Which is the Best Fighting Game?

[Wolf Kanno]

Now I love my RPG'a and I have a strange affinity towards rythm games (I love my DDR and Gitaroo Man) but my other great joy are fighting games. Now I feel this genre has really suffered and I find fewer and fewer new (non rereleases) fighting games I really want. Perhaps it's because I feel that the move to 3D never transitioned well and no one is going to bother trying to bring the frenzied action of the old SNK days back but I was curious as to what anyone else thinks.

I feel the last really good fighting game to be released was Guilty Gear XX: Midnight Carnival (Guilty Gear X2 to you noobs) with Soul Calibur 2 as the only really decent 3D fighting game out now.

Your thoughts? Feeling? Rants? Blasphemous Lies?

[RiseToFall]

I'm a Street Fighter and KoF fan, to me 3rd strike is the perfect fighting game, with Garou: Mark of the Wolves closely behind(it's not KoF but it's still SNK). I do want to try out the Guilty Gear series though.

[Markus. D]

I have been playing Street Fighter Anthology all day.

since I got home...


soooo about, 4 hours ^-^

[Necronopticous]

to me 3rd strike is the perfect fighting game

Oh, not just to you.

3rd Strike is the best fighting game ever created.

[Rocket Edge]

The tekken series, but it has it's faults. You can win a game by doing things like using some moves repetitively which is annoying.

[blackmage_nuke]

Street fighter, Hadoken just looks and sounds so cool

[Mo-Nercy]

The tekken series, but it has it's faults. You can win a game by doing things like using some moves repetitively which is annoying.

I think I know your problem. Block low.

I'm better at Soul Calibur but I've come to love Tekken a whole lot more. The size of the movelists, the possibilities with mixups, and the number of delayable attacks, cancellable strings etc. means that winning doesn't just come down to the character your using or even the moves you use, but how you psychologically wear down your opponent.

Any critics of Tekken will tell you it's "too easy to win" because a juggle will knock off 60+ health at a time. But the beauty of Tekken lies in one's ability to read a launcher and the moves that set it up. Better players will hardly get launched and at all and victory will go to the one who applies better pressure.

[Roto13]

Don't smoosh 2D and 3D fighters together. :P

Soul Calibur

[Sylvie]

I say Tekken. I love Mortal Kombat, but I can't say its that good. It's just that I grew up with it and came to enjoy it. Street Fighter and Soul Calibur are also great games, but Soul Calibur kind of becomes repetitive to me after awhile.

[JKTrix]

2D and 3D fighters together? Sacrilege! My deciding factor for deciding which is the 'best' is the one that displays balance, depth and control at a very high level. Thus, the absolute best fighters in each genre are:

Best 3-D Fighter: Virtua Fighter (not Virtual). No contest. You all really need to give Virtua Fighter a serious effort. Games like Tekken and Soul Calibur allow you to get really really good with many characters, but VF takes a commitment to one character to learn all of their ins and outs. You can still use other characters, but the amount of time it takes to 'master' one character in VF is substantially more in-depth than any other game. And it pays off once you do.

Best 2-D Fighter: Street Fighter. Despite the fact that my avatar and sig is a character from KOF (which isn't on the list, though I guess it could be grouped under Fatal Fury), I'd still pick SF as the top 2D. Guilty Gear is awesome, but SF still edges it out.

For the poll though, I picked VF.

[Breine]

I'd say the Tekken series... but the Soul Calibur series is a very close runner-up.

[Mo-Nercy]

Best 3-D Fighter: Virtua Fighter (not Virtual). No contest. You all really need to give Virtua Fighter a serious effort. Games like Tekken and Soul Calibur allow you to get really really good with many characters, but VF takes a commitment to one character to learn all of their ins and outs. You can still use other characters, but the amount of time it takes to 'master' one character in VF is substantially more in-depth than any other game. And it pays off once you do.

VF doesn't have a big enough arcade following for me to get into it. I walk into Galaxy World and I see 12 Tekken DR machines while VF finds itself next to all the other "niche" fighters lined up against the wall. Soul Calibur 2 was once badass but once it got shifted to that wall, no one played it anymore. Now it's not even there. Samurai Showdown sits in it's place. *mourn*

I only ever really got into Tekken because SC was taken away. But given a good enough community of gamers, I can get into practically any game.

[Devourment]

What?! Where's Killer Instinct Gold?

Anyhow, for me it's a tie between Dead or Alive & Soul Calibur.

[JKTrix]

VF doesn't have a big enough arcade following for me to get into it. I walk into Galaxy World and I see 12 Tekken DR machines while VF finds itself next to all the other "niche" fighters lined up against the wall.

Virtua Fighter is just too hardcore for most people.

Where I live, arcades don't even exist. So the arcade thing isn't a factor for me at all. Virtua Fighter 4/Evolution on PS2 is an incredibly deep game. Evolution actually emulates the arcade experience in the 'Quest Mode', taking real data from real Japanese players from the arcades VF.net service (complete with their nicknames and whatever custom costume they come up with). I imagine VF5 will do something similar with the data gathered from VF.net so far, but I hear the PS3 game will actually function directly with VF.net.

Back to VF4, it has the best and most expansive training mode in any game of any type ever. It goes way deeper than simple move lists. Soul Calibur 3 tried something similar in its tutorials, but it's merely a small fraction of what is available in VF4. When you delve into the training lessons and see what it has to offer, the sheer amount of depth in the game is mindblowing. The trainings are different for each character as well, since every character is in fact very different and deep in their own right.

It's too bad that VF isn't that popular over there. But get it on PS2, it's one of those 'Top Hits' discount games. This is the game that got me into arcade sticks, for the sheer precision it takes to play effectively.

[Jowy]

Given the amount of memories it holds, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is my personal favorite. In terms of having a polished engine, SF3:Third Strike.

With a 3D fighter though, give me some of that hot-hot Soul Calibur action.