Angry Gaming 04.16.07: It’s Nerf or Nothing - Take it to the Streets
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 04.16.2007
WHERE THE $%#& IS MY PSYCHO CRUSHER?!
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the televangelist that saves your soul from gaming industry hell. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and I am absolutely sick of white males, aged 17-24 who get on Xbox live and feel the need to talk non stop for 60 minutes. SHUT THE HELL UP.
Thank you for your assessment of Akuma and the scrubs that always pick him. Now, I've been a Street Fighter fan ever since the original 2 hit the arcades. Sometimes I get sick and tired of people using the same overpowered characters while acting like they're king of the hill. That's why I usually pick characters that everyone else doesn't use (usually the character that everyone thinks is the weakest). I usually pick Zangief, who all my friends think is just a slow, giant punching bag with hard-to-do moves. Of course, they slowly started changing their opinions after a while. I also use characters like Tyson (I know I'm supposed to call him Balrog, but we all know who he's supposed to be!), Dan, and Sean...even though I HATED WHAT THEY DID TO HIM IN THIRD STRIKE. Yeah--let's give Akuma several more moves like he actually needs it, make Chun Li's moves cheaper, easier and more scrub-friendly, and give poor Sean the single worst nerf-job of any fighting game character ever!
Come to think of it, since you did a feature on overpowered characters, you should do one on nerf-jobs as well.
Phil, you're speaking my language. In one of my earlier articles, I described a battle between myself and some douche who's only joy in life was his ability to do sick combos with Ryu in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. I entered that battle with Sean, and if nothing else I was a fool for that. In my lone war against CPU driven opponents prior to that fateful, I joined Phil as one of the many Sean fans who played 3rd Strike as the words "something is very wrong here…" entered our minds.
A "nerf job" is a term referring to what happens when a character or entity is toned down from previous appearances, whether it is in a sequel or in a patched or new version of the same game. The idea behind a nerf job is that developers attempt to balance out the difficulty in the game by toning down the abilities and powers of player controlled characters, but ultimately end up making the character powerless, soft and ineffective, much like a Nerf toy.
I truly believe most game developers sit in a white room somewhere and play against each other over and over to compensate for the business requirement that is quality assurance testing. Usually, when a character is nerfed, it does not serve to balance out a game's challenge but rather make a barely passable character completely useless, while other, already overpowered characters continue to dominate game after game. Rather than listen to actual gamers, developers either nerf a character based on their own subjective opinions or those of a small sampling of friends who just happen to have their ears (you've seen these assholes on various message boards, and scratched your head as to how such socially inept, nincompoop creatures managed to make contacts in the gaming industry). This usually leads to more imbalance in games, which leads to more players complaining, which developers promptly ignore which puts a smile on those few previously mentioned social inepts. And the circle of gaming continues evermore.
Since Phil was so kind as to give me a new column series idea, I will happily dedicate this first edition to looking at nerf jobs in the ever popular Street Fighter series. Capcom has put in plenty of effort to ruin some of their best characters over the years, so there certainly won't be any lack of material. Still, let's start off with familiar territory:
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - Sean
What happened to Sean in 3rd Strike is a perfect example of a nerf job. Capcom, in following with their usual game release traditions, created 3 different versions of Street Fighter III to keep players coming back for more. Each new version of the game featured new characters, new moves, endings and backgrounds. These three editions of the game, in order, were The New Generation, 2nd Impact, and Third Strike.
The character of Sean appeared in all three versions of the game, and was brilliantly designed. Sean's back story was simply that he was the apprentice of Ken Masters, and was still learning the ways of Shotokan karate. As such, Sean's moves were imperfect versions of the Ken and Ryu traditional moves. Instead of throwing a Hadoken fireball, Sean had that "Hadoburst" super move. While not exceptionally powerful, the Hadoburst used Sean's raw strength to cut through all other projectiles as an effective counter. Sean also had not perfected Ken and Ryu's signature dragon punch, which was a powerful flying uppercut maneuver that could land up to four hits in one motion. Instead, Sean started off in a dragon punch like move, and then followed up by smacking his opponent back to the ground. This was called the "dragon smash".
Sean was pretty much untouched in the first two incarnations of Street Fighter III, but when 3rd Strike rolled around for some reason Capcom saw fit to tone down all of Sean's best moves. The dragon smash turned into an incredibly weaker version of a dragon punch, and players throwing projectiles could easily counter the hadoburst just by parrying it. While a pause in Sean's overhead heel kick was removed in 3rd Strike, this did little to improve the timing or the power and usefulness of the move.
With half of his move set now worthless, Sean became an absolute detriment to use. While his rolling and ground moves exhibited a mixed style of Shotokan karate and Brazilian vale tudo (the style of Sean's native country) his moves did little damage to any opponents at all. Considering the various upgrades that other, more powerful characters such as Akuma and Chun Li had received, Sean simply could not compete anymore, and fans were forced to ignore him on the character selection screen for fear of practical surrender.
Street Fighter III: The New Generation – Ryu and Ken
With the success of Street Fighter II and its many, many revisions, Capcom allegedly felt the need to bring the series in a new direction, focusing on all new characters. This would later prove to be a heaping wad of public relations bullshit as Capcom proceeded to bring back several more familiar faces in 3rd Strike, but for history's sake we'll indulge the lie. Despite the new characters adorning The New Generation, Capcom decided to put Ken and Ryu into the game due to their overwhelming popularity.
In order to discourage their use, however, Capcom pulled out many of the moves Ken and Ryu had acquired in subsequent versions of Street Fighter II. Everything from the mid air hurricane kick to double hit close roundhouse was removed from the Shotokan warrior's repertoire, supposedly so that players could focus on the game's new main character, Alex, who played like a crappy version of Zangief. This was all well and good, except that the CPU characters in the game played so well that beating it in the arcades took a miracle. While Ken and Ryu were reduced to their amateur forward-jumping-roundhouse kick strategy, opponents like Gill were given literal immortality, while computer controlled Ibuki's and Elena's spammed anti-air maneuvers making arcade patrons nearly cry in frustration.
Of course, when news hit that the new version of Street Fighter III, called 2nd Impact brought back the aerial hurricane kick, players flocked back to the arcades ready to give Capcom even more cold hard quarters. And what became of Alex, the would-be American hero you ask? Well, in subsequent endings, it's shown quite plainly that Alex still cannot beat Ryu. So much for backing new characters, eh Capcom? American heroes 0, Japanese heroes 9500, and counting.
Street Fighter Alpha/Zero: M. Bison
Here's a role playing quiz for you. You step up to your local Street Fighter Alpha 2 arcade cabinet, choose an inexplicably pudgy M.Bison and get ready for your first opponent. You hold back on the joystick for three seconds, ready to unleash hell upon this poor, unsuspecting fool that dates to challenge you. You push forward and high punch, and dinky little ball of light flies from his lordship's hand across the screen at a very, very slow pace which is then promptly blocked with little effort. You say:
a) Wow, pretty!
b) Oh good, finally some balance in this series!
c) WHERE THE $%#& IS MY PSYCHO CRUSHER?!
Don't worry, we already know the answer. Outside of the original Street Fighter II series, M.Bison and his psycho crusher move were held apart at arm's length. This was in no doubt due to the problems caused in Street Fighter II: Championship Edition which saw M.Bison become a playable character for the first time. Wielding M.Bison's godly psycho powers in that classic game, players spammed the psycho crusher while mowing down most opponents who lacked projectile abilities or other skills. The psycho crusher was more or less unstoppable, until more counters for it were put into place during subsequent versions such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
This wasn't good enough for Capcom though, and the new version of M.Bison which appeared in Alpha as well as several V.S. series wound up being a mere shadow of his former self. While the psycho crusher was present in M.Bison's move list, it existed only a super combo move that took an incredibly long time to set up and was pretty worthless when blocked. Bison's basic special moves were instead replaced with the above mentioned pixie dust fireball and teleportation (Show me one person who uses this in an actual 2-player game and I will show you an M.Bison player that doesn't win a lot.)
The reality of the situation is that M.Bison was toned down to make room for the more godly, evil, and "cool" Akuma whom we have given far too much attention to already. Yet although Bison has been dropped from the Street Fighter series altogether, his thinner and more youthful glory days can be relived in several of the Capcom V.S. series to this day.
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Sagat
Lastly, we will look at an out and out classic.
Sagat has had his ups and downs in Capcom's world, though he ultimately suffered the same fate as M.Bison. In SSF2T, however, Sagat was blatantly nerfed and fans threw a huge fit about it. Not only were Sagat's attacks given significantly lower priority that most of his opponents, but his fireballs were slowed to a crawl. In fact, his fireballs were made so slow that an opponent using Ryu or Ken could eventually throw 2 fireballs before Sagat could get out one, due to the lost time after throwing consecutive fireballs.
SSF2T featured the ability to select old versions of each character, which improved overall character quality but removed the ability to do super moves. For Sagat, however, this was not the case. Old Sagat performed just as poorly as new Sagat, this time with a super combo to make up for the loss. In the Alpha and V.S. series, Sagat was later given much more priority and power in his moves, but fans will always remember the frailty that was Sagat in SSF2T.
The Anger
If it's Nerf or Nothing, then we choose nothing. Capcom isn't the only one who has brought the hammer of disability down on its own characters over the years, but they are certainly in the public eye for it. With popular series and fan followings come a certain standard that must be met, and developers have a duty to perform ongoing maintenance and quality assurance checks to make sure that any changes to the game don't ruin it for everyone involved. Of course, most developers would rather follow the insane belief that making crap the first time around only leaves potential for improvement in a sequel. Perhaps that's why the arcade fighting scene is dead now? Until next time, embrace the hatred.
