First off, Scott, are you on ps3 or xbox360? Just curious.. I don't
think we ever touched on that particular subject. lol. But more to the point...
While I agree with you for the most part, I also think x-rays are fun
to pull off simply for the ouch-factor... nothing like pulling off
that move and gcrining at the sounds. But that wasn't what I meant
when I said broken.
Broken, from a fighting game perspective means to be overpowered or
exploitable to the point of imbalance. In this case, it's the fact
that it's so easy to take off 40-50% life from your opponent. Some
people argue that ultras from Street Fighter IV are the same, but 2
things trump that argument. One, is that your ultra meter only fills
as you're taking damage, not if you're dealing it as opposed to the
x-ray's meter filling both ways. True, you have to factor in
super-specials and breakers, but it's ridiculously easy to build that
meter back up. Second thing, is that you cannot, under any
circumstances, combo or cancel into an ultra. There are no attacks in
Street Fighter IV that let you cancel. Cancelling means, essentially,
cutting off the end of one attack animation into another. So for
example, Ryu can do a dragon punch and cancel that into his shinku
hadouken super. This means that the dragon punch connects, but by
cancelling the last bit of the animation for that move, you're
hitting your opponent with the super while he's still in the air.
Ultras cannot be made to do that. There are techniques for making
sure your opponent gets hit, but you can't combo or directly cancel
into an ultra. Only things like focus attacks, certain move
situations, can let you connect an ultra with 100% certainty, and
even then... it isn't so certain. If this is too confusing, let me
know and if you want I can record a demo of what I'm talking about
with my commentary over it. Problem with x-rays is, they can be
cancelled into. So if you can pull off a long-enough combo to give
you 30% damage, throw an x-ray into that with a cancel which
basically makes it unavoidable by your opponent, and you're shaving
off a good 70% damage, since x-rays themselves don't do more than
40-45% damage. Ultras don't even give you that much damage... if you
can land it with a full meter, which gives you enough room to take
about three to four more hits before you die, if that ultra connects,
your opponent still has about 70% life left. So... it's not as much
of an easy comeback. That and the fact that x-rays are mapped to
simply tapping two buttons... has bugged a lot of people. Not me
specifically, but a lot of people I know.
Third and final thing... ultras in SFIV have huge recovery times. IF
you miss an ultra... you can expect to get heavily, and I mean
heavily punished. The recovery times on those is big enough to the
point where you have about a second where you can't do anything.. and
in SF, that's plenty of time for an opponent to dash in and nail you.
X-rays have no recovery time... at least, no recovery time that's of
any significance. So if your x-ray is blocked... no worries. For me,
that takes away a lot of the strategy, as if you miss an x-ray, you
don't get punished that much...
And that is my definition of broken. Long-winded I know, but needed
to get in all the details.
From: Scott Chesworth <scottcheswo...@gmail.com>
To: Gamers Discussion list <gamers@audyssey.org>
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] anyone got anny suggestions for the next version
ofbattlezone?
Hi Clement,
I'll fess up now and say that I totally intend to get you started on
x-ray moves. I'm wondering whether we think the same thing.
I actually pulled off my first ever X-ray move by accident. Oh the
joys of button mashing!
Having learned how to execute them intentionally now, they've started
to really irritate me. Essentially I think the problem is, while they
sound and by all accounts look great, they totally break the constant
pressure of the fight. Things like mega long combos or chains of
attacks make me panic when I'm on the receiving end or exhilerated
when I'm the one dealing them out, but X-ray doesn't manage to do
that. I think the problem is that once the sequence has started, so
far as I can tell there's no way to break it, so the person on the
receiving end just sits there hopelessly. The sequences take so long
that I have time to be angry that someone's x-rayed me, sad that my
character is having a bad day internally all of a sudden, but then
there's also time to consider what to do next. On the other end of the
equation, they're not satisfying to be the person who's dishing them
out either. I think that's because they aren't hard enough to execute,
so there's no big sense of achievement, just the break in the rhythm
of the fight. That disruption has put me off my stride enough that
I've almost lost matches I was comfortably winning before throwing an
X-ray into the mix.
Is that what you meant by broken? To me, they just seem like a gimick.
Sad part is that they didn't need to be there. It's hard to tell how
deep this new engine is just from the characters in the demo, but to
me, it definitely feels like an improvement from MK VS DC. It's all
subjective of course, but that would've been enough for me I think
without the new gimick.
Scott
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