#the 2v2 is part of my main idea

[talietikasero]

i'm gonna try and scrap together a version of my drafts after writing some more of what i'm working on: one is a 2v2 fight and the other includes two people against a bio-weaponized bear

[thekaijudude]

Very interesting tier list, I like it. Quick question before my main question, do you think Taro is stronger than his dad by this point? Anyway, thoughts on Ultraman Orb vs Monsterverse King Ghidorah? Let’s say it’s in a big city, so King Ghidorah can “juice up” if the opportunity presents itself. Orb seems like the New Gen Ultra that would be the best match for this version of KG to me, but I could be wrong.

Hi!

Well for your first question, its definitely a no.

Firstly, youre looking at an age difference of 148 000 years, and as Ive proven mathematically in an ask (Which I will spare you the mathematical jargon) that an Ultra’s stats increases exponentially with age. I mean I know ive often hyped up Taro but I simply don’t see Taro reaching anywhere near Ken’s level anytime soon even with his own ridiculous talent, which im not putting down by any means but the difference in power is clear given that HUGE age difference.

For example, a single punch from Ken can literally obliterate a 100km asteroid and a single drop kick can produce a force of an atomic bomb. Besides, the difference in Ultra Horn sizes is still as clear as night and day as its so much bigger than Taro’s even now which implies that Ken’s beam potency is also much higher than Taro’s

For a brief recap of Taro’s battle capability, heres an ask I did a while back:

https://thekaijudweeb.tumblr.com/post/183887378278/okay-so-heres-the-thing-ultraman-taro-vs-monster

Which means that Father Shot may be even stronger than the Storium Ray which is around Planetary Level at least

So for the new followers, how I do matchups is I generally go through the feats of each of the participants to analyze their battle prowess and break down on how which participant will win unless in cases where its an obvious stomp where ill also go through how it is a stomp

As an example, do check out a 2v2 battle ask that I did sometime back:

https://thekaijudweeb.tumblr.com/post/184222627413/okay-so-this-is-another-2-vs-2-matchup-only-this

With that being said, lets begin with Ghidorah

Ghidorah (Normal)

Is able to conduct electricity to amplify its own power, can also drain the life force of its enemies 

Able to generate storms when it flies at around Mach 0.82

Demonstrated a high enough mobility to dodge Godzilla’s atomic breath aimed at its heads

Ghidorah’s Gravity Beams (Which is basically electricity), a combined three of them was strong enough to topple and push the around 100 000 tonnes Godzilla

Flinched under missile assault

Is able to regenerate lost body parts such as his heads

Able to survive the Oxygen Destroyer (Which basically just removes oxygen from its surroundings) because of him not needing oxygen to survive

Was able to tank several times and only be knocked back by an amped Godzilla’s atomic breath

Was able to physically grapple with an amped Godzilla whom was able to throw him around, note that Ghidorah weight around 140 000 tonnes

Had one of its heads ripped off by a pre amped Godzilla

Was easily able to take out a low tier 2 Rodan

Ghidorah (Amped)

Was easily able to lift the near 100 000 tonnes Godzilla off the ground

Was able to incinerate Mothra with all three Gravity Bolts

Major portions of its body were incinerated after the second Nuclear Pulse from Godzilla

Now that ive broken down Ghidorah, cause Orb has so many forms, ill just briefly go through how each of them would do against him first, also note that ill be looking at battles on Earth, not in space cause we have no idea how this incarnation of Ghidorah will perform there, but it really dosent affect the outcome of this battle as you’ll see later. Also both participants will be in their original sizes.

Specium Zepellion (SZ)

With all honesty, the only advantage SZ has over Ghidorah is his speed (Mostly all of his forms have an edge of this)

Sperion Ray definitely does not have a high enough potency to do really much against Ghidorah cause it even took a long time for it to take down a weakened Maga Pandon

Even if SZ accessed Tiga’s power type’s strength, I don't think itll do much to him either cause itll probably be around the 100 000 tonnes range which we’ve seen Ghidorah tanking throughout the whole fight, not to mention SZ can only access it for seemingly a limited period of time

And since Ghidorah can regenerate, I don't think Orb’s Sperion Light Rings would be able to do lasting damage

Although im not sure whether Shutdown Protect will be able to work on Ghidorah, but even if it does, I don't SZ has enough stamina to maintain it long enough to deal much damage to Ghidorah

Note that im still talking about the normal Ghidorah here

Burnmite (BM)

BM maintains the speed and mobility advantage over Ghidorah but the increase in strength wont really make a difference to Ghidorah as its still not significant enough to overpower him

I doubt Stobium Ray has enough firepower to deal much damage to him as well as we saw Sadeath tanking it, albeit it was likely a nerfed version but Ghidorah’s scales has been shown to be rather durable so ill give him that, same with Stobium Burst

HOWEVER

Stobium Dynamite definitely has enough firepower to inflict significant damage, but im not sure whether its comparable to Burning Godzilla’s nuclear pulse

But lets just say that it is and now lets use amped Ghidorah, but BM can seemingly only use this twice before he becomes exhausted from what we’ve seen and we saw that it still took 2 Nuclear Pulses and yet Ghidorah still has his main head left which means that while BM will be exhausted, Ghidorah will still be able to regenerate his lost limbs so its essentially back to square one

Hurricane Slash (HS)

Same speed advantage but I highly doubt any of HS’ moves can do much damage to him cause although he has a higher dps than the previous forms, I doubt Orb Slugger Lance can slice through Ghidorah’s scales when it couldn't do so to Aribunta

So HS will likely run out of energy while essentially accomplishing nothing in the end

Thunder Breastar (TB)

Now stuff is getting more exciting cause TB has the brute strength in the range of Ghidorah’s weight so grappling is definitely a viable strategy

And I think theres little debate on whether Zedcium Light Ring can cut through Ghidorah’s necks or wings

But despite so, cause of TB’s low dps, if he engages Ghidorah in close combat, Ghidorah will still be able to overpower him cause of his ability to also drain energy from TB so its a very high risk move.

However, Zedcium Ray can likely inflict major damage on Ghidorah, so TB’s best bet is to leverage on his speed advantage and engage with Ghidorah from a distance.

But then TB as a form isn't really well equipped for ranged combat and things get more hairy if the battle takes place midair when Ghidorah whips up a storm which will definitely obscure TB’s vision. And we’re not sure if TB has access to the same X-Ray vision like SZ to locate Ghidorah through the resulting storm. But even if he could, it still takes a long time to locate cause the X-Ray vision is only limited to view a small space at any given point in time.

So either party might take the W here but with high difficulty, but the odds are stacked very heavily against TB if Ghidorah gets amped as the odds of winning with TB’s best strategy of engaging in ranged combat has dropped even lower with Ghidorah’s enhanced stats

Orb Origin (OO)

OO actually has a better chance of winning here than TB as long as he has the Orb Caliber on hand

Although close combat is definitely still a no-no for OO cause of the range of the Orb Caliber and Ghidorah’s ability of life force absorption will still be a thing

But if taken to ranged, the Orb Caliber Attacks seems to be heavy enough to deal damage to Ghidorah

Even if Ghidorah takes to the sky, his Storm Generating ability might even be used against him with Orb Wind Caliber

And cause of Ghidorah’s slow speed, Orb Water, Ground and Flame Calibers are very viable options, not to mention Orb Supreme Caliber

So I think as long as Orb manages to dodge Ghidorah’s Gravity Bolts and can do enough damage to overpower his regen, amped or not, OO could take the W

Lightning Attacker (LA)

Ok not gonna lie, forms from this point on can arguably be a stomp

I mean just look at LA’s stats (on Ultrawiki), dude is essentially in a tier of his own

LA can no doubt probably even snap Ghidorah’s necks with THAT kind of grip strength, he can even throw almost two Ghidorahs

And LA is covered in Cyber Mechanical armor, so he dosent need to worry much about energy absorption or even his Gravity Bolts cause LA is likely to be immune to electricity as well due to the nature of his armor

Also, before yall say that Ghidorah is immune to LA’s electric moves as well, need I remind u that LA has Ginga as a component? And that Ginga as 7 different modes? Its just because TsuPro only shows 1 out of the 7 modes that LA has but we can assume that he can somehow mimic the different attacks that Ginga has, especially Ginga Slash which was able to defeat even Super Grand King

LA is just way too fast and way too strong for even an amped Ghidorah to take, not to mention his armor, immunity and his sheer brute strength

But mostly because of his immunity, LA is essentially a bad matchup for Ghidorah

Emerium Slugger (ES)

Ghidorah cant win this no matter how u see this either

Although ES’ armor now covers less area of his body, his dps is just too ridiculous, rendering any attempts from Ghidorah to constrict and absorb energy from him completely useless in close combat, which ES actually excels in

Not to mention that ES has fought Reibatos, who has an even faster regen than Ghidorah and actually even overpowered his regen with ES Specium

Orb Trinity (OT)

This I can most safely say is an obvious stomp, see OT as LA on steroids with a chainsaw

OT is waaay too fast even by LA’s own standards

And OT’s gimmick is basically his ridiculous stats (As expected of a trinity fusion) and being able to deal MASSIVE amounts of damage in one go (Aka the insta kill tactics with the Trinitium Light Ring and whatnot)

Ultraman Orb

Yes, Orb as an Ultra in general its an obvious stomp as Orb’s whole gimmick is basically his versatility

Not counting his UFF exclusive forms, Orb essentially has a form that is best prepared for almost any battle matchup

But lets examine stuff that I haven't gone through to show other abilities of Orb himself

For now we know that he can fuse up till a trinity fusion, but based on the different cards he has now canonically speaking, OT isn't even the best trinity fusion Orb can come up with, the best possible trinity fusion that he can actually access now is the BelialxTaroxGinga fusion, which will be even exponentially stronger than OT without question

Not to mention Orb can actually just summon all the ultras (albeit nerfed but still) from his Ultra Cards to fire a combo beam all at once

Also we know that the VoL grants Orb new powers after each mission, and till today, we still have no idea what other new powers Orb has after defeated Maga Tano Orochi, Mulnau, Reibatos, Gilvaris and the latest Ultra Dark Killer presumably, so that's potentially 5 unknown new powers that Orb has gained but we are still in the dark about it

So I went through all of Orb’s canon forms and seeing how they'll actually stack up against Ghidorah, which if amped, will actually be around a mid Tier 3 kaiju

But in short, Orb is way too versatile for even most kaiju to deal with, so most matchups will almost always be a mismatch

Thanks for the question!

[fantabulosogamedev]

Status Update: The Plan

Hey guys!  I’ve been writing this post for around a week now, originally as a video script, and it’s ballooned way out of control, so I’ve decided to give y’all the summary of it as best I can here in text.  Come by the Discord if you have any questions!

So here we are, t-minus 26 days before the demo releases, with no majorly new information since the last Progress Update.  What’s the situation?  Am I still on schedule?  The answer is...yes!!  However...

Part One: The Game Itself

Some major changes have come about in terms of my plan for the game as a whole.  Essentially, my original plan (16ish levels total) was just infeasible at this point, and would result in a development time bordering on at least 3 more years at max development speed -- while some people might be cool with waiting that long, I’m not!  I gotta eat, and the amount of money I’d need to fund 3 years of development would be really high to ask for a fresh dev like me.

So, here’s the new plan: The Fantabulous Game will now consist of 6 primary levels, along with a tutorial zone (Cragwell Woods) and a hub accessed after The Fightyplace.  Based on my estimates, this should reduce the development time to approximately 1-1.5 years if all goes as planned, thereby reducing kickstarter costs and wait times.  The levels will consist of a reimagining of the Shamrock path of LFG, featuring the Shamrock City, the prison Ballcatraz, the Shamrock Palace, and more!

To compensate for this drastic reduction in content, some positive changes will be made as well: the game will now cost $15 instead of $20, a Boycap miniboss will be present in each level, brief linear connecting zones between levels will exist to add cohesion and content to the world, and most interestingly the Fantabula sublevels will be expanded!

Previously, the sublevels were going to just be brief platforming challenges, with a gold sausage for a normal clear and a bludsausage for a speedclear.  However, the sublevels are now going to be expanded into proper linear levels, featuring collectibles of several kinds scattered throughout...as well as their own full-blown bossfight!  Why am I bringing this up now?

With only 6 proper levels in the game, I no longer feel comfortable offering the Fightyplace for free in the demo, as it now takes up a much larger amount of the game’s content proportionally.  So instead, I’ll be releasing The Fightyplace’s Fantabula Sublevel, with some tweaks and modifications to give the player as full of an experience as I can!  Unfortunately I can’t say for sure how long the demo will be, as much of it will come down to player skill level -- time permitting, however, I’d like to add a NG+ to it, where players can push themselves against much more powerful enemies.

Finally, in regards to the 8 cut levels: if The Fantabulous Game is successful, I plan on working them into two separate expansion packs to be released after TFG is completed, for around $10 each.  The first of these expansion packs would focus on the antics of a non-Shamrock race from Le Fantabulous Game, and (assuming expac1 was successful) the second would turn its sights to exploring exactly how the world of LFG turned into the one found in TFG.

Part Two: The Crowdfunding

So with that out of the way, I’d also like to talk about my plan for the game’s crowdfunding campaign!  I’ve decided to use a blend of the top options from the poll I posted several months ago: on, or shortly after, the release of the demo, I’ll be launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund the game, with a goal of $40k.  I’ll be putting the currently planned rewards and stretch goals at the bottom of this post, and would love to hear you guys’ feedback on what should be added/removed/adjusted.

However, those looking for Early Access, I hear you as well -- it was the first option on the poll, after all!  Here’s the plan when it comes to EA: the Kickstarter, like many others, will have a backer tier for beta access throughout the game’s development.  This backer tier will function the same as Early Access would, but would not be discounted.  However!

If the game is successful, and I decide to create the two expansion packs I mentioned above, both of the DLCs will be sold on steam via early access with a sizeable discount pre-release.  Considering the expansion packs would make up approximately 50% of the original content of the game, I think this is a great compromise between the crowdfunding options!  This will also apply to any future expansion packs I make beyond those two, such as the hypothetical Boycap xpac.

Part Three: The Specifics

As I mentioned above, I have a rough draft of my plans for the Kickstarter, and would love to have feedback on them.  Here they are:

Reward Tiers:

Get the game (EARLY EGG) - $10, 750 available

Get the game - $15

Deluxe Edition: Get the game, digital manual, & soundtrack (EARLY EGG) - $15, 750 available

Deluxe Edition: Get the game, digital manual, & soundtrack - $20

Beta access: Pay more to get access to the game throughout development, in the form of episodically released levels! (good for those who wished for Early Access!) - $35

Deluxe Beta Access - Beta Access with the Deluxe additions! - $40

Design a Spherefolk NPC: design a friendly Spherefriend or Shamrock to show up in various levels throughout the game!  Design includes clothing, skin patterns, and dialogue (all subject to developer approval).  NPCs would randomly appear chosen from a pool of all backer NPCs. Also, appear in the credits as a “Backerfriend” and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game! $80

Design a Spheredog Collectible: Design a Spheredog to show up as a collectible in one of the levels of the game!  Design can be anything subject to developer approval, but must maintain the basic structure of a Spheredog. Also, appear in the credits as a “Supreme Backerfriend” and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game!  - $150, 50 Available

Design an NPC: Design a unique NPC that Capboy will encounter several times throughout his adventure!  Design is up to you nearly entirely, but should remain reasonable within the boundaries of TFG’s universe and remains subject to developer approval. Also, appear in the credits as a “Legendariful Backerfriend” and "Character Designer,” and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game! - $300

Design one of Boycap’s mechs: Design a mechanical boss based on anything!  You get to decide how it fights and harasses Capboy throughout the level, but specifics and general design are subject to developer approval. Also, appear in the credits as an “Fantabulous Backerfriend” and “Boss Designer,” and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game!  - $450, 2 available

Design a Fantabula Boss: Design a boss encountered within The Fantabula!  The boss must somewhat match the level theme and is subject to developer approval.   Also, appear in the credits as a “Fantabulous Backerfriend” and “Boss Designer,” and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game! - $600, 2 available

Ultimate Designer’s Pack: Every reward listed above, including every single “Design an X” reward!  Also, get to be brought onto the developer team as a creative contributor, joining private discussion about plans for bosses, enemies, levels and more!  Appear in the credits as a “Creative Contributor” and every corresponding Backerfriend section, and receive the Deluxe Beta edition of the game! - $900, 1 available

Stretch/Funding Goals:

40k - Funding Goal

45k - Mutators -- upon finishing the game, the player can use achievement-unlocked mutators to affect future runs of the game!  Mutator ideas include having every weapon unlocked right away, randomly shuffled stats on weapons, randomly shuffled enemies, and more!  Mutators would be included with the game upon release.

50k - Boss Rush -- The player would be able to rematch any bosses they’ve beaten, including a time trial mode where they’re given a specific build that they must fight each boss with.  Good scores would unlock further achievements, unlocking costumes and mutators.  Boss Rush would be included with the game upon release.

60k - Second Quest -- The Second Quest would essentially be a hardmode, beyond the simple changes offered by NG+.  Unlocked after beating the game, the Second Quest would feature a brand new story set in modified versions of the main game levels, with brand new harder versions of every boss -- which would be included in the Boss Rush!  The Second Quest would be released as a free update after the game’s release.

70k - Local Competitive Multiplayer --Local up-to-4 player PvP multiplayer gamemodes.  Gamemodes would include 1v1 and 2v2 deathmatch, king of the hill, and a flag-football styled gamemode.  Platforming races, “gungame” styled fights, and more would all be further options.  The Multiplayer would be released as a free update after the game’s release.

If you’re still with me after reading that massive post, thank you!!  I greatly appreciate your devotion to the game if you read all of that, and if you just skipped down here I don’t blame ya at all.  Unfortunately though, I can’t really tl;dr this, so you’ve gotta bear with it.

With less than 4 weeks to the demo, it’s exciting to finally see these two and a half years of work start to come to fruition!  Thank you to everyone who’s been supporting the game throughout its development -- here’s to a successful campaign, thanks to you guys’ help!  If you have feedback and/or questions about this plan, swing by the discord to talk about it there, but if not...I’ll catch you guys on the 26th!

-Fantabuloso

[dngrs-untld-hrshps-unnmbrd]

Crimson Days

Zavala x Reader angst/romance | G-rated | Gender neutral

This story is inspired by the events of several Taken King missions, essentially the ones in which Stuff Goes Badly Wrong and Zavala Is Worried. Good opportunities for some Zavala/Guardian romance and angst. Especially angst. Kind of a lot of angst …

All the Ghost mission dialogue is lifted directly from gameplay. I’ve also been inspired by Crimson Days, the 2v2 Crucible Valentine’s Day event. Battle couples and rose petals, such a lovely image.

Zavala’s voice comes over your Ghost. [This mission is scrubbed. Guardian, get to your ship and get out of there.]

You don’t need to be told twice. Your heart is pounding in your chest as you fire your sidearm at a group of flickering, approaching Taken, barely seeing them because you’re still reeling from what you just witnessed.

Oryx. Massive. Preternatural. Powerful. You could feel him hungering for you Light.

Taken begin to close in around you and you diligently drop each one, a gnawing feeling in your belly. The glowing black and white holes all around you, windows into nothingness, fill you with dread.

Suddenly Zavala’s voice comes over your Ghost again. [We have reports of these “Taken” across the system. Go! Get out!]

You’ve never heard him sound so urgent before and fear plunges through you. You reload your weapon and run, feet pounding along metal walkways through wave after wave of enemies. You’re pummelled by bullets and your recovery mechanisms struggle to keep abreast of the damage. If you fall now you might never get up.

Finally you reach your jumpship and take off faster than you ever have in all your time as a Guardian, noticing how slippery with sweat your fingers are and how your heart is thundering in your ears.  

Ghost transmits a message back to the Tower. [Zavala, we made it to our ship. We’re heading home.]

It’s late when your jumpship comes in and the Plaza is deserted. Or so you thought.

‘Guardian.’ Zavala steps out of the shadows. He’s not wearing his armour and the sight of him off-duty makes your chest feel tight. Memories of him flood your mind, the sort you can deal with when you’re feeling strong. You’re not feeling strong right now.

The only thing to do is be professional and polite and get to your bed. ‘I’m sorry I failed. There were so many Taken. Too many to fight.’

He frowns. 'You didn’t fail. The mission was to discover why the Skyburners were transmitting a distress signal, and you did that.’

Oh. Of course. You’re not thinking straight. The sight of those sinister, wraith-like creatures closing in on you has shaken you badly. The Hive, Fallen and Cabal are all formidable enemies, but a least they’re explainable. The Taken seem … unnatural.

'You’re all right. That’s the main thing.’ You don’t answer and he looks at you narrowly. 'You are all right, aren’t you, Guardian?’

Anger burns through you. Guardian. Always so remote, so cool, never using your name like he used to. When will it stop hurting? It’s been seventy cycles but that length of time passes by in a blink when you’ve been alive for as long as you have.

'I’m fine. Good night.’ You push past him and head for the halls.

That night you dream of red rose petals and blood strewn on the Crucible arena floor. Of armoured bodies awkwardly clunking together as they embrace in victory. Of laughing. Of a first kiss shared in a shady hollow of the battlefield that seemed like it should have heralded the happiest time in your life. But it soon turned cold, because the first was also the last, and one of you was eager to put it behind you.

[Hey Zavala, you wanna see what a beachhead on the Dreadnaught looks like?]

Your heart sinks as Cayde’s voice comes over your Ghost. Why did he have to bring Zavala into it now? He should have waited till the mission was completed successfully before gloating. Gritting your teeth you crouch behind cover, pull the sniper rifle off your back and begin picking off Cabal. Mostly this is giving you time to think how to tackle the Goliath tank that’s in firing range of the transmat zone.

It’s big. One blast from a tank shell could wipe you out. And you’re out of heavy ammo.

Predictably, when Zavala speaks his voice is tight with annoyance. [You’ve landed a Guardian on the Dreadnaught without authorisation?]

[Oh, right, can I have authorisation?]

Peering through your scope you drop three Phalanx in a row and swallow a groan. Nice, Cayde. Tease the commander while he’s annoyed. You wonder if this mission was conducted behind Zavala’s back so Cayde could prove he’s just as good a strategist as the commander.

But that was part of its appeal for you, wasn’t it, doing something that you knew Zavala wouldn’t approve of? It’s not like you to take pleasure in insubordination, and you worry for a moment if you’re becoming petty.

[We’ll discuss it later. Guardian, take care of that tank or the transmat zone won’t matter.]

'I’m on it,’ you reply, and the transmission goes silent. Now it’s just you and the tank and a few dozen pissed-off Cabal. Helpfully, Ghost sends down a few crates of heavy ammo and after a fierce firefight you’re able to put the tank out of commission.

As you’re picking off the last of the Cabal, Zavala’s voice comes over your Ghost.

[Guardian, Cayde just briefed us on your … unorthodox mission. Your victory, no matter the method, is a Vanguard victory. You have our thanks.]

Cayde’s cheerful voice follows. [Everyone loves a bad idea when it works.]

As you stand on the deserted beachhead you feel hollow, and you realise you didn’t want Zavala to accept your actions. You wanted him to be angry, to show some emotion towards you that wasn’t polite professionalism. You wanted to start a fight so you could become furious enough with him to say all those things you were never brave enough to say all those cycles ago. Because suddenly he wasn’t Zavala, your team mate, your dearest friend, your almost-lover anymore, and you didn’t know how to talk to him.

Overnight he became Commander Zavala of the Vanguard, someone you didn’t even recognise.

[We’re going to lose them, just like Eriana!]

No you damn well aren’t, you think as you blast a clutch of Taken with your machine gun. You’re firing wildly now, desperately, wasting bullets in your fight to get out of this hell-hole. You holster your weapon and grab the last tomb husk and run for the locked door, dodging round a dozen Taken.

Bullets thud into your back and your vision goes red as you gasp in pain. Finally the door finally opens, and when you stumble out and see the stars overhead you nearly sob from relief and fall to the ground. You could have been trapped down there forever, like Eris’s Fireteam.

That was close. Too close.

You see him as you emerge from the hanger and you turn on your heel and walk back the way you came. You’ll go the long way round and avoid him. You feel twice as shook up as you did after seeing Oryx.

But he’s spotted you. 'Wait.’ His footsteps sound on the concrete, getting closer. You wait, one palm flat against the concrete wall for support.  

He puts his hand on your arm, turning you toward him and squeezing gently. He sounds breathless. 'We thought we’d lost you, Guardian. We thought – Eris was distraught. Thank the Traveler.’

We thought we’d lost you. Eris was distraught. You pull out of his grasp. You were so proud of him when he was promoted to the Vanguard. No one would serve it with more thoughtfulness and dedication than him. At the time, though, you didn’t realise just how much his dedication would occlude all else.

'You ever say my name anymore,’ you whisper.  

He stares at you, seeming lost for a moment. 'That’s the way it has to be. Being Vanguard leader demands a certain amount of professionalism –’

'Are there rules that say the Vanguard leader can’t have friends? That he can’t …’

His shaky laugh as he broke the kiss, his hand warm as it caresses your cheek. 'I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time but I could never seem to find the right moment.’

'Silly,’ you say, grinning. 'Any moment would have been the right moment.’

He straightens, clasping his hands behind his back. 'There’s still so much to be done. The Taken threat … it’s graver than I ever imagined. We need to focus. I need to focus.’

Your heart feeling so full as you half lie, half sit together on the cold ground behind the stone plinth, hiding from Shaxx and the opposition. 'We’re a good team, Zavala.’

He helps you up, brushing rose petals sticky with blood from your legs. 'The best.’

A lump in your throat, you say, 'Do you remember our Fireteam? Remember Crimson Days? We won so many matches together. We …’ You make a helpless gesture, but you can see in his eyes that he remembers what else happened that day. You wait, hoping he’ll give you a sign that he knows what you both lost when he joined the Vanguard. But he just stands there, and though he looks sad he also looks stuck.

'We used to be unstoppable,’ you whisper, and when you turn away he lets you go.

I hope you’re enjoying my Zavala x Reader collection! Thank you for reading <3

[feisar]

my thoughts on the bullshit (marvel vs capcom: infinite)

its so fuckin wack. when they announced 2v2 i was hoping it was gonna be like tatsunoko (which is the best vs series imo) and its not Awful but it feels a lot slower and kinda clunkier? idk the parts i did like was that tagging feels more dynamic and i like the idea of the gems being like the grooves in cvs2 but that’s it? im not a fan of the autocombos and the down down motions shouldn’t be in a capcom game with all the other quarter circles and charges etc. i definitely do need to spend more time with it and hearing about how creative you can be with the mechanics from the pros that are playing it at e3 is a good sign but idk first impressions from me aren’t good.

but ok enough about gameplay i wanna talk about the real shit. that being capcom and disney and the fgc because i think that’s the real reason why this game is gonna be so blah

im a huge marvel head bc it was the first fighting game i really got into once i discovered the fgc (and you know its fun as hell and the first friends i made in college were the kids down the hall i played umvc3 with every weekend). part of the reason why its so fun is because its so God Damn HYPE like look at this shit and tell me you dont get fired up watching this vid and wanna play:

and this brings me into the main reason why i think this game is gonna be bad and flop again and its marvel and disney. we already know about capcoms money, lack of talent, and planning issues with their fighting game department and mvci is set to repeat all the same mistakes they did with sfv (lacking content, corny ass story mode, small roster, LOTS OF DLC) but that’s just one part of it.

the whole game to me just wreaks of a cash grab from disney/marvel to both 1. get that sweet sweet injustice money 2. sell more mcu stuff to nerds and 3. get more people invested in the fighting game market to benefit capcom. yes i understand games are made to make money. the point i’m trying to make here is that this is the result when you get game and media companies who don’t understand why fans love something and try to make something as a response to it.

the modern marvel owned by disney and the pieces of media they put out are carefully constructed and sanitized to show you what they want to see, which is what makes them the most money and what gets you looking away from the other studios that control the rest of their characters, notably xmen. i guarantee you someone at disney was shown the above video about mvc hype and was like “oh we dont want this kind of crowd at our game. this is gonna scare away people.” this coupled with the whole simplification aspect of the game (which i’ll get to in a bit) shows that disney doesn’t really know how the fgc works or how people get excited about these games which is big moments, nostalgia and generally fun shit! not the cheesy ass story mode they’re making which based on the demo is mcu and capcom characters doing nothing but saying each other’s names and having cheeky banter with the lads then punching some robots. the whole game itself feels very MCU oriented from the looks to the sounds and it makes for one really uncompelling package that’s a lot less hype than previous games in the series.

im all for making fighting games more accessible and helping the scene grow but the simplification of the controls and inputs feels really half baked and it seems like capcom doesn’t really know how to draw newbies in. replacing shoryuken inputs but leaving in charges and reverting back to the more complex mvc2 style buttons (lp, lk, hk, hp) as opposed to a friendlier l m h s from mvc3 seems weird and the down down input they added doesn’t fit in with the vibe of the other move inputs as well. as injustice has shown us making a Good ass game with a lot of single player content will get people interested in fighting games enough to buy em and some of those new players will eventually learn enough to get good and start competing. for whatever reason capcom cannot learn these lessons and i feel like the choices they made to simplify the game might turn off current players and thus make the game less popular, leading to a loss loss situation between fg pros and newcomers.

idk this is a wicked messy post but marvel is the game that got me really into FGs and i’ve made so many friends through it and to see what was my favorite fighting game become the lifeless husk we have now is so depressing but i hope capcom learns something from this (they prob wont). we’ll see how it turns out i guess. lmk what you think of all this too

[mettic]

Thoughts on dawn of war 3? Give me the real indepth shit, dont be some baby memer, actually tell me what you think and specify stuff. Personally I enjoy it, seems like a bigger scale dawn of war 2, though I kinda dislike elite units as they seem too powerful and I feel like whoever is the first to get the powerful ones is the ones that'll ultimately win the match, though I've experienced upsets -treeheadgay

Hitting it with a whopping “IT’S PRETTY NEAT!”

My biggest issue with it is tbh an issue with the DOW series as a whole and thats that controlling things can just be a pain in the fucking ass. It’s nowhere near as bad as the absolute unresponsive animation locking hell that was DOW2 but still more frustrating than DOW1 (I think anyways. it’s been a while since i played DOW1). The idea of using Gorgutz’s spin to win move to to block ranged attacks on my own backline is pretty neat if it wasn’t stupid hard to keep my ranged units inbetween gorgutz and the enemy units.

I think elite units are an interesting mechanic that needs some refining, they come off as the thing that you’ll look back on their vanilla versions after like 3 expansions and years worth of patches and be like “why did we play a game with this.” There’s some really fucking fun ones, like I think the Big Mek absolutely rules and with some tweaking you could actually port that into a moba and be a cool moba hero, and I thought the drill hole mechanic from Deff Dread hero was really cool and gives you a lot of options, but then there’s heroes like Gorgutz which just kinda feels flaccid. I dont wanna pretend like I know anything about the actual balancing of this game cuz im sure everything i think will be wrong but I dont think elites are that nuts EXCEPT for the fucking deathwatch elites. Those guys are infuriating, SM get them almost immediatly  and it makes trying to fight SMs early super hard because they’re basically getting a free space marine squad at the near start of the match with a really fuckin good ability in the vuln grenades. Big Mek is my boyfriend and I love him.

Im glad that they’re bringing back buildings and they’re implemented much better than even DOW1 I think. They’re still nowhere near as well done as Starcraft base building in how you can use them but  waaagh banners are pretty neat. The changes to reinforce mechanics (AKA can’t reinforce without being near a building, but you also can’t retreat like in DOW2 to get back to base quickly) kinda forces you to build forward bases to reinforce squads without having them have to walk super slowly back to base. Kinda wish Orks got a smaller building that could do that, like having WAAAGH banners reinforce instead of just regular buildings but what do I know. IDK if SMs/Eldar get a building like I just theorized I didn’t play them at all.

I think the new main gamemode is okay. I think the concept is decent but it sorta streamlines how you have to win the game. I also think the second point super fuck you laser is ass because it just halts early game pushes because that thing just melts early game units so you just kinda have to fuck off, hold resources and get a higher tier army before trying to actually win. I think first point is okay and the core seems kinda unnecessary for 1v1 when you coulda just made it your default base but I guess it’s important for 2v2s.

I cannot even pretend that I even noticed Tactics doing anything.

Hope the game goes even more in depth about tutorials because the hardest part of RTSs is just trying to figure out what the fuck everything does. I still dont really understand the scrap and waaagh mechanics. The closed beta had realyl good tutorials with videos and shit about the elite units and after watching them I had a much better idea of how they all worked and I hope they put out more stuff like that, especially for your regular units and race specific game mechanics. 

really fuckin gorgeous game. animations in particular are all really fucking pretty, I especially love the animations of the Ork buildings, they’re filled with tons of personality. Would also love to make a big shoutout to that fucking stupid jumping animation that Taldeer gets, that thing is so fucking funny I hope they never change it to something cool.

Game needs a concede button. Im really surprised the game didnt have this because I know when I lost at times and I dont wanna just close the game so I dont have to keep wasting my time playing a lost match.

Pretty Good. Hope people who are good at RTSs tel me how to actually build properly soon

[superfamigos]

Sam’s GDC Recap: Day 2

All right, here we are to review Day 2 of GDC, Tuesday February 28. Today was another day chock full of talks. I was on a Summits, Tutorials, and Bootcamps pass, which primarily take place Monday-Tuesday, so I was trying to make the most of the talks I could get to. I still did have a little discretionary time, and met a few nice people. Let’s get into it.

(And check it out! It me! Photo courtesy of Tim Rogers’ Twitter.)

Failure Workshop

Speakers: Michael Molinari, Adriaan de Jongh, Tim Rogers

Overview:

Michael Molinari talked about his interactive Twitch game CityStream

A city building game that combines elements of idle games, Twitch Plays, and realtime DMing

Reasons the game didn't do well included:

Paid content was permanent, so no reason to keep buying

Had to work double shifts to run the game live (more on this in Details)

Got too confusing as more and more things were added

Adriaan de Jongh talked about closing down his game studio Game Oven

Discussed background of the studio and costs of keeping it open

Various struggles for the team:

They had different deep motivations (for the kinds of games they wanted to make, and how to run the studio)

Media articles often gave credit solely to Adriaan, not the rest of the team 

Their roles were undefined, which caused tension

Tim Rogers talked about the failure of his digital sporting good VIDEOBALL

In some sense, Videoball was not a failure, because Tim designed his own favorite game

Videoball was already super hype in 2013

Took too long to get the game out, and had a weak message (I thought the trailers were awesome though - Ed.)

Various problems that contributed to the game's failure:

Inherited the burden of a publisher's expectations (to make the game bigger and better)

Divided their work into "have-to's" and "want-to's" (which led to moving the “want-to’s” into overtime work)

Original publisher went out of business during production

The first-time game experience for new players was too difficult, and often in the wrong environment (they intentionally prioritized a player's 1000th experience over the 1st, which led to the game's appeal not being apparent at first, especially in 1v1 like many streamers and Let's Players did)

Too much stuff in the game (online play split matchmaking into ranked and unranked 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3, plus arcade mode etc.)

The menus were not perfect (e.g. confusing at some parts)

Spent much less than $1 mil promoting the game

Lessons learned from the game:

The game was great: we can make great games

Game conventions are loud and stupid: we should have shown at universities, etc.

You can't make eSports, it just happens (shouldn't have diluted matchmaking with so many modes and just had ranked 2v2, which is what the game was designed around)

We could have made a dumber game (with more identifiable characters, etc)

Gave ideas on how we can save Videoball (essentially a stripped down, ad-supported free version)

Interesting details:

CityStream was only playable in one place: the CityStream Twitch channel. Now that the game has ended, there's no way for anyone to play it.

CityStream's character BEEP, a robot who narrated the action, was actually played in real-time by the team. They watched the game every day with the players and wrote live responses, because they weren't able to come up with a good automated solution. This led to double shifts where the team worked on the game during the day, and then played the game on stream at night.

CityStream ended with a really cute event where players flew to the moon while riding atop the city they built

The business model of Game Oven was to run a company on the "long tail" of sales from many games.

It cost approximately 6500 euros per month to run Game Oven, which went to 3-4 full-time employees, contractors, and other costs.

In the end, long tail sales wasn't enough to run the company, but other sources helped them make it. In other words, Game Oven wasn't closed because they ran out of money.

Communicating your vision and your frustrations is hard, but important

Despite all the problems, Adriaan is still friends with Bojan, and he's proud of what the team accomplished together

"Videoball launched, and my life has been a garage sale ever since." - Tim Rogers

With VIDEOBALL, Tim wanted to create the Burberry scarf of video games (iconic, high-quality, premium)

When working 16-hour days at some point during development, Tim worked out that they were probably making 4.60 per hour

People have said VIDEOBALL's design style is "preschool industrial," and called the game itself "Pong for millenials" and "2D Rocket League"

Tim showed an awesome illustration by Dan Dussault of what VIDEOBALL could look like if the look was un-abstracted into armored future soldier sports

Thoughts:

Failure Workshop sounds like a pretty depressing talk, but it actually wasn't too much of a downer. I mean, I don't want to downplay it: it's hard to see the struggles people went through, and you wish they could have succeeded. And it's also scary to realize that your chances for failure as an indie dev are also very high.

Fortunately though, the speakers generally had a positive outlook. It was good to see that they could pull lessons out of their experience, and they were still at it, trying to make games. CityStream and a lot of the games from Game Oven were very unique and creative, so it was cool to see a lot of new ideas, even if all of them didn't work out. And Tim Rogers' talk in particular was one of the funniest I went to at GDC. Definitely some of the best crowd response I saw.

Links:

Failure Workshop (Video) on GDC Vault: The full talk is available for free on the GDC Vault!

Failure Workshop (Michael Molinari Slides) on GDC Vault

Failure Workshop (Adriaan de Jongh Slides) on GDC Vault

Tech Toolbox

Speakers: Michael Cook, Holden Link, Brian Williams, Cukia "Sugar" Kimani, Chris Martens, Innes McKendrick

Summary:

Michael Cook of Falmouth University showed a procedural assistance tool called Danesh

A tool designed to help you tune your procedural generation

Allows you to not only adjust parameters and see examples, but also calculate metrics

Autotuning lets you set desired output metrics rather than mess with inputs to try to get those outputs

Danesh can search your code for other potential parameters to include

Available at danesh.procjam.com

Holden Link of Turbo Button showed off Tbutt, a wrapper for VR SDKs in Unity

Makes it really easy to compile builds for different VR platforms

Helpful for testing a project for a specific platform on whatever VR rig you have handy

For example, rather than compiling a build to load onto mobile for Google Daydream or Cardboard, the Turbo Button team can just flip a switch to test what they're working on with the Vive on their desk

Available at github.com/turbobutton/tbutt-vr-framework

Brian Williams of Spry Fox demoed Dark Config, a tool that allows real-time changes while the game is running by hotloading config files

You can define level attributes in config files and change those files on the fly, and the game will update instantly while running

This allows much faster iteration and proofing out new ideas using new combinations of existing assets

Uses YAML for the config files

Works with Unity or any other C# project

Available at github.com/spryfox/DarkConfig

Cukia "Sugar" Kimani talked about using Bezier curves to animate rectangles

From Johannesburg, South Africa, working in a studio called Nyamakop on Semblance

Talked about animating the main character, a little blobby dude, by deforming a rectangle using Bezier curves

(Wasn't able to get down many details, but it looked pretty neat)

Is winning the email game with an address that starts with "holla@yourboy" haha

Chris Martens showed Ceptre, or TinkerTool for rulesets

It's a small prototyping language for rulesets and logic stuff in board and video games

Could be helpful for testing resource economies (like Minecraft crafting), procedural generation (like Spelunky) or interactive fiction

Available at github.com/chrisamaphone/interactive-lp

Innes McKendrick from Hello Games talked about the texture generation in No Man's Sky

Their goals were to create variety, allow for runtime generation, and amplify the work of a small art team

They mix and match different layers and elements (base color, stripes/spots, hair, etc.) of individual textures created by an artist

Wrote a photoshop script to export color maps and metadata

For better color control, don't work in RGB (they use HSV)

The game loads in artist data, then combines and recolors in the shader, and finally generates a mipmap

They also wrote tools that let artists see lots of examples generated from their work, so they can make tweaks

Thoughts:

There were some very interesting tools in here. I was particularly into TButt, as it seems like it would be very useful for friends of mine that work on VR games in Unity. Danesh and Dark Config also seemed very useful, and using Bezier curves as an animation tool was interesting too.

Links:

Tech Toolbox (Video) on GDC Vault: Available for free!

Tech Toolbox (DarkConfig Slides) on GDC Vault

Tech Toolbox (Rectangles Slides) on GDC Vault

(The links to each tool are included in the summary notes, if provided.)

Lunch break!

After the Tech Toolbox talk, I got to talking with the guy next to me, Austin. He's a really friendly grad student from University of Michigan who co-teaches the only game development-related class at the school. He invited me to grab lunch with him and some friends, which included his game dev co-teacher Kurt, some grad students from Carnegie Mellon, and Rodrigo, an audio engineer and developer from WayForward. We went to Mel's Diner for lunch (where I got a old-school syrupy strawberry lemonade and a few very juicy, red-to-the-point-of-being-disconcerting sliders), and had a pretty fun time talking about Undertale, Splatoon, the Switch, etc. While Rodrigo and I were talking, I was excited to be able to tell him about Thumper, which he hadn’t heard of yet. If you're out there Rodrigo, hope you checked it out! Let me know what you think!

Unfortunately, lunch went a bit longer than I expected and I missed a talk by Matt Thorson (creator of Towerfall) about the level design for Celeste. Instead, I wandered around a bit in Moscone West until the next talks started, and ended up talking to Josh and Marcos, two Aggies who are currently working as generalists in the games industry (at Flying Car Games, I think?).

Finding ‘Duskers’: Innovation through Better Design Pillars

Speaker: Tim Keenan

Main points:

Rather than designing Duskers up front, the design of the game emerged during the course of development as Tim tried to listen to what the game needed

He gradually discovered several design pillars that guided development, but these pillars were less like mechanics or principles and more like emotions or feelings he wanted to evoke

These pillars included: realism, isolation, and careful planning

Tim felt that staying true to these pillars in all of his decision-making is what led to the effective communication of these feelings in the final game

Interesting details:

Duskers was very much inspired by Capsule, a similar terminal-based game set in space. (In fact, I was a bit confused when I first heard about Duskers, because I had heard of Capsule and wasn't sure if it was the same game.)

He was tempted to flesh out the look of the game world by showing a view of the area around the player's computer terminal before the game began. In the end, he decided to only show the on-screen display, in support of the realism pillar. The idea is that the player isn't controlling a drone operator character, they are the drone operator. This 1:1 simulation of the terminal helped players to feel like they were really there when they turned out all the lights and played.

Similarly, he tested two ways of showing what each drone "sees": a CCTV-like camera feed, and a less-readable view based on edge detection, which is closer to methods used in real computer vision for robots. Players liked the CCTV version more, but he chose the edge detection view, again to support the pillar of realism.

He also cut music entirely from the game to make it feel more real, which was a particularly scary decision.

Tim encouraged anthropomorphizing of the drones, which he hoped would make players feel like a lonely, slightly crazy freighter pilot. He gave each drone a name, and opted to let the drones obey orders blindly, rather than give them some level of AI autonomy. This made the drones feel more like pets or children than peers. He hoped that players would grieve the death of a drone, then realize how crazy they were being for attaching feelings to unfeeling robots, just as a drone operator in the game's world would.

He also increased the feeling of isolation by using logs to flesh out the game's world instead of direct dialogue with other characters.

Thoughts:

As someone who's really interested in imbuing games with emotion and feelings, Tim's success in achieving this with Duskers was really encouraging, and he had some good ideas on how others could do the same. The talk itself was engaging too. I recommend checking it out, especially if you're a fan of the game.

Links:

Finding ‘Duskers’ (Video) on GDC Vault

RUN and RUN / lyrical school 【MV for Smartphone】 on Vimeo: Speaking of 1:1 interface simulations, I was reminded of this great music video, which is designed to be watched on your smartphone (ideally an iPhone). If you’re on your desktop, go ahead and open it up on your phone. I’ll wait ;)

Fantastic Arcade 2016: Misfits Attic’s Sci-Fi Drone Sim DUSKERS - YouTube : Tim’s talk at Fantastic Arcade, which looks to cover some of the same content, and more!

How the dev behind Duskers let his game be what it wanted to be on Gamasutra : a Gamasutra Twitch interview with Tim that also looks like it touches on the same themes of the talk.

Shaders 201: Creating Art with Math

Speaker: Ben Cloward

Main Points:

Demoed methods for creating several shader effects, including:

A simple cloth shader

Animated rain ripples

A volumetric effect for something like ice with dirt and imperfections inside

Thoughts:

I thought this talk was fairly good, but it covered ground that I was already somewhat familiar with. The methods he described were fairly simple, and I’ve learned similar things about shaders in school already. The descriptions are a bit technical though, and I don’t remember most of it, so I won’t spend a ton of time on this talk. However, I will share some of the resources he mentioned in the links below.

Links:

Unfortunately this talk is members only on the Vault.

Uncharted 2: Character Lighting and Shading (Slides) : Ben cited this SIGGRAPH 2010 talk as the basis for the cloth shader he demoed.

Water drop 1 – Observe rainy world | Sébastien Lagarde : A series of blog posts that was the basis for the animated rain ripple shader demo.

Efficient Shader Tricks (Slides) : This GDC 2006 talk was the reference for the volumetric shader.

Another break

After this, I nearly went to the talk “Bringing Fantasy to Life in ‘Final Fantasy XV’”. Actually, to tell the truth, I actually got in the room for the talk, heard the speaker say that there would be spoilers, and then left (after a discrete pause so people wouldn’t think I was leaving for spoilers :P haha). In other circumstances I might have just stayed, but I’ve actually bought Final Fantasy XV and plan to play it soon, so I decided to abstain.

Instead, I went by the Shut Up and Sit Down board game lounge. I saw a few interesting games there, like the beautiful-looking Mouse Guard RPG. I think the comic series is really neat, and I’ve been seeing great reviews of the RPG as well. I was also intrigued by Beyond Baker Street, which was described as a Sherlock Holmes-themed Hanabi where you play a group of inept detectives trying to beat Mr. Holmes to the punch. I do love me some Sherlock. 

While there, I ran into my friend Jon, co-designer of the board game Skulldug! and host of the podcast Pretentious Game Ideas. We both worked at Microsoft Studios a few years back, but both moved on to different things. It was nice to catch up. He also told me about Bargain Quest, a game he had been watching a playthrough of. Apparently you play as competing shopowners in a fantasy adventuring town, which sounded pretty neat. 

After that, I headed downstairs and chilled with my travel buddy Brian until the last talk of the day, the Indie Soapbox.

Indie Soapbox

Speakers: Brandon Sheffield, Tanya X Short, Jarryd Huntley, Sadia Bashir, Marben Exposito, Gemma Thomson, Jerry Belich, Brie Code, Colm Larkin, Jane Ng

Brandon Sheffield: Taste in Games

Brandon encouraged the crowd to make more games that are different by showing their tastes and passions

Doing this can be risky, but can yield greater artist rewards

Cultivate your taste by:

Thinking about your favorite things

Asking others about their favorite things, and why

Going out in the world and doing something new

Going to the thrift store and finding 3 interesting things

Unleash your taste by making something that means something to you, not something bland and flavorless

(Kudos for the Guy Fieri cameo)

Tanya X. Short: How to Self-Care AND Meet Hard Deadlines

Your goals are:

Don’t burn out (making a great game is NOT your #1 priority)

Keep making games better each time (so you have to survive!)

Make a great game

It’s hard to take care of yourself, but believe you can do it

Moon Hunters, Mini Metro, Canabalt, Don’t Starve and more were made without burnout

Stop working all the time (and set specific work hours, it will actually increase productivity)

Prioritize and reprioritize, try to cut out the stuff that’s urgent but not important

Estimate how long it will take you to do tasks, then evaluate the actual time after

Cut the scope of your game before you bleed out

3 weeks of 60+ hours is proven to be less productive than 3 weeks of 40 hours

You’re not an exception

In a study of people who think they need less than 7 hours of sleep, only 5 out of 100 were correct

Don’t give up, forgive yourself for mistakes in self-care and move on

Lack of exercise should be one of the biggest worries, put your health first

Protect your love and joy and energy and don’t use it up by trying to feel more productive

Jarryd Huntley: Indie Rock - The Indie Cousins You Didn’t Know You Had

There are things indie game devs can learn from the indie rock scene

Like rock musicians, you don’t get started until you actually pick up the instrument. Just do it.

Try to take inspiration from wide life experience, not just “game X + game Y”

Work together and hire indie musicians for your game

Try making a local art manifesto with other independent artists in your area, maybe go on tour with a band

Try to learn from other fields that have similarities to indie game development, and support those people too

Sadia Bashir: 3 Things That Can Save Indies from a Pitfall

We think that our great idea is what makes our game successful, but what is really tied to success?

Conceptualize and plan at an early stage

Freeze requirements and scope throughout to avoid feature creep

Quality of a product is related to quality of development process

A hybrid process might be more successful than Agile

Marben Exposito: Subverting Expectations in Shower with Your Dad Simulator 2015

Develops a lot of short, silly games based on dumb Twitter suggestions

Finds it effective to mix the weird and mundane

Also effective was to subvert expectations

Added surprise secret game section, which people really liked

Gemma Thomson: Owning Your Place

The public perception of indies can be harmful

Often we see it as white men crunching on games in a bedroom

Sometimes we end up glamorizing bad working conditions

But life isn’t really Indie Game: The Movie, not everyone can afford to work like this

In our public and private conversation, we should a promote more realistic idea of game development

Jerry Belich: Venn Harder

Currently, the overlap between academia and industry is not too large

Contribute your passion to students

Help students learn more about design than just learning the tools

Opportunities include adjunct teaching positions, short-term teaching residencies, or collaborating with faculty

Brie Code: Public Speaking

Brie shared some tips for preparing to speak publicly

Remember “Why do I care?” and who the audience is

Create an outline (why I care, what I’m saying, why I’m saying it)

Use tips from “Can Charisma Be Taught?” study

Only one idea per slide

Pictures, not text

Practice a lot (and remember to breathe)

Realize you might always be anxious because it’s normal, redirect energy into the talk

Colm Larkin: Share Your Games

Colm developed in the open from day 1 on TIGSource, sharing early progress

Got good feedback, helped him get confident

A few related tips:

Your idea is not that special: execution is more important than the idea

No one is going to steal your idea (and if you do, you’ve been sharing the whole time)

Share work embarrassingly early, before you’re ready

It’s hard, but it helps

Get feedback before you get too far in

Get feedback on foundational stuff, not just polish stuff

Jane Ng: “Product” and Why That Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word

Jar-Jar tongue candy: a terrible product

Often we don’t like talking about our art as a product, but it’s important to success

We don’t usually give feedback on “would you pay money for this?”

Consider experience not just for the player, but for the potential player

See making a good product as a design problem

Think about what makes a great entertainment product

Make sure the whole package is attractive to a potential player

And make sure your game isn’t a Jar-Jar Binks candy tongue

Thoughts:

I had a great time at this talk. Really rapid fire talks, and everyone had an interesting point to make. A few good laughs too. I highly recommend checking this one out on the Vault.

Links:

Indie Soapbox (Video) on GDC Vault: Available for free!

Talks I missed

Building Game Mechanics to Elevate Narrative in Oxenfree - Would like to check this one out after I play Oxenfree. Check it out on the free Vault!

Friendship, Curiosity & Challenge: Focusing Your Career as an Indie Dev - Also seems interesting, and also free to all.

Board Game Design Day: The State & Future of Board Game Design - I don’t follow the board game industry as closely as the video game industry, though I like playing board games. I’m interested to hear what was said here.

Board Game Design Day: The Making of 'Pandemic Legacy' - Also very interested in this, since Pandemic Legacy has been getting tons of praise. I’m scared of spoilers until I have a chance to play though.

Post-con activity

After the Indie Soapbox, Brian, his teammate Colton, and I went out to eat at Tropisueno, a fairly decent Mexican place very close to the Moscone Center. I got to hear a bit from Colton about his background and how his studio, The Stork Burnt Down, got founded, which was interesting.

After dinner, Brian and Colton went to the Oculus party across the street, which was invite-only. I had been considering going to a chiptune show at the DNA Lounge, but was again feeling pretty exhausted. So I headed back to the room to chill and play some Ace Attorney 5. A very full day.

[mrredsrampage-blog]

For honor Review

Let me start with this, I like For Honor. It has decent combat, a surprising amount of customization and a good range of fighters but at times it feels like thats all it has going for it.

The customization is shockingly deep. Not RPG levels of deep but better then the premade outfits alot of fighting games do. Being able to add tattoos to Vikings, engraving to armors, slapping symbols on every part of your character can be funny and makes you feel like it’s really your style

The combat while good can be easily exploited by spamming guard break making it easy to get heavy hits or throw you off of things and while a experienced player can counter this it lets new players get steamrolled not giving them a chance.

It does have a story mode that’s good right? Well I thought so but the story barley makes sense having war for wars sake and where they could have made it a stark look at human nature they decided to add a puppet master to blame all the conflict on. I won’t mention it in this but there are some scenes where you don’t see crucial story elements because you’re not in that chapter anymore which makes the story suffer.

Now they have five modes Dominion, 4v4 elimination/4v4 skirmish, and 1v1 duel/2v2 duel. Now the problem with this is that they feel extremely similar. Granted the duels are they exact same concept but with a few small tweaks, elimination is basically 4v4 duel but it also has power ups such as speed boost, damage boosts and guard boost which can offer some insane comebacks. Skirmish on they other hand is just a team death match but by far the main mode it Dominion and it’s where I think the game shines the most. In this mode you have three flags two of them are points that you stand in and when the bar fills up you’ve captured that point but the third flag is a constant battle between A.I and depending on what team has killed enough enemy A.I to push forward determines who owns that flag this gives it a pseudo MOBA type feel. Once a team hits 1000 points you hit a “Breaking Point” where if you die you can’t respawn but can be revived it you weren’t executed.

I have a lot of fun in this mode but this is where the games BIGGEST FLAW comes in. The connection in this game is horrible with constant disconnects and sometimes not even being able to join this is beyond frustrating. At first I thought the servers where overwhelmed with the amount of people but no matter the time of day or night I get the same problem. Then the idea came up maybe it’s not the game, maybe it’s my connection, if it was my connect then I would be lagging out of other multiplayer games also. Rainbow 6 siege, Titanfall 2, Gears of war 4 and Overwatch just to name a few game where I’ve hand no problems connecting once in game. I’m also not the only one experiencing this issue other online have also voiced Thier frustration. I thought we where past this with games where shotty connection wasn’t going to be a big issue but with lack of dedicated servers this game just crashes at the worst times. One time I was at the end of the game and my two other friends and we hit the breaking point at 1000 and our teammate left again. I took control at started barking orders like a drill Sargent we get all three points and are about to make a huge comeback only for the host on the enemy team to rage quit and kick everyone into their own game with only bots filling teammates and the enemy team.

TLDR The game can be fun with decent combat but has limited game modes, and sub par story but bad game connection and lack of dedicated servers can ruin the experience.

6/10 If you have 60 bucks to burning a hole in your pocket pick it up but with games like Mass Effect Andromeda, Legend of Zelda, and Horizon zero Dawn coming out of save that cash. It’s a real shame because I really like this game I can only hope it gets better

[ddrkirbyisq]

I guess I may as well try to be good about linking to previous posts...here is Fanime 2018.

Blogging just to say "blahblahblah happened" and reporting on it is actually strangely exciting.  Reminds me of good old times...let's get into it!

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't have much lined up for Fanime this year and I had to leave early on Sunday to go teach private lessons (and also left Friday night to go to dance) so I wasn't even there for all that long anyhow.

Arcade gaming -- seemed pretty cool this year, but I didn't really have the time nor desire to really play a lot.  Arcade machines were set up as free play this year which is cool but may have contributed to long lines and/or the machines always being occupied at any given time and I really did not feel like trying to wait for a machine to open up.  That said I did hop on TGM3 for a bit, though not as much as I normally would because A) the sticks and controls felt a bit weird which threw me off a bit and B) I'm really not used to playing on a cab so just the actual size and style of the CRT display kind of throws me for a loop visually.  It was a different setup than the old one (my user data wasn't there) so I created a new account...was initially thinking that maybe I'd play until I got a promotional exam or something, but it became pretty clear that I really wasn't able to perform well on that cab at all, so I stopped.  Unfortunate really, but maybe for the best as I didn't have that sort of time to throw around anyways.

I also saw somebody playing 3rd Strike and he wasn't button mashing so I hopped on and played a bunch of friendlies with him!  They were pretty fun matches!  Despite my rust, I took most of them =O  He was a Hugo player, so a relatively unfamiliar matchup for me and though I had some trouble recognizing certain mixups like dash -> SPD or his running command throw, I think the hardest part was knowing what buttons to press in neutral because Hugo has such good long ranged pokes that beat out a lot of moves from afar.  He switched up to Makoto for a couple games as well and then back to Hugo and finally took one, after which I switched to Ken and played a few more before somebody else asked to play and I hopped out.  Good times. Didn't get to hop on either (there were 2!) of the Bishi Bashi games unfortunately -- again, just didn't have the time or willingness, since I already had other gaming plans, etc. and people were already playing.  I guess these sorts of things are great for those times when you go to con early Friday or whatever and it's super not crowded.  I'll have to remember that for next time, that going on Friday during the day is actually probably a great idea to get all the Artist Alley stuff/etc done with since you want to go through those when it's less crowded, then you can do photo posing and all that when more people are around... Went to one panel this year, Queerness and Magical Girls, which was great!  It also reminded me of just how awesome Madoka was, haha, but also had a lot of good content and great things to think about.  Yay~ We went to IPOH for roti, yay~ For my own gaming, I brought my laptop complete with Melee setup and a small group of us sat down to play some friendlies.  There ended up being 4 of us so I decided we should try out the epic "Dual 1v1" mode of 20XX where you play two simultaneous 1v1 matches (that can't interact with each other!) on the same stage, then the winners of both face off in a 2-stock match.  It was pretty hilarious, especially since having both matches going on in the same space was super visually distracting, and after one match finishes the victor is free to just spam tech skill as much as they want in an attempt to distract the other match, and do things like charge f-smashes, do rolls to confuse techchases, and general other shenanigans.  We played a few doubles matches as well -- 2v2 is not something I play very often (well, not that singles is either), but I knew that more than anything it's important to just look out to fish for kills whenever one of them is at high %.  That's one of the great strengths of Fox in a 2v2, his upsmash is just such a great quick kill option that can be thrown out whenever opportune, and it doesn't require the precision of a tipper marth fsmash or something like that. Watched one or two of my friends perform at Fanimaid Live, so cool and so good!  Woo~ Also played around with some Puyo Puyo Tetris as well as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with another friend, which was great! Artists' Alley and Dealer's Hall: Went through, bought some Journey pins and a necklace from Stephanie Kao (already have some of her prints!) -- only thing I bought all con, but it's nice to have a Journey necklace!  You know, to go along with my Journey messenger bags and Journey lanyard and Journey phone charms as I'm wearing my Journey cosplay lol.  Didn't make it all the way around Dealer's Hall (again, didn't really have the time to spare) but didn't quite care either. I did make sure to spend at least some time going around with my hood/mask on, which surprisingly was more comfortable than I remembered for some reason.  I also discovered that the trick for photos is to just find a good spot somewhere in the main hallway (not blocking traffic) to just sprawl out and do a meditating pose -- then a ton of people just start taking photos as they pass by.  So I'm glad I got a chance to do that before leaving con for good. Overall a chill con as expected, though Saturday was quite a long day still.  No B&W ball this year since I had to go teach private lessons and dance with the Stanford kids, so a bit of a shame, but honestly I wouldn't have been able to handle that much dancing (let alone social energy) this weekend anyways.  But yeah, overall pretty satisfied with how things went. Speaking of dance, that went well too.  Private lessons are always a challenge trying to really drill down and distill useful practical knowledge in a short timeframe, but they're fun and they also really push my own understanding of dance as well, so great all around. For now in the aftermath of the weekend I'm just taking it easy I guess.  I didn't do that much today besides spend some time cleaning up and trying to work on All in a Day's Work 4.  That'll be my main project moving forward for the week I'm sure.  Don't think there will be a postmortem for Inflate Me to the Moon (the only thing I'd really talk about is the SPC-style music).  There is still a fair bit of work left for All in a Day's Work 4 though.  I've gotten the album design all done at least, which is great, and I =thought= I had the tracklist done, but then I remembered that there are actually a bunch of OHC entries I did after I stopped making my "Monthlies" series where they were WIPs or other projects, so they've never been formally released.  Things like the WIP version of "Convergence", or "Song of the Sea", or even some Mysterious Space songs.  And some of those are actually pretty great!  So I had to try and make some room in the tracklist for those.  In the end I decided to cut out a few of the more recent songs and just save them for All in a Day's Work 5, because there are just too many songs that I want to put into these albums!  (figures, since it's been soooo long since All in a Day's Work 4)  Anyways, I still have to do the liner notes for all that and make =sure= that I've included all the tracks I want in the order that I want, so that'll be my main thing for the coming week....though I am also very overdue for some letter writing time. Let's hope we can have a good week this coming week.

[toomanysinks]

StarCraft II-playing AI AlphaStar takes out pros undefeated

Losing to the computer in StarCraft has been a tradition of mine since the first game came out in 1998. Of course, the built-in “AI” is trivial for serious players to beat, and for years researchers have attempted to replicate human strategy and skill in the latest version of the game. They’ve just made a huge leap with AlphaStar, which recently beat two leading pros 5-0.

The new system was created by DeepMind, and in many ways it’s very unlike what you might call a “traditional” StarCraft AI. The computer opponents you can select in the game are really pretty dumb — they have basic built-in strategies, and know in general how to attack and defend and how to progress down the tech tree. But they lack everything that makes a human player strong: adaptability, improvisation and imagination.

AlphaStar is different. It learned from watching humans play at first, but soon honed its skills by playing against facets of itself.

The first iterations watched replays of games to learn the basics of “micro” (i.e. controlling units effectively) and “macro” (i.e. game economy and long-term goals) strategy. With this knowledge it was able to beat the in-game computer opponents on their hardest setting 95 percent of the time. But as any pro will tell you, that’s child’s play. So the real work started here.

Hundreds of agents were spawned and pitted against each other.

Because StarCraft is such a complex game, it would be silly to think that there’s a single optimal strategy that works in all situations. So the machine learning agent was essentially split into hundreds of versions of itself, each given a slightly different task or strategy. One might attempt to achieve air superiority at all costs; another to focus on teching up; another to try various “cheese” attempts like worker rushes and the like. Some were even given strong agents as targets, caring about nothing else but beating an already successful strategy.

This family of agents fought and fought for hundreds of years of in-game time (undertaken in parallel, of course). Over time the various agents learned (and of course reported back) various stratagems, from simple things such as how to scatter units under an area-of-effect attack to complex multi-pronged offenses. Putting them all together produced the highly robust AlphaStar agent, with some 200 years of gameplay under its belt.

Most StarCraft II pros are well younger than 200, so that’s a bit of an unfair advantage. There’s also the fact that AlphaStar, in its original incarnation anyway, has two other major benefits.

First, it gets its information directly from the game engine, rather than having to observe the game screen — so it knows instantly that a unit is down to 20 HP without having to click on it. Second, it can (though it doesn’t always) perform far more “actions per minute” than a human, because it isn’t limited by fleshy hands and banks of buttons. APM is just one measure among many that determines the outcome of a match, but it can’t hurt to be able to command a guy 20 times in a second rather than two or three.

It’s worth noting here that AIs for micro control have existed for years, having demonstrated their prowess in the original StarCraft. It’s incredibly useful to be able to perfectly cycle out units in a firefight so none takes lethal damage, or to perfectly time movements so no attacker is idle, but the truth is good strategy beats good tactics pretty much every time. A good player can counter the perfect micro of an AI and take that valuable tool out of play.

AlphaStar was matched up against two pro players, MaNa and TLO of the highly competitive Team Liquid. It beat them both handily, and the pros seemed excited rather than depressed by the machine learning system’s skill. Here’s game 2 against MaNa:

In comments after the game series, MaNa said:

I was impressed to see AlphaStar pull off advanced moves and different strategies across almost every game, using a very human style of gameplay I wouldn’t have expected. I’ve realised how much my gameplay relies on forcing mistakes and being able to exploit human reactions, so this has put the game in a whole new light for me. We’re all excited to see what comes next.

And TLO, who actually is a Zerg main but gamely played Protoss for the experiment:

I was surprised by how strong the agent was. AlphaStar takes well-known strategies and turns them on their head. The agent demonstrated strategies I hadn’t thought of before, which means there may still be new ways of playing the game that we haven’t fully explored yet.

You can get the replays of the matches here.

AlphaStar is inarguably a strong player, but there are some important caveats here. First, when they handicapped the agent by making it play like a human, in that it had to move the camera around, could only click on visible units, had a human-like delay on perception and so on, it was far less strong and in fact was beaten by MaNa. But that version, which perhaps may become the benchmark rather than its untethered cousin, is still under development, so for that and other reasons it was never going to be as strong.

AlphaStar only plays Protoss, and the most successful versions of itself used very micro-heavy units.

Most importantly, though, AlphaStar is still an extreme specialist. It only plays Protoss versus Protoss — probably has no idea what a Zerg looks like — with a single opponent, on a single map. As anyone who has played the game can tell you, the map and the races produce all kinds of variations, which massively complicate gameplay and strategy. In essence, AlphaStar is playing only a tiny fraction of the game — though admittedly many players also specialize like this.

That said, the groundwork of designing a self-training agent is the hard part — the actual training is a matter of time and computing power. If it’s 1v1v1 on Bloodbath maybe it’s stalker/zealot time, while if it’s 2v2 on a big map with lots of elevation, out come the air units. (Is it obvious I’m not up on my SC2 strats?)

The project continues and AlphaStar will grow stronger, naturally, but the team at DeepMind thinks that some of the basics of the system, for instance how it efficiently visualizes the rest of the game as a result of every move it makes, could be applied in many other areas where AIs must repeatedly make decisions that affect a complex and long-term series of outcomes.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/24/starcraft-ii-playing-ai-alphastar-takes-out-pros-undefeated/

[fmservers]

StarCraft II-playing AI AlphaStar takes out pros undefeated

Losing the the computer in StarCraft has been a tradition of mine since the first game came out in 1998. Of course, the built-in “AI” is trivial for serious players to beat, and for years researchers have attempted to replicate human strategy and skill in the latest version of the game. They’ve just made a huge leap with AlphaStar, which recently beat two leading pros 5-0.

The new system was created by DeepMind, and in many ways it’s very unlike what you might call a “traditional” StarCraft AI. The computer opponents you can select in the game are really pretty dumb — they have basic built-in strategies, know in general how to attack and defend, and how to progress down the tech tree. But they lack everything that makes a human player strong: adaptability, improvisation, and imagination.

AlphaStar is different. It learned from watching humans play at first, but soon honed its skills by playing against facets of itself.

The first iterations watched replays of games to learn the basics of “micro” (i.e. controlling units effectively) and “macro” (i.e. game economy and long-term goals) strategy. With this knowledge it was able to beat the in-game computer opponents on their hardest setting 95 percent of the time. But as any pro will tell you, that’s child’s play. So the real work started here.

Hundreds of agents were spawned and pitted against each other.

Because StarCraft is such a complex game, it would be silly to think that there’s an single optimal strategy that works in all situations. So once the machine learning agent was essentially split into hundreds of versions of itself, each given a slightly different task or strategy. One might attempt to achieve air superiority at all costs; another to focus on teching up; another to try various “cheese” attempts like worker rushes and the like. Some were even given strong agents as targets, caring about nothing else but beating an already successful strategy.

This family of agents fought and fought for hundreds of years of in-game time (undertaken in parallel, of course). Over time the various agents learned (and of course reported back) various stratagems, from simple things such as how to scatter units under an area-of-effect attack to complex multi-pronged offenses. Putting them all together produced the highly robust AlphaStar agent, with some 200 years of gameplay under its belt.

Most StarCraft II pros are well under 200, so that’s a bit of an unfair advantage. There’s also the fact that AlphaStar, in its original incarnation anyway, has two other major benefits.

First, it gets its information directly from the game engine, rather than having to observe the game screen — so it knows instantly that a unit is down to 20 HP without having to click on it. Second, it can (though it doesn’t always) perform far more “actions per minute” than a human, because it isn’t limited by fleshy hands and banks of buttons. APM is just one measure among many that determines the outcome of a match, but it can’t hurt to be able to command a guy twenty times in a second rather than two or three.

It’s worth noting here that AIs for micro control have existed for years, having demonstrated their prowess in the original StarCraft. It’s incredibly useful to be able to perfectly cycle out units in a firefight so none takes lethal damage, or to perfectly time movements so no attacker is idle, but the truth is good strategy beats good tactics pretty much every time. A good player can counter the perfect micro of an AI and take that valuable tool out of play.

AlphaStar was matched up against two pro players, MaNa and TLO of the highly competitive Team Liquid. It beat them both handily, and the pros seemed excited rather than depressed by the machine learning system’s skill. Here’s game 2 against MaNa:

In comments after the game series, MaNa said:

I was impressed to see AlphaStar pull off advanced moves and different strategies across almost every game, using a very human style of gameplay I wouldn’t have expected. I’ve realised how much my gameplay relies on forcing mistakes and being able to exploit human reactions, so this has put the game in a whole new light for me. We’re all excited to see what comes next.

And TLO, who actually is a Zerg main but gamely played Protoss for the experiment:

I was surprised by how strong the agent was. AlphaStar takes well-known strategies and turns them on their head. The agent demonstrated strategies I hadn’t thought of before, which means there may still be new ways of playing the game that we haven’t fully explored yet.

You can get the replays of the matches here.

AlphaStar is inarguably a strong player, but there are some important caveats here. First, when they handicapped the agent by making it play like a human, in that it had to move the camera around, could only click on visible units, had a human-like delay on perception, and so on, it was far less strong and in fact was beaten by MaNa. But that version, which perhaps may become the benchmark rather than its untethered cousin, is still under development, so for that and other reasons it was never going to be as strong.

AlphaStar only plays Protoss, and the most successful versions of itself used very micro-heavy units.

Most importantly, though, AlphaStar is still an extreme specialist. It only plays Protoss versus Protoss — probably has no idea what a zerg looks like — with a single opponent, on a single map. As anyone who has played the game can tell you, the map and the races produce all kinds of variations which massively complicate gameplay and strategy. In essence, AlphaStar is playing only a tiny fraction of the game — though admittedly many players also specialize like this.

That said, the groundwork of designing a self-training agent is the hard part — the actual training is a matter of time and computing power. If it’s 1v1v1 on Bloodbath maybe it’s stalker/zealot time, while if it’s 2v2 on a big map with lots of elevation, out come the air units. (Is it obvious I’m not up on my SC2 strats?)

The project continues and AlphaStar will grow stronger, naturally, but the team at DeepMind thinks that some of the basics of the system, for instance how it efficiently visualizes the rest of the game as a result of every move it makes, could be applied in many other areas where AIs must repeatedly make decisions that affect a complex and long-term series of outcomes.

Via Devin Coldewey https://techcrunch.com

[nazih-fares]

Six years after the release of Marvel vs Capcom 3, which recently was ported to this generation of consoles, it is finally time for Capcom to reveal its new opus of this cross-franchise fighting game, with the rather very different Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. With the aim of appealing to a bigger audience, did Capcom manage to do so without pushing away fans of the series?

Who ever had the idea to unite the Marvel universe with the world of Capcom could give birth to such an unexpected and successful crossover? A series that kicked off back in 1996 with over 4 different editions over the years, this new opus is banking heavily on making some sort of sense of how these two universe collides. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite tells the story of an interplanetary chaos set by Ultron Sigma, born from a cross between Ultron (Marvel’s iconic robot evil) and Sigma (the main antagonist of Mega Man X). Thanks to the two Infinity Stones which he has in his possession (another key Marvel reference), which are linked to Space and Reality, he managed to merge these two worlds together. Like any big villain wishing to control the galaxy (and all dimensions), Ultron Sigma wants to shape it to its effigy, seeing himself and peers as a supreme god of living beings. In any case, a bunch of heroes from both Marvel and Capcom will have to put their egos aside, in order to recover the six Infinity Stones, to accomplish their mission and defeat this ultimate evil.

This previous paragraph is basically the story of the “Story Mode” found in the game, something Capcom omitted in the previously launched Street Fighter V, which should be something amazing if it wasn’t for this script that is all over the place, barely piecing things together, confusing you along the way like some sort of 12 season running soap opera where the mother is now the adopted daughter of the father of the main actor’s wife. I’m not going to bash it much, and I did particularly enjoyed the frantic pace of the story but after actually enjoying the ones in Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 (both reviewed earlied this year), and with the narrative direction of Marvel, this game would’ve been better at telling a tale of mighty heroes saving the world. The relatively dynamic stage set for these character is reinforced by the humor of certain ones like the devilish Dante from Devil May Cry, Frank West from Dead Rising, or everyone’s favorite angry and facetious Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy. We simply regret that not everyone was entitled to the same preferential treatment, and some character are either fillers or just really in bad roles.

I would say the main issue here with maybe not enjoying the story mode other than the script is two simple things: graphical quality and loading time. While the latter doesn’t need much explaining, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite has a really long loading time between the story mode cutscenes and the actual fights, which kills the flow and annoys the impatient players. The second point is the character design of almost the entire roster. I get that blending Marvel and Capcom character styles is a feat of its own considering the different artistic origins of each media house, but there’s not enough compromise on each end, which gives us some very weird versions of our heroes. If Chun-Li got “fixed” successfully after the feedback of the community, Ryu looks rather cubic during the cinematic, and Dante almost looks nothing like the Demon hunter we know. To finish on the graphical part of the game, the game is still a feast for the eyes in battle, with volley of visuals mashing through the screen, especially supers that are so crazy that it could give instant epilepsia attacks.

Before attacking into the heart of the title which is the gameplay, Capcom seemed to have learned the lesson in terms of content at launch. When playing offline, you’ll have no less than six modes ranging from Story, Arcade, Mission (which are sets of challenges to learn each character’s combos), the inevitable Training, and finally Versus with friend or CPU mode. The Collection is added as a bonus, and includes information about each heroes, the music of the game, and cinematics to replay. For those of you brave enough to play online (or those with decent connections),  you can then access to Ranked match, Casual Match, and the Beginners League (for those under the level 14), Lobbies to accommodate up to eight players, Rankings to see the world’s leaderboards, and finally a replay feature to rewatch all of your previous matches.

Now that we tackled everything, how’s Marvel vs Capcom Infinite when it comes to gameplay, and has it been really turned into a casual mess to attract newcomers? Thankfully no, and if the game made drastic changes that may be detrimental to the series, the overall package is still decent. First of all is the switch from a 3v3 to a 2v2 combat, something that has only been done in the Tatsunoko vs Capcom series (my personal favorite of these crossover franchises). While this choice has been made to enhance readability so that the action is more clear than it was before, I now understand this with the new generation graphic engine, as a three player mashup would’ve become a gigantic sore for the eyes. This also makes it easier for Capcom to reconquer the pros of the Marvel vs Capcom fight, and hopefully have enough leverage to add the game in its annual Capcom Pro Tour.

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In addition, the gameplay, specifically the combos, have been made much easier to input. Unlike the technical tenors of the genre (Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Tekken), big attacks that used to require a severe set of input can be done by pressing for example LT + RT, or a quarter circle followed by the combination of low and high punch. This simplification thus has the consequence of making the whole more accessible to ordinary players, and thus gives this immediate pleasure of play which does not require to get your thumb sores to see these amazing super moves. On the one hand, and although it can be played in the high ranks of the fighting game community, the franchise is not specially known for its technicality. Moreover, the combos, hyper and super automated jumps can be deactivated, relying on you to customize the experience to your liking, so you can do the combos like the good ol’ days.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite shares another common trait with Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: the presence of the second character, which can be used if the main one is KOed, and more interesting acts as a helper to establish a chain of combos. Exploited as it should, in other words by having the right timing, the Active Switch can be turned into an ability to break the movements of your enemy, even the most impressive ones. However, you will need to make sure you have two bars of Super in stock, otherwise it will not work. A good other part of this dynamic is that fighters that are “out of the ring” will recover a certain amount of health with time, which can call for some fun last minute switch of tactics.

You’d think that it’s enough to change the recipe, but there’s is one parameter that still allows to change things around which are key to the whole direction of the game: the Infinity Stones. Like in the Marvel universe, there are six of them, which you will have to pick one at the beginning of each match, according to your affinities, your pair of characters picked, and obviously your opponent. Whether it is the Stone of Reality, Time, Power, Soul, Mind or Space, these invaluable jewels with “infinite” powers can shape and alter the game. These will obviously activate numerous unique abilities depending on the stone, whether it is an Infinity Surge (LB) or an Infinity Storm (LB+RB). I’m not going to explain the whole are not going to make the inventory at the risk of falling asleep, but it is necessary to give you some examples. Let’s say you decided on picking the “Mind” Stone: the Infinity Surge allows you to lock your opponent in a suspended bubble that stun him for a short moment, provided that you are close to him since. But when you switch to the “Infinity Storm” state (which is activated once you hit 50% of your Infinity bar), your Super gauges fill up at crazy speed, leaving you to freely go mental and abuse Super moves.

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite was reviewed using an Xbox One downloadable code of the game provided by Capcom. The game is also available on PlayStation 4 and PC in online and retail store releases. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.

With this new episode, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite retains its core elements while drastically modifying certain gameplay features in order to seduce as many newcomers as possible. Six years after the release of Marvel vs Capcom 3, which recently was ported to this generation of consoles, it is finally time for Capcom to reveal its new opus of this cross-franchise fighting game, with the rather very different Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.