Quote:
Originally Posted by Kheldin  define not noob-friendly. I play tekken at a fairly high level, and used to play some street fighters back in the day, but it's been since SF Alpha 1 that I took a break from them for awhile.
Basically what i'm looking for is:
a.) Tight gameplay where skill is king over cheese bullshit
b.) Visually impressive graphics
c.) Combos that make sense (in the Marvel vs. Capcom games you'd have like 30 hit combos that did like 10% damage, when a few fierce punches would do the same deal...it was combos for the sake of combos, and that was stupid)
That said, does that skew your recommendations at all? |
You'll find tight gameplay in all of these titles. Cheese is subjective of course. I'll try to be as objective as I can with my breakdown below, but note that my bias favors CVS2 and Alpha 2 as my favorite fighters (with super turbo up there somewhere).
Alpha Anthology
- Alpha 1's day is gone. It is kind of fun, to noodle with, but probably wasn't really for release when it came out. Alpha 2 is really the first complete game in the series. Guy and Ken rule the world.
- I really enjoy playing Alpha 2, but many dislike the high damage custom combos, which are easier to do than in other fighters with customs (in most cases). It is decently well balanced, with most of the mid tier being fairly competitive against the top tier (Chun, Ken, Rose, Ryu) in any level of play you will likely be engaging in any time soon.
The art direction in A2 is considered by some to be the pinnacle of old-school art direction. Most of the backgrounds kick ass. Plus the music is mostly renditions of original music from SF2.
- Alpha 3 is the most controversial game in the Alpha series. It was the first street fighter to have the player select character modes or "isms," which determines the type of super gauge the character has. In high level play, Vism dominates for most characters; there are some tricks you can do with Vism that literally breaks the game engine and allows a few characters to do infinites. I avoid A3 because of this, but it does have some cool things going for it.
In terms of competition for the above games, Alpha 1 and 3 are pretty much dead stateside. You'll see occasional Alpha 3 side games in local tourneys, with it being more common as a side game in larger ones. However, with the addition of Alpha 2 to GGPO, A2 has had a bit of a revival.
If you're really interested in playing an Alpha game, my honest recommendation would be to play Alpha 2 on GGPO, especially if you have access to an arcade stick you can use on PC.
Anniversary Edition
- Hyper SF2: Just wait for SF2:HD to come out of Xbox live or PS3. This is fun and all, but often not considered a tournament worthy game due to some champion edition characters breaking balance totally. (Hi Bison!)
- Third Strike: One of the most popular tournament games still (The big three 2D fighters--aside from Guilty Gear--are 3S, Marvel, and CvS2, with an honorable mention for Super Turbo). It has a lot of depth on some levels, but the parry system destroys the importance of projectiles and makes controlling space and zoning more random, or so some would say. I've seen a lot of things happen in high level play that just leaves people scratching their heads. A lot of old schoolers dislike it for the slow, slow pace and the parry system. Plus in high level play it pretty much turns into ken vs chun vs yun with the occasionally makoto.
The super art system is interesting in theory, but in practice every character has one, maybe two super arts you'll see in high level play.
It is the most visually striking of all the games mentioned here definitely. It still holds up pretty well today. I also enjoy the electronic/hip-hop influenced music, but some may disagree.
It is pretty noob friendly as there are a lot of high damage combos that are pretty easy--relatively speaking--to pick up, with higher damage and harder ones to learn that give an edge, but aren't necessarily required for entry level competition. Parrying isn't really that hard to pick up, but you won't be pulling a Diago and parrying all of Chun's SA2 tomorrow. It also has a limited cast compared to CVS2 (though still 20 characters), and two of the top tier are reasonably easy to pick up and go with (Ken, Chun).
CVS2
- CVS2 arguably has the most depth of all the games mentioned here, so much so it is pretty daunting and intimidating to the new player. It has over 50 characters, of which you pick a team of three to play as with a ratio system (you chose to play as 1 ratio 4, 2 ratio 2s, a ratio 1 and 3, or 2 ratio 1s and a ratio 2, but unless you use the last option you're gimping yourself).
The "ism" system from Alpha 3 is used in this, except they're called grooves and there are six of them. Yes, six. Only three of them see heavy use in high level play these days (C, A, and K, with some N). Many of the characters are more optimally used in one groove over another, and teams should be selected to have some synergy. Figuring all of this out, not to mention becoming competent with three characters is a bit more of a time/skill investment than the above games.
Of the the strongest grooves, A, is based around a custom combo system that is rather hard to execute, for most at least. C is very competitive, however, if you don't want to start with A (many consider C a counter to A anyway).
Where things get even more tricky is a tournament legal glitch called roll canceling. Three grooves (C, A, N) have a command move roll executed by hitting lp and lk at the same time. Where the glitch comes in is that you can perform a special move about 1/6 of a second after doing the roll, which will cancel the roll and transfer invincible frames found in every roll to the special move, whether it was intended to have invincible frames or not. Roll canceling is one of the most technically difficult things in any fighting game to do consistently. You will not be doing this day one.
On top of that, the game system is rather complex compared to most other fighters. There is a huge FAQ about it on gamefaqs that is required reading if you want to take the game seriously.
Graphically, the game looks fairly dated, especially on PS2 (it runs in slightly higher res than arcade/dc, so the characters are a bit more pixelated).
So while CVS2 might have the most depth of the above games, it might be to the game's detriment.
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I hope that helps somewhat. If you have more specific questions, by all means, let em rip.
