http://www.the-magicbox.com/1208/game120822d.shtml

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mo7_AETqIk

A lot of people are saying this is a Smash Bros. rip off. Well they're wrong. A Smash Bros. rip off would actually have decent combat design in place. You need more than a 4 player fighting game and various characters from different game series to be a ripoff. To ripoff Smash Bros. there would need to be (1) Ringouts & mechanics focused around ringouts (i.e. edgehogging, up b recovery moves, spiking, etc.), (2) Damage percentile system (no health bar -- more damage taken, more distance traveled when hit), and (3) Same or similar moveset (i.e. no SF2 command moves; weak, medium, strong attacks, double jumps, overhead attacks, both side attacks, and so on).

The developer was clearly inspired by Smash Bros though. You can see that with a lot of the choices made and design elements taken from the series (i.e. the entire theme, Fat Princess having the same move as Peach's side-b, turning translucent temporarily when knocked to the ground, etc.). So what could be the matter with it? What astoundingly stupid design decision was made that would make anyone at crappy company like THQ nervously green light this game?

This game only allows you to kill your opponents with a special move that can only be performed after building up enough meter (by hits on enemies).

None of your hits buildup a damage gauge on your opponent. 90% of the time you are going to knock your opponent around without any effect other than your special meter rising. This diminishes the impact of being hit. Is it not disconcerting to strongly hit someone without seeing massive damage (through meter or other visual indicator on enemy) done or them going flying to their death? It's like they looked at those user designed levels in Brawl where you were enclosed in a space and didn't play it to figure out what was fun about that. Those levels were fun because participants damage kept increasing and that meant that when somebody got hit at high percentages they would go flying and bounce manically around at high speeds. It was stupid fun since no one was at risk of dying. Now obviously Hyrule Castle was designed better because it had the risk of dying by having several directions to be sent to the kill screen which made getting high percentages more nerve wracking. It even had bombs come down in sudden death that would knock you silly with a chance you could tech or be in a good position to survive the explosion.

So what they did was recreate that Brawl experience without the hectic bouncing around at high speeds off walls, remove the damage percentile system, and threw in a special move power (the bad addition to Smash Bros.) that does not allow a chance to knock the power out of them. Meter does not change when killed. And all those special moves will again range from near impossible to dodge to impossible to dodge. It looks like you can also forget about a combo system like Smash since juggling would be inescapable.

Then you have the look of the game which is super ugly. They ruined Sly Cooper's cute character look by making it more gritty/mature. The 3D models look terrible. It's like a bunch of generic dudes you kill in Playstation games running around than main characters. You've got the ugly Dante in there. It's the issue of having realistic figures over cartoonish figures really. When you got killed in Smash there would be a huge explosion jut out of the screen. In this game it's like a pathetic poof. The backgrounds look super unimpressive compared to Brawl, SFxTekken, and pretty much any current fighting game.

I think they hope that playing with 4 people will mask how shallow and stupid this game is. That the party game crowd won't care since their standards are so low. I think they're wrong.

So what are your thoughts on this game? Do you agree with what I wrote? And if anyone has played Guilty Gear Isuka I'd like to hear a comparison of that to Smash Bros and this game.

edit1: added "on this game" and "with what I wrote" to the second to last sentence. removed a segment of the first sentence.
edit2: added more explanation on what a smash ripoff would be and added YuYuHakusho game link.

My thoughts are that I'll wait to play a game before assuming and declaring that it isn't fun.

Look at two replies you could get:
1) Sure. You're right. I shouldn't declare what is fun or not fun until I've played a game.

2) This game isn't going to be fun for me based on all the observations and points I have made. I'm sorry that I am capable of judging a game based off its possibility space, 27 minutes of footage of it being played, and placing it in comparison to other games of similar genres where it would rank at the bottom. I don't enjoy playing shallow games -- in comparison to other fighters (i.e. Power Stone) it is a shallow game. So boo to you.

Both end up with one conclusion: One segment of a sentence in the entire writeup I wrote could be removed and your one "cheapshot/smart/whatever" sentence would be removed. That would mean I still have several paragraphs standing while you have written nothing. And indeed you did not write any thoughts on the game --  you will only judge it being fun or "unfun" till you have played it. If we concede the argument with response #1 we can assume that that goes without saying and is unnecessary to write; it is of little value, a given.

Anyhow, the game will at least encourage players to attack one another. However, the fighting system will make running away when one has the lead very easy and annoying as the edges of the stages are safe from ringouts (there are no ringouts). Perhaps they should return taunting to the status of King of Fighters 95 where taunting would decrease your opponent's special meter.

I'd be perfectly happy if you removed that segment of the sentence, as it's what I take issue with. There are obvious differences between the games that you have outlined, and if you'd left it at that, I'd have no quibble. But you present the argument with the assertion that those who deem it a Smash ripoff are "wrong" because the game won't be "fun" (as if that's what people meant when they deemed it a ripoff, and not the multiplayer melee combat featuring a wide assortment of franchise characters). How can a subjective opinion be objectively wrong (or right)?

Well I will just remove it. I don't want to waste any more time on it.
For people late to the party I altered this sentence:
"A Smash Bros. rip off would actually be fun and have decent combat design in place."

I have absolutely 0 interest in this game.

It is an obvious Smash Bros rip-off, even if it does some things differently (and I don't like the sound of this system either), with the major difference that Sony just doesn't have a lot of beloved/interesting mascots that I would like to use in a fighting game.
I mean, I like the Uncharted games, but seeing Nate in a game like this is totally not interesting to me.

To be fair though, I'm not the greatest Smash Bros fan in the world.
Loved the GC game, but couldn't really get into the Wii one. I only bought it because it contained an exploit to soft-mod my way around that retarded region lock, haha.

Isuka has rock music. Smash Bros does not.

Well I mean besides how metal the Guilty Gear series is (I'd like to read game mechanics comparisons). haha.

Yea, I don't really like the cast either. One character I heavily associate with Sony is Crash Bandicoot. I'm surprised they didn't get him in there (makes more sense than Bioshock's Big Daddy). Maybe a secret character?

I would say the sentence on how it's going to suck is correct, given that the mechanics don't take any major changes before Sony forcibly takes an unfinished product of this young developer's crippled hands. The long-range moves of Kratos and Parappa don't only work simultaneously as a good offense, but a defense that probably will precede imminent brokenness. No matter how much they try to fine-tune the game, they'll never get anywhere if they're only testing the 4 player free-for-all.

This may simply be a stillborn, and a detrimental example of how-to-(not) ripoff Smash Bros. Let's just hope some one else is hoping to pick up where Melee left off and make a real game. RIP, PASBR. Amen.

They previewed this game at Evo this year and it was beyond boring. It's dead if they leave the system as is, doomed to average reviews and being the laughingstock of any serious fighting game community. No sense of a progression during a match, just building/using supers. Yuck.

And frankly, the only character I'm even gonna touch is Parappa. Most of the other characters just look bland. Get some dudes from NFL Xtreme or Spyro or Crash or something...I'd settle for an anthromorphic Playstation logo over the current cast.

Where's Polygon Man when you need him?

http://www.presspauseradio.com/storage/ … 1024077697

source: http://superbotent.tumblr.com/post/3690 … patch-1-02

All they need is cliffs, edges, and ledges.