kind of remake. Imagine just having the original SF1 roster, with all characters playable, and the artstyle of the II/III "Anniversary" editions...

Anyway, I'm planning to re-visit a bunch of Street Fighter and related games this Summer when we're doing Third Strike for TR.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:...I haven't played Street Fighter V. I have read, however, that it isn't that great.[/spoiler]

this isn't quite right. Most of the negatives thrown at SFV have been about content at launch. And that's fair. But many reviews have also tried to make that clear. Rock Paper Shotgun concluded by saying something along the lines of "I hope none of these critiques keep you away..." and I feel like that's the bottom line.

SFV was released with different but translucent intentions. Capcom is going the sort of MOBA route of releasing the game with a small roster and continually adding new characters in the next couple of years. I think they said the goal was one new character every other month? The plan is to make SFV a living, growing game instead of making new iterations of it. So while a complaint me be "small roster" now (and mind, that's not one of my complaints), it will change in coming months.

The bigger complaint here - and it's justifiable to an extent - is lack of single player content. There is a Story Mode where you play through a game story where the fighters are chosen for you to fit the story. You'll play as every character and you'll do this in an hour or two. It's really easy and really short. Outside of that, there's no Arcade Mode with different endings for each character. That does feel short-sighted for fans of solo play.

But but but as a fighting game, SFV is awesome. The speed is great, the moves are great, and the roster (current, as of today) is awesome and will get bigger and more diverse. The oddness of the roster and mere cherry picking of the past favorites reminds me a lot of SF3 - which is a good thing.

I was talking to a student about the new Call of Duty this morning, and it reminded me of a gaming opinion of mine that seems to be fairly unpopular - I thought Modern Warfare 2 was WAY better than CoD4.

Street Fighter V is actually pretty good. The only issue I have is the input delay. SFV actually accomplished what SF4 was claiming to attempt.

ElkinFencer10 wrote:I was talking to a student about the new Call of Duty this morning, and it reminded me of a gaming opinion of mine that seems to be fairly unpopular - I thought Modern Warfare 2 was WAY better than CoD4.

I didn't particularly care for the forced two player co-op challenge things, and any game where I get to roam through Pripyat usually makes me happy, so I suppose I disagree with you.

Also, I prefer Street Fighter Alpha 2 to Street Fighter Alpha 3, though for a couple of different reasons, one of which is purely nostalgia: I played a lot of Alpha 2's weird SNES port. But Alpha 3 just never clicks with me for some reason. I just don't know why.

the7k wrote:SFV actually accomplished what SF4 was claiming to attempt.

mechanically, I agree. Yeah.

I like Alpha 3 least too. Don't care for how it handles, the overly bloated roster, or the style switches -- it's not a comfortable game. I tried to get comfy with it, but I don't care for it. Alpha 2 all the way, and behind that 1 before 3. Same here with Alpha2 being a SNES game owner but also I was lucky to find it in places on an arcade cabinet too. Alpha3 I've only tinkered with console/GBA side.

I know this one will be not popular but seeing COD popped up it's time. CoD fell off a cliff into a multiplayer mire of crap with it leaving World War II (I throw MoH in that too.) I'm sorry but the whole over emphasis on multiplayer and upselling all those bundles and maps is a pure turn off especially coupled with boring modern/slight future combat. I prefer the historical grit angle of the WW2 aspect, the games then not having the wimpy pressure against death bar vs a life bar (making you far more careful.) I liked having a bit of creative freedom but only enough to put someone into a real situation or campaign from 70 years ago. It feels better, more real, more worthwhile being put in the boots of a soldier in that period than some fake middle eastern or sci-fi wrecked US or whatever situation.

Tanooki wrote:I like Alpha 3 least too. Don't care for how it handles, the overly bloated roster, or the style switches -- it's not a comfortable game. I tried to get comfy with it, but I don't care for it. Alpha 2 all the way, and behind that 1 before 3. Same here with Alpha2 being a SNES game owner but also I was lucky to find it in places on an arcade cabinet too. Alpha3 I've only tinkered with console/GBA side.

I know this one will be not popular but seeing COD popped up it's time. CoD fell off a cliff into a multiplayer mire of crap with it leaving World War II (I throw MoH in that too.) I'm sorry but the whole over emphasis on multiplayer and upselling all those bundles and maps is a pure turn off especially coupled with boring modern/slight future combat. I prefer the historical grit angle of the WW2 aspect, the games then not having the wimpy pressure against death bar vs a life bar (making you far more careful.) I liked having a bit of creative freedom but only enough to put someone into a real situation or campaign from 70 years ago. It feels better, more real, more worthwhile being put in the boots of a soldier in that period than some fake middle eastern or sci-fi wrecked US or whatever situation.

I completely agree, though I think they started to fix that with Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III since it really showed that they put more focus on better writing and getting actually talented actors. Whether or not that continues with Infinite Warfare remains to be seen.

ElkinFencer10 wrote:I was talking to a student about the new Call of Duty this morning, and it reminded me of a gaming opinion of mine that seems to be fairly unpopular - I thought Modern Warfare 2 was WAY better than CoD4.

It was the last one I really got into... but the killstreaks KILLED it for me. CoD4 had 3 I think, and MW2 had around 15 or something? Sums it up...

That said, it's been what 10 years since MW2 came out? I'm finally interested in checking out the newer ones since they're dirt cheap now too, so I have Ghosts... haha. But uh, Doom is taking up my FPS time right now and probably 100x better.

The only one I found moderately interesting was Ghost but I've never replayed it.

It's not just the stupid stories it's also all the stupid fluff for kill junkies and the terrible shortness of the campaigns. The old WW2 games on a first play through even on easy would take numerous more hours to knock off so you really got your monies worth if you weren't just some online kill jockey tool.

CoD and MoH back in the days meant a whole lot more to me. The single player campaigns were much more meaningful, and these days the emphasis is far more on multiplayer. That's why I'm hoping next month's TR will take those back who are more familiar with the newer annual releases and they get a chance to see how the series started as well as the WWII roots.