Can I Keep Up the Fight?

I've been meaning to get this blog post down for some time. Here are my thoughts on my personal experiences of playing various games in the fighting game genre and how I hope to retain the re-energized fighting spark with Persona 4 Arena.

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I have been a long time fan of fighting games, though I'm having a hard time enjoying the new renaissance the genre has experienced this gaming generation. One of the first games I ever got was Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo and played that game to death. I also enjoyed playing Fatal Fury 2, Mortal Kombat I and II, TMNT: Tournament Fighters, World Heroes 2, and other fighting games that I either had or played frequently over at friend's houses during that time. Though not a traditional fighting game, I kept up the fighting spirit when I transitioned over to the Nintendo 64 with Super Smash Brothers. Killer Instinct Gold was decent though I made some bad purchases with Dark Rift and War Gods.

The following console is where my love of the fighting game genre blossomed. The following is a list of fighting games I owned for the beloved Sega Dreamcast.

• Capcom vs. SNK
• Garou: Mark of the Wolves
• The King of Fighters 1998 (dubbed The King of Fighters Dream Match 1999)
• The King of Fighters 1999 (dubbed The King of Fighters Evolution)
• Last Blade 2
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2
• Project Justice
• Power Stone 2
• Street Fighter Alpha 3

The Sega Dreamcast was the special console that got me fighting all the time along with some other classic games that I owned and played in that time (Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia). There was nothing better than spending most of the weekend with friends and family playing the Dreamcast, and a good chunk of time dedicated to those fighting games listed. I still own my Dreamcast copies of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, King of Fighters 1998 & 1999, and Power Stone 2 today, while "downloading" the other games and burning them onto a CD for the other games listed.

Unfortunately, the fighting game genre lost a good bit of momentum once the Playstation 2/X-Box/Gamecube consoles solidified the gaming market. There were still some good fighting games out there with [I think] Tekken carrying much of the fighting game banner during this time (Tag, 4, 5) along with a few others. I managed to purchase The King of Fighters 2000/2001 for the PS2, but missed out on King of Fighters 2002/2003. SNK was in dire straights at the time, they brought in a new developer to continue the franchise going but I didn't like the striker addition from King of Fighters 1999 and 2000/2001 just didn't click with me. I still had fun with the console, managed to squeeze in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, ICO, Burnout 3: Takedown and a few other games before college work became so much that I had to put forth more time and dedication toward my college studies. I did not play many games while I attended college. Anime took over as my big hobby at the time as it was experiencing a pretty big expansion as more people became exposed to anime. I was buying anime DVDs and downloading fansubs from torrents frequently during my summer and winter breaks and my fire with video games almost went out. It's odd that my desire for video games rekindled while my interest in anime is now at an all-time low.

I graduated college toward the tail end of the PS2's life in 2007. I was just browsing around Gamespot one day when I came across one of the trailers on Persona 3. After reading their review of the game shortly afterward, I purchased the game and loved the game from start to end. I also purchased P3 Fes, went straight into playing The Answer and falling short of the end boss because I under-leveled severely. I got a little bit of the fighting game spirit back up by grabbing Capcom vs. SNK 2 and King of Fighters XI. Capcom vs. SNK 2 is what a game between two long-running franchises should be, throwing the kitchen sink with tons of characters and bringing along each companies unique power gauges. Mix-matching teams from both companies was fun and the feeling of triumph when one of us finally beat Shin Akuma and Omega Rugal and having them unlocked and playable. King of Fighters XI was a nice fighter that honed in when they briefly used the Marvel tag-in system that started in 2003. It had a nice roster and featured plenty of unlockable fighters to go after and the gameplay was pretty fast and furious. After some time, the love for the PS2 dwindled and in early 2008, made the transition to the current generation of consoles with the X-Box 360 with Rock Band as the first game. I eventually purchased the PS3 and Wii later.

Side Note: I did purchase Persona 4 as a last hurrah for the PS2. Unfortunately, my brother decided before hand to mod our formerly reliable PS2 for him to play the Beatmania games. The modded PS2 was working at the time though it was exposed. I accidentally spilled a bit of water onto the console and now the console is rendered useless. I STILL own my PS2 copy of Persona 4, but never managed to play one second of it. ;_;

I went in pretty hard with fighting games this generation (and games in general since I got my job soon after graduating college) in hopes to capture some of the fun times I had with the genre's offerings with the Super Nintendo and Sega Dreamcast days, but I ended up being flustered with most of the games I went after. Here are the current list of fighting games that I purchased before getting Persona 4 Arena earlier this month.

• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend
• The King of Fighters XIII
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3
• Mortal Kombat
• Skullgirls
• Street Fighter x Tekken
• Street Fighter IV
• Super Street Fighter IV
• Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition
• Tekken 6
• Virtua Fighter 5
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Out of all the games listed here, the only game where I kind of enjoyed and put in some decent time into was BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. I was still in my anime phase at the time and loved looking at the art and animation of the game. I played around with everyone and decided to use Noel as my main. Looking back to it, I just spammed the hell out of her drive move when I played online as I didn't know any better. I eventually got to Level 30 and made a new X-Box Live friend or two through my time there, along with one nice message and a few mean ones mixed in. I was looking forward to Continuum Shift when that was announced and picked it up the week-of its release. However, after spending some time playing with Noel in training and playing through arcade mode, I felt sick to my stomach. I knew that they changed up all the characters to make the entire roster a bit more balanced but I was sort of put off with the changes they made to Noel. I didn't even bother playing Continuum Shift much after that as I set my sights on playing and completing other games.

I had high expectations for vanilla Street Fighter IV, vanilla Marvel 3, and KoF 13, but once I got around to playing them, I just wasn't getting into them as I used to. There's a multitude of reasons why I just haven't gotten into the fighting games from the generation, ranging from how much more critical I am personally instead of being carefree back in those days, to timing and having precise executions, little technical things to always look out for with meter, range, mix-ups, cross-overs, etc. Being exposed to the world of streaming and watching these fighting gamers play these games at such a level that I'll never attain has gotten me feeling pretty blue in owning all of these fighting games, though I enjoy watching them play at that level. I'm having fun playing numerous games from many different genres with the current generation, but fighting games has failed to engage me.

Until now...

I was planning to pass over Persona 4 Arena over the aspect that the game served as a story aftermath of the events of Persona 4. However, after reading about the fighting system of the game and watching some of the gameplay trailers, I decided to give it a shot. I pre-ordered my copy from Newegg when they held their per-order promotion one weekend in July where they were selling the game for $48. Newegg shipped the game pretty fast and I got my copy along with the arranged soundtrack CD on the retail release date of August 7. I had an early taste of the game when one of my brother's friends got the game early from buying it at a certain game store in suburban Philly that weekend. I was a bit worried playing it a first, but once I got into it, it just felt right. I ended up playing a good chunk of Persona 4 Arena with my brother's friends for most of that day and ended up having my arms cramp up in pain so much because I played so much.

What I love about the the fighting system with P4A is how much the simplified the fighting engine to where you don't have to be reliant on knowing the ins-and-outs of the entire engine and not having to know any out-of-the-box combos to be successful. You just go in there and play. There are certain parts to P4A's engine to be mindful of, with different types of bursts, furious actions, evasions, one more cancels and bursts, and other little things that more experienced fighters will take note of, but you can still be successful by playing a smart game, knowing what your character can do in certain situations and correctly assessing what your opponent is throwing at you. During my first casual matches with a few fellow bombers here, I just went in Chie knowing to be up close and personal, pressure them as much as possible, and throw in the God Hand at the right time and distance. Eventually, I am doing my best to integrate a few more aspects of Chie's game into my arsenal, such as using a bit more of her persona at certain distances and situations and using her furious action counter more times. In short, I applaud Arc System Works for crafting a great fighting engine that's easy for beginners to get into and hack away, but also having little things that can slowly be applied to a person's game as they dig deeper into the character and engine.

I'm not going to be as great as some of the pros who have started to pick up and run with the game, such as Nerdjosh (Teddie), ChrisG (Elizabeth), MarlinPie (Chie), and those that finished in top three in Flux's Giant Bomb P4A community tournament earlier this month, but I can definitely say that I can play a competent game. I had much fun playing with some of the fellow bombers here during the first week of the game's release, though my play couldn't compare to some of those that I fought against (Flux, Soki). P4A is also the first game I played online on a console game in a long time. I still get jitters playing online matches because I still get nervous on how I'll play out against others as I've had my fair share of licks playing online on other games. So far, I haven't received any bad messages and all but one of my matches went smoothly and fair for the most part. I'll still fight some ranked matches here and there, though I sort of feel discouraged at times since I was hovering in the high 20-low 30 winning percentage range before somehow going 6-3 with my recent ranked match session this past Friday, bringing my winning percentage up to the low 40s now. I'd still love to fight with other bombers here for a nice casual session. In the meantime, I'll do my best to get through the story mode of this game over this upcoming Labor Day weekend, though I had a hard time going through just reading walls of texts during my short initial run playing through the mode. I'll also try to get good with another character. I'm sorta doing alright with Mitsuru. I'm also gonna try to train up with Naoto with the trap/keep-away game, though my initial training sessions with her hasn't been great. I also hope my overall playing skills don't diminish over time.

In short, P4A brought the fun back to fighting games with me and I hope support for the game continues to be strong in the next couple of months in the midst of the upcoming Q4 gaming barrage (Assassin's Creed 3, Hitman, Halo 4, Cod: BO2, etc.). It seems to be doing pretty good in the fighting game community scene at the moment, where it's gotten top amount of entrants in Spooky's Big Two weekly tournaments in the past two weeks and drew in 128 entrants at this weekend's Summer Jam 6 event in Philly. Whether or not it maintains this wave of momentum it has and becomes a featured game in EVO 2013 remains to be seen, but I am enjoying this game very much and I think it'll have it's place as one of my favorite games this year.

[Oh, I'm playing P4A on the PS3 if you're wondering.]