Fighting Talk

Published on Wednesday, 01 February 2012 09:34

	By Jay McGregor Follow @_JayMcGregor

I've just watched IGN's 2011's best fatalities in fighting games and I'm horrified to say the least.

Not because I've just witnessed a medley of very imaginative murders (I rather enjoyed that part), I'm shocked because I can only imagine how many button commands it must have taken to perform such moves. The modern day fighting game has become the Rubik’s cube of the video game world; you pick it up because of the challenge and throw it out of the nearest window for the same reason.

Fighting games were popular because they could be easily picked up and played. The only skills required were a callous thumb, a well timed punch, and an irresistible urge to bash buttons like watching Jim Davidson in a Cinderella pantomime. Now, they're an insane test of memory. You seemingly need to laser-engrave a million combos directly into your memory just to avoid flailing your arms around a bit before falling ungracefully on your arse. Yes, the very same memory that has been fried by excessive video gaming. Toasty! 

Face it, gamers are lazy people. We're the only people in human history who can break a sweat sitting on the sofa*. So, to ask someone who's attention span is shorter than a tic-tac and who's memory is thinner than Michael McIntyre's stand up to digest The Encyclopedia Galactica of combination moves is simply unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, I like challenges, I love them in fact, but I love them even more when I win.

I don’t want to buy a game knowing - KNOWING - that I won’t get to see half of animations because I don’t have the energy or mental capabilities to unlock them - settling instead for a YouTube clip of some Chinese cyborg tearing up a controller. If some tragedy were to befall your nether regions, would your first trip be to Stringfellow’s? No. It’d be to the rubbish dump to throw out anything that has an internet connection.

I know this sounds like an old man rant but fighting games have really gone to the dogs. It’s political correctness gawn maad. One of my mates, like me, still buys Street Fighter every time it comes out, mainly out of nostalgia. And, like me, he plays one game and realises the Rainman memory and cat-on-crack reflexes needed to continue playing past practice mode - opting instead to stock up on Bovrill, knitting patterns, and tweed jackets before swinging over my house for an episode of Come Dine With Me.

I went over to his house when Street Fighter IV came out, excited and pessimistic in equal measures. I knew we weren’t going to have epic matches that involved lots of flashing lights and slightly camp finishing moves like some European trance discotheque. Instead I expected to us to be stood at either end of the screen frantically punching and kicking air in an attempt to make something happen. I call it Street Fighter: Alzheimer's Edition.

This is when it dawned on me, you can’t even button mash anymore. The great gaming institution of mashing the buttons, pulling off spectacular moves and looking like you knew what we’re doing has been eradicated. Capcom have sucked the fun out of being unskilled and chosen to make Street Fighter an exact science making us realise our glaring short falls in the process. I game because I fail in life, if I fail in game, then I cease to exist (Confucius).

When Marvel Vs Capcom was released earlier this year fighting games reached their crescendo. This game embodies everything that makes modern fighting games a chore, the size of the roster, the extensive combo lists and the over-the-top visuals that leave you feeling molested. I tried to be smart by cornering my opponent and repeatedly pressing punch but even that age old tactic doesn’t work anymore. Audacious double jumps made sure of that.

I used to laugh at people who wasted their time trying to pull off a fatality in Mortal Kombat. What could be funnier than watching someone carefully plan their battle so as not to hurt their opponent too much, prepping them for a finisher, enter in a long combination, mistime it and punch them to death. But now it seems the joke is on me. All that hard work has paid off and I’m left limp in front of a controller.

As with all ‘sporting’ games now, simulation supersedes fun. And in some twisted way, Capcom have convinced themselves that there’s a cause all link between the amount of effort that Zangief expresses and the amount the gamer puts into controlling him. This is misguided. The fun of the game is actually directly linked to how little effort is put in. Video games were created as an antidote to effort. They’re the sanctuary from effort. In real life, I've never been selected for the local parish OAP football team. In video games, I run the best f'n football team in the world.

So when games become simulations they’re pissing on the founding theory of what they were invented for - fun and escapism. If you really don't like the fact that your character can carry ten guns in his back pocket whilst recovering from plasma wounds by gobbling down a cheese 'n' pickle sandwhich, here's a suggestion: JOIN THE ARMY. More realism? In games? The same games where supermodels chuck away their careers to shoot fireballs from their feet at green hairy monsters? Has Capcom been mentally scarred after taking mesculine in an anime theatre?

So what then of this old dog who refuses to learn new tricks? Too easily agitated to learn even one combo and too proud to admit it, but I can’t turn back because the remakes of old Street Fighter games don’t quench the HD thirst. I guess I’ll sit here and rant then.

*Apart from when a Fray Bentos ad comes on at the Prescott residence.