I have no idea if I’m making an arbitrary distinction, but it seems to me that many fighting games can be loosely categorized by how the characters move/react.
In some, when you push the ‘attack’ button, the change from standing there to the punch/kick/whatever is almost instantaneous. It’s as if there are just two or three interim animation states that flash by and POW, right in the kisser. These games seem to leave virtually no time to block or counter. My most recent experience with this type is Smash Brothers Brawl on the Wii (but I’ve seen it on plenty of other games).
In others, the attack button seems to trigger a slower (though not necessarily slow) animation sequence, one that appears to involve many interim states. An arm pulls back before throwing the punch or something to that effect. Timing is crucial, but there seems to be a greater window to react. A classic example is the old Karate Champarcade game from the 80s.
Anyone else out there make this distinction between types of games? Anyone else have a strong preference between them (I kind of hate the former, finding them kind of spastic and tedious).
There’s definitely a difference between different games. I find Virtua Fighter to be really slow like that, and I couldn’t stand it because of that. Felt like playing a game in molasses.
Soul Calibur is a game I’ve always enjoyed. It has a variety of moves - some are quick jabs, but there’s also a lot of big wind-up moves as well. Lots of the latter are actually unblockable, so they require the opponent to recognize the move and dodge out of the way appropriately (or interrupt it with a quicker attack).
Smash Bros is a quicker game, but it’s much more about positioning than the average fighter, since stages are multi-tiered in the vertical axis.
The irony here is that it doesn’t even really matter how “detailed” the animation is.
Street Fighter 4 has some attacks that come out in 3 frames, and it uses 3D models, so it’s presumably transitioning through the animation in that time.
BlazBlue has much slower attacks, overall, but since the characters are traditional sprites, they may only pass through 3-4 actually visually distinct frames of actual animation.
The fact of the matter is though, that in most of these games, you are NOT reacting to your opponent’s attacks. Not even in the slower games, unless you are expecting a certain very specific attack and are ready to do exactly what is required. So the fact that you “feel like there is no time to block or counter” doesn’t actually have anything to do with the number of animation frames (unless it gets REALLY HIGH).
When you mentioned Brawl as your example of a slow game I nearly fell out of my seat. As a Melee veteran, I had to slow myself down for Brawl, but to each their own I guess.
You can look to the Wrestling/UFC type games for a slower play style that gives the player a modicum more time to react. Though I find a majority of the fighting style games to be more predictive than reactive.