![]() |
Game Reviews Post and discuss game reviews here, whether professional or amateur. Remember to link to the source when posting others' reviews! |
![]() |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes |
![]() |
#1 |
Rum Raisin~
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Skullgirls - A Fighter Fan's Thoughts.
So, I've been playing Skullgirls off and on for roughly a week now, and having digested it to whatever extent now, I feel like I can give a somewhat informed opinion on the game as a whole from the perspective of a 2D fighting game junkie.
(As a quick disclaimer, the difference between what I consider "bad" and "ugly" in this review format - "Bad" tends to be more nitpicky stuff that can be written off as taste or opinion and for the most part doesn't hinder the overall game. "Ugly" issues are what I consider legitimate objective problems with the game that hinder gameplay and are issues that "need fixing". To reiterate. "The Bad" does not necessarily mean that the game itself is bad or even that the issues there are all that bad.) Ladies and gentlemen(?) it's... SHOWTIME! The Good : To start with, the game just looks gorgeous. They nailed the presentation of this game, in the world they've built, the crisp 2D sprites and backgrounds, and the fluidity of the animation. The character designs are all pretty unique and creative (if somewhat grotesque and cheescake-heavy at times), and the personality of the characters are interesting and show through well in their animations and attacks. The game is also stuffed full of in-jokes, both generic internet pop-culture ones (Ms. Fortune has serveral "I can has cheezburger" call-outs in her openings, one with Cerebella saying it to her with a shocked "That's racist!" in response) as well as fighter-specific ones. The announcer is particularly fun to listen to for fighter fans, as eventually he'll break from the game's usual match announcements and start to parody ones from other games ("This is Along those same lines, the game's sense of humor is a large part of its charm. While the story and the world it takes place in have extremely dark overtones (although, as it's been pointed out to me, not any darker than a game like Darkstalkers, and it rings true), the game doesn't take itself all that seriously the majority of the time, and there's a good balance between dark and dreary concepts and lighthearted comic relief to keep the game enjoyable overall. From a gameplay perspective, the controls are responsive and simplistic enough that there's little chance for too much trouble with input (which is a problem I've had with other fighters on the 360). An arcade stick is probably still preferable (I haven't had one to try it with, however, so I can't say for certain), but I was pretty comfortable with the controller as it was. The game very obviously pulls quite a bit of inspiration from Marvel vs Capcom 2, and if you're a fan of the crazy hyper-long strings of ridiculous combos, you'll probably slide into the system Skullgirls has in place pretty easily. The gameplay and mechanics of the two games share a lot in common, and even as someone who isn't usually a big fan of that style of gameplay, I have to admit that when it's done well, it's pretty fun, and this game fills that niche in 2D fighters that to my knowledge hasn't really gotten a whole lot of attention since MvC2 made its debut. The actual setup of the system itself seems to be a cross between MvC2 and Capcom vs SNK 2 - namely, you can build a team of up to three characters, but the more you pick, the weaker each will be. There's pros and cons to playing with each of the team sizes, for example, you can just use your best character in a solo team, and they'll hit like a truck and take less damage, but you can't swap them out to recover any health, and you won't have any call-in striker moves to help you out. On the other end of the spectrum, you can have a large variety in moves by stuffing your team full, and you have three health bars to play with, but none of the characters are going to do a ton of damage on their own and depending on the opposing team's size, they can get shredded by stronger characters. It's a really cool way to vary the team-style setup. In addition, the game also lets you make custom striker moves for teammates when you call them in to help, which is the first game I've ever seen that gives you that option. The only things off limits are supers (obviously), which means the same characters can have drastically different effects when called in to help. It's an added bit of strategy that really improves the game. One of the biggest bits of praise the game deserves, though, is for its tutorial mode. For the most part, tutorials in fighters are either nonexistant, too quick of an infodump, or only for very specific mechanics in the game that leaves beginners puzzling out the rest on their own. Skullgirls' tutorial, in comparison, is the most entry-level friendly fighter tutorial I've ever seen. It actually breaks down every major fighting game term, explains what it is, why you'd do it, and walks you through a few practice rounds of increasingly difficult manuvers. The Bad : As beginner-friendly as the tutorial leads the game to appear to be, there's a massive jump in difficulty the second you leave tutorial mode. As mentioned, the game is incredibly combo heavy, and the computer knows every combo possible and WILL use them against you relentlessly. Even as a fighting game veteran, I had yet to get a full grasp on the playstyle the first time I walked into story mode and got frustrated as the computer would occasionally completely destroy me. I can't imagine a brand new player fresh out of the tutorial would feel any better about it, and I could easily see someone losing patience. Now, granted, this was on "Normal" difficulty, and there were two difficulty levels below it that are likely better suited for beginners, but I'd imagine most people starting up the game for the first time would just go with the default difficulty before turning it down, especially if they felt ready following the tutorial. Semi-related is the actual style of play that the game revolves around itself. With the exception of maybe one or two characters (granted, I still haven't played a few of them, so I could be a little off in this judgement), you HAVE to play combo-heavy in order to stand a chance. What's normally a high-level concept in other fighters is this game's bread and butter. If you don't like that, you're going to get frustrated with this game fast. Because the game is so focused on taking advantage of hit stuns to keep combos going as long as possible, being on the receiving end of particularly brutal ones can be irritating. Especially against the computer, where there doesn't seem to be any chance of human error causing flubs in the combos that give you an out, it sometimes feels like you may as well put your controller down once you've been hit - you're not doing anything for at least a few seconds. This isn't necessarily a bad thing (some would probably say it's the entire point of the game), but if it doesn't match your tastes, then it can be a problem. Speaking of tastes, while I don't personally count this as a "bad" thing, the game is obviously pretty heavy with "fanservice". If you're offended by busty girls in barely-fitting outfits (or the gross-out factor of characters dismembering themselves, girls driven to insanity by horrific experiments turning them into living weapons, or horrific blobs that imitate people), then this game might not be for you. That said, I think the cheesecake and gross-out factors are easily looked past for the overall game (I don't mind the fanservicey stuff in the least, but went in slightly nervous about the gross-out stuff, and shortly after starting realized I didn't really have anything to worry about in the first place). I'm going to backpedal a bit on the tutorial and criticize it just a touch. For a game so focused on combos, it would have really been nice to include at least one starter-combo tutorial for each of the characters. It's something fighters that don't make high level combo play the focus of their game have, it seems odd that Skullgirls is lacking it. I get that part of the "fun" is supposed to be working all of it out for yourself, but again, you come out of the gate with really no idea how any of the characters work, while the computer... doesn't have that problem. Granted, it's a problem fixed by spending time in Training mode, but given how long the tutorial already is, most people probably are going to want to head straight into Story Mode if there's nothing actually prompting them to do otherwise. It's also a little odd that the movelists for characters are nowhere to be found in the game. It took me a while to work out that you have to go to the actual game site and download a .pdf that has the movelists for everyone (from what I recall there's a note to that effect that shows up on the main menu of the game, but it's easy to miss and it's not anywhere near the first place anyone would normally think to look for character information). I'm not going to directly complain about the size of the roster, because I think with how distinct all of the character's playstyles are it isn't really an issue in Versus, but combined with the potential of three characters per team, Arcade mode can get... a little repetitive. I've had a few games that threw the same three characters at me the entire time in differing team sizes. There are little bits of balance issues amongst the characters. Nothing game-breaking, but I've noticed mobility is a significant problem amongst certain characters that don't have moves designed to get them around the screen (this really becomes glaring against the final boss of Story/Arcade mode, who is Magaki-level cheap and extremely good at keeping you from being able to hit her). Zoning is maybe a touch too difficult to work around with because of this, although Peacock and arguably Double are the only two characters that can fully take advantage of this (Peacock is also one of the only characters I've noticed that can break out of the combo-string playstyle effectively, so this isn't necessarily a bad thing). It's not a major problem, and I'm certainly not going to break out the "OP" label, since I do think all of the characters more or less balance out when played as intended (some of the balancing is a bit subtle and hard to notice - I've seen Cerebella's grapples called out as exceedingly damaging, which they kind of are, but they also rarely ever give unrecoverable damage, which means a character can swap out and immediately start healing over the damage they just took; likewise, Ms Fortune's head can cause significant problems for people when used right, but it's also vulnerable to attack when it's on the ground). Speaking of the boss... yeah. I can't make too big an issue out of bosses being incredibly difficult being an SNK fan (the term for exceedingly cheap bosses is "SNK Boss" for a reason), but as a warning, Marie is up there with Igniz and Magaki for the most frustrating bosses I've fought against in a fighter (to be fair, though, Igniz and Magaki are still worse by a bit). Marie's one of the only bosses I can remember fighting who significantly shifts the size of her hitbox (smaller, not larger) and purposely puts it out of reach of most character's attacks for the final third of the fight. You have to fight her in the air to finish her off, and it's likely you'll be continuing over and over and over again against her just to finish off story mode for certain characters (Peacock, however, can just stand in the corner and shoot her and pretty much insta-win - see above). The game also lacks a spectator mode for versus play. I can't dock too many points for this, though, seeing as it's both an independant budget title, and it's something that even full-price fighters have yet to adopt as standard. The GGPO based online system seems to operate on a working-or-not kind of thing. I've yet to have actual lag in a match, which I have to say is pretty nice, however there's been a pretty decent sized handful of matches that disconnect before they can even start, and when there is lag between players, it comes in the form of the game freezing for a bit before it catches up with everything. Granted, I prefer that to the game slowing down completely, but those freezing moments can pop up at inconveniant times and completely throw off something you were attempting to do. When it works, it works really well, but when it doesn't, you have to back out and try all over again, which can be frustrating. The Ugly : The loading times. Sweet Celestia of Equestria, the loading times SUCK in this game. It's one of the few glaring issues the game has, but it's by far the biggest for me. For a non-disc based game installed on the hard drive, I'm not really sure why this is such a problem, but you can be sitting on loading screens for upwards of half a minute at a time. Arcade mode is particularly bad, since it puts you through loading screens between each fight. Between that and occasionally odd connection issues trying to play online, it can take long amounts of time just getting anything going through Xbox Live. I've quite literally waited fifteen minutes from starting the game up to finally getting a match going against someone before. That's on the extreme end, but it's happened. Slightly less of an issue, but still a pretty big problem in my book, is that the game will quite frequently glitch into swapping out character sprites for their hitboxes for a few frames. This might be something of a "YMMV" issue, since I'm sure it doesn't bug other people as much, but I find it extremely distracting, and it can happen at very inconvenient times, taking away any hints that would be present in the character's animation about what they're trying to do simply because you can't see them at all. There's supposed to be a patch coming before too long (which also should bring along the first DLC character, from what I understand), so hopefully one if not both of these issues get fixed soon. TL;DR : Skullgirls is a fun, deceptively complex fighter with gorgeous 2D graphics. There are definite issues, but there are also far worse things you could spend $15 on. If you're a fighter fan, it's worth at least looking into, and if you're a 2D fighter fan, even moreso. If you like the frantic fast-paced playstyle that MvC2 had, you'll probably enjoy the game (on the other hand, if you couldn't stand it, you might want to give this one a pass). Beginners interested in checking out the fighter genre, come for the tutorial at least, it'll give you a good idea of the basics of how fighters in general work, but turn down the difficulty against the computer until you get up to speed.
__________________
![]() Last edited by Pinkie Pie; 04-18-2012 at 06:56 PM. |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#2 | ||
Our Sweet Prince
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
The problem I have with the design philosophy of the game is that there's little room for flexibility or free thinking. If you don't do the combos in EXACTLY the order the game has laid out, you're gonna lose your chain and get killed. Compare that to KoF 13, where you have half a dozen ways just to get to each of your supers, and that's before getting into HD combos. It's this reason that I've decided to never touch Skullgirls again. Quote:
|
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#3 |
Baka gaijin desu!
![]() ![]() ![]() |
From what little exposure I've had to it, some of the characters have neat gimmicks (One of them has their head disconnected and acting independantly from the main body, there was a combo video where the head was filling out gaps in their combos to keep one going for over 100 hits. Naturally, I couldn't exactly try this with the demo....) Neat gimmicks always keep a fighter interesting; I love it when everyone is rather different
My biggest complaint is the total lack of in-game move list. Until I have several of a character's inputs memorized, I always like to go into one player modes where I can pause and check the in-game movelist mid battle. Needing to get a movelist from a website simply does not fly for me, since I have both my PC And PS3 linked to the same monitor, and it's a pain to change the cables back and forth.
__________________
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#4 | ||||||
Aw shucks, sugar cube
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The in game move list was not included due to a lack of time and more important issues being implemented. It is being patched. Considering that most of the characters have the exact same inputs, it is not that big a deal.
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Don't worry, one of the DLC characters is going to be a dude with a tank arm, so there will be a dude to even out all that estrogen. Quote:
Except for Parasoul and Cerebella, everyone has pretty traditional quarter circle and dragon punch inputs. Parasoul has charges AND quarter circles while Cerebella is grapple. Meaning full circle. The lack of in game movesets is not that big a deal when you learn that most of the characters have similar inputs. That's part of the charm, really, I mean back in the MK days, the game didn't tell you kombos or moves or fatalities, you had to figure that shit out for yourself. Quote:
Parasoul's shots should not be considered in the same level as a fireball. Parasoul's shots literally do nothing if you attack her and unless she is close enough (or does her down charge with Med punch) most people can just run past the shot. She has to detonate them and a lot of her moves deal with pushing opponents away. If she just stands around flinging shots, she is going to get punished severely.
__________________
How dreamlike to see my x-sisters, outside the context of a Papa Song dome. They sang Papa Song’s Psalm, over and over; background hydraulics underbassed that sickening melody. But how jubilant they sounded! Their Investment was paid off. The voyage to Hawaii was under way, and their new life on Xultation would shortly begin... Watching them from the hangway, I envied their certainty about the future.
|
||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#5 | |||||||
Rum Raisin~
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
Sure, some characters play similarly, and you could probably do okay by playing them all the same way (you certainly wouldn't do well against someone who wasn't doing the same thing, though), but using the resources that you're given, Cerebella is not going to play the same way that Ms. Fortune does, who won't play anything close to how Peacock does, etc. Yeah, the game's combo-heavy, but the focus on it isn't such that you can ignore everything else and just mash buttons. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
To be absolutely clear, I like the game. I think it's a very good game. It's not a perfect game, but that's not the same as saying it's bad. The only issues that are an actual hindrance to it are the ones I mentioned at the end, the rest are all preference and opinion things on my end.
__________________
![]() |
|||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#6 | ||||||
Our Sweet Prince
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Droog, you keep doing this thing where you repeatedly reference a game you know I havent played. I dont know where you expect to get by doing that.
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
It's almost definitely the fact that they're throwing you in with no meaningful tutorial that is giving me such a different experience from you guys. You were able to play fighters in their first coming, I was not, for the same reasons I can't play Skullgirls. And this game really does feel like an unpolished SNES era fighter to me, for all intents and purposes. Quote:
I also compared Skullgirls to Blazblue earlier in that post so fuck you. Quote:
Also: All of the characters I've played are completely vulnerable after using a special attack, and unable to continue any combos that may have been going on. quote="Pinkie Pie;414928"]That hasn't been my experience at all. You have plenty of flexibility on where to go with combo strings, when to activate the supers during them, whether to try to launch into the air or keep grounded, go into a grab, and so on. It's not a rigid set of "you must do this combo string in this specific way or it won't work".[/quote] This has not been my experience at all. I almost have to wonder if we're playing entirely different games. Or characters. There is literally only one combo I can get to work with Valentine: poke -> MP x3 -> HP x3 -> QCF K. Everything else I try leaves a hole open for someone to break out of my combo. Legit question: once you get a combo to work, how do any other variables matter at all? Your opponent is completely helpless until you're finished taking your free shots at him one way or another. If you knock them in the air or keep them in the ground, how does that in any way affect how you play aside from the name of the moves you're hitting them with? The only thing I can think of is that one set may do more damage than another, but that causes there to be only one "correct" response to the situation. Quote:
|
||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#7 | |||||||
Aw shucks, sugar cube
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Sounds to me like you are complaining because you can't figure out a way to get out of combos or respond with one of your own. That's not a fault of the game so much as it is a fault with you not being able to combo.
__________________
How dreamlike to see my x-sisters, outside the context of a Papa Song dome. They sang Papa Song’s Psalm, over and over; background hydraulics underbassed that sickening melody. But how jubilant they sounded! Their Investment was paid off. The voyage to Hawaii was under way, and their new life on Xultation would shortly begin... Watching them from the hangway, I envied their certainty about the future.
|
|||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#8 | ||||
Our Sweet Prince
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
Quote:
Really, SF2 has not aged well. Quote:
Quote:
So here's a thought: How about instead of beating me over the head with how I'm wrong about this game, that you actually show me how in the everliving fuck you people are able to enjoy it? |
||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#9 | |
Banned (at user's request)
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Oct 2004
(6420 days) Location: Gamersville Gamington
Age: 44
Posts: 2,744
Threads: 7
Style: Event Horizon
Mood: Lonely. Play with me~
Time spent on board: 8 month 0 week 2 day ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
But regarding what I quoted; why not just play the game? I don't mean "play the damn game despite not enjoying it", but I mean, just practice. Put the difficulty on the easiest setting and go through arcade mode, or even just hang out in Training. The first patch promises to expend the Training mode options. Play casually, slowly get used to the game mechanics. The more often you play, the better you'll eventually get at it. As you start to get better, raise the difficulty one notch and play through it even more. That's how I play all my fighting games. I play on the easiest difficult setting for maybe a week or two while getting used to the characters I like. Learning their moves and their properties, figuring out what links or chains into what, and so on. Then I raise the difficulty and try out what I've learned on slightly more difficult opponents. And I keep going at it like that. It eventually becomes really enjoyable. I'm not a combo player. At best, I do the basic weak-medium-hard type three to four hit combos, and that always works well for me. Even in combo-heavy games like this and MvC, I still tend to do just fine without relying on combos. I'm sure you could, as well. It just takes some play time. Last edited by Elisa Maza; 04-18-2012 at 11:57 PM. |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#10 | |
Our Sweet Prince
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Quote:
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|