Hmmm, well I'm not all that excited about this, in general every attempt to try and emulate "Smash Brothers" has kind of failed as far as I've seen. The big example I can think of is that Cartoon Network "Punch Time Explosion" thing they released which I guess some people had high hopes for, but actually blew chips.
I think the whole "Smash" subgenere of fighters is something that companies should stay away from, I will hopefully be wrong, but I can't see this ending well for Sony. Any way it goes, as much as I like fighters, I'm going to very much be taking a "wait and see" attitude.
I also find it kind of amusing to see people complaining about a lack of female characters. WTF did people expect given the complaints over the "Battle Nuns" trailer for "Hitman" or the nature of the complaints about a certain Tomb Raider trailer. With people screaming about violence against women, is it any surprise that nobody wants to say put many characters like Lara Croft, Lightning, or other characters into a fighting game where they are going to get pounded?
That might not have factored into the final roster (where women are present, but in low numbers) but it wouldn't surprise me. In Lara's case I wouldn't be surprised if she got cut due to the reaction to a certain trailer.
In short, I wouldn't be surprised if recent "Women against Tropes" and feminist gaming arguements and discussions have actually managed to start the gaming industry regressing, every bit of progress the industry has made since "Final Fight" being undone.
If your wondering why I mention "Final Fight" I'm referring to how they decided the female characters in the US release of the game were transvestites because it was too contreversial for a US audience for guys to actually be seen pounding the crap out of girls (no matter how violent or dangerous). This leading to a lot of contreversy over the gender of "Poison" due to contridictions in the character's various incarnations in spin offs. Over time we got to the point where noone had any problems with girls coming out to punch it out, win or lose, with the guys, it's all in good fun and pure fantasy, and characters like "Poison" and the mess of what her actual gender is have become hot topics of video game speculation (if your curious the wikipedia page for Poison DOES put it to rest, the creator says that the US version of Poison is a post-op transexual for example).
So basically due to all the bellyaching about Agent 47 taking down a group of (heavily armed and well trained) female mercenaries dressed as nuns, I wouldn't be surprised if games that in any way allow you to emulate this in any context are on their way out. After all it's not that far removed from say Zangief beating Cammy or Chun Li into the pavement, or whatever fighting game analogy you care to use (note, the women Agent 47 took out were NOT defenseless victims, and would have probably tore apart anyone who wasn't a genetically modified super-assasin with a bar code on the back of his head).
In short for the few making the point about the lack of women on the roster, you should be screaming praises to the heavens that a company like Sony has put any into this game at all given recent events. After all the clear message is that since guys can't fight girls or do bad things to them in the media, that women need to be locked away, sheltered, and protected, as opposed to you know... picking up guns or combat skills and trying to use them (or is it that if a girl becomes a professional killer your morally obligated to let her go on murder sprees... I get confused here at times),
