More Fighting Game ramblings

I had a chance to play a little of Soul Calibur 5 at the weekend, not a game that I had been looking forward to especially but I'd been aware of it through coverage on Shoryuken.com. The fact that it featured Ezio Auditore from the Assassin's Creed series interested me slightly and he was clearly the character I was going to try out first. I was with a bunch of friends who mostly had some interest in fighting games, though for some it was a minor distraction before playing some FIFA.

First impressions weren't good - I was really shocked by the main menu, which was ugly, clunky and had us very confused as to where the option for standard player vs. player mode was hidden. Once we found it we then realised that we'd better go to the options screen to set up the controls as there was little chance that they had followed the Third Strike Online approach of having controller setup on the character select screen. However, I don't think any of us were prepared for a very simple screen with a shared setup for both controllers. We scrolled through the first few layouts, all of which seemed to be centred around the face buttons on a pad - I didn't even realise at the time that there was an option to customise it fully but that would have taken an age as you have to scroll through a list of attacks, not just press the button you want to do an attack.

Thankfully all of us were using the same brand of Arcade stick and were prepared to just roll with the default setting but this is absolutely unacceptable for a game that was seemingly being positioned as a serious tournament game. Button checks have become a huge time sink at these events when there are so many different button layouts on arcade sticks and pads, with everyone plugging their own in for each match. Third Strike Online has demonstrated the best way of doing this now and I feel there's no excuse for future games that don't follow the same approach (if Street Fighter X Tekken does it wrong I will gnnnngghhhh!).The single controller setup seems like such an oversight that I feel like I must be missing something, I've not seen this complained about yet but I wouldn't have expected it to be difficult to find this option either.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the config screen isn't exactly friendly to new players either, you are just presented with a list like: A - G, B - K, X - A, Y - B, RB - A + B, etc. I took this to mean guard, kick and two types of attack but someone else observed that it could just as easily be interpreted as guard, kick, attack and block - were they really so short on screen space that they couldn't print the proper name of things?

We all jumped in and had some button mashy fun with it, people mostly getting beaten because they didn't use the block button (I always struggle with games that take this approach). It seemed harder than I remembered to get a ring out on people - you'd often have them right up against a sheer drop, hitting them with attacks but they would be absolutely fine as long as their feet stayed on the ground, like there was a foot high invisible wall all around the arena. Ezio was pretty cool and I even managed to finish a round with a combo into his hidden pistol, though I have no idea how I did it. So while it may have a training mode that sounds quite good, there was nothing in that quick game with friends that really encouraged me to take a more serious look at it. I would play it again in that kind of situation but by that point I'm sure there'll be something new and interesting that would take that experimental spot.

Speaking of mashing, we also played a little Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, where I managed to beat all comers with a team of Phoenix Wright, Dante and Hawkeye. I'll admit I was the only person who'd played much of Ultimate, though most had played the vanilla version and beaten me on other occasions. I was mostly playing Phoenix Wright for practice as I want to use him but he's so hard to do anything with online. The dream is to hit someone else with his level 3 hyper and take them to court but so far I've only had it done to me (still hilarious either way). Dante I've always dabbled with so I can remember a few combos and Hawkeye is currently my insurance policy even though I don't really know how to play him.

Hawkeye works really well at 'keeping people honest' I think, if you mash out a move without thinking he can pretty much punish you from anywhere on screen with his single arrow hyper move. I think you can maybe cancel your move with X-Factor as a bait for it but I've not seen it done. I can really struggle against more random players in other games so having the threat of that hyper really feels like it forces the match to be played more on my own terms - and if people don't learn then I'll keep on using it. He also gets a pretty good speed boost when you activate X-Factor, so he's a great character to save till last and on a couple of occasions I lost both of the other characters and then just ran through the other guys entire team in a red mist of glory. There's no better end to a match than hearing his "No!" followed by "KO!".

Hopefully I can get to play a bit more of it this week, I think I just need to be strict with myself and avoid trying to play ranked matches online as that's always the quickest route to disappointment city...