A few weeks ago, after practicing Akira for nearly a month, my brother decided he wanted to try his hand at Virtua Fighter 4. I hand him the controller, crack my knuckles, give him a little sneer, then proceed to get my butt handed to me by his immutable button-mashing prowess. Three times in a row. Suffice it to say, I was thoroughly ticked off at the amazing amount of combos he could pull of just using the punch button. Not since Soul Caliber had I seen techniques like this. And I started thinking: Are there any fighting games that don''t involve some sort of cheese-factor? So I came up with this little idea. Why not use some sort of weight distribution system on the character models to counteract using the same punch/kick/combo over and over? I read about the new Havoc? physics engine used in UT2003 that uses weight distribution, and I thought this might go well in a fighting game. For instance, make each button just one attack. Press triangle, for instance, and you punch. Press it again, you punch again. No insane combos result from hitting the same button over and over. So then, the more punches you throw over and over, the more the character starts to shift his weight to his front, until he/she eventually tips over from lack of balance. Same goes with kicks or rapid button pounding. I realize this would be very taxing to balance out so that the characters do not tip over every time you do a combo or move, but I think with enough tweaking it could be incorporated into the game, maybe adding to its gameplay depth. Maybe one of the rewards for learning the game is to be able to play consistently without falling over all the time or tripping over yourself. Any other ideas?

Hmmm very interesting idea you got there!
And I know what you mean, fighting games bleh! They are so fun but too easy if u press 1 button. Remember Eddie Gordo? I think from Tekken 3, how you pressed a combination of two buttons and you could kick ur oppontents butt so easy?

But yah, it would add a new "somthing" to fighting games.

Grr...Eddie Gordo...the very mention of his name makes me froth at the mouth in interminable anger.

Yeah, and just last night I went to the local arcade with some friends of mine, and I just watched in horror as my friend royally whooped me with Paul Phoenix in Tekken 4. He has lightning-fast twitch fingers, and I was slaughtered within seconds.

Bushido Blade is the ultimate button-mashing killer.

Go ahead, mash those buttons (two attack buttons, three different attack stances). I''ll just stay out of range until your attack ends. Before you can recover I''ll stab you... That''s it, you''re dead, I win.

Or how about simply adding an energy bar? See Blade Of Darkness.

Now of course, these games use swords instead of fists, but the principles could remain the same.

I thought of maybe a stamina bar sort of thing, a la Blade of Darkness, but it was annoying when you actually know what you were doing, and you still had the energy to worry about. Granted, it took away the button-mashing problem, but IMO it also detracted from the total gameplay. Now, maybe if there were some sort of point system, maybe where it judges your technique and/or attack placement, and thus refills your energy bar, that would be very cool.

Bushido Blade was definitely a great game, I agree 100% on that. The ONLY thing that annoyed me was when I went in close for the kill, then I would leave myself open to rapid attacks.

I think that Soul Calibur does away with button smashing by having so many ways to deal with anything. If somebody is overusing a powerful move, it is easy to guard impact (deflect) it. If somebody is being really random and button-mashy, you should use a long-range, powerful move.

I would like to play VF4 but I''m not longer at college and would have no roommates to play against. I think Soul Calibur has good balance. I suspect that you could reverse a lot of his button mashes, since punches are often high, but I don''t know how the reversals work in VF4. In VF3 there were like 3 or 4 reversals, each for specific types of incoming attacks, but in Soul Calibur you only have to worry if a move is high or low (mids are always deflected if timed properly).

I like your "tipping over" idea, though. I imagined a tank game, where if you fired your main gun too much, your tank would tip backwards from the force of the cannon, and eventually tip all the way over. You would have to temper your offense not to cause your own downfall

above exists my entire argument on why fighting games suck...

some one prove me wrong.... PLEASE

-SniperBoB-

Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, the only fighting game I play any more, has some ideas. Regular attacks push you away from your opponent or your opponent away from you, so you could do a few jabs, but then had to use longer range attacks. If you''re really good, you could hit someone with a couple of jabs, a few swipes with a beam saber, then fire your big gun at them all in the same combo. The other balance tactic is to have an energy bar. The way it worked was, blocking an attack partially refilled your energy bar, and letting an attack get through unblocked partially refilled your enemy''s bar. Doing special moves drained your enery bar, as did firing your pistol(very weak weapon whose main purpose was to stop any charging attacks). The more powerful the technique, the more it drained. Even so, only at certain energy levels could you do certain techniques, even though you wouldn''t have drained all that energy. The effect was to punish blocked supermoves(which drained some of their life anyway), and prevent someone from just doing the same special move over and over(even though there is a counter for each).

It was really hard to do combos, though. The longest combo I''ve seen was 10 techniques. As you progress through the ladder, the opponents'' recovery times decreased, so combos had shorter and shorter windows of opportunity.

Awesome game(SNES, only released in Japan, mostly translated ROM available). Everyone should try it.

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Original post by SnprBoB86
above exists my entire argument on why fighting games suck...

some one prove me wrong.... PLEASE
-SniperBoB-

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The best advice I can give is to know not just your own fighter, but the other fighters. You really can''t use your own moves very well if you don''t know openings associated with the attacks of other players.

Take Maxi from Soul Calibur. He''s kinda like Eddy Gordo, and mashing buttons with him can make him flow from one move to another. He can really tear up against a newbie using this. However, any seasoned player knows the 2 or 3 "simplistic" combos that newbies will use, and there is enough delay between the hits to deflect the easily-predictable hit that is coming. An "advanced" Maxi player won''t use those flawed attacks against a seasoned opponent. He might throw in some kind of low attack, or throw, or something else that the enemy won''t expect.

I was never able to exploit Eddy Gordo''s weaknesses in Tekken, but my friends hardly ever picked him, so I didn''t get much practice. I always heard that he has delays in his attacks where he is vulnerable, and no matter who you choose as your own fighter, you would have to understand Eddy''s flow before you would do a good job against him.

Anyway, if you don''t like fighting games, that''s fine. I like them, especially Soul Calibur. I believe that a good fighting game minimizes:

- the rock-paper-scissors 100% guessing game
- imbalance between characters

However, all fighting games will have some amount of these elements.

Your entire train of thought is horribly flawed.

You seem to think that you "practiced," and that by practicing you somehow improved your skill level, which is simply not the case.

The first and most obvious question is did you practice against other people? If the answer is "no" then you haven''t really practiced at all. Playing against the computer or in training mode is like hitting off a tee in baseball. It might help you practice a few fundamental things but it isn''t a substitute for actual play.

What you are suggesting is basically equivalent to the following:

"I was playing basketball with some people and was really bad. So, for a month I played HORSE and got really good at it. Then I played with the same people and still got rocked. Clearly the rules of basketball are fundamentally broken."

The problem is not "cheese" or button mashing. The problem is your skill level is obviously not very high. You are attributing some problem to the game, when the problem is your play.

Another example would be for me to say "I practiced Chess for a month but still lost to someone who moves randomly - boy Chess sure is dumb." This is the same sort of non-logic.

People seem to think that if they do something that vaguely looks like practice, even it they aren''t really practicing anything useful, that it is their god-given right to magically become much better. That''s just silly. You want to add a bunch of strange mechanics to game to make up for the fact that you don''t really know how to play it and don''t understand it.

If the person kept on pressing punch, why didn''t you just duck? Or block and attack back? That is Virtua Fighter 101.