VF5 Fails the ButtonMashAbility Taste Test!

MAAAAN SHUT THE FUCK UP GEESH!!!! You sound like your Mad because nobody comes to your house to play games with you.

 

I guess it depends on what you want out of a game. I wouldn't enjoy any fighting game under the circumstances you described. A few years back I played Tekken 5 at a party and, win or lose, I didn't enjoy it very much because I didn't understand why I won or lost (none of us knew the game). Even if many (me included) starts off as button mashers more or less, at least for me it's not fun at all having "cool stuff" happening if I don't know why it's happening.

 

I recently came across this. The guy is doing a review for VF5. The video is fairly new, he's a gamer, but is not familiar to the series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPSnWwkqY8

He's playing only a demo so, the practice mode (dojo) is not available. He's just button mashing. He says the controls are easy, he's liking VF5 very much, but doesn't know if it's worth buying it, because he'd rather have someone to play against, since he knows the game is old and unlikely to find someone online playing it. People nowadays only care about Street Fighter or Marvel vs Capcom 3.

He picks Akira, faces 3 opponents, defeat all of them and then the demo is finished. Nice to see his excitement when he tries El Blaze, since he moves faster and the moves come easily. I told him in a comment: "El Blaze is very suitable for beginners".

 

Yea it's definently not masher friendly. You gotta know your characters moves to have any decent fun in this.

I had a friend try it a while back, he really liked how it was martial arts based, no fireballs and what not. But he just didn't know how to do any moves, so it was hard for him to get into it. As far as a being able to play and do stuff right now type thing. And it does take a good amount of time and effort to remember all the moves for a character. You have to have a special like for a game to try and re-learn (so to speak) to play a it.


We then moved onto MvC3, where he had more fun as was willing to keep playing cause it was easier to do combos.

Again, it's why it's a great idea for FS to have that Evo style training mode to help ease people into it, so they can be like "Ohhh, ok I get it now". I'm really happy they listened and added it...Well, I guess we don't know if it's deep like the Evo Training, or is it? I didn't really hear anything concrete about it.

Really though, they should add a little bit of the training mode in the demo.

 

^THIS!!!

I guarantee that this add-on will encourage people to learn at least a fraction of the game enough to play and have fun doing so... This could be a mini-tutorial in the game, nothing too ridiculously long, but just enough to know what you can do (also have the option to go through the whole shebang if the player desired to though)...

This kinda worked with KOF actually, but it was with the tutorial rather than the practice mode... I know someone in my local scene who picked up K', Kula, and Kyo, but he only has the demo. I asked him, "How did you pick up Kyo, he's not in the demo???" He told me if you go in the tutorial and don't finish the second part of the tutorial, you can practice with Kyo, just don't finish with his Neomax... This cat did that, and he's pretty solid even though he's not too familiar with all of the matchups...

Anyway, I feel Sega can capitalize on this very thing... Give the people a chance to play with someone other than Akira and Sarah in the demo, like Jean and Goh, and allow them to see someone else in training mode, like Jacky, with the option to use either of the 4 playable characters in a timed training mode... Throw in a good primer for the new players who have no clue how to do anything, and I think that would help usher in a new crowd...

This of course needs to be followed up by marketing imo, but that's another story...

Anyway, I feel something like this could help trim the fat off of players trying to learn the game, but end up mashing. They might feel less inclined to mash out because they don't know much, but now, with these said ideas implemented, they can have a chance to get into the game without fear of getting stomped by either semi-seasoned players, "pro" players, straight up (insert character) mashers, and the CPU, and feel less like they have to mash to win, but rather they have to apply what they learned to get that W...

 

Tell that to my Shun playing friend.

I would never operate Kage while drunk, but the game is rather enjoyable under other influences.

 

Yeah, when you first fire up SFxT, and press start, the game immediately recommends you go to the training mode to check out attack buttons and basic stuff. Its very nicely done in that game. All fighting games could use that sort of introduction for the absolute beginners.

 

It's true that Virtua Fighter has a button that does absolutely nothing. It's X. You tap it, nothing happens.
If you hold it, your character's hands slooooooowly change position. Oh I get it now, it might be the guard button.
A button masher wouldn't hold a button if it doesn't do anything instantly.
It also feels weird at first that the guard button would be on what you'd expect to be the generic punch button.

In SC5, when you tap the A button, the girl's shield instantly goes in front of her face and the Great Wall of China gets erected clearly and instantly. It's obvious what that button does. It's the useless button, but at least you know it does something when you tap it by mistake.


Going semi-offtopic, but...
What got me interested in the first place was watching random matches on youtube while trying to decide if I should try the xbox 360. As was said before, VF5 looks very nice and fun to play when played by good players.

What made me leave is that it's hard to understand the flow of the game, and which kind of thought process you're supposed to have in order to be half-way decent.
I would love it if there was a match analysis where the person says something like "Now I know I'm at a slight advantage and I think there are good chances that the opponent will do (something...) so I use an offensive move K because..."

It was also the feeling of "it's boring" because it seems like every character kinda does the same thing and has the same tools.
In Soul Calibur, there's a greater accent on character strengths and weaknesses, they really define the character, and it gives individual characters more flavor, at least flavor that is easy to perceive. It gives a decisive reason to play this character over that other one.
In SC, you fight the player, sure, but you definitely fight the character too, even if it's a clueless button masher.

What made me come back is mostly the commentary that I found very inspiring in the following video.
These two were basically fleshing out the idea that you fight the player, not the character. For some reason, the way they said it all made me put the disk back in the console.

 

If you want to be really honest about this it's the block button in VF that is the hardest thing to overcome for new players. SF4, Tekken, DOA, etc don't have a block button and just holding back/DB is a bit easier then remembering to press a guard button. Especially when most fighters have always used the back/DB as blocks, it becomes second nature for many gamers.. The second thing would probably be the speed of the game. VF5 felt much slower and more deliberate than say DOA or some of the other fighters. Just my 2 cents on why VF5 wasn't that popular at your casual gamer party.

VF5FS looks a lot faster and more fluid so speed wont be an issue this time, the guard button might still be an annoyance to noobies though. The overall flashiness of FS should be a big draw regardless.