Working Title 08.24.06: Underrated/Overrated - Fighting Games
Posted by Jordan Williams on 08.24.2006
First edition of U/O and we look at the Fighting games. I'll give you two hints, one of them has drunk guy and the other has a kid with a REALLY big bat.
Howdy! Jordan here, coming off of a pretty hectic week. I bring you another wonderful dose of the namelessness that is WORKING TITLE!
(Jis the Editor's Note: Dude, "namelessness" isn't even a word.)
(Ogre's Note: I don't care!)
Last week I delved deep into the world of the fanboy. It was fun and all, but I found my true calling. Working Title needs...structure. It needs...a topic. So, from this point on, Working Title will work on sort of a episodic format...sort of. Much like with Welcome to Next Gen, most of my columns are going to revolve around a certain topic, in a series, with spaces in-between for little one-shot columns like 'Fanboys and You' and whatnot. That way, I get more time to plan, and it builds up some suspense.
Now, like I said last week, this week will be the start a four-part series, Underrated/Overrated, where I will list MY opinion of one overrated game and one underrated game in a certain genre.
Let's look at that again.
MY opinion.
That means you don't have to agree with it because it's not fact. If you don't agree, though, Reader Mail is always there.
Now, for the first week, I decided to kick U/O off with the genre which is almost impossible to find an underrated game in: Fighting.
But first...
What exactly makes a game underrated? Does the game have to be some obscure game no one ever played before? Nope. Does it need to have a small, cult-like following? Nope. Does it needs to have motherfuckin' snakes? Nope...but it wouldn't hurt.
To be underrated, the game just really needs to be one that slipped under the radar. It has to be passed over by most of the mainstream audience for a bigger, badder game. This usually LEADS to a game having some sort of cult following, but that's just because said cult loves the game.
When I picked these underrated games, I truly tried to avoid really obscure games I knew NO ONE ever heard of. Although they will pop in on the list from time to time, they don't really classify as "underrated" so much as "never heard of."
So, when you look at these games, I hope you at least get a small flashback of seeing these games in the arcade or hearing a little newsbit about them in a gaming magazine or on a website. Then you can remember when it just suddenly up and disappeared, becoming truly underrated.
What's Overrated? I'll explain that a little bit later in the column. Now onto the picks.
The Genre of the Fist
Yep, fighting games, probably the most simplistic genre out there. The main point is to inflict so much bodily harm on a person's character that they cease to remain conscious or...you know...just kick the shit out of them.
In our world, there are TONS of fighting games. All of them pretty much enjoyed by whoever plays them. There are some downright HORRIBLE fighting games, but they are surprisingly few and far between...it's really hard to mess up a fighting game.
But that doesn't mean that some games don't get lost in the shuffle or aren't just overshadowed in general. That's where the underrated part comes in. Sure, if you ask anyone to name a fighting game off the top of their head, they will no doubt spout off Dead or Alive, Street Fighter II (no one ever says I), and Mortal Kombat. But what about Killer Instinct, Bio Freaks, or even Super Punch Out?
So, that's where we get underrated: games that were good but just never heard off or didn't get as much respect and praise as they deserve because they flew JUST under the radar.
Yep, I am sure people REMEMBER this game but probably as a blur. Rival Schools was one of Capcom's 3D (yes, 3D) fighting games that flew so low under the radar that people didn't even know it had a sequel. The basic story is REALLY basic. As the name suggests, you are playing a character from one of these "rival" schools, which all focus around one aspect of teenage life. Example, Gorin High is the 'sports' school, housing such characters as the soccer player, Roberto and the baseball star MOTHERFUCKIN' SHOMA...although, of course, no one knows Shoma. The schools all put aside thier differences for once to team up against the evil teachers...yep. The only person anyone really remembers from Rival Schools is Kyosuke, who got his start in this very game and went on to be an entry in Capcom vs. series. (Namely Capcom vs. SNK 2).
This is Shoma. That is Shoma's bat. You don't mess with Shoma.
Now, why was this game underrated, you ask? To put it simple, for the time when it came out, no fighting game delved so much into the actual PLOT of the game as much as this. The only other one I could think of was the Soul Blade/Calibur series. It actually had cutscenes and dialogue between matches that just served to further the actual character development and the plot of the game. The entire story wasn't just shunted into some ending sequence or left in the game's manual for you to read later.
(Jis the Editor's Note: Now you're trying to pass off "shunted" as a word? You're kidding me! ...Wait, no, you're not. Oh well, continue, Mr. Namelessness.)
Now, as for how the game played, it was one of those games that used a tag system. With Marvel vs. Capcom dominating the market, it had become all the rage. You picked two characters (regardless of school) but it wasn't tag in the sense that you can tag Person A out for Person B. You fought as Person A the entire round with Person B being your backup. When your special meter reached a certain level, you could call them in for a pretty spectacular-looking team attack which hit for a LOT of damage (or even healed you, in some cases). After the round, however, you had the choice to switch who you wanted to fight as or keep the same person.
But with Marvel vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. Whoever, Tekken, and all of the other fighting games hitting the market, Rival Schools eventually faded away from sight. Finding ANY of its versions is considered a rare treat, and finding its arcade cabinet is even rarer. It's one of the few Capcom fighting games that didn't get seventeen revisions and re-releases. It was a good game, but it just came out at a time when the market was changing its somewhat-outdated 3D graphics on 2D plane. Thus, Rival Schools went away fairly quietly, enjoying some underground success in its console ports but ultimately becoming one of the most underrated games of its genre.
Verdict: Underrated
Now, you must be wondering, with a genre that is rarely ever hit-or-miss, how can a game become OVERRATED? The answer is: quite easily. Hype is everywhere. It's in music, games, movies; it's all around. So, when a game gets a lot of hype, it usually tends not to live up to it. But what happens when a game surpasses its own hype and becomes overhyped to the point where it is believed to be greater than it really is? That, my friends, is called Overrated.
Overrated
Honorable Mentions: Dead or Alive (series), Tekken (series), Mortal Kombat II
Yes, believe it or not, VF4 is overrated. Why do I say this? Well, plain and simple, the game didn't seem all that great to me. The characters, although most date back to the original Virtua Fighter, are a tad stale; not much really changed with them. At a time when 3D fighting was at its still-growing peak, Virtua Fighter 4 offered little-to-no real change to it. Don't get me wrong, it was a solid game, but there was also the lapse of difficulty and the fact that you could pretty much generate the whole game into a button mash-a-thon. The game wasn't really bad, but the hype that surrounded it ended up thrusting the game way higher up on the pantheon of fighting games that it deserved to be. This game was meant to stack up against the likes of Soul Calibur II and Dead or Alive 3?
C'mon, now.
The controls were pretty chunky, given they were never exactly fluid in any of the games. In an age where control was becoming more fluid and complex, Virtua Fighter 4's controls just seemed very old and stale, and that is coming from someone who is a card-carrying Guile player in Street Fighter. The graphics were pretty damn good. I think they actually tried to make that the main selling point of the game, and it worked; the graphics DO look really good for a PS2 game. It's just that the weak story, weak cast, and dated controls really held this game back. The hype of it being in the critically acclaimed "Virtua Fighter" series added a lot to its hype, which in turn added a lot to its overratedness.
(Jis the Editor's Note: Now I KNOW that's not a word!)
(Ogre's Note: I DON'T CARE!)
Nope. No idea what the hell is going on here. But it looks good.
The story in Virtua Fighter 4 didn't really leave much to be desired, hardly even enough to comment on. Contributing to the game's fame was the PS2, the proclaimed God of fighting games at the moment. Pretty much every big fighting game franchise was/is on this console, thus Virtua Fighter 4 was just another way to finish up a collection.
This game edged out Tekken to become the overrated game in the fighting genre. Tekken managed to stay out simply due to the fact that it got my namesake from Tekken III, and Tekken had a generally decent story and explored it well.
Verdict: Overrated
Agree? Disagree?
Then TELL me. I know already that not everyone is going to agree with my choices. Hell, I am pretty sure most of you out there have your own choices to go with. Send them in! Reader Mail is like oxygen to us writers!
Reader Mail
Sadly, no one took me up on my offer to add ways to find a fanboy. Shame on all four of you...although I DID get a nice hunk of reader mail/feedback from fellow 411 Staff Member Sean McCabe.
He writes:
Hi, it's Sean McCabe here from the Retrospective, and I have to say this was quite an awesome column you wrote on fanboys. Okay, let's start off with that Wii follow up you were hoping for, in regards to the necessary use of the controller.
I don't know about them opting to stick with regular controls for Brawl was really if the Wii controller was too hard to use for it, but basically, the game's director was quoted as saying "Don't throw your Gamecube controllers away". You also, in your Wii column, forgot to mention a few details about the controller. Like for one thing, the Wiimote will have a shell, which hasn't been shown yet, but it is likely an older fashioned controller which will allow easier play with conventional games, but still allow you to use the Wiimote's features. The way I see it, the Wii isn't a gimmick based console. Nintendo are making sure they have everything covered. The only thing the Wii lacks is power, but its functionality as a games console will likely make up for that. Free online Smash Bros. Brawl? I think we'll start seeing "Wii print money" jokes soon.
Next, onto the subject of fanboyism. Admitting you're a fanboy or an Elitist I think is an important thing, and you can be one and still be a fair and honest gamer. I'm a total mark in fact for Zelda, Street fighter, King of Fighters, Kingdom Under Fire, Resident Evil, MGS, and others. When I like things, I like them a lot. But the one thing I am not is one of those people who will sit and say "that looks crap" when I haven't experienced it. I was, a Nintendo fanboy, quite like you described once. But I like to think that was only because all I could really afford was Nintendo consoles for a while. It took Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, and FFVII for me to see the error of my ways, but once I did, a whole new world of gaming opened up. I'm a proud owner of a PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, and will be buying an Xbox 360 and Wii soon. It's a testament to Sony's incompetence that I want nothing to do with the PS3, especially with MGS4 on it, rather than me having anything against them. The one thing I can't really stand personally are PC fanboys. Yeah, they're a dying breed. But they are by far the most arrogant fanboys that I've ever encountered. I think of them as Xbox fanboys x 10. I myself don't play many PC games, and I hate quite a lot of them (Diablo 2, World of Warcraft, and others) but then I do love classic adventure games (Broken Sword, Sam and Max etc.) so it's not all bad there.
Anyway, finally, to preempt your take on FFVII, let me just say this. It's a classic game. It probably is overrated, but really, what I hate about it is the cash-ins that Square-Enix has been making and the willingness of so many FFVII fans to accept them, and think they're awesome... when coming from a genuine FFVII fan who nonetheless isn't blinded by the game, that these cash-ins suck. Advent Children sucks. Dirge of Cerberus sucks. And then they go on record to say they want to make FFXIII like the new VII. I say to you Square-Enix, fuck you. I hope the money was worth throwing away the little artistic integrity you had left after the crapfest of FFX and FFX-2.
Thanks for the feedback.
Also, about my reason to leave out the 'shell' for the Wii controller. I simply haven't seen it yet (besides from the mock up going around the internet) or heard any real plans to use it. I didn't want to put something that hadn't really had any proof of its existence or use into the column yet. It was in the original draft, but when I looked it over, it just seemed out of place because there was nothing else to say about it.
I'm not even going to TOUCH FFVII...yet.
[Pimpy Pimpy Pimpy!]
Of course, we have tons of stuff to read in 411, so we pimp each other's work.
Angry Gaming by Damien Sarcuni He wants an MMA game. I agree 100%; I am sure the Aki-Vendetta engine can be tweaked to it.
Well, that's all folks.
And that concludes the first part of Underrated/Overrated. Join me next week as I break down the broadest genre in the history of the gaming world: Platforming.
Which game do you think will be Underrated/Overrated?
This is Jordan Williams, and...
That is IT!
I have had it with this muthafuckin' column and its lack of a muthafuckin' NAME!
[EDIT: Due to some financial problems, this might be the last Working Title from anywhere to two weeks to a month. Sorry, guys. But life just sucks like that sometimes. I'll try to use library and friends computers in the meantime.]
