When you boot up a fighting game, what do you want to get out of it? It could be a simple distraction, it could be to socialize with friends, it could be so you can larp as some kind of videogame wizard on a journey to fighting game perfection (that seems to be increasingly and concerningly popular). For me, when I boot up a fighting game, I want two things out of it. I want a skill based competition and I want to experience moments of player expression. When I say "player expression" I don't mean finding an opponent who plays a character in a way that completely disregards the typical values of their tool kit, rather I want a communication between players of what their habits are, what they are good at and what they are bad at. A good fighting game, to me, allows for a player who observes these habits, the strengths and weaknesses of what their opponent can and cannot do, to take advantage of these observations. You can probably assert from my score, that I don't believe strive does this well.
Before I had spent a significant amount of time examining GG as a series very, very closely in order to determine what it was about it that simply did not 'click' with me, one of my earliest negative observations I made when I was playing accent core was the fact that it felt like I was doing everything on autopilot once I got to a certain level. It felt as if I was winning matches because I had completely committed to a working formula and I was losing matches because I had either broken the formula or was simply outplayed in neutral and then got mixed over and over to death. Not really an experience rich with 'player expression' as I had described earlier. What was more shocking to me, was the fact that when I sought to improve, while I was met with the usual process of assessing matchup knowledge and optimizing certain combo routes and setplay, at the highest possible level of play the overall gameplay loop was still identical. Win neutral, force situations and suffocate the opponent as long as possible. No reactive gameplay allowed. Passivity is never correct, never optimal. You will play aggressively and only aggressively because the risk reward is skewed to only one style of play across almost the entire roster.
Almost the entire roster. Pardon this upcoming tangent, but I'm a big fan of Street Fighter Alpha 2. One of my favourite aspects of A2 is how alpha counters are balanced. To those not familiar with this fabulous game, when in blockstun every character can input a 412 motion (back, down back, down) followed by a punch or kick to counter attack for 1 bar of meter when you would normally be forced to continue blocking. Accent core has a character who has defensive options that are heavily inspired by this mechanic. They feature a variety of creative tools and option selects from these alpha counters, lending them an overall playstyle that shifts between defense and offense that is unlike the rest of the cast (though to be completely honest, the offensive part of the gameplan is the same kind of aforementioned looping suffocation I'm not particularly fond of). Fans of strive who have not played accent core may even be shocked to hear that this character is in fact in strive! Though in a form almost entirely unrecognizable.
Baiken may be the best example of how this game seems to primarily kneel to the whims of the consumers rather than the players and competitors.
"This character is popular and will sell DLC on aesthetics alone, but in the past, people who do not actually put in the effort to play her complain that her defensive playstyle and unintuitive means of opening up the opponent are not fun. Thus, we must bow to the majority who want to play her purely based on aesthetics, isolating fans of her original playstyle, even though it will mean we reduce her kit to options that make her gameplan almost completely homogeneous with the existing roster."
It really appears a LOT of the decision making, beyond this one example, was a process based on selling copies rather than fulfilling a vision. Fluff has superceded substance and strive has chosen to reject the few things that made past guilty gears truly unique in favour of broad appeal. Neuter tool kits, homogenize the cast and leave nothing up to the imagination of the player. While I felt that previous entries left little room for nuanced gameplay, this is a whole new level of monotony.
Perhaps a virtue of the coin-op days was the fact that fighting games had to be designed with intention regarding the core gameplay because if all the game could offer was visual finesse, the consumer would only drop a single quarter on the experience. Now flash is all that's needed to reel in some sorry suckers and get them to spend $100+ on your game, dlc characters, colours and stages. I would certainly know, I bought this game full price on launch with the first dlc pass. They got me. Hook, line & sinker.
I'm not trying to belittle those that enjoy strive, but I do want to understand what exactly the appeal is compared to any of the previous entries. I've still yet to see a positive review of strive that argues for something unique to the experience itself. The closest I've come across is the idea that the game is "easy to pick up" and execute. Is this really a virtue when the gameplay itself is so one note? What's the point of having easy execution if the things you are executing contribute to a gamestate that itself isn't particularly deep?
Typically, I like to end my needlessly long reviews on a somewhat positive note. Either optimism for the future or an appreciation for the things a game has done well. I struggle so much to find anything with strive. I will instead thank you for reading this review, even if you just skimmed. I hope that strive may develop something unique and defining for itself someday.
Before I had spent a significant amount of time examining GG as a series very, very closely in order to determine what it was about it that simply did not 'click' with me, one of my earliest negative observations I made when I was playing accent core was the fact that it felt like I was doing everything on autopilot once I got to a certain level. It felt as if I was winning matches because I had completely committed to a working formula and I was losing matches because I had either broken the formula or was simply outplayed in neutral and then got mixed over and over to death. Not really an experience rich with 'player expression' as I had described earlier. What was more shocking to me, was the fact that when I sought to improve, while I was met with the usual process of assessing matchup knowledge and optimizing certain combo routes and setplay, at the highest possible level of play the overall gameplay loop was still identical. Win neutral, force situations and suffocate the opponent as long as possible. No reactive gameplay allowed. Passivity is never correct, never optimal. You will play aggressively and only aggressively because the risk reward is skewed to only one style of play across almost the entire roster.
Almost the entire roster. Pardon this upcoming tangent, but I'm a big fan of Street Fighter Alpha 2. One of my favourite aspects of A2 is how alpha counters are balanced. To those not familiar with this fabulous game, when in blockstun every character can input a 412 motion (back, down back, down) followed by a punch or kick to counter attack for 1 bar of meter when you would normally be forced to continue blocking. Accent core has a character who has defensive options that are heavily inspired by this mechanic. They feature a variety of creative tools and option selects from these alpha counters, lending them an overall playstyle that shifts between defense and offense that is unlike the rest of the cast (though to be completely honest, the offensive part of the gameplan is the same kind of aforementioned looping suffocation I'm not particularly fond of). Fans of strive who have not played accent core may even be shocked to hear that this character is in fact in strive! Though in a form almost entirely unrecognizable.
Baiken may be the best example of how this game seems to primarily kneel to the whims of the consumers rather than the players and competitors.
"This character is popular and will sell DLC on aesthetics alone, but in the past, people who do not actually put in the effort to play her complain that her defensive playstyle and unintuitive means of opening up the opponent are not fun. Thus, we must bow to the majority who want to play her purely based on aesthetics, isolating fans of her original playstyle, even though it will mean we reduce her kit to options that make her gameplan almost completely homogeneous with the existing roster."
It really appears a LOT of the decision making, beyond this one example, was a process based on selling copies rather than fulfilling a vision. Fluff has superceded substance and strive has chosen to reject the few things that made past guilty gears truly unique in favour of broad appeal. Neuter tool kits, homogenize the cast and leave nothing up to the imagination of the player. While I felt that previous entries left little room for nuanced gameplay, this is a whole new level of monotony.
Perhaps a virtue of the coin-op days was the fact that fighting games had to be designed with intention regarding the core gameplay because if all the game could offer was visual finesse, the consumer would only drop a single quarter on the experience. Now flash is all that's needed to reel in some sorry suckers and get them to spend $100+ on your game, dlc characters, colours and stages. I would certainly know, I bought this game full price on launch with the first dlc pass. They got me. Hook, line & sinker.
I'm not trying to belittle those that enjoy strive, but I do want to understand what exactly the appeal is compared to any of the previous entries. I've still yet to see a positive review of strive that argues for something unique to the experience itself. The closest I've come across is the idea that the game is "easy to pick up" and execute. Is this really a virtue when the gameplay itself is so one note? What's the point of having easy execution if the things you are executing contribute to a gamestate that itself isn't particularly deep?
Typically, I like to end my needlessly long reviews on a somewhat positive note. Either optimism for the future or an appreciation for the things a game has done well. I struggle so much to find anything with strive. I will instead thank you for reading this review, even if you just skimmed. I hope that strive may develop something unique and defining for itself someday.