Button Masher - The Games I've Played

Once upon a time, I had a friend who introduced me to Marvel Vs Capcom 2, and I thought it was amazing. Given, it was his game and I was no good at it because I had never played a fighter in any serious way, but I thought that the gameplay, the graphics, and the arcade feel of the entire thing was just amazing. That meant that when I saw #3 come out, and I had the opportunity to buy it, I had to give it a shot to finally be able to put in the time and give fighters a chance.

I quickly learned, that nope, not worth it.

Now, part of fighters that make them so fun is playing against friends. You can only do so much with a computer, so that's problem number one- I have no one to play against. The chances of me playing against a friend were slim to none, and to grab my wife and tell her non-gamer mind to deal with the counter combos, the areal combos, and everything else this game provides, just wasn't going to happen. That left me with the computer and trying to learn what all of the combos were, how to perform them, and what the dozens of characters each did.

It wasn't worth it.

The depth of this game is amazing. Each character has a field of inputs and button controls that turn them into blurs of light and damage. There is so much strategy and counter picking and difficulty within making a team and their set up, that it starts to get very overwhelming very quickly, and then there is the simple fact that it takes forever to learn, and the characters that you might love to play with, in the long run might not be worth it to learn. Let's take a 'for example'.

For example- Morrigan.

Throw back to MvC2 where my team was her and Iron Man and their ults would wipe the screen of any and everything that got in their way. Who needs to learn how to aim, when you can just back up into a corner, press a few buttons and people start pulling out weapons that are four times the size of their body to destroy the opponent?

The "simple" set of commands to Morrigan start and end with this-

Now, the problem with this is that first, the game doesn't write this out for you and tell you that X is what hard attack is, SQ is light attack, or whatever the button configurations are, they just tell you what type of button you need to hit, and then it's your job to figure out where that type of button is assigned on your controller.

Then comes the question of timing, you might know the input for a move, but if you do it too fast, it won't register, or if you do it to slow, you'll do something wrong. Again, more practicing.

Then come the actual combinations that are above and beyond what that little sheet of commands tells you about-

So, then you finally learn all of this stuff, and then go back to 'story' mode, just to learn that the computer is a cheating bastard and that you'll never keep up.

The music- great.
The graphics- amazing.
The depth of each character and the entire idea of the fighter game- it's there in full force.

To be absolutely clear, this isn't a bad game. It fits the genre that it's in, and does it in really good style. The problem lies not in the game, but within me and if I like the genre. Just like I know that some strategy games (like FF tactics) or some hardcore roleplaying games (like Skyrim) aren't everyone's cups of tea, this game was my reminder that fighters just aren't for me. I don't like them. There's no story, there's no real characters, it's just a test of button mashing for me, and that's no fun.

If you like fighters, and you like learning button combinations for 100 hit combos that juggle your friends in the air for an entire health bar worth of fun, then this is the game for you. If you know how to do technical interrupts and block at ridiculous speeds, then you're in the right place. If you're looking for something that involves a story, plot, or anything like progression within your characters, you're in the wrong place.  This game caters to a very specific audience (which I am not a part of) and I can't knock it for making something for that audience and being offended when I'm not head over heels in love with it. It wasn't made for me, and I'm aware of that. I don't need to love every single game that is ever produced. I would much rather have companies create genre specific games that are targeted and made for a specific audience instead of some of the stuff that is on this list that tries to be everything but nothing, all at the same time, just so that it can target more people and make a few extra bucks.