2018 and the Fighting Game Scene So Far...
Welcome back to Geeketv.org! I am your Resident Remixer (and apparently monthly fighting game blogger) Saitoshi, and here is where you'll get the rundown of fighting games, the music in those games, and the occasional anime post. Of course with this being a site with, for, and by fellow geeks like myself, I'm sure you'll get PLENTY of those things above. But I digress---
Yours truly. Well, my alter ego, at least.
SO IT'S 2018...
And unless you're not into this kind of thing (and if that's the case, why are you even reading this post?), you know that this year is shaping up to be a promising year for fighting games so far. We've already started the year off with Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition which revamps almost everything about the game and will eventually give us all the legacy characters we as fans have asked for. Not to mention one of the most requested modes in the game so far...Arcade mode...Hence the name. So that's just one thing going good for us so far and one step in the right direction for Capcom in order to redeem themselves. "But Toshi---" You ask. "---What makes this year any different than the last disappointing FGC year?"
WELL, IF YOU MUST KNOW...
Look at this unfathomable beauty
As of today, Dragon Ball FighterZ (pronounced FIGHTERS) dropped for the Xbox One, PC, and Playstation 4, marking one of THE BIGGEST anticipated releases in gaming history. For the first time in history, we have a PROPER DBZ fighter made by the king of anime games, Arc System Works.
...What's that? We don't mention how they screwed themselves over with their other promising game, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, by putting TWENTY characters, including guests characters from Rooster Teeth's hit animation series RWBY, behind a paywall? Gotcha. Won't mention it.
Now don't get me wrong, I love other DB fighting games, In fact, two of my favorites were the old school Final Bout and Ultimate Battle 22/27 (The latter was featured in a post just last week. You can check that out here), as horrible as they were. But there's nothing that compares to this. And NO, Xenoverse does NOT hold even a drop of water to this! After the open beta test for the ps4 (and the multiple rage quits that came with it) FighterZ was given a score of 88% by Metacritic is already ranked third best game/most shared game for ps4 in 2018! I will DEF be giving you guys a review when I get my hands on it! It's no surprise this game is making waves. I mean, look at the name attached to it! But this game isn't all this year has to offer...
Apparently, 2018 is the year of dead franchise revivals...
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who remembers the Street Fighter EX series. This is where the franchise moved to a 2.5D plane and development was given to a company know as Arika with Capcom overseeing the project. Almost all the iconic Street Fighter Characters we knew and loved were there, but Arika put a few of their own characters in the mix as well. It was kind of an alternate universe thing, not canon to the original story but canon to its own. In 2011, Arika released a teaser titled Fighting Sample featuring both Kairi and Hokuto from the EX series but we would never see the fruition of this teaser come to life until Arika's apparent April Fool's joke back in 2017. Turns out this wasn't a joke at all and a demo of it became playable shortly after. Back in December '17, we got a beta test lasting up until Christmas. The game is great and def brings back some callbacks from the original series. But it is still in beta and it needs a lot of work.
With Capcom out of the picture, Arika has been slowly releasing teasers of their characters from the series AND THEY HAVE BEEN EXCRUCIATINGLY SHORT! Either way, the game is something me and a host of other fgc members will be waiting for as it's slated for release sometime in 2018.
And then there's this highly requested gem back from the dead
Here's something I really wasn't expecting to hit me any time soon. With the release of Soulcalibur V back in 2012, the franchise was declared dead by the fans. Mainstays were taken out of the game, the gameplay itself drastically changed, the storyline was BEYOND horrible...there's...there's just not much else I can say. No one wanted it to come back unless there was a severe revamp. Welp, that is EXACTLY what we got. Soulcalibur VI was announced back in December 2017 during the Game Awards and what a shock it was! Off rip they showed series mainstays Mitsurugi and Sophitia (the latter was dead in V's timeline) along with new mechanics added to the game. The engine will also be running on Unreal just like its brand's partner (Bandai Namco), Tekken. Just yesterday morning, we got another trailer for a new character that was teased in the announcement trailer named Groh, Nightmare, Xianghua, and Kilik, who is no longer Edge Master....BUT IS APPARENTLY STREET FIGHTER V'S NECALLI NOW!
The resemblance is almost uncanny....Sorta...Okay, maybe not
SCVI is also slated for a 2018 release and with the year just beginning I can only imagine what's coming next. Of course, there's Dissidia NT coming out on the 30th, but that's more of an arena fighter....Plus, it just doesn't feel as immersive as the original PSP version, sooo....Yeah, not getting that. It is still a good game, though, so if Final Fantasy and arena fighters are your thing, go pick this up!
Speaking of arena fighters, Naruto Shinobi Strikers is an upcoming thing, too. Maybe I'll cover more on arena fighters later on in the year. But for now, let's just appreciate the hype train that's been given to us at this moment and hope that 2018 is the year of redemption for fighting games after a few years of only one or two good exceptions!
