How many of your friends have you met in real life?
It’s a question that makes perfect sense to my generation but might not resonate with our parent’s generation. Thanks to online forums and social media, people my age frequently form friendships with people we’ll never meet in person.
So, here’s how I met three of my closest friends and bonded with them over Borderlands.
Like most 90s kids, I was obsessed with Homestar Runner in the early 2000s. I watched almost everything on the site, sent in emails, and spent what little allowance money I saved up on merch. I still own most of that stuff, like static cling stickers, a talking The Cheat plush doll, and several large t-shirts that I’ll never fit in.
Large shirts were in fashion in the early 2000s but I wear medium. They’re all right to wear if I’m working in the garden or painting, I guess.
Through Homestar Runner, I found the Burning Horizon Forum. Originally created as a way to archive all the secrets in Homestar Runner videos, the forums expanded to off-topic chats, sub-forums about music, gaming, and art. So we quickly went from a group of loosely affiliated H*R fans to a group of friends sharing their interests.
The group of three I met there also bonded over fighting games, and we’d chat while streaming tournaments at Evolution. Three of us even organized a real-life meetup at a tournament in Chicago.
We never got the full group of 4 together in real life, but we still became close friends just through talking on the forums and Skype groups. In 2009, we all started playing Borderlands together through Xbox Live as well.
That game became a new meeting spot for us. We’d all get together in an Xbox Live Party and play the game while chatting about life. As a social game, Borderlands was perfect. Engaging enough to make memorable moments (like one of us becoming such a terrible driver that we’d kick him out of the car, or my intense fear of the giant spider enemies), but also mindless enough to let us talk to each other and not just talk about the game.
Over the next couple of years, our group of 4 burned through Borderlands and all of its extra content multiple times, resetting the game with new characters and starting again. For friends that couldn’t possibly meet regularly, Borderlands was the perfect hangout spot.
That was 10 years ago though. Since then, a few of us have moved, gone through university, and gotten time-consuming jobs. We stayed friends after Borderlands, but didn’t really get a chance to have a social game experience like that.
Fast forward to 2019. We’ve all got PlayStation 4s and we all have access to Borderlands Remastered. So we get into a party chat again and catch up like we did 10 years ago. Despite all the time that’s passed, we’re still staying up way too late playing games, cracking jokes and trying to cut off uncontrollable giggle fits because it’s 4 a.m. and everything is hilarious at 4 a.m.
Because we played through the game so much, parts of Borderlands Remastered are just etched in my brain. I know where to go through muscle memory, I know what that character is going to say, I remember which guns are the best already.
But the game is really inconsequential, isn’t it? The best part is getting back together with all three of my friends for the first time in years and just talking.
Even though I’d have to drive several hours to meet one of them, or take a short flight to see another, or take a really long flight to see the other. We bonded over Borderlands and I’m happy the Remastered edition gave us the chance to do so again all these years later.
Our parents might not understand our relationships with people we’ve never met. But the internet and games like Borderlands are so amazing, they can keep friendships going for years, even friendships between people who live hundreds of miles apart.
Autocombos have a bad reputation with casual fighting gamers. Any Shoryuken or Eventhubs article about Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle or Dragon Ball FighterZ will have at least a handful of comments complaining about autocombos and games “rewarding mashing”. YouTube comments are even worse.
If you play any of these games with a mind to learn, you already know that autocombos are not as awful as they are made out to be. It sounds bad on paper (reducing a skill-based system to mashing Square), but if you spend any time experimenting with autocombos in a game, the flaws become apparent.
Autocombos are almost universally weaker than ones that require input. DBFZ and BBTAG actually design the game around them, requiring you to mix autocombos and your own inputs to make creative and practical attack strings.
Still, I have an issue with Tekken 7 suddenly deciding to add autocombos to a three year old game.
The story mode of Tekken 7 had “assist combos” that allowed you to mash some buttons and get a decently-damaging string. They’re adding this to the main game in season 2, presumably to make the game easier for new players. I don’t think it’s gonna work at all.
Tekken 7 is the fighting game I spend the most time on, and has been since 2017. Even though the game is much easier than past entries, it has a lot of baggage that keeps new players away.
A short list explaining why Tekken is hard and doesn’t attract new players.
The game is heavily based on legacy skill. Characters and combos don’t change much over time, so players who started at Tekken 2 have an innate advantage over those who started at 7.
The movelists are daunting, characters can have 150 moves and there’s no way to tell which ones are good on your own.
Tekken 7 has no tutorial.
Do you see how “mash square to get a combo” solves any of these issues? At best, letting you do an electric with Kazuya by hitting Square twice is putting a bandage over an electrical fire.
I’m a ‘017er in the Tekken series, so I’m still learning things that older players already knew. But so far, I think learning combos and setups is actually the easiest part of the game, and the least useful. Tekken 7 is harder than a lot of modern fighting games, but it’s because of the time it takes to develop its fundamental skills, not combos!
There’s no equivalent to a wakeup dragon punch in Tekken 7. Once you get knocked down, an autocombo won’t help you safely stand up and get out of danger. The lack of invincible moves also means that there’s nothing you can really mash if your opponent is pressuring you with safe moves and backdashing away from your strings.
One of the most important Tekken fundamentals is punishing your opponent for unsafe moves. If your opponent is pestering you with low pokes, you generally can’t punish them with a full combo. So even if you do learn to block lows, the autocombo system won’t help you out there either.
Another important Tekken fundamental is movement, allowing you to evade your opponent and hurt them for punching the air. While spamming buttons might help if you play Eddy Gordo, anyone with more than a few hours worth of Tekken experience is gonna backdash out of the way and punish you. Autocombos probably won’t teach effective sidestepping or backdash canceling.
So, instead of adding a comprehensive tutorial, or copying one of those “Top 15 Moves For Every Character” lists into the game, or even adding in more sample combos into the character movelists, they’re adding autocombos.
It’s probably something that won’t take much time to implement, but if the idea is to get new players to stick with the game, they’ve already missed the point.
Destiny 1 remains one of my favorite games of all time. It came out in 2014, but the expansions improved the game so much that I was still hooked by the Rise of Iron/Age of Triumph expansion in 2016.
I am much colder on Destiny 2. While the core gameplay still makes every other first-person shooter feel obsolete, Destiny 2’s structure is still worse than the first game after months of updates. After seeing the teaser for the big fall expansion “Forsaken”, I’m ready to leave the game behind entirely.
Destiny 2 launched with less features than Destiny 1, and is still struggling to catch up. The satisfying Record Book from Destiny 1 gave constant incentive to complete challenges and get rewarded for them, but Destiny 2 launched with no record book.
Many Strikes and Nightfalls in Destiny 1 had specific, themed loot that looked really cool and encouraged you to grind for a powerful weapon or cool-looking armor. Destiny 2 got rid of strike-specific rewards and made the entire Strike system feel less important. I don’t know anyone who was purposefully grinding strikes for the first few months of the game: it was an irrelevant mode.
After hearing the community complain about Destiny 2 lacking quality of life changes and events that Destiny 1 had, Bungie started slowly rolling out a roadmap of changes. But this made me even more frustrated because they were just adding things back that were already in the first game, or making irrelevant changes.
Bounties should have launched with Destiny 2. Multi-emotes should have launched with Destiny 2. Heroic Strike Modifiers should have launched with Destiny 2.
The Eververse Store (microtransaction store) also hurt my enjoyment of the game by nerfing customization. I grinded for specific Shaders in Destiny 1 so I could have my characters in specific colours: Purple for Hunter, Red/White for Warlock, and whatever for Titan because Titan sucks and I don’t play them.
People frequently claim that “cosmetic only microtransactions are fine”, but this is an insult to the art teams that work hard to make video games look cool. “Things looking cool” is an important part of the gameplay experience: it’s why people spend so much time and money trying to get skins in Overwatch. And because I can’t make my characters and weapons look cool in Destiny 2, I care less about the game.
The Shader system in Destiny 2 changes them from unlimited-use items to consumables, so you are encouraged to spend money and buy more shaders from the microtransaction store. It is a bad change, and something that will likely not be reverted in the future. Skinning your guns was cool but I have never agreed with making shaders consumable.
Now that we’ve seen what Bungie plans for Destiny 2’s fall expansion, I have no interest in paying money to experience any of these changes. I don’t care about PvP changes or bringing back random rolls.
What I want from Destiny 2:
Unlimited use shaders
Modifiers for Weekly Heroic Strikes and Weekly Nightfall Strikes
Don’t bring back random rolls. It’s a grind, but not an enjoyable one at all
In-game Triumphs/return of the Record Book from Destiny 2
Strike-specific loot
Some of these things are coming back, based on the roadmap Bungie has shown. But they’ve taken too long to bring Destiny 2 up to Destiny 1 standards. When I watch the Forsaken video, I am not excited. I feel no need to spend $40 to make Destiny 2 as good as the first. After being hooked and playing almost daily since 2015, I feel no need to boot up Destiny 1 or 2 anymore. I just want to play something else.
If you can visit one fighting game tournament a year, you should choose Combo Breaker.
I see that statement every year on Twitter after the event ends, posted by people from every sub-section of the fighting game community. This is my second Combo Breaker event, and it will not be my last. I’m trying to come back every year.
There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll separate this into sections to share my experience.
Volunteering
This is the second major tournament I’ve volunteered at. I was chosen to run two brackets in two separate games, and enter match results into smash.gg during pools.
Even though I missed the volunteer meeting, the staff and experienced volunteers made this extremely easy for me. Running brackets was super easy with the directions listed on my paper, and entering match results online was simple (though I already had experience with that from Michigan Masters 2018). Plus, there were always people around to answer my questions.
All volunteers were given access to a break room which was a blessing after spending hours on my feet. They even paid volunteers for their time!
I only got in four time slots of volunteering, but next year I definitely want to do more.
Pools
Every single setup at Combo Breaker had an Astro MixAmp with a headphone splitter. So if you brought your own headphones (or even borrowed them from Astro on site), you could have game audio . This is next level tech that I hope gets implemented at many more events.
As far as my performance:
TEKKEN 7 – 2 W, 2 L
The King of Fighters XIV- 0 W, 2 L
Mystery Game- 1 W, 2 L
TEKKEN 7 was a great learning experience. Through the weekend I got to face some of the best players in the world. And personally, not going 0-2 means I might be doing something right.
The Second Ballroom
I didn’t discover this until near the end of day 1, but there was a whole other ballroom to visit! That place had arcade cabinets, two extra streams, more setups for casual play, and Ladders.
I wish Ladders were more prominent. It’s a great concept: round robin games that you can play whenever, with the winner getting a prize at the end of the day. However, it wasn’t very well promoted and I couldn’t tell when Ladders started and ended without asking a lot of questions.
It’s a great idea and a good alternative to regular casual games, but they should be louder about where it is next time. Put up a a sign!
My goal for next year’s Combo Breaker is to get out of pools in Tekken 7 and get on commentary for at least one game.
I can’t say enough good things about this event. Go to it if you can, even as a spectator there are fun things to do in and around the venue. I’m already setting aside vacation money and requesting days off for Combo Breaker 2019.
In 2017, Injustice 2 launched with a basic set of tutorials. It showed game mechanics and had brief character overviews, but didn’t explain the game’s intricacies well. The Legendary Edition of Injustice 2 has added an overhauled tutorial with the Learn hub, adding explanations of frame data and fundamental concepts that can apply to many 2D fighters.
The Learn hub in Injustice 2 is much larger than the game’s old tutorial, with over 50 different tutorial sections. The real meat of this section are the Advanced Mechanics and Combo Strategy screens, which have several playable tutorials and Trials that test your knowledge in a “real match” situation.
What caught my eye immediately was the Frame Data section in Advanced Mechanics. Through use of coloured outlines and uncomplicated language, this tells you how frame data works in Injustice 2 by showing safe moves, unsafe moves, startup and recovery frames. This is the type of tutorial that applies to every fighting game as long as you have the data handy.
— Travis @ Michigan Masters 2018 (@PerfidiousSinn) March 30, 2018
They’ve done it since the first Injustice, but I give NetherRealm a lot of credit for putting frame data inside the game. The majority of modern fighting games won’t include frame data, leaving players to rely on outside resources like apps or wiki pages. Having the frames readily available on the pause menu is something every fighting game should do.
The Combat Strategy section of Injustice 2 is full of great tips that transfer across fighting games. Hit confirming has always been one of my weaknesses, and the tutorial here was helpful in practicing it.
As you can probably tell, I’m still not great at hit confirming.
Having a tutorial with a visual demo is good, but having the optional trials that make sure you’ve mastered the concept is great. You’re even rewarded with in-game currency for finishing each section.
The only part of the Learn center that falls short are the character specific tutorials. They teach a handful of combo strings and special moves, but don’t go into basic combos and the character’s archetype.
Overall, the Learn center is an excellent addition to Injustice 2, complimenting the many other ways the game teaches you how to play. The game also includes in-game frame data, and cool notifications during a match when you get a cross-up, reversal, or wakeup attack.
It’s never too late to improve the tutorial in your fighting game, because it benefits all players and helps onboarding new players. It’s a great thing that Injustice 2’s developers saw room for improvement and added the Learn hub.
Any other developer that doesn’t put frame data in their game from now on is getting a harsh sideways glare from me.
Dragonball FighterZ is easy start playing because it has simple controls and mechanics that apply no matter what character you use. However, its lacking tutorials will lead you to a lot of studying outside of the game to truly understand it.
Also, it’s pronounced “fighters”, not “fighter zee” or “fighter zed”.
Compared to other Arc System Works games, DBFZ is a lot closer to Persona 4 Arena than Guilty Gear Xrd. Every character has an autocombo that you can activate by hitting an attack button, which will transition into a level 1 super if you have enough meter. There are also unique attacks in that autocombo string that can transition into medium/heavy normals or special attacks.
What I really liked were the amount of universal mechanics and the simple special commands. It makes swapping between characters easy and makes the game amazing for casual play.
Every special attack in the game is either a quarter-circle or down, down motion. Every super is a quarter-circle and two buttons. There’s a universal overhead (6M), universal sweep that most characters can combo from (2M), universal anti-air launcher (2H), and a universal hard knockdown ender for air combos (j.H).
The tutorial doesn’t fully explain these universal mechanics. I had to experiment in training mode and ask other players to find out what exactly the “smash” attack was. Same with learning that the universal 2M sweep can start combos.
In general, the tutorial and combo challenges are underwhelming compared to Guilty Gear. The tutorial teaches you how to execute certain system mechanics but not why they are useful. Even though there is a “more info” tab, it rarely has more than a sentence or two of explanation.
Z Reflect is a technique with many applications and properties, but they are not explained here.
Each section of the Battle Tutorial has multiple steps, and if you want to repeat one of the earlier steps or experiment with it more…you can’t. You have to go back to the lobby and select the tutorial again, sitting through a few load screens in the process.
(Not to mention the extremely high chance that you’ll be disconnected from the server during this process, but I’ll stick with tutorial critique for now.)
“I never have problems with the FighterZ servers, they’re perfect” Nigga i just found myself on ranked pic.twitter.com/HMua8BHWrs
— KenzoAve ? (Son Of A Sheperd Ver.) (@KenzoAvenue) February 23, 2018
Some mechanics in the tutorial are not explained with the amount of depth that they should be. The game tells you that the Z-Reflect can knock away opponent’s physical attacks, but doesn’t tell you that you can reflect projectiles, or that a successful reflect grants you brief invulnerability.
There are also several technical oversights within the tutorial. If you change your button settings, the tutorial displays won’t change with it.
An early tutorial tells me to Super Dash with R2 or O+X, but I’ve set my R2 button to something else. It doesn’t mention that Super Dash is HEAVY ATTACK + SPECIAL ATTACK, it just says “R2 or O+X”.
It would be much easier to understand if they just used the latter notation, like how Guilty Gear Xrd trials say “Punch/Kick/Slash/Heavy Slash/Dust” instead of “X/Square/Triangle/Circle/R1”.
The Combo Challenge has the same problem, but worse. It tells you to activate special moves with default button layouts, like doing a super with QCF + R1. But what if I don’t have R1 bound?
Well, I have to guess what R1 corresponds to with the default layout, because you can’t change buttons at all while in the Combo Challenge menu. It’s a bizarre oversight.
Most of the Combo Challenges are pointless, as they teach you 3 or 4 real combos and the rest are “perform your special attack” or “perform your super attack”. They don’t even properly explain what the specials or supers do, which makes the challenges even more pointless when you play a complex character like Hit or Android 21.
Guilty Gear included multiple, practical combos for every character in the game from beginner to advanced difficulty. It had missions that taught you fighting game basics as well as matchup specific tips for every character in the cast. The tutorial of Dragonball FighterZ is very underdeveloped in comparison.
While the game has pretty easy and lenient inputs, and a basic, good combo shouldn’t take too long to learn. But the game will not give you those basic, good combos so you’ll have to look online for them.
Some fighting games are naturally easier to pick up because you can mash buttons and make cool things happen. Dragonball FighterZ is one of those games, as it has very simple controls and lots of universal mechanics. In that sense, it’s a good game for beginners to jump into.
On the other hand, simpler games like this are easier for experienced players to maximize. They’ll be able to pick up on game systems and combo theory faster than new players, making the gap between them grow very quickly. Unfortunately, Dragonball FighterZ lacks a mission mode, good combo tutorials, and a good game tutorial that would help new players catch up.
I feel like this will be a game that will be very alienating to new fighting game players if they try to play online or enter a local tournament. It’s fun to mash, but it definitely lacks the expansive tutorial content of other Arc System Works games, especially compared to the latest Guilty Gear title.
Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[st] is the fighting game you should show to someone who has never played a fighting game before, but wants to learn.
There are a few names that always come up when you mention great tutorials in fighting games. Skullgirls, Dead or Alive 5, Virtua Fighter 4 EVO, and Guilty Gear Xrd are regularly praised for having comprehensive tutorials that teach you the basics of fighting games and deeply analyze their own unique mechanics.
Well, add UNIST to that list!
While the game does have some very unique mechanics that will take time to internalize, the tutorial doesn’t throw all of that at you at once. It teaches you things as simple as “how to properly do a QCF motion” to things as advanced as empty jump lows and what okizeme is. I was blown away when I saw how deep into fighting game theory it gets.
Gallery
There are some occasional moments of strange grammar like blockstun being called “guard stun” and calling whiff punishing “attacking whiffs”, but this tutorial is superb at teaching the fundamentals of 2D fighting games.
There’s also the mission mode, which has a long list of combos for your character and general strategy on how to play them. They even highlight the character’s best block strings and anti-air moves.
For the actual gameplay, I found some early success in just using 2D fighting game basics. The Passing Link system means basically any character can combo A > B > C to a special move, and I picked up basic combos with Eltnum fairly quickly.
The biggest learning curve will be from mastering the game’s systems. The GRD system buffs the leading player (whoever is blocking successfully and landing more hits) every few seconds. I found it difficult to keep track of who was winning the GRD war while also taking advantage the buffs when I won it, as it gives you access to several new options. The tutorial mode is a great help here, as I consistently referred to it to remember how the game’s meters worked.
Also, every character has a Vorpal Trait that is unexplained. Eltnum’s allows her to cancel A normals on whiff and backdash cancel anything she could special cancel.
There are also Force Functions that take a block of your GRD meter. I assume these are good because of how useful GRD is, but the game doesn’t explain what this attack does for each character. Vorpal Traits and Force Functions are not really explained well, which is the only negative point I have against the extremely comprehensive tutorial.
UNIST is an easier to digest anime game than others. The air movement is very limited for most characters, so there’s little worrying about instant airdashing, airdash cross-ups, and building the muscle memory for really, really long air combos.
When playing, I felt like a lot of fighting game fundamentals carried over for me and I could focus more on learning the system mechanics because I wasn’t getting double perfected every game. And even if you’re new, the tutorial will teach you more than enough to get started. Combos are simple enough to understand with the Passing Link chain system, but there are definitely some difficult, advanced combos that are fun and rewarding to grind out.
If you have even a passing interest in anime games, this is definitely one to pick up. And if you’re not personally interested in Under Night In-Birth but want to learn the basics of fighting games, this is one you must not skip. The tutorial alone won’t make you stop sucking at fighting games, but it’ll help you see the path to being kinda good, eventually.
Throughout 2017, Typeshift was my anchor. When I had no motivation to do anything else, or felt like my thoughts were racing too fast for me to catch up, I loaded up Typeshift. Solving a few word puzzles helped me calm down, reset my brain, and most importantly, kill a few minutes waiting at the doctor's office. The game can be challenging, but it's the exact level of challenge I needed to help myself focus.
9. Horizon Zero Dawn
released February 28, 2017
Developer: Guerilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Horizon Zero Dawn is a visually stunning game with a challenging, unique combat system. But what keeps this game in my thoughts is the world and the characters who inhabit it. Each quest is accompanied by a voiced, named character and its own small piece of lore. Each story mission lets you learn more about the main cast. Aloy, who is stubborn to a fault but empathetic to complete strangers. Erend, who is outwardly confident but inwardly crumbling under the weight of his responsibility. Sylens, who is a jerk and only out for himself, but has sound reasons to be this way.
The story of this game is superb. I remember tearing through story missions in the last part of the game, hungry to learn the origin of this bizarre world. The game builds a great mystery and doles out reveals in masterful fashion, and is a great example of how an open-world game actually can have good story pacing.
8. A Hat In Time
released October 5, 2017
Developer: Gears for Breakfast
Publisher: Humble Bundle
The very specific sub-genre of “collect-a-thon” 3D platformers is all but dead, which made A Hat In Time a treat for me, the guy who replays Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie every year.
The game rolls together all the best parts of Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, and the Banjo-Kazooie series into one adorable package. The writing is consistently funny, the platforming is pitch perfect (the wall-jump and homing attack feel so good to use), and the objectives in each world are vastly different but mostly fun. A Hat In Time kept bringing new stuff to the table as it progressed, and I'm glad that someone is keeping this sub-genre alive.
It's so nice to have a great Sonic game that I can recommend freely without having to make excuses. The last time I could do that was Sonic Generations back in 2011.
Sonic Mania understands exactly what made Sonic 3 & Knuckles so good. The level design is immaculate, rewarding you with special stages and powerups if you like to explore. It rewards you with satisfying speed if you practice and have good reflexes. The music is perfect, the boss battles are better than the classic games, and even the older stages are remixed enough to feel totally fresh. Can we go back in time to erase Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and slot this game in its place?
Before playing this game, I knew nearly nothing about Vocaloid. I vaguely remembered some Hatsune Miku songs from anime club in high school, but I hardly considered myself a fan.
After playing hours of Project DIVA in early 2017, I know three things for sure.
1. I love this specific sub-genre of J-pop music with Japanese singers.
3. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone is one of the best rhythm games on the market.
This might be the best value I've gotten out of a game this year, as I paid $60 for a massive tracklist of 200+ songs. I'm not even close to completing it, but I always have a blast burning through a few songs. It can be absurdly difficult at times, but has enough settings to cover “slightly drunken houseparty” to “chasing #1 on the leaderboard”. The song choice is excellent, and I discovered a lot of new favourites despite being mostly unfamiliar with the genre. And every song is accompanied by wildly inventive and colourful music videos that are just as fun to watch when you're not playing the game.
If you like rhythm games, pop music, or Vocaloid to any degree this game is necessary. Just like Rock Band, I'll be coming back to this game for years to come.
5. Doki Doki Literature Club
released September 22, 2017
Developer: Team Salvato
Publisher: Dan Salvato
There's no way I'm giving a full overview of this game. You need to just play it.
You know that it's a horror game wearing the clothing of a cute visual novel, but do you know why it's scary?
Do you know the feeling of confessing to someone, or apologizing, or admitting you're wrong
And they don't accept it?
Do you ever fear waking up and forgetting something important? Maybe losing your keys, or forgetting the password to your bank account
Or not remembering the faces of anyone you've met?
Do you ever lie awake at night remembering all the times you've hurt someone's feelings?
Do you try to make amends, or do you just hope those thoughts will eventually disappear?
Platinum Games frequently make my Game of the Year list, but this time I have little praise for the gameplay. I actually found much of NieR: Automata's combat disappointing and not challenging. Especially compared to Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising, NieR falls short.
The reason why it makes the list is everything else. The soundtrack is fantastic and is a perfect complement to the melancholy tone of the game. I'll always remember walking into the Amusement Park and hearing that track playing as I saw the first pack of machines who were more interested in having fun than attacking my party. The lonely tune playing in City Ruins still sticks with me today, as it feels like an ode to a key theme of the game: holding on to those few moments of hope in a broken world.
The game's odd structure can be seen as a negative, but it's actually what made it hard for me to put it down. You essentially must finish the game three times, and the first two times are only slightly different. But you also get to see the contrast in how the player characters interact with the world and solve problems. 2B is stoic and professional, 9S is empathetic but naive. The context of the world changes so much based on who you're playing, and then everything you know is shattered by the third playthrough.
I have rarely seen a game improve so dramatically as it progressed. Route A is good, Route B is similar, Routes C-E are full of mind-blowing reveals, heartbreaking choices and a complete disruption of the world you've come to know. The game builds up a small open world enough that you become familiar with it. Enough so that you know where everything is like the back of your hand. And then it plays that familiarity against you, as your allies disappear and formerly safe zones become horror shows.
I cannot even imagine how Yoko Taro can follow up such an audacious game, but NieR: Automata guaranteed that I will be there day one to see what he creates next.
You may have guessed this by now, but I assemble Game of the Year lists mostly based on soundtracks. And Persona 5's OST is full of bangers. Last Surprise has already surpassed Reach Out To the Truth and Mass Destruction on my “most played” lists on iTunes. The lead guitar in Blooming Villain will never not give me goosebumps. Even the regular dungeon themes are impossibly catchy.
Aside from jamming to the soundtrack, the gameplay is what kept me glued to Persona 5. I've always enjoyed the simple rock-paper-scissors strategy in the Persona games, but 5 added just enough to make combat deeper and more enjoyable. Status effects lead to devastating combo attacks, the Baton Pass system allows you to do absurd damage if you're skillful enough in hitting weaknesses, and the demon negotiation system becomes another sort of Social Link system, as you learn the demon's personalities and try to exploit them to gain power or cash for yourself.
I played Persona 5 for 100 hours and was excited to battle nearly every time.
The system refinements don't just stop at combat though. The Confidant system in P5 is much better than the Social Link systems of 4 and 3, providing noticeable, tangible benefits for hanging out with your friends. Some of them significantly change the combat and make it even more enjoyable. Hifumi Togo is the best girl for multiple reasons, and there are very few arguments against this fact that I will entertain.
I appreciated the sense of place in Persona 5. For the first time in the series, I really felt like I was completely transported to a busy Japanese city and I soaked it in, rarely using fast travel to go anywhere.
From the bustling shopping center to the back alleys of home, this game really goes out of its way to make you feel like you're in Japan. I might not be able to visit there in real life, but I loved the feeling of taking a mini vacation to Japan in the hours I spent in Akira Kusuru's shoes.
2. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd
released May 3, 2017
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publishers: XSEED Games, Marvelous USA, Inc.
It's about time one of these games made my list.
In 2014 and 2015, I played through Trails in the Sky and its sequel and loved them. However, I played them too late to get them on the Game of the Year list. Consider this both an endorsement of the third chapter of the series and my make-good for not recognizing those games properly in the past.
Second Chapter tied up so many loose ends with the story that I was worried that The 3rd would feel inconsequential. I was quite happy to be wrong about that.
The third chapter in the Trails series changes up the setting, swaps in new playable characters, and raises the difficulty just enough that combat is consistently challenging. I could blaze through a lot of encounters in the mid-to-late game of FC and SC, but The 3rd starts off tricky and gets downright devious.
I loved seeing the origin stories of characters from past games and getting more background on the half-magic half-tech world of Liberl. I wouldn't recommend this game as a standalone, but it's a deeply satisfying payoff for those of us who have been with the series since 2014.
The Trails in the Sky series is not new, as this is a localized version of a 10 year old game. However, despite its simple 3D models and 2D character art, this game's cast was the most memorable of any game I played in 2017. Learning the history of Kevin Graham and Ries Argent was an emotional journey, and this being the culmination of a series I started playing 3 years ago made all those emotional payoffs hit harder.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is easily my favorite role-playing game series and I'm gonna keep bugging you all until you play them.
I suck at fighting games, but Tekken 7 makes me want to get better.
I have always admired the Tekken games from a distance but never dove in. Tekken 6 was released before I was in the scene and I actively disliked what I played of Tag 2. From the moment I started playing Tekken 7, it just clicked. The game fit my hands.
Like any good fighting game, I kept coming back to Tekken 7 for the community. I joined Discord servers to trade strategy with fellow players, consumed hours of video tutorials, and played in offline tournaments nearly every week since the game dropped in June.
Coming into the Tekken series as a new player, seeing a list of 50+ moves for even the simplest character was daunting. I've only played 2D fighting games before, and those movelists only have 20 moves at the absolute maximum!
But with the game's great difficulty comes a great sense of accomplishment when figuring things out. I remember winning my first match in an offline tournament. Hitting blue ranks and then green ranks online for the first time in a Tekken game. Actually sitting down to take notes on my replays for the first time.
Getting better at Tekken is time-consuming and difficult, but I feel like this game has helped me in a journey of self-improvement outside of the game as well. I don't drink as much because I can't play Tekken well while buzzed. I eat less junk food because that means bad mood, and bad mood = bad times playing Tekken . I work out more because more stamina = better focus and longer Tekken sessions. I didn't expect this game to affect me the way it has, but it has actually made a positive impact on my life.
I'm still not good at fighting games, but with Tekken 7, I feel like I'm finally on the path of Getting Good in my favourite game genre.
If you want to learn Tekken 7, I hope you have a phone or computer nearby.
3D fighting games are not as popular or numerous as 2D fighting games. There are likely several fighting game players who haven't touched a Tekken game since the early 2000s, and other series like Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive are stagnant because they haven't released a new game in years.
If there's one 3D game that has the ability to cross over and pull in 2D players, it's Tekken 7. Although it has technically been out for a few years, the official worldwide console/PC release has been successful so far, with tournament registration and sales numbers to back it up.
The increased interest in Tekken makes it even more frustrating that the game has no tutorial to help new players learn the game. The closest Tekken 7 gets to a tutorial is in the Mishima Saga story mode. Some fights will display one or two tips on the bottom left corner of the screen. “Hold back to block”. “Hold down to crouch”.
But these tips disappear shortly into the story mode, and many concepts are left unexplained. Tips will occasionally appear in loading screens, but there is no database to revisit them. Keep a notepad handy.
The next step is to look at your movelist in Training Mode. Scrolling through this, you can quickly see which moves are screw attacks, which moves hit sidestepping opponents, and your armored Power Crush attack.
But you're still just looking at the move's effect on a dummy, not what makes it useful. You have a Rage Drive and a Rage Art, but aren't given the context as to why you would ever use the Drive instead. From the perspective of a new player, Rage Art is stronger because it does more damage, right?
In a game where most tournament commentary consists of people constantly telling us the frame data, why is there no frame data accessible in the game?
The option to display your movelist in game is flawed. In Dead or Alive 5 and Guilty Gear Xrd's Command Training, an indicator flashes on screen to let you know you executed a move properly. You can also set an option to automatically move to the next attack, or repeat the current one until you feel comfortable. Smaller games got it right, and the premier 3D fighting game should be able to do the same.
In Tekken 7, you can watch a demo of the move. You have to compare your attack to the demo to see if you did it properly. There is no confirmation that you did it, and no automatic progression to the next move.
The training mode is robust, but some things are confusing compared to other fighting games. Many games have a “1 hit guard/guard after 1st attack” setting to test combos: the first hit will count but the opponent will block everything else if it didn't naturally combo.
In Tekken 7, you must do this:
CPU Opponent Action 1: Stand
CPU Opponent Action 2: Guard All
To get a “guard after 1st attack” setting. I didn't even understand how that worked until I looked up a guide online. There's also no easy option to see how to break throws, leaving players to experiment or research online when it comes to escaping command throws or chain throws.
Tekken 7 has multiple ways to get up off the ground after being knocked down, but with no tutorial it's difficult to know how to do any of them. If you ground tech, you can hit a punch button to roll into the background or a kick button to roll into the foreground. But if you're already lying down, you press Left Punch to roll into the background and Down+Left Punch to roll into the foreground. Kicks do different things now.
Again, I had no idea how that worked until watching a tutorial. And this is deadly for new players, because if you aren't waking up properly you can basically get stomped to death before you can stand up and reset the situation to neutral.
It's not a complete lost cause for new players, however. Despite the lack of a true Tutorial mode, I believe Tekken 7 is easier to pick up and play than any 2D fighting game.
There is a fair amount of single player content, including character customization, Treasure Battle for earning customization gear, arcade mode, and miniature story modes for each character. If you can't play locally, there online connectivity is very good and online tournaments are a nice feature.
Remember, single player content matters when engaging new players. Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't!
Having combo strings makes it easy for new players to pick someone who looks cool, mash 1, 2, 3 or 2,3 or roll your face on the pad (if you're Eddy/Lucky Chloe) and maybe even pick up some wins online. The combo system feels natural and intuitive from the start, while deep enough to allow players to build if they seek outside resources.
But the issue is requiring outside resources. The game won't explain to you how Rage mode works, the difference between Rage Drive and Rage Art, when you should sidestep, the numerous wakeup options when you're knocked down, how to use certain training mode features, how to break throws, how to break command throws, or when to block low vs. high.
In 2012, I decided to stop being a spectator in the fighting game community. I bought an expensive arcade stick, found my local fighting game meetups, and started playing every fighting game I could get my hands on.
It has been nearly five years since I picked up Skullgirls for the first time, but after playing it for a while I learned that it wasn't the game for me.
However, the game has improved dramatically since 2012. And while I may not keep up with Skullgirls, I will fully recommend it to new fighting game players, veterans, and pretty much anyone looking for a fantastic game.
Skullgirls 2nd Encore+ is allegedly the final version of the game, as the team at Lab Zero are moving on to new projects. While no fighting game experience can be perfect and include all of the user interface/quality of life elements that you want, Skullgirls gets closer than any fighting game has.
Training Mode
I am astonished by how many options are in this game's training mode. There are things that I never thought I needed until I saw them in this game. Slow motion, hitboxes, a grid overlay so you can tell exactly how far your attacks reach, hitstun bars, even two types of input display.
Basically, the only thing it's missing is straight up frame data in the command list. If you are a new player and want to just sit in the training room until you figure out Skullgirls, they provide more than enough tools to do so.
Quick Loading Times
Long load times are the norm in modern games. In Skullgirls, I almost never sat through a load time of more than 5 seconds. Even if you're frequently changing stages and characters in Versus, the load times are short. It's very refreshing to play this game after every other fighting game is making load times longer and longer.
This makes settling in for a quick First to 50 set even easier, because once you both hit Rematch it's on in seconds.
Also, both players have a small menu of options post-match. So you don't have to give thumbs up to confirm you're ready to go.
Legacy Controller Support
You can plug in a PlayStation 3 stick into the PlayStation 4 version of Skullgirls and it just works.
Seriously.
You don't have to hook up a PS4 controller to USB and worry about it powering off, killing the connection. You don't have to go through menus. It just works. No other fighting game has gotten this right besides Skullgirls yet.
Tournament Mode
In this local versus mode, the button configuration option automatically pops up every time you select characters. So there's no worry about starting a match without a button check, potentially stalling a tournament bracket. It's another brilliant feature that somehow hasn't been implemented by every other fighting game.
Now, I'd like to look at exactly why this is an excellent fighting game for beginners.
Lots of Single Player Content
Pro players downplay how important single player content is in a fighting game, but it absolutely matters. This content draws in new players to games, who may become interested in what's beneath the surface and become more invested in the competitive side of the game.
You should want more people to buy and play your game. And having lots of single player content helps that along. Skullgirls has plenty.
A fully voice-acted story mode for every character, with cutscenes and boss encounters.
Arcade mode that pits you against random opponents and teams.
A quick match mode against the CPU if you don't feel like doing an entire Arcade ladder.
Survival mode.
Challenge mode, full of gimmick battles with conditions you won't see in a regular match. My personal favorite locks your attacks, forcing you to win by surviving until time runs out.
Trials to teach you combos for every character
I don't compete in Skullgirls, but I keep coming back to it because there's so much to do.
The Tutorial Mode
This is what sold me on Skullgirls the first time. The tutorial is long, comprehensive and excellent for learning how to play fighting games.
It does teach the game's numerous mechanics down to the minutia that you won't truly understand for weeks. The thing that puts it above and beyond is how the game teaches concepts that can be applied to any other 2D fighting game.
There are drills on how to use tick throws, how to use and block mixups, explanations of blockstun & hitstun, and punish combos. That's stuff that applies to nearly every fighting game, and understanding the concepts of these tutorials will help you level up your game in any fighting game.
If you want to get into fighting games, the Skullgirls tutorial is a great place to jump in. It's up there with tutorials like Dead or Alive 5 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
It's not without faults, however. There are times when the characters can overlap the text on the screen, especially as your tasks get more elaborate.
Gallery
There's no option on the pause menu to review the larger text boxes, so you'll have to start the lesson again to read them.
Also, the longer tutorial sections could be broken up better, as there's no easy way to rewind and review a concept you missed. You have to start from the very beginning to see a text passage again.
It's Fun To Mash
Some fighting games have complicated, finger-breaking inputs to do combos and supers. Some fighting games have advanced movement techniques that you must learn in order to compete, making walking around the stage an advanced skill. Some fighting games simply feel clunky until you learn how to work within their systems.
In Skullgirls, you can jump into a match and hit a lot of buttons and it feels great. It's incredibly responsive, even in online matches. The inputs are simple, with most attacks being quarter-circle motions. The majority of the cast shares the same input for Level 3 super combos, so you can do a cool move with any character you pick up.
Most characters have a consistent light-medium-heavy-launch combo that you can rely on.
In the long term, getting good at this game is difficult. But the time from “picking up the game” to “doing cool moves” is considerably shorter than other games. Fighting games are too hard to play if you're not already a fighting game player, and lots of casual players just want to jump in and mash special moves and supers without reading the manual.
By making move inputs simple and very responsive, Skullgirls encourages new players to choose someone who looks cool and start doing basic combos with them immediately. And if they want to move up to that next level, there's plenty of tutorial content there to enable them to do so.
I've bounced off many 2D fighting games as a newbie because they don't feel good to pick up and play immediately. Anime fighters with highly specialized characters and loads of meters on the screen turned me away because I had no idea how to even do special moves or supers.
With the simple inputs, extremely low input lag and accessible basic combos, it feels good to pick up any character in Skullgirls and play, even if you aren't familiar with them. I think it does a better job of being inviting to new players than most other games.
I tried getting good at Skullgirls years ago, but after entering a few tournaments I realized that I was nowhere near as skilled as I thought. It's a common issue with games that have smaller player numbers. There are few new players at your level, just a scene of dedicated veterans. You'll get crushed before having a chance to react in most matches, which is an unsatisfying loss because you can't learn anything from it. Try jumping into a ranked match and you'll see this in action.
Being a team fighting game also makes it immediately more complex than 1v1 games. You have to consider your assist attacks, and change them based on what your opponent is using. In the match, you should be using your assist often, but using it at the wrong time will get it knocked out quickly.
Despite having a very lengthy tutorial on how it works, the Infinite Protection System and Undizzy meter are very difficult to understand. I didn't actually know how it worked until someone explained it to me in plain terms, and burst baiting is something new players won't know how to utilize but may get frustrated when it's consistently used against them.
The variable team system is nice but picking a solo character is almost never recommended. Lacking an assist makes you much more vulnerable to larger teams, as you can't tag out to regain health or just take a break to plan a strategy with one character. Skullgirls should give the option of a team of 2 or 3, but not solo.
I still recommend this game to new players just because the tutorial is so great and how easy it is to jump in and play because of the intuitive combo system. But even after building my skills over five years, I just can't hang with assist-centered team fighting games.
That's just me though. I think Skullgirls gets everything right in terms of user interface, menus, visuals, online play, and legacy controller support. Just because I don't prefer team games doesn't mean you should drop the game immediately. You should try this game out because it's fantastic, and great for new players to fighting games.
Returning to Skullgirls has been a nostalgic experience. In 2012, I picked up this game on my Xbox 360 and bought an Eightarc Fusion arcade stick that I still use today. I was committed to learning fighting games so I could play Persona 4 Arena.
Since 2012, I've played nearly every new fighting game. I've met new people in different FGC scenes, managed a gaming club in university, and traveled across the country to participate in tournaments/ sleep in outrageously comfortable hotel beds.
I've somehow convinced my place of employment to give me Tuesday nights off so I can go to a weekly fighting game meetup in Ohio. There, I've made new friends, played even more obscure fighting games, and even started doing commentary and learned how to run my own tournaments.
Fighting games helped improve my patience in games and in real life. They've taught me how to stay calm under pressure as well. And all of the traveling I've done and people I've met makes me excited to try new things in my everyday life. I'd say I'm in a much better place today than I was in 2012.
So, try new things as much as you can. See as much of the world as you can, and your life will be enriched for it. I'm gonna keep playing every fighting game I can get my hands on, even if I suck, because taking the step from spectator to player was an unexpected turning point in my life.
If you're interested in any fighting game I've talked about or one that's coming out, try it out! You'll likely see the fun of reading your opponents if you put effort into learning the game. You might suck at it for a while...or forever if you're like me...but you will learn something about yourself through the experience.
Log in to comment