LONG BLOG
RANT: Unlocking Content in Fighting Games
I’ll just come right out and say it: I fucking hate unlocking shit in fighting games. Usually I consider unlocking items/weapons/equipment/costumes in games to be something pleasant. I like the challenge it represents. Just recently I finally went back and unlocked all the characters for Resident Evil 5’s Mercenaries mode. It took awhile, but every defeat made victory seem that much close. I’m the kind of guy who looks at 98% and thinks “That’s just not good enough.” I want every weapon upgrade, every alternate costume, every color scheme, every area on the map picked clean of its hidden treasures.
But when it comes to fighting games…
Unlocking shit drives me fucking bonkers.
Today’s offender is Street Fighter IV. I love this game. I love the characters, I love the combat, I love the special moves, and there are few things I find more satisfying than sitting down for a few hours to tear it up with Guile. There are also few things I find more aggravating than Street Fighter IV’s approach to unlocking character colors and taunts.
For those of you that don’t know, the process for unlocking colors and taunts is to proceed through the game’s challenge modes, Survival and Time Trial. Normally these are the kinds of modes I would spend most of my time with (I’ve thrown away countless hours on Dead or Alive 4’s Survival mode), but this is not the case with Street Fighter IV and that is one reason and one reason alone: Special Rules.
I have made somewhere around 50 attempts at beating Time Trial 11. Time Trial 11 has been my own personal purgatory for quite some time now; you start with 50 seconds, +30 for every defeat. Not so hard, right? Here’s the kicker: No Ultra Combo, no EX attacks, no Throw Escape, no Focus Attack, no dash, no Target Combo. The lack of an Ultra Combo isn’t really a problem for me under usual circumstances because I main Guile, and his Ultra is almost prohibitively difficult to pull off under most circumstances anyway. However, everything else this Time Trial takes away basically destroys my ability to play; lacking the ability to tech out of throws, lacking EX attacks (which have different properties than normal attacks, allowing you to set up longer/more complex combo strings), lacking the Focus Attack (which allows for canceling out of moves to lengthen combos/go for a throw), lacking the ability to dash (which removes my ability to dash in for a quick combo), all of these things completely destroy my ability to play.
Normally I would have given up around attempt 25, but in order to unlock the last two colors and taunts, I’ve got to make it through to Time Trial 20. This presents a unique problem for me, because I’d really like to have every option available to me upon selecting a character, but in order to do that I’ll have to push through Time Trial 11 - 20 to achieve that goal. This is a potential gauntlet of agony for me.
So, after 50 times of trying to beat Time Trial 11 with a variety of characters and methods, I decided to sit down and ponder what really made me so angry about this, and I discovered that it wasn’t just that it was difficult. It was something that’s always driven me nuts: unlocking content in fighting games.
No quarter-munching arcade machine I’ve ever played on required this unlocking horseshit. The things to be unlocked in most fighting games are costumes and colors, which have no functional impact on the actual gameplay experience. Whereas other unlocks in games often have some kind of effect beyond aesthetic, either increasing some sort of stat, granting special abilities, or changing the capabilities of a weapon, in fighting games unlocks serve no real practical purpose. So why in the fuck must they be unlocked?
I understand the purpose behind unlocking the fighters themselves, as each fighter adds a new dynamic to the game. I still think it’s stupid to require them to be unlocked in the first place, but I at least understand the logic behind it. With colors and costumes, it’s beyond my understanding. I can’t even fathom why someone - why anyone - would think up something so stupid.
How about you, Destructoid? What do you think about unlocking content in fighters, yes or no?
Blindfire
But when it comes to fighting games…
Unlocking shit drives me fucking bonkers.
Today’s offender is Street Fighter IV. I love this game. I love the characters, I love the combat, I love the special moves, and there are few things I find more satisfying than sitting down for a few hours to tear it up with Guile. There are also few things I find more aggravating than Street Fighter IV’s approach to unlocking character colors and taunts.
For those of you that don’t know, the process for unlocking colors and taunts is to proceed through the game’s challenge modes, Survival and Time Trial. Normally these are the kinds of modes I would spend most of my time with (I’ve thrown away countless hours on Dead or Alive 4’s Survival mode), but this is not the case with Street Fighter IV and that is one reason and one reason alone: Special Rules.
I have made somewhere around 50 attempts at beating Time Trial 11. Time Trial 11 has been my own personal purgatory for quite some time now; you start with 50 seconds, +30 for every defeat. Not so hard, right? Here’s the kicker: No Ultra Combo, no EX attacks, no Throw Escape, no Focus Attack, no dash, no Target Combo. The lack of an Ultra Combo isn’t really a problem for me under usual circumstances because I main Guile, and his Ultra is almost prohibitively difficult to pull off under most circumstances anyway. However, everything else this Time Trial takes away basically destroys my ability to play; lacking the ability to tech out of throws, lacking EX attacks (which have different properties than normal attacks, allowing you to set up longer/more complex combo strings), lacking the Focus Attack (which allows for canceling out of moves to lengthen combos/go for a throw), lacking the ability to dash (which removes my ability to dash in for a quick combo), all of these things completely destroy my ability to play.
Normally I would have given up around attempt 25, but in order to unlock the last two colors and taunts, I’ve got to make it through to Time Trial 20. This presents a unique problem for me, because I’d really like to have every option available to me upon selecting a character, but in order to do that I’ll have to push through Time Trial 11 - 20 to achieve that goal. This is a potential gauntlet of agony for me.
So, after 50 times of trying to beat Time Trial 11 with a variety of characters and methods, I decided to sit down and ponder what really made me so angry about this, and I discovered that it wasn’t just that it was difficult. It was something that’s always driven me nuts: unlocking content in fighting games.
No quarter-munching arcade machine I’ve ever played on required this unlocking horseshit. The things to be unlocked in most fighting games are costumes and colors, which have no functional impact on the actual gameplay experience. Whereas other unlocks in games often have some kind of effect beyond aesthetic, either increasing some sort of stat, granting special abilities, or changing the capabilities of a weapon, in fighting games unlocks serve no real practical purpose. So why in the fuck must they be unlocked?
I understand the purpose behind unlocking the fighters themselves, as each fighter adds a new dynamic to the game. I still think it’s stupid to require them to be unlocked in the first place, but I at least understand the logic behind it. With colors and costumes, it’s beyond my understanding. I can’t even fathom why someone - why anyone - would think up something so stupid.
How about you, Destructoid? What do you think about unlocking content in fighters, yes or no?
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About Blindfireone of us since 7:06 AM on 06.09.2009
Howdy, I go by Blindfire. Welcome to my blog on Destructoid.
I was a late bloomer when it comes to videogames. Growing up, my family has never been especially affluent, and we pretty much just didn't have the cash to throw down on Nintendo or Sega.
I didn't really play a lot of games outside of the occasional visits to family friends in Phoenix, where I got acquainted with classics like Sonic, Donkey Kong, and Mortal Kombat. I was awful at them but I didn't care, I knew then and there that I'd fallen in love with videogames. The next time I'd get to play videogames would be on a PC, home-built basically from scratch by my uncle and my mother. It was a piece of crap that housed everything I could cram onto it, from Doom to WarCraft II. It underwent several hardware mods as time went on, but eventually we moved on to pre-built equipment and haven't looked back since. Some of my fondest memories, though, are of starting up DOS and typing in the command string to start up Rise of the Triad. I still have a huge soft spot for RTS games, as WarCraft II was the first game I really understood all the mechanics of.
The PlayStation was my first console. It was a pastime for me more than anything, really. A handful of decent games that I played occasionally when I wasn't doing something else. It wasn't until Metal Gear Solid that I really started to grasp gaming as a kind of physical concept. Metal Gear Solid made gaming a tangible thing for me, and I still have a powerful love for that series to this day.
I didn't become a real gamer until around 2004. That year, my gaming collection grew exponentially for the PS2, and for my newly-acquired Xbox. I made so many discoveries about games and gaming that year that I literally can't quantify it; it was an epiphany that has led me to expanding my horizons and seeking every new game experience I can find.
These days I try to keep an open mind about games, and let anything surprise me.
I was a late bloomer when it comes to videogames. Growing up, my family has never been especially affluent, and we pretty much just didn't have the cash to throw down on Nintendo or Sega.
I didn't really play a lot of games outside of the occasional visits to family friends in Phoenix, where I got acquainted with classics like Sonic, Donkey Kong, and Mortal Kombat. I was awful at them but I didn't care, I knew then and there that I'd fallen in love with videogames. The next time I'd get to play videogames would be on a PC, home-built basically from scratch by my uncle and my mother. It was a piece of crap that housed everything I could cram onto it, from Doom to WarCraft II. It underwent several hardware mods as time went on, but eventually we moved on to pre-built equipment and haven't looked back since. Some of my fondest memories, though, are of starting up DOS and typing in the command string to start up Rise of the Triad. I still have a huge soft spot for RTS games, as WarCraft II was the first game I really understood all the mechanics of.
The PlayStation was my first console. It was a pastime for me more than anything, really. A handful of decent games that I played occasionally when I wasn't doing something else. It wasn't until Metal Gear Solid that I really started to grasp gaming as a kind of physical concept. Metal Gear Solid made gaming a tangible thing for me, and I still have a powerful love for that series to this day.
I didn't become a real gamer until around 2004. That year, my gaming collection grew exponentially for the PS2, and for my newly-acquired Xbox. I made so many discoveries about games and gaming that year that I literally can't quantify it; it was an epiphany that has led me to expanding my horizons and seeking every new game experience I can find.
These days I try to keep an open mind about games, and let anything surprise me.