Game Blog Post #4
At every point, someone will have played a fighting game and thought something along the lines of “oh, that really shouldn’t work that way.” Balancing and animating fighting games is a tricky prospect for most people (unless you’re ArcSys, for some reason— they have a catalog of very good anime fighting games).
For this blog post, we will focus predominantly on Mortal Kombat 11 (shortened to MK11), Injustice 2, and Tekken 7.
Tekken 7 is a 3d arena fighter in which players are auto-faced towards their opponents but can still move on three axes rather than the traditional two. This game has very lengthy animations on some moves (such as Dragunov’s quarter back heavy, or any of Gigas’ moves) but these are in correlation with the power of the move. These animations have been specifically keyed to display movement in correlation with the power of the move. Damage outputs are standard across most moves, in that they do not depreciate the longer an enemy is in a combo— a deliberate choice by Bandai Namco to allow for anyone to be able to play the game at a decent enough level to succeed. Tekken 7 has enjoyed a long lived commercial success since its initial release in 2015— in part due to the accessibility of the game, but also due to the viability of the competitive scene for the game as well. Many people consider it to be the “prime” fighting game in regards to the (irony fully intended) balance between accessibility and flashiness.
Mortal Kombat 11 is a 2.5d fighter in which players are auto-faced towards their opponents but only have two axes to operate on: x and y (relative to the camera perspective). This game has fast-paced animations that all play out at roughly the same speed, with the only variance coming in between move types— such as light, medium, and heavy. This game has decent balance scaling, but all the characters do next to no damage due to the high amount of health the players have— a choice that was undoubtedly made to enforce a more defensive mode of play, which is in addition to the series’ continued tradition of a dedicated block button. This has made the game less viable in competition against other fighting games that are also vying for a spot on the competitive stage— such as the next game, by the same studio released two years earlier.
Injustice 2 is another 2.5d fighter similarly to the last game— however, it has some major changes that set it apart from the MK series. These changes are found in the combat and related mechanics— and we’ll start with the animations. Most animations are fast, but the heavy moves have a much longer usage animation that you can also stall with to prevent it from coming out immediately— for example, if you do a combo that launches your opponent, you can hold the input to delay the move until the opponent is back within range— this is a marked accessibility improvement, as it allows players who are not as keen on timing as others to have a chance in combat against other players who know how to time their moves. Another accessibility change is the lack of a dedicated block button— rather opting for the “hold back or down to block” method of control, one that is natural to do rather than learning to hit a specific button.
Fighting games are reliant on balance and accessibility for long term success in the genre— which is why Marvel VS Capcom 2 and Tekken 7 are going to be at EVO this year instead of MK11 or Super Smash Brothers: Melee.
C. B. Irby 