Soul Calibur V announced

Yes, I believe the SC scene is quite big in France.

I personally met with some members of the most important french SC association
called GNOUZ Corporation. They are the kind of guys who made me understand once what mastering a fighting game truly means. They do organize national rankings very seriously and some tournaments at major events across the country.

As example, shortly before the game release they organised with namco's partnership a Soul Calibur V tournament at the Paris Game Week on the demo version of the game as shown in the following videos.

GNOUZ TV #1: Hisaharu Tago Interview (Eng Subtitles)
GNOUZ TV #2: Tournament (Eng Subtitles)

Their latest videos are quick tutorials about punishers one SC player has to master, I really like how they put it ^^
Pyrrha Must Die (by Saitoh)

 

Thx po nice write up.

 

I totally agree with po's explanation of SC5 game play. I'm also bothered with the removal of some of the characters move list. Not to mention a whole stance without replacing it with something else. I'm a Mitsurugi user and I feel crippled every time I play him. Mitsurugi became so boring. Only relying on rush offense and not much creativity like when he had Relic Stance.

I might have stopped playing the game if it wasn't for the awesome online connection. Seriously, I was playing against my friend today. He is in England and I'm here in Japan. One bar of connection and still it was more playable than any fighting game I ever tried playing online with the same connection. NOT even SF4 comes close to it. And for that I forgive NAMCO for their stupid decisions.

I believe this is not the last time we hare about SC5. We are going to see a second version of the game next year. Hopefully then they'll at least address the missing characters and move list issues.

 

I had a few comments I wanted to make about the back and forth between Po and Feck, but the posts were so long that I forgot most of them. I'll say this much. I think Po over-reacted to what Feck said.

I looked outside my window and saw some kids playing basketball. They were have fun playing a game.

I looked at my TV and saw Lebron James and Kobe Bryant playing basketball. They weren't playing a game, they were playing a sport.

People who post here are all hardcore by definition. We all play for sport. Forget knowing what a characters frame data actually is, simply knowing what the term 'frame' means makes us more knowledgeable than 90+% of gamers, most of whom are casual at best.

I don't think Feck's comment to Mike was that out of order. Its not like they are two rookies talking to each other. Feck's been here for years and Myke has been running a VF site and posting frame data and writing guides for a decade. Even if they have never seen SC5, they would at least be familiar with its basics because all 3-D fighters share the same basics.

I don't think someone like Feck or Mike would need years with a 3-D fighter to know whether they think it's shit or not.

Especially since they were talking about the mechanics of the game.

 

I felt it reasonable to make a double post because the comments of this post are unrelated to the one I made above.

Earlier MasterPo said,

And later he said,...

I personally like VF better than I like SC, but I have probably spent more time playing SC than VF, and the reason is...

SoulCalibur is accessible...

Most of my friends who are good at Street Fighter, suck at SoulCalibur. That same set of friends absolutely, horrendously suck worse at VF and they know it; they feel it, as soon as they pick up the game.

You just have to know a little something to get anything out of VF. Not so with SoulCalibur.

Moreover, SoulCalibur has extremely good netcode and online set-up; plus it is on both systems. That makes it easier to tolerate playing (I can't play a fighter with the Xbox D-pad, its far too imprecise), and easier to find someone to play against.

The online set-up, netcode, and platform (because of the controller options) all go toward the assessment of how good a game is overall.

VF has both better mechanics and better balance than any fighter I have ever played. But VF is the worst at actually delivering those mechanics to my living room in a way that I can use. In a world where I could play a lot of different opponents whenever I wanted, I would rather be playing VF. But I don't live in that world. For me that world only exists online. Playing an offline fighter with no story, by yourself while knowing you will never play it against another human being gets old quickly.

I hope the next VF takes a page from SC5 and delivers on an online interface that is just as good. In fact, it would probably be best to just copy all the features. That way they can't F-up.

They don't even have deliver FS, I'll take Evo. Who am I kidding, I would rather have Evo, with the SC5 online features.

 

Who wants a whoopin at sc?

 

Bring it Darth, bring it hard!

 

Throw nerfing controversy? Throws seem a lot stronger in this game. They track sidestep, feel harder to break and do chip damage even when broken. I think they were powered up as a means to deal with Just Guard. I expect Namco are thinking Just Guard will play a big role once players get used to it.

I agree about characters losing moves and the removal of regular GI (dunno how well JG will be able to replace it but JG will take a lot of experience to implement whereas GI was more accessible). It does seem like there are more evasive moves and auto GI moves to somewhat make up for the change though.

 

I will seek you!

 

@Darrius, in all the posting back and forth you probably didn't see that I apologized to Feck, for going to far, and misunderstanding what he originally posted.

However, I strongly disagree with your statement about all 3D fighters sharing even the basics. LIke you said Myke and Feck have been around a long time, And I've been playing Fighting games before 3D fighting games were invented Here's why I disagree: Take these three 3D fighters

Virtua Fighter
UFC 2010
Soul Calibur 5
Def Jam Icon
DOA 3
Supremacy MMA
Fight Night Champion
Fight For New York
Deadliest Warrior (Legends)

Reversals, Blocks, Throws, Evades, Throw Escapes (if they apply), Ducking, Jumping, etc. The concepts are not exchangeable between these fighting games, and in some cases the concepts are not even applicable, or they are absent altogether. You could be an advanced player in any one of these games and totally suck at the rest of them. That fact alone, should make it
clear that "The basics or not the basics"

Lot of ppl on this site think that Fight Night Champion is not a 3D fighter, but it is . Or Def Jam Fight For new YOrk but it is, All the frame talk, combo talk, and game mechanics as they relate to Virtua Fighter, simply don't get you very far in Supremacy MMA, or UFC 2010. We might be tempted to divide 3D fighters between 3D simulation fighters and 3D arcade fighters, but there are hybrids e.g supremacy MMA, or Def Jam Icon they both have simulation and arcade elements to them. The same with Deadliest warrior, it is a simulation but has arcade mode, and so does UFC3. So that division won't work for newer games coming out. I play primarily fighting games, all kinds, and have spent many many years comparing analzying, talking, and posting about the pros , cons, similarities and differences.

My main point with Feck, was; you cannot judge the quality or deepness of fighting game simply by looking at(Feck Knows that). I went on further to post that you cannot fairly evaluate SC5 on Virtua fighter's terms. and even further suggested that if you're going to do some deep evaluation , you need to be an insider, have played that game for considerable time, and been a part of that game's community for some time.

That's why I cringe when ppl on this site try to evaluate the UFC fighters, in terms of Virtua fighter vocabulary.

I play (or have played) all of the fighting games in my list. Sure the one thing they all have in common is they are 3d and fighting games. There is generally someway to avoid damage, but each game implements it differently, sometimes its called block, or evade, or duck, or dodge. But even then these words mean something different within those games. Are throw breaks and throw escapes the same thing? Are guard breaks, and quick reversals the same thing?

@Darrius, you have to be into both games very deeply to do some kind of substantive comparison between them. Its very hard to do. Its just easier to evaluate each game on its own terms. That's the safest way for most ppl.

Feck may very well have a deep enough knowledge of fighting games in general to compare different species of fighting games, but that knowledge was not on display in this discussion.

SC5 is a fun fighting game to play, IMO its worth the price of the game. The online features raise the bar for other similar fighting games.

 

You didn't need to apologise Po, that HIV comment and the post was pretty silly and I can see how you took it the wrong way. I just don't understand when people insinuate you need to have some deep knowledge of a game before you can even remark on it.

Some of your comments reminded me of when Tekken 6 came out and people were saying similar things, I don't see why you'd want to become part of the Tekken community and learn the game inside and out if you don't like the game much to begin with. I've played every game in the series and attempted to learn the mechanics but the game just doesn't hold my interest, I agree that I can't comment fairly on the deepness and quality of it's mechanics but i'm ok to say I don't like the game right?

That's why I made the HIV post, it was meant to be equally as silly as someone saying you have to become a pro at a game you don't even like just to be able to put forth your opinion.

 

BF I remember you asking if better players are in ranked, and now I have with out a doubt tell you yes. The player match lobbies that are open are pretty much full of players who are still learning the game. Every once in a while I come across someone who's super low ranked and happens to also be really boss at the game, but that is very much the exception. I find C1 and above to be pretty good matches, where B2's regularly beat me, but not by much. I've only fought one rank A and they just rocked my socks.

It seems like ranked is the only place I can find a decent match. I use player matches to learn new characters now. I just learn a few combos from 8wayrun then take the character into player match rooms to learn how to apply them.

Recently I've switched to using phyrra and omega Phyrra. I just started to find siggy too unsafe and was getting punished too much. She's also starting to feel better than Sofie use to, more options available at any given point.

 

Also once you get the hang of the Colesseo mode, you will find many A and B players there. Many of those folks can bring the match to a quick close.

@Feck, we're on the same page more than you think. I more or less started out with Tekken (back to Tekken 2 days), When I first played VF, immediately moved Tekken down a notch, the more I played VF the more notches Tekken got moved down I became a game bigot after about a year in favor of VF and I rarely had good words to say about Tekken. VF appeared to actually do what Tekken was trying to do. I tried my hands on SCII somewhere around that time and after putting a great deal of time into it, I saw, the beauty of Tekken! That's right SC turned on my Tekken light bulb. For several years after that I played all three and compared, compared, and over compared.

Some games are fun because they challenge you intellectually, Some games are fun because they challenge you emotionally. Like a posted earlier, some fighting games create a sense of violence & revenge, good vs evil, rage against the machine. Other fighting games create a sense of finesse, strategy, tactics, kungfu-savior-faire. Virtua Fighter is of the later, and Tekken and SC are the former.

Feck obviously you know whether you like a game after playing it because it either gave you or didn't give you what you were looking for. But without getting to existentially metaphysical here Sometimes if you just let go and see where the game is trying to take you and then go there, you may end up liking it for totally different reasons than you we looking for.

When I picked up Tekken I was looking for VF (except I didn't know it at the time) I wanted the strategic, tactical, no nonsense, no shenanigans 3D fighter, but Tekken was all I ever had access to. Well as soon as VF was on PS2 my search was over. But I got back into Tekken for totally different reasons I now see the beauty of Tekken from Tekken's perspective and the beauty of VF from VF's perspective. Although they seem just like different sides of the coin, nothing could be further from the truth.

Tekken & SC (Violence, Emotion, Brute Force, Revenge) == fun
VF (Strategy, Tactics, Finesse, cunning, Intellect) == fun

 

Sounds like I need to get myself up to B rank then Think i'm C3 at the moment, i've met a few good players but my extremly limited Mitsurugi seems to beast most people. I'm no expert on SC but this game feels fairly balanced to me, when I do run into trouble it seems easy enough to adapt my playstyle enough to eek out a win.

 

Ewww! Oh well, I suppose it'll go down in price anyway and Namco will have patched it by then.

 

It's actually not game breaking. We've known about this since day -1. You can just throw them or otherwise punish. It's not a brain dead tactic.

 

Makes mid-low mixups weaker, I guess?

 

Game breaking bug found a week after release? sounds about right for a Namco game lol

By the 3rd patch it will be all sorted out, unless they have another character that can ring you out from halfway across the stage.

 

I imagine it would jump during the exe frames so you'd fall down as the attack was reaching you, but I don't know. Something worth testing out in training mode.

It was found out the day BEFORE release.

I do find this tactic difficult to deal with, and pretty much know if my opponent is using it or not if they are jumping all my lows.