Soul Calibur V announced

I'm looking forward to this game a lot =]

 

I'm excited, but they have "supers"... As if it weren't enough to have "fatalities" in the game, this seems too over the top...

 

looks good

 

And they STILL couldn't fix the character models. lazy fucks

 

Let's see, so far from our predictions - Sophibastards being Sophi-clones (replacements?), "new and improved" MORE BEARDED Mitsurugi, Siegfried and unchanged megatittied Ivy all accounted for.

But actually HOLY CAKES were those dudes really talking for 10 minutes about making all the game "more accessible" for "button mashers" and to do "COOL STUFF" and being flashy and go like "look at that"? Dumbing down characters so that they aren't "confusing"?

I mean, can you REALLY dumb down that series any more after SC4... And they were specifically ripping on Ivy, even though after SC2 she'd already lost half her stances and tricks... actually, the whole damn *game* lost half the stances and tricks, instead being replaced by half-cinematic moves and canned bullshit like just frames and Taki's low launcher to air grab?

Seriously, I remember times when there were both "beginner-friendly" and "expert level" characters in every game, and although they might be evenly matched, the higher execution and more complexity provided challenge to a player inclined to put some time into the game... Nowadays it seems that most games is designed for soccer moms to be played on the Wii with one hand. There's nothing wrong with accessible *characters*, heck, VF has Lei and Jacky and beginners can mash and it "looks cool" (all those two dudes in the interview droned about), mission complete, but... I feel alienated when two dumb fucks sit there and brag that they are dumbing down a whole *game* that had already been dumbed down to the ground, THROUGH THE GROUND.

I most certainly mad, but really, marketing guys - how about a bone to the more hardcore players, too? Are we no longer the target market for *anything*? I remember many hours of fun I've had playing SC2 with my flatmate at the uni, my Cassandra's trickiness trying to overcome his Ivy's range and defense capabilities... come SC3, we try the same thing and... "dude where's my character". We played through the movelists, and the tricks were gone, the stances were gone, Cassie's delays and Shooting Star gone... The games became boring and predictable, we didn't give half a shit that there was fire and lightning now... and now SC5, "your characters may be gone, but stuff is EVEN COOLER and LESS CONFUSING, BUY NOW!!!"...

Fuck you, modern gaming industry trends. At least I still have my C.Viper and Abel, and maybe Gen to mess around with. For all the hate SF4 gets, at least *they* didn't give any gamer group the finger from the get-go.

 

Ya this game is going to suck ass. Im going to run off and play Kof 13 when its out

 

What he said and additional "Fuck you!" ;-)

 

Maybe your reading too much into that interview. Many fighting games make have those sort of statements and it isn't necessarily as bad as it seems. VF3 for instance has similar statements on it's arcade flyer.

It's too early to write SC5 off even if the trend with recent SCs hasn't been good.

 

Welp, I'm working with what they give me. My main complaint with that interview is that more than half of it was promises of making the game into a FG Farmville, in step with the recent trends of making the games "accessible" (oh how I've come to hate that word when it comes to gaming recently, since more often then not it appears to mean "shallow and stuffed with eye candy" and is simply a lazy way out for the designers).

That interview was supposed to hype up the game, but if that's their idea for a promotion then it's a total miss with the more old-school crowd. I get it that they want their game to sell, but I wouldn't mind being pandered to from time to time either - even 3 minutes out of bloody 18. In the whole trailer there wasn't a single bone that I'd find appealing, and yeah, fuck that.

It's kind of similar as ME3 promotion lately - they go to great lengths to describe inspiration with newest GoW and asscreed and CoD and whatever... and then add a tiny footnote "we're not forgetting about RPG fans" at the end. Sure, the game may turn out great and balanced (it had better be), but if the marketing is 95% shooter crowd and two laconic sentences about "we'll think of something for you too lol", then there IS some worry. Now SC5 has surfaced and it's the same bloody thing, it's like oldschool gamers are declared dinosaurs now and the marketing dudes are kinda embarrassed that us "uncool nerds" aren't extinct yet, so that they can go 100% cool hip accessible easy rock explosions already, for the new generation cool hip jock tapout gamer target audience.

Indeed, SC has been a mess. Me and my friends were giving those games their chances at length for years, but it turned out to be pointless. They have no credit left with me, and unless I see them deliver I'll keep my line of "from here it looks like crap, and their marketing methods suck ass", thank you .

 

My main bugbear with SC4 is that it lost a lot of the pace of the older SC games (SC1 in particular feels like turbo speed in comparison), The 8wr which is what primarily distinguishes the series wasn't as good. The demonstration at least showed faster movement and better evasion.

There are other things as well though the like loss of system mechanics and moves and the removal of characters (Hwang). Also the art/design and music has steadily gone downhill with each game after SC2. Still I'll look out for new characters, moves and mechanics. The addition of a meter system is something new and the "super move" is reminiscent of Soul Edge's Critical Edge attack. You risked getting disarmed in Soul Edge when using that moves so I wonder if that'll make a return.

 

And I thought the character models were going to get an upgrade smh =[

 

SC4 sold really well, sold even better or just as much as the original version of SF4 if I remember right.

I guess they're making it even more casual to try and bring in the massive numbers games like CoD and GTA make, though I strongly doubt a fighting game will ever achieve those kind of sales, there's not a big enough fighting game market for SC5 to achieve those kind of figures ....especially when they're alienating most of their fanbase in the process.

 

new character announced, daughter of Xianghua.

 

Just looks like 4!

 

Just in case some of you guys missed it on ustream here is the Soul Calibur V demo

Pt1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjL_ogGvV7Y
Pt2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Aza9x3iY_g

The game's speed reminds me of SC and SCII but unlike those, here the side stepping is a killer just like in VF. Guard Impact is back, but in a different way. Repel is the same but Perry became something like a just defend property (you can see it clearly in Mitsu vs Seig match). Characters still lose their armors after blocking for a long time. Also, fall recovery is faster than before (which is good IMO). One new thing I've noticed is that the moment a player throws another, a fading orange flash appears (it seems that it indicates the time to escape the throw). Finally, Guard Break attacks from SC3 and Just attacks from SC4 are back.


here is my early thoughts on the characters:

-Natsu is a hyper version of Taki @_@ it's gonna be tough playing against her. I don't like her looks that much cause she reminds of the those Japanese KoGals (google it and you'll know what I mean). She might have a better costume. or at least I hope.

-Patroks is gonna be a very popular character. I'm sure of it. His play style is better than I expected.

-Ivy looks better than SC4 (costume wise). I hope she will play like how she did in SC3 or at least SC2.

-Zwei. there is no comment on this guy. The only thing I can say is that I find his design to be a very Japanese generic one.

-Seig's super is gonna be very punching since it travels for a long distance.

-Mitsu's 2K,6B is not as safer as before. Hope most of his moves will be the same too. And I haven't seen any stance of his. I'm gonna get disappointed if they don't bring them back.


Finally, system wise, the game seems to be shaping up quite good. I just hope they wont use the HAVOC engine just like they did for SC4. It was a collusion mess >_< (Tariq knows what I'm talking about). Namco will a playable demo at this year TGS on September. If I'm lucky enough and had some free time, I'll go and check it out.

 

A lot of the new characters look like ripoff of old characters. At least in SC3 and 4 they added two new original characters in it. Not saying the game is going to be bad just namco needs chill out on adding water down versions of old characters which is. So far all I see is they ran out of ideas and just added ultras to the game.

 

Has anyone else noticed that Soul Calibur is going in the same direction Tekken did when Tekken 3 was made what with taking place nearly 20 years later, and a majority of the characters being replaced by descendants/disciples? I'm sure we all know that, but do u think it means that the respective series are trying to refresh themselves or something?

 

SC have been doing this since the beginning. It's not something new. It's just that they made a big jump instead of small ones like they did previously. Maybe they are trying to refresh the series with lots of new faces instead of just few. I'm not a big fan of these jumps but at the same time I don't mind it (as long as my main is still there )

On a serious note. I have big expectations for SCV since the director is used to be a huge SC fan and it seems that he used to play it a lot. Plus, the way I see SC, is it's a watered down weapon based VF game. And that's not such a bad thing as long as the game is balanced, fun and have depth into it.

 

How is it watered down??? It practically has everything any other fighter has, VF included... It's just not as balanced as VF (but even VF has its flaws in that department), but I'm sure if they want their fans to keep playing they're gonna have to stay on top of balancing it, period. Tournament finals, especially EVO's, were pretty funny watching when someone used Hilde. People kept booing them whenever they did those massive ring out combo. Algol was a great character, but he drastically changed the way one would play SC, and he had those infinites of doom, too...

Real talk, I felt SC3AE was as close to being the most balanced. It was up there with SC2 imo, but I'm leaning more to 3AE because they practically changed a bunch of characters, and they were still fun to play. Zas, Li Long, and Amy are the first 3 that come to mind.