Daryl’s Neighborhood

I was going to write about the epic debacle between Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack and Neogaf, but as the page was lengthening and getting longer, it just seemed moot to continue any kind of recourse over the matter.  Shawn Elliott twittered about Tyler Malka's response (founder and owner of Neogaf), which is where I started reading, but now that thread is locked.  All of the important posts I had read are now unaccessible, and since I am blessed with that of poor memory, I can't pull up the one thing that I felt really spoke true about the entire grievance.

Instead, I'm gonna talk about other stuff.  Stuff like the internet, forums, online communities, and the possible path between game devs and gamers.

Personally, I like to approach an issue from both perspectives.  Reaching a consensus of agreement is a much more interesting path than trampling one's opinion of a matter down into the ground.  Perhaps people don't see it that way; I get into alot of these debates with my own personal friends about matters ranging from all kinds of stuff.  I don't like arguing, but I like getting deeper into a subject and trying to learn something new, and hoping the other person learns something from it as well.

Opinions are everyone's entitlement.  Its usually the validity of fact and knowledge that come into question, which seems to be at the root of every forum debate.  Thanks to the quickness of the internet and anonymity of text, its easy to misinterpret what might've been an innocent question into an ignorant slur thanks to an occasional misspelling or lack of punctuation.

But now what?

If game devs are going to be openly criticized in all forms from the public, at what point can they interact with the community?  Should they?  How much can they say without being lambasted and ridiculed from the denizens of online communities?  And if another developer like Dyack comes along again who has great passion about his product yet is hated by a particular group of people, what does this spell for true fans of the game, who will also be open to similar criticism?

Is it too late for polite and civilized recourse in this age?

This article was written by the resident Soul Calibur player expert here, Zachary Lewis.
 
After three years of development, Soul Calibur has now entered the next chapter in the series debuting on the next-gen console platforms, Playstation 3 and XBox 360.  After playing the PS3 version for over a week, I have to admit I'm quite pleased with the final product.  This is quite possibly the best looking fighting game on the Playstion yet.  The character models are fully detailed; stages look amazing with real-time lighting effects, vibrant backgrounds, and breakable objects.  The developers made good use of the Havok engine; anyone with a 720P capable Hi-def setup is in for a real treat.

All the old favorites are back again and remain mostly untouched move-list wise.  Ivy and Voldo aside, fans can easily pick up the game and continue playing their characters as they did in the previous installment. 

There are some property differences, however. 

Characters who used to dominate such as Xianghua and Taki were nerfed down.  New additions to the series include: Hilde, the sword-and-spear swinging princess of the Wolfkrone Kingdom; Darth Vader (PS3); Yoda (XBOX); and the Apprentice (from the upcoming title "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed").  There are also five unlockable "new" characters whose designs were created by famous manga artists, but the problem is they aren't technically new; they're just pallet swaps for existing characters. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw the dual katana wielding Shura for the first time thinking, "Oh, she must've been inspired by the legendary Miyamoto Musashi," only to discover she's a rip-off of Cervantes.  Since there's already a Character Customization mode, I found this feature to be rather redundant.

Soul Calibur IV's gameplay builds upon the previous game.  Stun combos and just-guard impacts make their return, but without the glitches and variable cancels which were considered the bane of the third game.  Characters have been balanced with refined move properties.  Personally, I liked Soul Calibur III (glitches aside), so I was happy to see that the game was simply re-tuned rather than remade into something completely different.  The gameplay seemed a bit slower to me at first, but after a while I became used to the movement of the characters and I was able to sink in to my usual pace.  The visualizations are the best incarnation yet, with fluid, dynamic animation.  Breakable equipment also makes its return from the very first Soul Edge, with destructible armor replacing destroyable weapons.  Three bars underneath the health gauge represent the upper, middle, and lower armor pieces.  When an area takes substantial damage (blocked or not), it'll break off, leaving that area more susceptible to extra damage.

A new addition to the series is the Soul Gauge, which is represented as a small gem next to the health gauge.  As a player guards too much or has their attacks guard-impacted, the color gradually shifts from blue to red.  When it starts to flash red, there's a chance that the next attack may break their guard and leave the defender open to a "Critical Finish," a fatality-esque move that ends the match with little concern to any other surrounding factors.  This forces players to become more aggressive and rely more upon guard-impacting rather than risking to defend incoming attacks.  I was skeptical when I first heard about it, but after seeing this new approach, it turned out quite well.  Matches hardly end in critical finishes, so as a tool its mostly there to punish turtlers.  As long as you exchange blows, the gauge stays fairly balanced for both opponents, encouraging more quick thinking.


Currently there are only four modes for single player, and two modes for both online and offline versus play.  Single player has all of the usual variety you'd expect to find in a Bandai-Namco fighing game: Story, Arcade, and Training mode.  The only new mode is "Tower of Lost Souls" mode, where players have to "ascend" up a tower, fighting various enemies with special abilities along the way.  After all the levels have been completed, you can then begin descending the tower and unlock even more items and earn more gold.  It can be very challenging trying to complete some of the requirements, as you won't know what they are until your second play-through.  If you're the kind of player that wants every item in the game, expect to spend a lot of hours here.  In addition, this is the only mode aside from story mode that allows tag-team play. 

Overall, with its solid gameplay and beautiful visuals, Soul Calibur IV is arguably the best fighter on the PS3 to date.  The online mode offers instant connection to players all across the country, reminiscent of arcade cues of days past.  Being able to challenge someone from the comfort of your home is a welcome addition.  Character customization and future downloadable content gives it potentially strong replay value for months on end, an add-on that is even more beneficial with potential patches in the future.  Get the game, and here's hoping we'll meet online sometime.

You can reach Zack playing Soul Calibur on his PS3 at Zemy107.

After a fairly successful Saturday at the convention, we decided to try our luck again and come back on Sunday.  There was a Smash Bros. Brawl tournament that day, so we hoped the turnout would be even larger.  Again, we skipped the entrance fee as usual for the day and set up our small area.

I do want to point out one particular strange moment that day. 

While watching two other people play King of Fighters XI, a skinny masked ninja walked up to Soul Calibur and asked in a really low and husky voice if he could check out some things.  As no one was playing at the time, I said it was perfectly all right but told him that if someone wanted to play also, he'd have to let him join in.  He agreed.

This guy had this creepy low voice whenever he spoke.  He also liked talking to himself (I had no indication if he was directing sound toward me).  He told me he only wanted to see if there was a story mode in this version.  "There's always a story mode in almost all of Namco's titles these days," I thought.  He continued poking around.

Andy's cousin Michael came by.  He picked up the controller, and the two battle it out, with the masked ninja kid hissing his defeat in poignant sadness.  I in turn pick up the controller for fun, and Michael and I start the smack talk (we have a bit of rivalry).  Here's a small transcript:

[Me] Kilik huh?  Let's see who has the bigger stick, foo! (chooses Kamikirimusi)

[Michael] No way, my stick is bigger!

[Me] Well whoever wins has the bigger stick!

[Masked-ninja kid] (in whispy voice) You guys should put your sticks in each other and see who's bigger, heh heh heh.

[Michael and Me] ...

At this point, the masked ninja kid becomes unmasked, and the creep factor rises over 9000.  I later go on to fight against him, only to be weirded out even further when he picks the same character as me, and says, "Heh, now we can see how big my stick is compared to yours, heh heh."  I lost to him out of sheer fear.

The day ended pretty well.  There wasn't a whole lot going on, but we did get to meet a few more people.  There was this really talented Beatmania IIDX player who wowed just about everybody who walked by.  Andy got second place in the Brawl tournament.  A friend of ours talked to Saber yesterday, and she said I was cute!  That was awesome.

I definitely need to get to more conventions in the future.

No, I didn't cosplay.  Rather, the main objective was to set up a small station in the main hall and play various fighting games while trying to meet new people.  I had been waiting for this event to pop up again as it did the last previous years, and after missing out on alot of other conventions (A-kon, Anime Expo, and the like) this seemed the last time before the anime con season ends.

Andy notified me of an upcoming Smash Bros. Brawl tournament happening at a local anime convention, and that piqued my interest.  If there's gonna be a tournament, that means players will be there.  If there are lots of players, maybe they'd like to play more than just Brawl.  And if there was a little area where I could bring in some games that I like to play, maybe they'd come and play too...was the rationale I concluded.  Not a bad idea for a Saturday.

So, after sending some communications to the guy in charge of the video games section, I was granted permission to set up a small booth just for gamers.  The selection included:

• Tekken
  
• King of Fighters series
  
• Guilty Gear series
• Arcana Heart
• Street Fighter (Capcom vs SNK and Third Strike)
• The Rumble Fish
• Hokuto no Ken
• The Prince of Tennis: Smash Hit

Okay, so that last one was just a joke (it is an anime convention, after all...).  My friend Cuong and I showed up at around 11 A.M., and pretty much snuck in, ignoring the $25 entrance fee.  I don't know if people thought we were staff, but we pretty much did our business hassle-free.  Heh.

Overall it went really well.  We met alot of new and friendly people.  One of our friends was there coincidentally, and whined that she was all alone.  She hung out at our station for quite some time, and I think due to her, it attracted alot of other people who were most likely hoping to just take her picture.  She cosplayed. 

We stayed there gaming for nearly nine hours.  It was a marathon of an event.  We saw a Rock Band tournament (which was pretty cool), checked out some goods (I bought a "Geek!" badge pin), and took in a lot of the scenery.  Sometimes there would be people who would do random dances that ignite contagiously to other manic fans, ending in an earth-shattering room full of dancers. The heat in that room alone was also enough to make a grown man sweat.

Oh wait, some of them did. 

More photoes can be found at the flickr page.

I discovered this awesome, legendary image thread, and as thus have found a near infinite yet limitless amount of genious!  This image will appear really easy to a particular group of core fans.  I dare say that it might be a bit too easy for this week. 

As always, click the image for the answer!

And the comparison photo:

Perhaps I should do my friends next.