Jer

I've been watching my roommate play it, and it looks pretty damn cool. I don't normally like that kind of game, but it looks like enough fun that I might try it when he's done.

Meh, for fighting games it really doesn't make that big of a difference that PS2 is a little less powerful than the other systems. System power hasn't improved gameplay in a fighter in a really long time. T5 could have been done on the PS1 and look like T3 and it would have played the same. And anyway, focusing on only PS2 lets Namco optimize the game for PS2. Don't expect another slowdown ridden mess like PS2 SC2. T5 really shows what PS2 is capable of, and imo looks as good as any fighter on X-Box. No reason SC3 wouldn't look that good.

Yeah, I'm not sure. They did make a lot of tweaks to the home versions, but they never fixed step-guard. I think partly it's that people didn't realize how strong it was until pretty late. The community as a whole didn't really see how turtly and limited the game could be until Evo 2003, when DTN won with a super safe Nightmare that used like five moves. By then the American version had probably already gone gold and the only people playing in arcades would be conquest scrubs that wouldn't care either way. An SC2 Evo type thing would have been cool, though. Fix the glitches, add in Dante or something stupid to get the scrubs to buy it, and release it for $20. Heh.

Yeah, that's pretty close, but it's more like it made most moves too unsafe. Step-guard was just step, neutral, guard, and when you did it you'd get a slightly shorter step, but still long enough to step verticals, but then you'd cancel the step into block if you were attacked. It made step almost totally safe. In SC1, you could use step strategically to beat verticals, but you couldn't overuse it since it could be punished by horizontals. In SC2, step could only be punished by low, fast, long-range horizontals, which very few characters had (only X's 3A was really reliable at it, which consequently made her the best character in the game). That basically meant that there was no incentive not to step constantly. That also meant that verticals that weren't extremely fast were just useless, since they'd be stepped every time. The more people played, the more they realized that most problematic moves could just be stepped to one side or the other and punished. This limited all characters, and created a tourney scene that a lot of people found pretty boring, since most characters couldn't get away with using more than about ten different moves if they wanted to win.

I didn't think SC2 was that bad, but I'm probably really biased since it was the first fighter I traveled to play, so I've got all these great memories of tournies and gatherings that are gonna make the game seem better than it was. Step-guard did put some annoying limitations on your offense, but it wasn't as bad as some people said, imo. Everyone in Seattle spent all summer telling me how bad it was, but I could never see what was so wrong with it. I even liked watching Mick and Rob play, even though everyone else booed them, heh. I haven't wanted to go back since T5 came out, though. I think that's what killed the scene, more than anything. Almost everyone that played SC2 tried T5, and T5 was so good that none of them wanted to go back.

Name and occupation?! Will the innovation ever stop?! Yeah, I'd be really surprised if SC3 is more than just a little upgrade with a few new characters, but you never know. At the very least they'll probably fix 2G and step-guard and make it play like SC2 was supposed to. I'm sort of excited, but it's so soon after T5 that I don't care as much as I did when SC2 or T5 were about to come out. Any word on the arcade release? Hopefully they'll do cards again.

Eh, if it's going to be on one system, I'm glad it's PS2, since all my sticks are for PS2. Otoh, online play, laggy as it would be, would still be fun, and converters aren't very expensive, so X-Box would have been nice too. The one advantage of this is that the focus is going to be on the game this time, instead of on the horrible exclusives. The exclusives and the scrubs that used nothing but the exclusives were the worst part of SC2. GamePro's preview was funny with how much it bashed SC2. 'Can Namco regain its footing in the fighting game arena after the ill-fated SC2?' or something. Then you flip back a few pages to their list of games that got all 5.0s. SC2. Um, derr? Gogo revisionist history!

I got a chance to play T5 over Thanksgiving break, and I have to say, I absolutely love it. It seems like every change they made was for the better. The graphics are nice, especially the stages, which are beautiful. The gameplay's just like they said it would be, a refined version of TTT with some of the better stuff from T4. Backdash and step are stronger, so movement is more useful, jabs aren't as dominant and the whole game feels faster. Position change is gone, so 1+3 throws again, so there are actually throw mixups again, yay. Elevation and obstacles and all that other unnecessary silliness is gone. The whole game just felt tight and fast, much more so than T4. I was really impressed. Raven and Feng both seem totally badass. Awesome character concepts, and they both seem pretty strong, although it's too early to tell. Feng had some very nasty scrub-killing strings that I was having a lot of trouble dealing with. I messed with Raven some, and I like the way he plays, although I'm really bad with him. His crouch dash mixups seem really solid, and it seems like he could play a pretty good spacing game. Cool looking teleport stuff too, but it seemed pretty bad. Jack 5 seems pretty ridiculous too, his moves all look imposing. A big character that plays big, nice. And my scrub ass was very pleased to see that Julia is looking damn buff, with ff3, ss3+4, f3~4, and u/f4,3 all looking fun. It looks like Law got a lot of cool new stuff too. That's about all the characters I've seen so far, others either weren't used or were used by scrubs that thought we were playing T3 (yay for for SS into multipart with King, no one will ever see that coming!1!). But I'm impressed with the new characters and with what I've seen that they've given the old ones. The card system is awesome and elegant, and rewarding you for winning in versus rather than having a dedicated mode for it is excellent, since it means that the machine won't be wasted by smelly otaku dorks playing conquest. My only complaint is that Namco didn't make it clear enough that you're not supposed to put quarters in the card slots. I don't know how they'd have done better, but people are really fucking stupid and every machine I've heard about has been shut down at least once because of people putting quarters in there. Ours was down over an hour for that. Bah. Anyway, anyone else played it yet?

I was messing around a bit, and it seems like adding a second jab after the first knee actually makes the timing of the second knee easier. I'm doing knee, 1, 1, knee, 2, 4 now, getting it like 70% in practice mode.

I can't do three knees in a juggle. I don't think there's a particular trick to it; I think you just have to get the knees to come out at the first possible moment. It seems ridiculously hard, though. Even the Koreans often use easier juggles instead. I like knee, 1, knee, 2, 4. One more damage than yours, and I like the wake a little bit better, since you're in a good position to go into crouch dash mixups. Knee, 1, knee, 1, f+4 is good for sending them further across the screen. And then obviously if they can be jabbed to a wall, doing that and then ending with f3+4,4,2 is best. Crazy damage. After ws1, you can still do normal two knee juggles, they're just harder. ws1, knee, 1, knee, 2, 4 works and does solid damage. I only get it like a quarter of the time though, so I usually use ws1, knee, 1, (4~3,3)_(4~3,1) depending on if I want damage or oki. I can't figure out how to do CD ws1 either. Let me know if you find out...

This annoys me, because I really don't care about graphics in games at this point. Games look great already, and improvements in graphics aren't going to mean anything in terms of gameplay. I'd rather games keep looking like they do now, and cost $50. I've already been buying fewer games recently, and this will cut my buying back even furthur. I don't think this focus on graphics is sustainable. Each generation it will cost more to develop games, and each generation the difference in graphics will be less and less noticable. Eventually people will stop being willing to pay for graphics improvements they can barely notice, especially when they don't improve gameplay.

That "PS2 sales are higher only because PS2s break more" argument is such a joke. PS2's worldwide sales have been roughly four times as high as X-Box or Gamecube sales for most of its life. You really think that people have bought an average of *four* PS2s? That means for every person like me that has had one PS2 that never broke, there's someone out there that's bought seven of them? Seems pretty unlikely. And of course, all the people that make that argument have never presented any actual evidence, except just whining about how often their PS2s have broken. Gameboy is the best selling videogame system ever only if you add up the sales of all the different kinds of Gameboys. If you don't, PS1 is. Adding them up never made any sense to me, since the hardware is so different. But yeah, GBA has been doing really well. It often beats PS2 in monthly sales, especially in Japan. Gaming Age forums often have links to NPD numbers.

Got it yesterday. I'm pretty impressed overall. Just getting a 99% perfect port is pretty impressive. It looks better than I thought it would. The music is really good, too. I thought it sounded good in the arcade but could never really hear it. I'm a little disappointed in the way they did the profiles, though. Not being able to name the individual characters, having to use a different memory card for second player and not having it record your win/loss ratio are all annoying. It's still fun to dress up your characters though. Better than nothing, but not as good as it should be and not as good as the arcade. Heh it's surprisingly hard to beat the game with all the characters and get all the endings. Jinpachi's not that bad when you're using someone you know, but trying to beat it with someone you don't know very well is a pain. Is Devil Within even worth playing? It sounds pretty tedius, and we've already unlocked DJ from versus. Is there anything else that it unlocks that you can't get another way?

I called EB today and they're not getting it until tomorrow. That makes me sad.

Two days! Omg I can't wait! Heh and the stupid reviews have begun. Apparently 1up's version of T5 has no backdash. Interesting... Heh fighting game reviews are just horrible.

Vagrant Story definitely needs a sequel. I'd buy an FF6 remake. FF6 is my favorite videogame ever, and a remake that modernized the graphics and music without sacrificing the feel of it would be pretty hot. They'd have to keep the combat fast, though. Minute long spell animations would ruin it.

I use an Hori for SC2 and a pad for T5, so I may get the combo, since my Hori now is getting kind of beat up and unresponsive. Ced, I've never seen that, but it's a pretty cool idea. I had to switch over to a pad for T5 since the motions actually have some complexity (unlike SC2), and I was constantly messing them up on a stick, but I really miss the big arcade buttons. Maybe I'll try it next time I play. Everyone will think I'm weird, hehe.

I heard about that, but I wasn't really following TZ back then. Sounds fun. Apparently he didn't learn much, if it's the same guy making the vids. You'd think he'd at least come away with some idea of how to play Tekken.

Heh, there are some T5 vids up at IGN made by the IGN staff. They are awful. It saddens me that the game will be reviewed almost entirely by people that play like that.

If Namco's willing to patch it, it really shouldn't be a problem. T5 is way better than the first release of SC2 was. SC2 version A was a mess, with glitchy bullshit all over the place, and a much easier, much more obvious infinate. Cassy's 44[A] was like +39 on hit and 36 frames to execute, so it was just an infinite to itself on normal hit, yay. And there were major universal glitches like fuzzy guard. Namco released a patch, and all that was fixed (although more problems came up later). It's not a big deal, as long as they don't just ignore problems when they come up.

Oh no, Steve has some situational infinite that everyone is flipping out about! Heh, TZ drama is too funny. I do hope they fix it though, because it just feels kind of glitchy. That stun on the (3),1,1 is way too long; it looks like Jinpachi's stun bullshit. So have people decided that there's not another time release, and Heihachi won't be in the game?

Nope, didn't see that. I don't think I've even seen anyone jump on purpose, except to hopkick or something. And alas, break is over, and I'm back at college, three hours from a machine.

Yay new TRCs here! Got to play as Devil Jin once, he looks great but just plays like TTT Jin, kinda boring. His lasers that he doesn't have real control of are a cool plot touch, but they seem really useless. I tried 3+4, and he just jumps up, holds his head and lands. Worst move ever, heh, unless there's some followup. Played against Ganryu once. It looks like he has a lot of new stuff, and he looks good. Not deformed like he used to. My favorite part of the new release is probably Devil Jin's stage. It looks so awesome, probably my second favorite stage behind Moonlit Wilderness. Jinpachi's stage is also released with the new character batch. It kinda sucks, though, since so much dust and other shit flys up whenever anyone hits the ground that it obscures your vision. If someone knocks you down and then does a low on Jinpachi's stage, you can barely see it.

It's like a toy one, it looks kind of anime-ish, very unrealistic. It's very yellow. It's magically attached to her back.

I've got a Julia, 5th Dan (I had a promotion match to a named rank today, but I lost, dammit). She's 2P outfit, all black. I have her white 2P clothes too, so I can switch it up if I want. She has a squirrel, which looks really goofy, a cowboy hat, and sunglasses that you can barely see. She's about 268-67. Yay lines of scrubs. I've also got a 3rd Dan Raven that's about 62-14. He's 2P outfit and has a ridiculous looking straw hat. Both my characters are named Jer. I'm very creative. I agree about the quality of the TRCs. One thing I really liked about T4 was that there weren't any clones. All the characters felt unique. That's still true now, even though there's like 10 more characters, including characters that used to be clones. A cast of 30 characters without any clones is really pretty amazing. I'm not sure, maybe it's just psychological, but Jack-5 seems easier to juggle. He launches like everyone else, though. That's good for me, he didn't used to get launched by Chang ch 111, iirc.