I am a terrible fighting game player, but I am a big fighting game fan (albeit more toward the casual end). I have awarded a couple of fighting games as one of my favorite for the years the past five years and can easily proclaim on number of classic fighting games as one of my favorite games of all-time pantheon. However, it’s been getting harder for me to get in adequate time and effort to play and learn the little ins and outs of a fighting game and to evaluate its impact against other games I have put in more time and effort into. While my fandom for fighting games remains strong, I do hold a bit of frustration on my increasingly diminishing time with fighting games the past few years. Thus I try to give a fighting game special consideration if I really enjoyed playing the game and the game exemplifies a quality release, such as Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- did to shove its way to number two on my GOTY 2016 list.

Since the fruitful year of 2014, where I awarded four fighting games on my GOTY list that year, it’s been a trying time for me to get in decent time to play fighting games both for personal curiosity and coordinate matches with others. I do not recall any significant fighting games being released in 2015, which reflects the lack of any fighting game listed on my GOTY list that year. Adding to a lack of a strong, interesting fighting game release that year was a multitude of longer hours toward work, the diminishing desire to play fighting games, my diminishing communication with my peers at a few internet chat rooms, etc. My attention and enthusiasm for all fighting game related items (and at a time, gaming in general) was at an all-time low. I did not even bother watching many fighting game tournament streams aside from EVO and a few other big ones (Combo Breaker, CEO). It also did not help that Splatoon was an awesome game that filled in my online competitive urges nicely.

I had hoped 2016 was going to be the year I get back into the fighting game fold, and that Street Fighter V would be the spark plug to do so. It did for the first month or so, as I played plenty of online games along in ranked and briefly with other Giant Bombers. I got close to reaching 1,000 PL before falling into a bad losing streak and stopping sometime in July down to 642 PL. That’s where I was also grinding out other games I was playing concurrently that slowly took precedent over SFV. I got back into FG mood a bit with Revelator’s release, getting in solid sessions with a few GB folks before a lot of things made it hard to sustain the GG momentum I built up. I feel really bad that I did not get in any significant time with KOF XIV and BBCF as both games took a big back seat against JRPGs I was playing at the time of their releases (TMS#FE and Bravely Second). Aside from SFV and Revelator, the only other FG that I managed to get in some solid time in was the PSN release of The Last Blade 2, which I was disappointed on how the game came out to be, but still played it enough to earn all PSN trophies for it.

It’s frustrating to evaluate fighting games against other games because there’s so much more work to undergo to truly see what the fighting game has to offer. While in the long-term fighting games can provide that nice pick up and play anytime aspect like other games, it takes a long time beforehand for a player to get up to that point. There’s a lot of internal preparation one must undergo before heading out into the competitive wilderness, such as finding the fighter that best suits your playstyle, then learning how to mesh the game’s universal mechanics to integrate with the fighter’s characteristics and your playstyle to utilize in battle, and eventually learning what tools you can use with your character to counteract your opponent’s battle game plan. No matter how “accessible” certain fighting games are to others, there’s always that initial cliff-like challenge that makes it tough for anyone hoping to just jump right in after a quick tutorial session.

I’m not sure how other fighting game fans feel, but I feel like the pay-off of finally getting a good grasp on a fighting game gives off a much higher rewarding feeling than getting through a tough boss or section in other genres. There was a short time while playing a Revelator casual session with other GB folks where though I was not winning many matches, I finally felt like everything came together and had a great time battling for that session. I’m sure others feel equally as ecstatic once success starts coming in once everything comes together in battle. It’s awesome to see folks who are passionate of the genre to continually improve their own crafts and celebrating being in each other’s camaraderie. I’m not sure how 2017 will shake out for me, but I hope to attain some sort of that camaraderie every so often by trying to carve out more time for fighting games both alone and with others if possible.

There are a lot of general fighting game concepts applied to all games in the genre that still go over my head, but I hope my lack of knowledge in some aspects of fighting games will not harm my enjoyment of the ames in the genre and affecting others while playing with them. While improvement continues to be an on-going agenda to strive for, my goal for 2017 is just spend more time with fighting games wherever possible. It’ll be a challenge with work continuing to be a massive time sink and squeezing in available time in between the big gaming releases early in 2017, but I am feeling a big hole of not playing much fighting games lately. There’s no shortage of FGs that I want to get back to, whether it’s continuing my good early feels from Revelator (edit: Revelator 2 incoming, though console TBD), getting back into SFV with season 2, or just getting in more time in other FGs that I have been unable to get around to much (Nitro+, KOF XIV, BBCF) or for the first time (KI). In terms of new FG releases expected this year, I am looking forward to Tekken 7’s eventual console release and may give Injustice 2 a chance.

Fighting games are what helped me gain a few friends in Giant Bomb, as I participated in the numerous Persona 4 Arena community events as I joined GB in mid-2012, followed up with MikeFightNight’s sessions in 2013 through 2014, so they hold a special place in my gaming heart. I also attended my first and only fighting game tournament thus far in Summer Jam back in 2013. Adding to that playing a number of classic FGs on my own during that helped me get through life back then, it’s something that I don’t want to lose a hold of. The only thing I don’t mind losing is losing a lot of fighting game matches.

Equipment

Upon the five years of FGs with a few GB duders, I learned on certain things unknown to common knowledge that certain equipment can impose additional input lag. I know the television I have been playing fighting games on is not the ideal monitor to play it on, but this TV has served me well and buying a gaming monitor that reduces input lag is out of the cards as I consider that an unnecessary/luxury purchase. I have hooked up my consoles on a wired connection to the router, but I know full well that will not ensure the best, consistent connection playing online against others.

My small but prideful accomplishment is getting acclimated to playing with a fight stick over a game pad. I can definitely feel the ease of playing certain fighting games (like SF and GG) with their button setups over a pad, though I am still far from being the expert fight stick executioner.

Notable Games/Event

Persona 4 Arena - August 2012 to Mid-2013

I knew I played a ton of Persona 4 Arena due to all of the casual sparring and participating in almost every GB P4A tournament held when it was really active. Easily earned my #1 spot on my GOTY 2012 list as well as a place on my favorite games of the 10s decade group.

Summer Jam 7 - August 2013

I wrote a brief blog on my experience as a spectator at one of Philly’s three major FG tournaments. I was there to cheer on my friend “Mistah Foo”, who got knocked out early in Injustice and UMvC3 and hung out at the anime room a bit and chatted with one player who participated in BBCSE and P4A.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R - Late 2013 to Mid-2014

I think I was playing the Japanese version first as they had +R installed first before the US PS3 version got patched with it later. As you can see, I did not play as many games in GGXXAC+R in total against P4A, but I had a ton of fun playing the game with a small group of others. I also kept a record of results when weeklies were held for this time period.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax - Late 2014

Compared to P4A, P4AU was not quite as fun to play with the additions and changes the major cause of the lackluster enthusiasm of the game compared to the vanilla version.

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late - August 2014 to Early 2015

Yes, you are not seeing things. I won only 7 games out of 100+ matches in UNIEL ranked online. The game was a bit rough for me as I never got into the groove that I had with P4A and +R, but I still had a ton of fun with the game as I played close to 430 games in UNIEL and earned my #1 spot for 2014.

Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- - Dec 2014 to Mid-2015

I similarly struggled with SIGN as I did with UNIEL because I did not find a characters I was totally comfortable in playing with. Even with that struggle, I am surprised on how well I performed with a 35% winning percentage on ranked and managed to played a decent amount of SIGN in spite of a tough working year.

Street Fighter V - Feb 2016 to July 2016, onward

I got into the SFV as much as I can in spite of its early problems and got close to Ultra Bronze until falling back to lower Bronze status. While SFV may be more notorious to the gaming world at large for its problems, it’s still the number one attended game to play in almost every major FG tournament worldwide. I’ll see if I can get back into SFV amongst a busy work and gaming schedule this year. I did sneak in one ranked match last week and won, so that’s a start.

Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- -June 2016, onward

I did not play many ranked matched, but the player matches I played with other GB-ers were very fun to play. Jam definitely feels much better to play compared to Bedman and I think I held my own very well during the few but lengthy sessions I had in Revelator. Along with SFV, I hope to get some more games of Rev under my belt, now with the recent news of Revelator 2 in the works.

PS4 Fighting Games

I feel bad for the other FGs I bought but due to unfortunate circumstances that they’ll be on the back burner, especially KOF XIV (as I am a huge SNK fan) and BBCF (second fiddle to GG to me). I may not be able to play many games in FGs this year, especially with a stacked game schedule in Q1 and Q2 2017 and continuing long working hours, but I will do what I can to get in some games in whenever I can.

Thanks for reading!