I admit it. I’m playing DOA4 and digging it. After poking at it with a stick for a few weeks and attaining the amazing rank of B+, I declare fit for general consumption. Unlike previous DOAs, it will not poison and kill you, but then again it may not be your taste either.

When you think “DOA”, your mind will immediately snap to one of two things: counters or breasts. Breasts we’ll save for another post, but oh those cursed counters. Thankfully, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the counters have been substantially tweaked, to the point where they feel pretty fair. An overall feeling of Fairness(tm) is one of the most prominent improvements in DOA4. Where DOAU felt completely arbitrary and unfair in it’s high-damage, easy execution counters, the beatings I take in DOA4 feel like they’re my own fault, not the fault of poor game design. Executing a counter with SF3-parry timing will reward you with a nice hefty counter attack. If you’re sloppy though, the counter is significantly less punishing.

So DOA4 is Fair, but it’s also Simple. This is both a blessing and a curse. For a noob like me, I could easily jump into the game and feel like I knew what I was doing. On the down side, the game feels like it is permenantly stuck in easy-mode. At times it half plays itself. Exchanges that involve multiple techniques in more sophisticated games (parry, attack, combo, followup) are collapsed down to a single input. D/b + X, *POW*. Satisfying, but not for long. The learning curve is blissfully shallow in the beginning, then it starts to pick up as you become aware of the cute paper/sissors/rock game between staggers/counters/throws, and the intricicies of the wake-up game, then it just seems to stop. Occasionally I will join in a game with some A+ and SS players, and they’re pretty much doing the same stuff that the B+ guys are doing. They just don’t make the dumb mistakes, and do a much better job of punishing mistakes made by their opponent. Maybe I’m too much of a scrub to see the super advanced techniques before my eyes, but I doubt it.

And finally there’s the online play, which is miles beyond the simplistic template offered in Capcom games. It’s not perfect, and the new virtual lobby idea is a little silly I think, but the way the game handles lag (by slowing down gameplay instead of adding latency to your input) and the ability to watch other players are two features that are absolute musts for online fighters in the future. It’s dreamy when it works, and it does work most of the time. Once Microsoft and Team Ninja iron out the screen and controller lockup bugs, we’ll have a very nice polished online experience that hopefully other companies will shamelessly copy.

So yeah, it’s fun for now. It’s got style, looks awesome on an HDTV, has enough depth to keep you busy for a few months at least, and plays great online…most of the time. I give DOA4 the same grade that it gives me: B+.

A lot of you have taken exception to the sentiments of my last post. (By the way, I encourage you to use the blog to post your comments. Ponder just made it easier to register, and you don’t even need to register to leave a comment) Many of you use your tournament places to gauge your progress as a player, and view a top 20% finish as a real accomplishment. I can certainly see where your coming from; like I said in my original post, the vast majority of the field has no hope of winning, and are playing against internal goals set for themselves. My post was a reaction against a new breed of player, the good-but-not-great player who presents himself as one of the elite by some vague alternate criteria.

By far the most common tactic employed by the faux-elite is the meta-win. If you can’t gain recognition by actually being the best, try becoming the best at a contest with way fewer competitors (like the R-Mika Master competition), then go looking for props. You must decide for yourself if you’re one of these players. There’s a difference between playing your character out of love and playing in search of the spotlight. You’re looking at someone who played (and placed in a major, thank you) with Spiral, Cable, Juggy, and this was before Duc showed the world the power of Spiral at B4. You should absolutely play whatever character you want, but play to win. There is no consolation prize for “best Makoto” in a Third Strike tournament. Whoever you play, take pride in your ability to compete and win, not in your relative ranking against other players who play your character.

The other delusion of these posers is to apply tiered rankings to players. Hey, if I consistently finish in the top 8, I must be mid-top-tier, right? I’m almost as good as Valle and Wong? Sorry it doesn’t work that way. Top 8 just means you got beat by some top players, and the same top players beat a bunch of other people who may be better or worse than you before they got around to beating you. If you’re an up and coming player then of course you should feel pride at personal best tournament finishes. Just don’t read too much into that win — there’s an enormous difference between tying for fifth and placing top three.

At what point did placing top 10 become a badge of honor? The point of a tournament, for those of you who have forgotten, is to find out who’s the best. There is one winner in a tournament, and that’s the guy who beats the 2nd place finisher, also known as the first loser. Back when the SF rivalries were real rivalries, winning was everything. CaliPower summed it up pretty well on irc tonight:

<Calipower> dood
<Calipower> back in the days
<Calipower> if you arent top 3
<Calipower> who the fuck are you

Indeed. Sure it feels good to advance deep into a tournament bracket, but let me explain why you shouldn’t be quite so pleased with yourself. The double elimination format is really only accurate for finding the top two players in the field. The reasoning is simple, it’s possible that the #3 player will be eliminated by the #1 and #2 player, while the #4 player sails into the losers’ final and places third. Seeding does help mitigate catastrophic errors like this from occurring, but at best the double elimination format is only accurate to four places. Also, it’s not uncommon for a top player to be upset in the opening rounds, which radically reduces the accuracy of the bracket for those on the losers side. Considering all this, any decent player who plays in enough tournaments will crack the top 10 eventually. If SF were Golf, top 10 would be par, and you don’t see pro golfers high-fiving their caddy after shooting 72.

Of course, we can’t all be one of tournament winning elites, and it is true that probably 80% of the players entering a tournament have no shot at winning, and they know it. There is certainly something to be said about testing yourself against the best. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that you are a top player because you’re a “consistent top 5 finisher.” You’re a top player when you beat all the other players in a tournament and win the thing.

But what about playing for fun you say? What about your super-custom Son son, BB Hood, Tron Bone team? There’s plenty of time for fun, before and after the tournament. Tournaments are about winning. Losing with a unique, innovative low-tier team is still losing. Many players use these meta-goals as an excuse for losing, like the infamous “top R-Mika” player. Do you really love R-Mika that much (if so, please seek help), or are you subconsciously relegating yourself to a kiddie-pool competition because you don’t have what it takes to compete for the title of top overall player with the big boys?

Play to win. Settling for 8th or some obscure self-appointed title is a disservice to yourself and to the other players in the tournament who deserve your best game.

Yes, SRK now has a blog. Hey, why not? This is here strictly for my own amusement. The subject matter is competitive gaming in general, and fighting games specifically. If I’m really lucky, maybe one of those Killian or Sirlin kids kid will drop by with a pearl of wisdom from time to time.

So, what’s up with these games anyway? As Gamespot recently posted, the 14-year-old HF remake for the Xbox 360 sounds like a very good proposition to most of us. Some of you weren’t even born when HF was made, but these games are so well crafted that they endure, for decades. That we are still interested in SF, ST, and Third Strike is an amazing testament to the quality of these games, but we’re in a pickle here people. The 2D fighting game community is in a kind of suspended animation. We’re very much alive, but everything is sort of on pause, and a lot of us are looking around for the next big thing to keep the ball rolling.

So, when is that next game coming, and what form will it take? A refresh to one of the tried and true franchises? A new game series? Something completely different? I haven’t a clue, but until it gets here I guess I’ll cozy up to some of my favorite 10 year old games.