Do you consider fighting games to be a scam?

[Lemon Zing]

I've noticed they use the same, or at least similar characters, and then give them the same moves as what somebody used in a prior game.

I'd like to see new moves, and well, you know what I mean. You're just paying for the same thing otherwise.

 

[Misery]

I've noticed they use the same, or at least similar characters, and then give them the same moves as what somebody used in a prior game.

I'd like to see new moves, and well, you know what I mean. You're just paying for the same thing otherwise.

I've spent about a gazillion hours with fighting games.

And I tell you this: Even the most diehard fans often feel this way.

There was one notorious example, in the Blazblue series. A totally new edition came out, right?

Know what it had?

One new character. ONE. Did I mention this was a full retail release?

Unfortunately the genre is like that.

But if you want to see the worst of the worst...

DEAD OR ALIVE 6 on Steam

Scroll down a bit, where it shows a short list of DLC. Click "show all". And witness the greedsplosion that follows.

I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again: EVEN EA WOULDNT DO THAT.

And when the devil himself is unwilling to go so far... you know you've gotten nasty.


Now, that all being said, there is one crucial thing to consider: having "the same" special moves in different games isnt really a bad thing. Think of it as double-jumping in platformers. It always works exactly the same, it's never new, it's repeated everywhere. But this is because it's a great mechanic that just WORKS.

It's the same for things like Ryu's Hadouken, or his Shoryuken. Both of these are moves you will see in MANY games, not just in Street Fighter. Not because the devs are trying to be cheap and copy things. But because they are "core" moves that are just sort of fundamental, if that makes sense.

No, the point at which games start to feel scammy is when they do things like, you get a "OMG SUPER EDITION" and it does something like add one character, or maybe it doesnt add any and just tweaks the balance... that sort of thing. The Street Fighter series is notorious for this. But having shared moves across entirely different franchises? It's normal. Every game genre does this, whether their fans want to admit it or not.

 

[GrownupGirl]

I don't really know, as I was never into fighting games and found most of them boring and mindless. Except for the Super Smash Brothers games, but for some reason people think they're not "real" fighting games. Then what kind of games are they?

When Mortal Kombat 3 came out, however, it looked like most of the new fighters were just more clones of the older characters and they just gave them different colors and names and junk.

 

[Misery]

I don't really know, as I was never into fighting games and found most of them boring and mindless. Except for the Super Smash Brothers games, but for some reason people think they're not "real" fighting games. Then what kind of games are they?

When Mortal Kombat 3 came out, however, it looked like most of the new fighters were just more clones of the older characters and they just gave them different colors and names and junk.

Nah, it's not a mindless genre, but it certainly can look that way from the outside.

The problem is that they're actually hideously complicated. Getting to the point of being even somewhat decent at them takes a bazillion hours of practice. All sorts of complicated elements grinding together at the speed of sound. For newer players, well, they dont really know how to deal with all of that, so the mindless button mashing begins. The genre as a whole is notorious for being *very* difficult to get into.

Smash isnt an exception. The reason why some people see the Smash games as not being "real fighters" is... because they're trying too hard to seem mature. Seriously, that's the reason. Much to my non-stop annoyance, plenty of gamers out there wont touch certain games, because those games are "kiddy". Not for "REAL" adults. Ironically, this is actually an incredibly childish behavior on their part. Like the 13 year old kid that tries to sneak into R-rated movies to prove how mature he is.

As for Mortal Kombat: Plenty of them WERE clones. Fighting games do that sometimes (Ryu & Ken for instance) but MK loved it. Some of it was due to technical limitations at the time. Big rosters like that of MK3 werent common, because they were very hard to do. Heck, even smaller rosters were tough to pull off. And considering HOW those characters were made (digitized actors) it was even harder. So, palette swaps. Plenty of them. To their credit though they at least did a decent job of making each play a bit different from the others.

 

[Lemon Zing]

Pallet swaps are what they refer to them as, right? Like how Kuma and Panda are separate characters that are bears, but they are also considered unique, individual characters. In fact, the Kuma in recent games is actually Kuma II, because he's in reality the son of the bear that acted as Heihachi's protector. The bear also really hated Paul Phoenix.

Mortal Kombat has way too many ninjas, but at least they are all cool. The movie adaption is awesome.

 

[Misery]

Pallet swaps are what they refer to them as, right? Like how Kuma and Panda are separate characters that are bears, but they are also considered unique, individual characters. In fact, the Kuma in recent games is actually Kuma II, because he's in reality the son of the bear that acted as Heihachi's protector. The bear also really hated Paul Phoenix.

Mortal Kombat has way too many ninjas, but at least they are all cool. The movie adaption is awesome.

In older fighters at least "palette swap" is usually very literal. Scorpion and Sub-Zero are palette swaps because they're very literally just the same set of sprites, just recolored by the game before being put on screen. MK did this quite a bit. All those ninjas, like Smoke, Reptile, Rain, or even Noob Saibot, they're just color changes off of the original sprite set. Whereas with Ryu & Ken, one is usually considered a "clone" of the other, as their art is different. The only thing that's at all similar about them is the style of their outfit, in terms of looks. But they still use mostly the same moves, so they fit under "clones".

Super Smash Bros also LOVES to do the clone thing. It's outright infamous for it. Just mention "Fire Emblem" to any pro and you're likely to get a hearty groan out of them.

These days you dont see true palette swaps all that often, because the memory limitations are a thing of the past. But you definitely still see clone characters sometimes, though not as often as you used to, unless you're playing Smash.

 

[Lemon Zing]

In one of the WWE games, besides using cheat codes in prior games, you could play as the Red and Green moves models. They were just two big guys with wrestling gear you used to demonstrate the moves, that looked identical. Just that one was red and one was green. They were pointless.

 

[BrokenBoy]

Fighting games are not bad but they require too much frame perfect inputs and godlike reactions times which I have little patience for except in Smash because it doesn't feel as fast.