As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, I've been putting together an article about the latest build of Street Fighter 6 for Games Radar and that has eaten up a lot of my time, so here's one from the archive - something I wrote about a year or so ago but it never ended up anywhere. I've tweaked it, improved it and made a few nice .gifs to go alongside the words and stuck it here to buy me some time to get something ready for next week. Realms Deep 2022 kicks off today and I'll have something about that ready for you all this time next week.

Shadows Try Fights.

I hear it all the time. “I’d really like to get into fighting games but I’m just so shit at them.”

It’s the silliest thing you could say about the genre. It’s like saying you’d love to learn to play the piano but you won’t because you’re rubbish. Well, here’s the news - you’re not rubbish, you’re just new. A beginner. There’s only one way to change that, too. Practice. Time spent. REPS. Get into that training mode and start doing the work. You will, categorically, improve if you simply spend time learning how to play the game. This sounds intimidating to some people - how is spending time in training mode actually fun? - and to be honest it is one of the greatest hurdles fighting games face. In an online FPS, you can just play hundreds of online hours and slowly improve. You can do the same in fighting games, but unfortunately, your ego is on the line too. There’s no team to hide behind or to blame your failures on. You’re going to get washed constantly and the only person responsible for this is you. So, most people get frustrated and quit, because they’re not willing to sit in training mode and aren’t willing to eat shit and learn to like it.

Which leads to the issue of how exactly to reward the player. People will happily put hundreds of hours into something like Destiny in order to get a new gun with bigger numbers and, during this time spent grinding will also improve at the game, but not necessarily have a massive skill increase, as improvement in a lot of these games is an in-game stat boost of some kind.. So, the main difference between grinding fighting games and grinding an MMO/GaaS title is the prize - it turns out that your own improvement isn’t enough for most people and they need a trinket or two along the way.

Now, I’m not claiming to have the solution to this ongoing issue with fighting games, nor am I smart enough to even throw up a few possibilities, but the trick appears to be somewhere in masking grinding with some sort of clear single player content, whilst throwing in a few token in-game rewards along the way. A nice new hat for Ryu, for instance. A man who certainly is a lot smarter than I when it comes to all things fighting games is James Chen, legitimate FGC (fighting game community, for those unaware) royalty and someone who has seen the entire genre go from the arcades to the bedrooms to the internet and even into massive arenas in Las Vegas.

A few years ago I interviewed James for a project that unfortunately didn’t get off the ground (a classic case of publications simply saying that fighting games don’t do numbers) so it was never released. Admittedly this saved me a considerable transcription job but there was some real gold in that interview about how the genre can improve in regards to getting people to engage with the actual learning of the game in a more meaningful way. The one quote that stood out the most was when I asked him which game has the best training mode and he replied with Super Smash Bros Melee - which caught me by surprise.

You see, the Home Run Derby mode, where you have to smash the white beanbag dude as far as possible, is actually teaching you how to maximise your damage output whilst keeping control of you and your enemies’ movement. A basic, fundamental aspect of success at a competitive level in that game. There are probably some players out there who can drive the damage percentage of that beanbag up considerably in a couple of combos and not realise they could do that to another player in a fight, so there still needs to be some kind of connection made in the game, but on the other hand, would this player have ever been able to drill and practice and get these combos so sharp if it was just them and a training mode and nothing else? One game out there that actually teaches a lot of the fundamentals of a fighting game through a bloody brilliant single player game. From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is, at its core, a fighting game. Look, hear me out.

By stripping away the RPG elements that usually come with a From Software action game and putting a focus on pure combat, there should be no surprise that this kind of thoughtful, reactive sword fighting would share a fair bit with the fighting game genre, but here’s the various concepts that you need to know for success in both fighting games and Sekiro. Of course, the ability to block or parry enemy attacks and the risk/reward involved in your choice is front and centre in Sekiro, but many fighting games have some kind of defensive risk/reward mechanic too. Look at the parry in Street Fighter III, for instance. You can hold back to block all incoming attacks, but will receive a small amount of ‘chip’ damage, as well as being forced into the blocking animation which takes a bit of time to recover from and, therefore, you may have to sit there and take a bit of pressure (we’ll get onto this in a bit). You can risk timing a forward press to perform a parry, which not only mitigates the chip damage, but also removes the blocking animation and subsequent recovery, so you can counter attack immediately.

Obviously there’s a bit more depth to this and other games have similar but ultimately different mechanics, but fundamentally these are coming from the same place. Being able to take risks with your ability to defend yourself will always be exciting and something that you always need to be thinking about. In Sekiro, it’s crucial - simply defending the entire time will break your posture and leave you vulnerable, but a misplaced parry can mean even bigger damage coming your way.

Next up, there’s space control and what we call in the FGC ‘the neutral’. Let’s look at Guile for a second as an example of how a character controls the space around him. Guile has always been dead simple - he throws Sonic Boom projectiles or he does a Flash Kick. The Sonic Booms travel across the screen, controlling the lower horizontal and forcing the opponent to block or try to jump over them. Correctly identifying when the opponent jumps means Guile can hit them with a Flash Kick, which controls the vertical space around him. That is the absolute barebones Guile game plan and a basic example of how controlling the space and forcing the opponent to do what you want them to is a strong tool.

In Sekiro, being aware of the ranges of you and your enemies attacks is just as important as it is in any fighting game. Being able to ‘poke’ away at your opposition from a safe range and knowing exactly where your attacks are going to hit when dealing with a group are huge parts of surviving encounters. Knowing where bosses attacks hit and how they cut off the arena you’re fighting them in, so you can safely move into an attacking position is entirely about neutral control. This leads nicely to everyone’s least favourite part about learning to play a fighting game at a competitive level - knowing frame data, hitboxes and hurtboxes. Here’s the dirty secret: frame data is in basically everything and in From Software games, it’s actually really upfront about it all. You have very clear invincibility frames, where you’ll pass through an enemies active attack should your dodge connect with it during the frames of animation where it is deemed to be untouchable. This is all frame data knowledge!

Did you know that in Street Fighter II, Ken and Ryu’s Dragon Punch has invincibility frames, so if someone throws a fireball at you, you can time a Dragon Punch and watch the fireball sail right through you? It’s a really good tactic and shows how a bit of knowledge about how the game is working underneath all the visual design can go a long way in helping you achieve victory. Knowing what attacks will leave you vulnerable and which ones you can throw out and still have enough time to defend yourself if it is blocked? That’s frame data. Knowing that you have to dodge over the right arm of the Demon of Hatred when it does a specific attack? That’s understanding hitboxes and which parts of an enemy will cause damage to you if you get hit by them. All that frame data does is give you concrete numbers that you can nail your plan of attack to.

Finally, there’s execution. Although this is a constant area of debate within the FGC, the consensus seems to be that there is a sweet spot in allowing new players to have access to a lot of stuff with relative ease but still having a high enough skill ceiling to reward those players who put in the time and effort to pull off the really tricky stuff and risk screwing it up in the heat of battle. Now, Sekiro doesn’t have the same input execution as say, King of the Fighters, but it does require you to commit to every action, whether that be using one of the Shinobi Prosthetic abilities or simply performing an attack chain. If you mash the button rather than taking care and precision, you’ll over-commit unintentionally and likely get yourself killed. You can see this especially clear in hammering the block button in an attempt to get parries - the timing will be off so you’ll still guard the attack but it’ll send your posture meter flying up and, on NG+, will actually give you chip damage!

So although lacking in traditional fighting game execution, Sekiro is teaching about that economy of buttons and movement that is crucial in a fighting game. Countless times I have played a new/casual player at something like Tekken and they’ve been a full screen away from me, still hitting buttons and throwing out random kicks and punches and I’ve just asked them “why are you doing that?” and immediately they realise that they should concentrate on closing distance rather than just trying to attack as much as humanly possible. Execution isn’t just about being able to perform a Dragon Punch every time someone jumps in on you, or nail one frame links 99% of the time, but even down to the very basics of pressing buttons and making moves based on at the very least, a calculated decision.

This, of course, rolls back into the defensive risk/reward strategy, completing this brilliant little system that underpins almost every fighting game ever made, as well as most of the From Software titles. Sure, Dragon Ball FighterZ might have mad air dashes, Marvel vs Capcom might have assist characters and hell, Smash Bros might have you fending off seven other players all holding Super Scopes, but all this stuff is there in some way. Finishing Sekiro might not make you good at any specific fighting game, but if you have finished Sekiro then you can certainly understand what it takes to be good at fighting games.

THANKS FOR READING.

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