G-pinions

I apologize for interrupting the beginning of the belated year-end columns, but I'm fairly peeved at the fighting genre right now. Obviously this was prompted by Dead or Alive 4, which I picked up for my 360 Friday night. I will say that the game is fun, and that I've enjoyed almost all of what I've played thus far. But GOD DAMN is this genre stagnant. It's geared entirely to hardcore fans of the respective series, and non-gamers who just like to whip the piss out of each other. For both of those extremes, I can completely respect an effort such as DOA4. It looks great, animates almost perfectly, has a lot of character, and is simple to pick up but (incredibly) tough to master. That last one is the problem though - it's simple to pick up in that you can almost button-mash your way to victory against the computer (and your friends) half the time, and feel like you're making progress doing so. But you're not. Beyond a point that arrives all too quickly, you're learning nothing. The learning curve just stops, and continues in the distance, where only fighting game fanatics can touch it. After getting beat down by the final boss two dozen times while playing as a random character, I decided I'd had enough. I wasn't making progress, I hadn't been taught a thing (besides "have faster reflexes") and I wasn't enjoying myself. When you win at that point, you just breath a sigh of relief and thank your luck that she didn't teleport behind you and snap your neck for the eighth time; there's no pride for actually doing anything to avoid it yourself.

And I'm not just bad at this, as you may understandably postulate. I played the hell of out Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and their myriad iterations in the arcades, and learnt the ridiculous move lists like everyone else. I even managed to get a decent hold of the rock-paper-scissors mechanic that most 3D fighters use, and managed to enjoy the Virtua Fighter and Soul Caliber series. But I'm fed up with how unforgiving it all is, and DOA4 is perhaps the most glaring example of that yet. As I said, you can still almost button mash (not so much mash as input random buttons and directions) your way to victory, but DOA4 still starts out at a much higher difficultly than most fighting games. So by the time you're at the end of the story with a character you're not 100% comfortable/lucky with (which is all of them) it just becomes grueling. Even when I force myself to learn the ever-awkward counters and reversals, it's not assured that I'll be able to fight my way past a randomly difficult opponent.

Really, the entire genre needs to die, and be reborn as a series of truly represented fighting games. I don't want to play as other characters, I want to play as me. I want to create my character as a simple man, and learn from a series of other characters how to fight. I don't want to be them, I want to teach myself to fight like them, if I so desire. I want to be able to subtly change my fighting style for an upcoming opponent, knowing my strengths will play to his weaknesses. I also want it to control like I AM ACTUALLY FIGHTING, not making split-second suggestions as to whether my avatar should or should not throw his forward punch, that looks exactly the same every time. Fight Night of all things did a really great job of making punching feel like punching, and the variations feel like variations. And while we're stuck in this era of analog sticks and buttons, I can only hope for so much.

But is it wrong to dream of a game where no two movements are the same, where physics actually matter, and where being organic takes precedence over being possible to master? I look at the evolution of some genres, from Mario to Jumping Flash to Ratchet and Clank, from Wolfenstein to System Shock to Halo, and then I look at Street Fighter (the original) next to DOA, and the lack of fundamental differences are almost embarrassing. Yes, DOA4 is passionately made, well presented and technically proficient, but why one would spend hours alone with the game is something only specific fans of the series can communicate or appreciate. It's a genre direly in need of a revolution, whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not.