This past weekend was the EVO Tournament, a large annual fighting game tournament. Coincidentally, as I’ve been working through the Extra Credits backlog I watched this video about how fighting games play out at higher levels of play. I only watched a few minutes of EVO unfortunately, as interesting as watching these professional level game tournaments sounds, I find I would rather play or make games myself than watch someone else, but all of the coverage got me thinking about fighting games this week.
Fighting games are absolutely fascinating, full of attacks and counter attacks, interesting tradeoffs between risk and reward, as the Extra Credits video says, it’s almost like a chess match. Unfortunately, while I’ve always sensed that that high level game was there, I’ve never been able to tap into it and master it. I’ve bought a fighting game or two for every console generation, and put some time into all of them, but still never been able to figure it out. Part of it probably has to do with the way I play games, I like to play a game to conclusion, then move on to something else, trading a depth of knowledge for a breadth of knowledge.
But the unfortunate thing about my play style is that often the high level game is where things get really rewarding. There have been a couple of games where I finished the story mode, then stuck around to take part in the extra challenges. And those can often be more gripping and exciting than the main story. The tension that I feel as I work my way through an advanced challenge is remarkable, and it just mounts and becomes more intense as I near the end of a very well played run. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for the competitors at EVO.
This all highlights how much hidden depth lies in many games. I play enough to catch a glimpse from time to time, but it takes a lot of time to get that good, and I could easily play several games through at a mediocre level in the same time it would take to get really good at one game. Still, it’s something that I think needs appreciating from time to time, and definitely something that deserves some respect.