Killer Instinct Review - C-c-c-c-combo Breaker

[Seracen]

why the heck should I bother playing a game, if I don't care about the characters or story involved?

For the gameplay/multiplayer? See: Unreal Tournament, Ninja Gaiden Black, Halo 3

Never bothered with Unreal Tournament either, Ninja Gaiden had just enough story to keep me sated for a single playthrough, and Halo has always attempted to tout its storylines (if nothing else, Halo 1 alone secured most of the sequels for me).

Again, it's just personal preference. If I were speaking for everybody, COD and BF would never sell. I'm not saying I don't play MP, but I always see it as garnish.

For me, SP are the burgers, and MP are the fries.

 

[m0ng00se]

For the people who were hoping for some kind of explination of the game's mechanics and what sets this game apart from other fighting games, I wrote this: http://pastebin.com/vhvUHTG8

TL;DNR: based on video and interviews the game has a lacking neutral, but makes up for it with it's combo breaker mind games, the (potential) problem is that the combo breaker mind games are the same for every character, which (in theory) sucks the individuality out of each character. In addition, the heavy combo oriented gameplay makes the game spend most of it's time in mid-combo. If you think the combo mind games sound like fun then maybe it's a good game for you, if you don't like the idea of losing out on a strong neutral game in favor of the mid-combo mind game stuff then this might not be a good game for you.
TL;DR for the TL;DNR: Combo breakers are the entire game, this makes it unique, but also presents issues as the game is now forcing this mechanic into a genera not built with it in mind.

Sick.

So pretty much the whole game gets played after the first hit? That seems super interesting but too bad that the first hit isn't worth much.

The level of mind games as described really smacked of "I knew you knew I knew you knew I knew" which is less a mind game than a Saturday morning cartoon bit. Hopefully it's a little deeper than that though.

 

[m0ng00se]

Okay the pastebin review is actually pretty well-informed but it cuts off randomly in the middle (I play GG too!).

I should just do what you did, citizen, and write a better review for a game I haven't even played, ahaha

 

[m0ng00se]

"I knew you knew I knew you knew" is a lot different when there is only 2 sets of options for one player, "Do thing" and "Don't do thing." P1 gets "risk eating breaker/counter their breaker/skip the whole mess and just do an unbreakable" with the third obviously being a matter of mathematics over mindgames and thus not a decision for purposes of this discussion (although fairly leaving the decision advantage with the attacker). P2 then gets "C-C-C-COMBO BREAK" or "Don't."

Which is I knew you knew I knew you knew I knew. Once certain optimization numbers come out, we'll at least have the weighted options but it sounds like the combo linkers are the equivalent of an instant reset in any other game.


Guilty Gear and SF has resets, high/lows, left/rights, the RPS inherent in poke range (walking forward dies to sticking out moves dies to whiff punishing dies to walking forward). Mid-combo the attacking player gets the options of "Damage now" or like 3 different flavors of "Hopefully more damage later" (in the form of positioning, hard knockdown, meter gain, etc). Mid bad idea in a lot of games, players get the chance to make the judgement call on "See if I can get away with it" and "Blow a bunch of meter to make this safe."

This is more like chess-in-a-hurry than MAD Magazine Spy vs Spy espionage.

 

[Ipsen]

Really? While I think Skullgirls is a great game, it could have done with a couple more characters. I take Persona 4 Arena's character size of 13 as minimum. It's got nothing to do with price to me. The lack of variety makes the game worse to me regardless if I'm paying 15 dollars or 80 dollars. I know more characters are coming, but the question is, will anyone still be playing by the time they do? We all know how sheeplike and retarded the fighting game community is. The second a new hyped fighting game comes out, they abandon the old one, before eventually going back to ones from a couple of years ago.

LabZero's circumstances aside, I'm of the impression that Skullgirls has more 'variety' than you may give it credit for. Between those 8 (now 9) characters, you can either go in tag style up to 2 partners, or solo. Not to mention each character is built and balanced to 'tournament quality'; if you have an eye for fighting games, it's enough to appreciate the sheer utility a 'well-made' character, team, setup or matchup can provide (then again, after a long list of fighters with simliar base mechanics, you tend to lose that appreciation; a Catch-22). Variety has very little to do with character count, and Marvel vs Capcom 2 proves my point beautifully (still love the game for it, however).

And honestly, when it comes down to it, you find REAL people to play with you in fighting games in order to find longevity in them; There's just no way around that. Rolling through online lobbies comes and goes, then goes forever. Finding real people to play is one of the key steps in getting legitimately skilled at fighting games, I believe.

And we're not so sheeplike. I'd say it's just virtually every fighter comes down to being (an offshoot of) street fighter. Combos, throws, projectiles, cross/mixup, frame detail, etc.; fighters just can't seem to get away from this jargon. So it ends up Capcom fighters, the most familiar, get the most play (the most recent titles being the most popular AND having the best chances of playing retreads), while the 'offshoots', say 'anime fighters', suffer slightly from the 'deviating from the standard'.

We are retarded, though.

KI has to have enough depth in all of its characters to stay relevant, but the growth of a game, done right, brings in or brings back a fair amount of players. I think KI will be fine.

 

[m0ng00se]

Wow people have such problems with the FGC. Or at least brony here does because Fighting is Magic got canned or something like it's Capcom's fault.

The reason FGC players play MvC3 and SF is the same reason RTS players play StarCraft 2. If you wanna play, you have to play what everyone is playing. It's just how it is. Those games are genuinely terrible but they're where you go to compete.

P4A gets a crazy amount of love for what it is, some of the bigger scenes run ranbats for it. My scene runs SFxT, WindJammers, TowerFall and Guilty Gear on top of the regular stuff, so who even knows what's going to get popular in a scene.
If you can't appreciate the characters in SkullGirls for what they are (and how well done they all are) then the game is entirely not for you.


The reason nobody plays SkullGirls is mostly the restand resets are ridiculous and unfun from what I understand.

 

[Ipsen]

Not if its an Xbox One exclusive tho. If it wants to stick around, it needs to gain a fanbase quick before the FGC goes back to their precious Marvel vs Capcom 2 or Street Fighter game. Something I'm still depressed Persona 4 Arena didn't get. It has to be the best fighting game I've ever played, and its sad to see only like 10 people in the lobby. Thank god for its godlike netcode tho, allowing an Australian like me to play whoever I want and meaning I can get lag free games even when only 10 people are playing.

That's true, but it really all depends if the Xbox One itself gets out there itself in order for KI gets play.

But again, I find it only gets you far to just play fighting games online. I find fighting games to be one of, if not the most 'meeting real people required' genre of gaming out there, because of situations like

Spoiler: this

P4A gets a crazy amount of love for what it is, some of the bigger scenes run ranbats for it. My scene runs SFxT, WindJammers, TowerFall and Guilty Gear on top of the regular stuff, so who even knows what's going to get popular in a scene.

But yea, I'm with you on P4A; it's my favorite fighting game to date. So many good points it hits (even though it boils down to a pretty tightly ASW style game), and yet takes the extra step to expand rather well on the Persona world. I can't wait for Ultimax...Ultra Suplex Hold (best sequel subtitle ever).