THE FIGHTING GAME FEVER! (NOT SWINE FLU RELATED)

Welcome to my Blog folks, 

It's a rather pleasant rainy Sunday afternoon here in dear old England, I've had a quite delicious sunday roast and I watched me some Formula One. Nothing out of the usual and that's for the best, but today much of my thoughts have been taken up with the wonderful genre of the beat-em up. This classic and much beloved genre of videogames, as seen quite a resurgence of late with titles such as Street Fighter IV bringing fighting games back to the forefront of gamers minds. Now I shall be the first to admit that compare to most, I'm rather poor at fighting games. But I have always been fond of them, even if I usually find myself at the end of a heavy beating when I take my skills online. But this reawakening of the genre as also reawoken my interests in the many franchises available. 

I'm not the biggest Street Fighter fan, while I've always appreciated it's generalized few of being the best fighting franchise in existance. That doesn't mean I have to be massively fond of the franchise, I own a few Street Fighter games including the latest entry. But it's a series which as never pressed my buttons and one that as never truly captured my imagination. While I don't personally have a favourite fighting game franchise, the first true fighting game I fell in love with was Soul Blade on the Playstation One. Soul Blade (or Soul Edge as it was known in the US) was a wonderful fighter that of course began the Soul Calibur series, but even I have developed my needs from a fighting game and require something a little bit more nowadays. I did enjoy the latest Soul Calibur game though, but I have found myself more and more interested in the wonders of the 2D fighter. 

When talking about 2D, I'm mostly speaking of it in graphical terms rather then the platform of battle. Afterall Street Fighter 4 is a 2D fighter with 3D graphics, but I'm talking about 2D graphical fighters such as King of Fighters, Guilty Gear and BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. There's actually quite the fine collection out there and more then enough to please even the most dedicated fighting game fan. I shan't act like I know everything about fighting games, infact compared to even some of you on Giantbomb I know very little. But you don't need to know everything to appreciate a good fighting game and everyone as their different tastes. It's because of this that I have never really had the ultimate fighting experience with Street Fighter, it's usually games such as King of Fighters that I've felt more at home with. Character design is of course also key and while the Street Fighter cast are irreplaceable, they simply don't excite me.

Some of you may judge me for saying such a thing, but that's fine. To truly start enjoying fighting games (especially online) you need to realize that there are much better players then you out there, some of you are simply stunning to play against and know a hell of a lot more then me. Anyway, so my thoughts have been very much on the latest beat-em ups to hit the market. This afternoon I bought an asian version of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger as it's one of the few fighting games to really excite me and my needs, for one I adore the unique style the game as and having played a short spell of it, I enjoy it's gameplay. But there is more to get excited about, as next week we lucky Xbox 360 and PS3 owners get to play us some Marvel vs Capcom 2 for XBLA and PSN. I've just bought me some Microsoft points to make sure I had enough for this truly special title, even though it's one of the fighting games I truly suck at the most. But what a fighting game it is. 

I'm sure many of you have strong views on fighting games, afterall it's one of the few genres to have such a dedicated and competitive following. I will shamefully admit to loving it's return to the limelight and while it's true future is still unclear, I can't wait to see more developers take on the fighting kings of Street Fighter, Tekken and so many others. There is a game out there for everyone, be it the anime superfan or the fans who see fighting games as a form of art. There are folk out there who probably do take it a little 'to' seriously but you have to love even that it an odd sort of way, it's all about finding your comfort zone and fighting folk who you can have fun with. I have had many a match with friends who have been far better then I, but I still had an absolute blast playing. It's a videogame afterall and videogames are there for pleasure rather then pain. 

So any fighting fans out there have much to look forward to in the coming weeks, while we Europeans don't yet have an estimated release date for BlazBlue (one of the reasons I decided to purchase a PS3 version) we do get us some King of Fighters XII at the end of August. Infact it won't be long before we run into the busy months of gaming, better start saving up my pounds and pennies. Hope you do the same, because the next few months are going to be insane for some top games. But there are of course still some fighting games to enjoy and Marvel vs Capcom 2 hits XBLA and PSN next week being part of the Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade. I'm not totally sure how many points it's going to be sold for right now but my guess would be around the 800-1200 mark. I highly recommend a purchase of this arcade game, as it's indeed something special. So for now, keep on fighting the good fight.