Friday 12 January, 2007

I started playing against the computer in arcade mode with characters I was familiar with, namely the Shotokan trio – Akuma, Ryu, and Ken, the former with which I am most capable. I slugged it through to the end, oftentimes button-mashing in attempts to pull off the special and super moves, occasionally parrying by mistake. The fights were pretty ugly, with my clumsy handling and low marks on the A-F ranking system. I was lucky if I managed to pull a C. Though the first bonus stage was reminiscent of the car-smashing exercise of Street Fighter 2 fame, I had no absolutely no idea on how to even begin attempting the second stage. One of the playable characters controlled by the computer, Sean, would shoot basketballs at you while a simple set of instructions told you to parry them. I kept asking myself, “How am I supposed to parry?” while the basketballs made way with my face and I futilely tried to punch them away.

I eventually made it to the final battle against the red and blue antagonist, Gill, who happened to be an excruciatingly tough opponent. He has a particularly nasty habit of hitting the player really hard with fire and ice-based attacks and resurrecting to full health if he dies with a full super bar intact. This combined with the fact that I was a newbie made this an activity almost comparable to shoving bamboo slits under my fingernails. I didn’t keep count on the number of attempts my victory took, but I can assure you there was plenty of screaming and anguish.

After a good while, I played a series of human vs. human games against Paul (palani on GameLog), one of my roommates. This is where the real learning and appreciation sequence began. We sampled all of the characters the game had to offer us and figured out the intricate parrying and EX move system. At one point, we had spent at least a solid ten minutes chucking different projectiles at each other and parrying them. We had begun to break the surface of parrying, and we knew that it would take an exceptional amount of time and skill in order to eventually parry the rapid and oftentimes more random melee attacks. I had also deviated from exclusive use of the Shotokan trio at this point; finding utility in Elena, the Capoeira fighter whose attacks solely consist of kicks.

It sounds to me a little like the bonus stages were a bit extraneous and hard to pick up. I've noticed fighting games have really started going overboard on the bonus stages these days. How much do you think it would detract from this game if the bonus stages were removed and those developement resources were focused on the rest of the game? Or, do you think the bonus stages are very important an more focus should be put on them? In what way would you improve them?

You need to do more analysis of the game design rather than description of gameplay. What makes the game fun? What makes it compelling enough for users to keep playing?