On the subject of male fanservice, they aren't all muscly dudes too. What about the bishonens, or the shotas here and there? Judging by the fanart there are plenty of women out there who enjoy these character archetypes too.
Also just wondering, how do people feel about women who enjoy cosplaying in pretty skimpy costumes? Just curious on everybody's opinions.
In the vast, vast minority of women, and to issue a tentative blanket statement probably with psychological issues. Or they're booth babes and they're getting paid.
Gotta be mentally ill to enjoy attention from the opposite sex am I right?
On the subject of male fanservice, they aren't all muscly dudes too. What about the bishonens, or the shotas here and there? Judging by the fanart there are plenty of women out there who enjoy these character archetypes too.
Also just wondering, how do people feel about women who enjoy cosplaying in pretty skimpy costumes? Just curious on everybody's opinions.
In the vast, vast minority of women, and to issue a tentative blanket statement probably with psychological issues. Or they're booth babes and they're getting paid.
I know that they are in the minority, but why psychological issues? And what psychological issues? Curious to hear your perspective.
On the subject of male fanservice, they aren't all muscly dudes too. What about the bishonens, or the shotas here and there? Judging by the fanart there are plenty of women out there who enjoy these character archetypes too.
Also just wondering, how do people feel about women who enjoy cosplaying in pretty skimpy costumes? Just curious on everybody's opinions.
In the vast, vast minority of women, and to issue a tentative blanket statement probably with psychological issues. Or they're booth babes and they're getting paid.
I know that they are in the minority, but why psychological issues? And what psychological issues? Curious to hear your perspective.
That's pretty damn sexist/hosed up. I'd ignore it.
Some people just like showing off. Either themselves, or their work. I know a few cos-players who are women, and they put an insane amount of effort into the costumes they make. And they're probably on the far low end of the scale when it comes to the people who take it seriously.
It's a hobby. And like all hobbies, people have different approaches to it. Part of the hobby is unwinding in said costume/partying it up after hours. Or showing off the insane level of work you put into a set of clothes. Granted, someone who runs around in a thong that rides up their arse, and a skimpy bikini, or something similar, is probably looking for a certain kind of attention. But it seems more of an enthusiast thing.
Also, there may obviously be exceptions (Like DoA, which has fan-service by the tonnage, but doesn't make it a core gameplay concept.), but from what i've seen, most "girl fighting" games are damn creepy. And one nearly killed gaming at my college.
We used to have weekly tournaments in the college student lounge where we'd play Smash Bros and other similar games. Some (Very "goony", unkempt, and generally everyone assumed he had some issues. Got caught looking at naked pictures of women on his laptop with his hand down his pants at one point in the lobby, and almost got kicked out of the college as a result.) brought some sort of 2D fighting game in that he must have imported from overseas, and claimed it was an awesome game on par with our usual line-up. For the record, the sort of games we'd play there were games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros Brawl mostly. Later, we added MvC to the line-up, too.
So since it was a fairly laid back affair, and people would bring in games to try out all the time. Just about everyone, thinking this guy must have a reason for liking this game so much, gave it a shot and lined up some matches. As it turned out, that was a mistake. A huge mistake.
Not one of us lasted five minutes into the second match. It was the most awkwardly uncomfortable, obviously fan-service thing ever to grace the screen. Half the crowd that was watching got up and just left, shaking their heads, or just tried to pretend they were there for some other reason. And the last two people who tried to stick it out eventually got up, shut it off, and told him to get that crap out of there.
Nearly killed the whole gaming get together between classes for about two months, too, after that. Since every time we tried to get it going again, said creepy guy (And later, some of said creepy guys horribly racist/creepy friends who had the same interests.) would try and force his line-up of horrible games on the gathering, or just bother everyone into where a lot of people stopped showing up. After awhile we just stopped bothering until they focused their attention elsewhere.
Wish I could remember the name of the game. It had young girls fighting, and lots of "drawn" cinematics with panty shots and such. The sounds they made when they got hit or attacked were the worst part, though. Sounded like they were having sex. Couple that with the auditorium we used to play it in, with huge speakers, and it sounded like there was a lesbian orgy going on in the place.
So basically DoA without the polish and larger female cast?
DoA is actually a decent game. Not even sure it should qualify as a "girl fighting" game. Only reason I sort of count it is because the creator of DoA is one sleazy dude who obviously thinks of some of the characters as fan-service material. It was, I think, implied that that might have lead to him resigning from his position at the company that made it too, back when that whole thing was an issue.
Also, the fact that it has a much larger male cast than the female cast helps, too. Also, that the fight mechanics (At least, in the last game.) were awesome. It only got really creepy after the release of the last actual game in the series. Which is when the "volleyball" (Read: Not volleyball, I checked that game out, it has straight poledancing scenes you can unlock in it, in fact.) stuff started to come out.
The drunk guy you can play as is probably my favorite character in any fighting game ever, given the number of hilarious moments he has and how he plays.
You have to fight his crappy balance and absurd move-set just as much as you do the enemy, but the enemy usually has no clue what the fuck you're doing half the time. Bringing him into an online match was sure to get you some nasty tells since people couldn't cheese wins, when the guy you were playing as might actually seriously fall over on his ass, and then proceed to do some sort of drunken break-dance as he desperately flails at you (While you're out of range.), trip you up when he suddenly scoots forward on his ass, then hop up and non-nonchalantly kick you in the teeth like he intended to do that all along.
I agree that there's more female objectification (sp?) than male in gaming, but sometimes it seems that any showing of female flesh = sex object. For example, Ivy's (not counting 4, everyone looks stupid in that one) dominatrix thing is pretty badass, and Elena is one of my favorite characters in any fighter.
I'd also like to know of examples of characters that are fanservice towards women, but are not "empowered". The only one I can think of is Remy from SF3...
DOA is proof that any game is better with a drunk in the roster.
Seriously, he's awesome. Much as DoA deserves some criticism for the blatant fan-service, and especially the insanely creepy volleyball games. I can't hate the game when it has characters like this:
That can take out characters like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden with drop kicks to the groin, from the ground.
Everyone else's "quest" in DOA4 involves them stopping someone from destroying the world, fan-service, getting famous, or getting the respect of their big brother or some crap.
His quest? To find the ultra-booze, the greatest booze in the world. And drink that shit dry. Along the way he pretty much pisses everyone off while drunk off his ass, kicks their ass in his story mode, and picks a fight with a world destroying threat (and casually punches it out while having what appears to be a blackout).
And he does find the ultra-booze in the end. And it's awesome.
There's a funny scene in other characters story modes, too. Depending on the character you play as, a second character shows up (Backlit by white light as he charges into the room.) in the generic ominous evil scientists laboratory, at the final boss fight (against the generic energy being/super-boss) to help fight you. The supporting character obviously then obviously gets one-shotted since tag team fight mechanics don't exist.
What happens if your "supporting character" is Brad Wong, however? He shows up in the room before yours in his "victory pose", knocking back a forty, backlit by the light...And continues chugging the thing down until the door closes again. The main character doesn't know what the hell just happened, as evidenced by them essentially going "What the fuck just happened?". They never explain how he got past all the horrible crap your character did, or why he's even there.
Compare this to some of the games in the OP, which, looking them up, are pretty damn fan-servicey in terms of their presentation, and story. If DoA qualifies as a "girl fighting game", then i'm not sure what wouldn't.
Edit: Looking up the volleyball games, did you know that they programmed age to be a multiplicative variable that increases boob jiggle? This, I assume, means if you say you're eighty years old, they're basically gravity-less. Really damn creepy, and it implies all sorts of things about the elderly, I guess.
Edit: Elena in DoA (At least 4.), wasn't even that fan-servicey, as I recall. She wasn't showing any skin, or anything. She just wore a very stylized cat-suit. Which as far as objectification of women in gaming goes is pretty tame. Hell, I can't think of many of the more established games having blatant fan-service in them as a main feature, as of late.
The exception would probably be that whole Ivy thing in the last SC game. Which was a pretty big case of objectification going so far that it became disgusting. I remember reading a gaming magazine and seeing a picture of her as one of the previewed fighters, and her cleavage looked like someone had transplanted her ass to her chest with the way her costume was designed.
He's not nearly as unpredictable as Brad, however. All of his moves appear very deliberate and to the point in their execution.
It's hard to tell from just watching videos, but both the player playing Brad Wong and the player he's fighting often have no fucking clue which direction he's going to move in next. Part of the reason is that the very vague way he moves around makes it hard to rely on "tells" to tell you what you should do next.
Every aspect of his animation is meant to screw with players who have gotten the conventional methods of figuring out how to predict an attack by animation down pat. The only way to really "tell" what you need to do for most people is to concentrate really hard on the game and his moveset. Sort of like if you were drunk.
This leads to situations where he might fall over flat on his ass, or start randomly break dancing out of nowhere. Or just appear that he's lost his balance, leading to him kicking backwards while throwing a punch forwards to keep his balance. Which leads to everyone involved cracking up laughing, even the guy who gets his ass handed to him. What's really funny is when/if you trick a new player into playing him, at which point it's almost like a drunken Deadpool got transplanted into a serious fighting game.
That being said, more games need drunk reindeer men with their heads on fire. Or just drunks with inexplicable and hilarious movesets that are designed to confound everyone.
Edit: Fighting games as a whole (Excepting the kind in the OP.) tend to portray women as being fairly empowered, no matter what they wear. Since if there's a story mode, odds are they'll be in it, kicking ten kinds of ass to reach their goal.
The problem comes with some of those niche games, which, in the interest of creating pornographic material utterly pervert that concept through the story of why they're fighting.
For example, looking up the plot of Variable Geo (One of the "girl fighting" games that was listed in the OP.) on Wikipedia revealed this about its plot:
Set in a near-future version of Japan, the games tell the story of a martial arts tournament created to determine the country's strongest woman. The tournaments are sponsored by a number of family restaurants, who in exchange for their sponsorship, are given promotion in the form of having a tournament entry work as a waitress. As a result of the popularity of the tournaments, the restaurants experience a boom in patronage.
The winner of the tournament is awarded the title "Virgin Goddess", as well as a large cash prize of ten billion yen, and a house erected anywhere on the planet they should choose. However, when a given waitress is defeated, they are required to publicly strip themselves of their clothing (self-fondling and public masturbation may be forced upon the loser, and in the most extreme cases, the loser is raped/gang-raped, either in private or in front of an audience), in order to teach the so-called "true" shame of defeat. In spite of such humiliation, the tournaments often draw many competitors, each placing their pride and their dreams on the line as they battle for the top.
It's glorified (creepy) masturbation material with a fighting game tacked onto it, essentially. Apparently there's a big market for this stuff in Japan given that there's 14 Variable Geo games that Wikipedia knows of, and apparently there's quite a few other similar games out there.
Brad Wong has a movelist like any other character. You know what move is coming next because he only has a few options for what move comes next. He wobbles a bit and looks kind of goofy, but he's not on the level of Shun Di. It's like saying Maxi or Eddie Gordo or Hwoarang or Lei-Fei are completely random and unpredictable just because they have a bunch of stances.
Shun has a drinks counter. Every time he takes a drink he becomes stronger. After a certain number of drinks he gets new attacks and new properties for his moves. A Shun with 30 drinks is pretty much the most powerful character in the game. Every character also has certain moves, often slaps, that will lower his drinks counter, basically sobering him up. He also sounds like an angry bird, which is awesome.
A bunch of the VG games are straight-up eroge. The series still managed to do more than that, but not to the extent that Melty Blood did.
I'm not trying to troll you or the thread. I think I just look down on T&A in games in general. For example, it annoys me that every female character in ME3 has a perfect body and obnoxiously large breasts (even the old lady Dr!). I understand games like DOA volleyball were able to meld the bouncy with solid gameplay. I'm sure it's possible here too.
I have never heard anyone describe DOA volleyball's gameplay as "solid"
I never played it, but back when it was a thing I remember people arguing that it had solid gameplay to make it more than a jerk session for neckbeards.
I'm sure it was the neckbeards jerking it who were saying these things...
Set in a near-future version of Japan, the games tell the story of a martial arts tournament created to determine the country's strongest woman. The tournaments are sponsored by a number of family restaurants, who in exchange for their sponsorship, are given promotion in the form of having a tournament entry work as a waitress. As a result of the popularity of the tournaments, the restaurants experience a boom in patronage.
The winner of the tournament is awarded the title "Virgin Goddess", as well as a large cash prize of ten billion yen, and a house erected anywhere on the planet they should choose. However, when a given waitress is defeated, they are required to publicly strip themselves of their clothing (self-fondling and public masturbation may be forced upon the loser, and in the most extreme cases, the loser is raped/gang-raped, either in private or in front of an audience), in order to teach the so-called "true" shame of defeat. In spite of such humiliation, the tournaments often draw many competitors, each placing their pride and their dreams on the line as they battle for the top.
It's glorified (creepy) masturbation material with a fighting game tacked onto it, essentially. Apparently there's a big market for this stuff in Japan given that there's 14 Variable Geo games that Wikipedia knows of, and apparently there's quite a few other similar games out there.
Set in a near-future version of Japan, the games tell the story of a martial arts tournament created to determine the country's strongest woman. The tournaments are sponsored by a number of family restaurants, who in exchange for their sponsorship, are given promotion in the form of having a tournament entry work as a waitress. As a result of the popularity of the tournaments, the restaurants experience a boom in patronage.
The winner of the tournament is awarded the title "Virgin Goddess", as well as a large cash prize of ten billion yen, and a house erected anywhere on the planet they should choose. However, when a given waitress is defeated, they are required to publicly strip themselves of their clothing (self-fondling and public masturbation may be forced upon the loser, and in the most extreme cases, the loser is raped/gang-raped, either in private or in front of an audience), in order to teach the so-called "true" shame of defeat. In spite of such humiliation, the tournaments often draw many competitors, each placing their pride and their dreams on the line as they battle for the top.
It's glorified (creepy) masturbation material with a fighting game tacked onto it, essentially. Apparently there's a big market for this stuff in Japan given that there's 14 Variable Geo games that Wikipedia knows of, and apparently there's quite a few other similar games out there.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
You know, I never expected a fighting game could be more "rapey" than Battle Raper.
Brad Wong has a movelist like any other character. You know what move is coming next because he only has a few options for what move comes next. He wobbles a bit and looks kind of goofy, but he's not on the level of Shun Di. It's like saying Maxi or Eddie Gordo or Hwoarang or Lei-Fei are completely random and unpredictable just because they have a bunch of stances.
Shun has a drinks counter. Every time he takes a drink he becomes stronger. After a certain number of drinks he gets new attacks and new properties for his moves. A Shun with 30 drinks is pretty much the most powerful character in the game. Every character also has certain moves, often slaps, that will lower his drinks counter, basically sobering him up. He also sounds like an angry bird, which is awesome.
A bunch of the VG games are straight-up eroge. The series still managed to do more than that, but not to the extent that Melty Blood did.
Word.
Fuudo, current SSF4 champ, used Lion and changed to Shun. Guy is a beast with it.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
So as long as a game has digital tits and ass it's ok if the gameplay is average or worse?
:?
Indeed.
No, but there's the chance the gameplay might be good. I'm all for waiting and seeing where it goes. If it's a miserable little pile of TnA cash-in without any redeeming features, then let it die in a fire, etc. Or: it could end up a new and interesting fighting game franchise.
The title is what makes me think it won't have good gameplay. Guys will buy it on the fact alone that it's girls fighting. It's pretty obvious what they're doing here.
I agree that there's more female objectification (sp?) than male in gaming, but sometimes it seems that any showing of female flesh = sex object. For example, Ivy's (not counting 4, everyone looks stupid in that one) dominatrix thing is pretty badass, and Elena is one of my favorite characters in any fighter.
I'd also like to know of examples of characters that are fanservice towards women, but are not "empowered". The only one I can think of is Remy from SF3...
Sexy doesn't mean sex object, but that's the general trend here.
Ivy is quite possibly one of the worst examples, as the poor woman gains a cup size each game, but loses clothing to go with it. It's hardly "empowering." The empowered thing is bullshit because it's fighting game and no shit everyone is an asskicker. Unless your name is Dan, I guess?
Sexual titillation in fighting games is a non-issue.
Yes, it is. But it's part of an issue with how gaming treats women in general.
I botched my last sentence in that post. It wasn't related to the rest of the post, but an aside of me being curious of males that are targeted to females in fighting games. Remy from SF3 just stands out for me as a very rare example of that.
As for Ivy, I really like how she looks in Soul Calibur V. She's still the busty dominatrix (which I have no problem with), but she's not falling out of her clothes anymore. I'll admit I haven't really followed the game, so I don't know if they still have that stupid clothing damage thing.
I botched my last sentence in that post. It wasn't related to the rest of the post, but an aside of me being curious of males that are targeted to females in fighting games. Remy from SF3 just stands out for me as a very rare example of that.
As for Ivy, I really like how she looks in Soul Calibur V. She's still the busty dominatrix (which I have no problem with), but she's not falling out of her clothes anymore. I'll admit I haven't really followed the game, so I don't know if they still have that stupid clothing damage thing.
It's there, but they toned it down a lot(just armor damage, little to no clothing damage). It also rarely happens. There's still some eye-rolling character design choices, but on the whole they got rid of a lot of the eyeball gouging fanservice that happened in SC4 for SC5. It was pretty funny/sad how so many complained about the reduced fanservice though.
Arcana Heart and melty bood have really really good gameplay that's also been improved, tweaked, and balanced over many versions.
This? Nope. Not giving it a chance when there's so many better fighting games around.
I botched my last sentence in that post. It wasn't related to the rest of the post, but an aside of me being curious of males that are targeted to females in fighting games. Remy from SF3 just stands out for me as a very rare example of that.
As for Ivy, I really like how she looks in Soul Calibur V. She's still the busty dominatrix (which I have no problem with), but she's not falling out of her clothes anymore. I'll admit I haven't really followed the game, so I don't know if they still have that stupid clothing damage thing.
It's there, but they toned it down a lot(just armor damage, little to no clothing damage). It also rarely happens. There's still some eye-rolling character design choices, but on the whole they got rid of a lot of the eyeball gouging fanservice that happened in SC4 for SC5. It was pretty funny/sad how so many complained about the reduced fanservice though.
IT was sad how they made a huge deal about toning down the rediculous boobage, then proceeded to have the first ad be a shot of massive Ivy cleavage in her second, "makin up for the first" revealing custome as the first ad.
It was kind of like one big ass juke.
Besides now you can change proportions in the CAS so you make your own rediculously skimpy sluts.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
I agree that there's more female objectification (sp?) than male in gaming, but sometimes it seems that any showing of female flesh = sex object. For example, Ivy's (not counting 4, everyone looks stupid in that one) dominatrix thing is pretty badass, and Elena is one of my favorite characters in any fighter.
I'd also like to know of examples of characters that are fanservice towards women, but are not "empowered". The only one I can think of is Remy from SF3...
Sexy doesn't mean sex object, but that's the general trend here.
Ivy is quite possibly one of the worst examples, as the poor woman gains a cup size each game, but loses clothing to go with it. It's hardly "empowering." The empowered thing is bullshit because it's fighting game and no shit everyone is an asskicker. Unless your name is Dan, I guess?
Sexual titillation in fighting games is a non-issue.
Yes, it is. But it's part of an issue with how gaming treats women in general.
I have to disagree with excluding the nature of the game as meaning a character is not empowered. Ivy, of course, isn't empowered at all. I'm convinced that by the end of it, someone was just doing it as a running gag and to parody the whole thing. Some of those pictures of her they released were downright grotesque at times.
If a character has a story where they are self motivated, are willing to compete on par with the male characters, and are generally not clinging to a man like they're in some sort of shitty sci-fi novel throughout the entire story, and are capable of acting on their own, then yeah, i'd say they're fairly "empowered".
On the other hand, if the content of the story involves them being non-entities, or, even worse, in situations like that Wikipedia plot synopsis up above, then i'd say the opposite is true.
Fighting games are a bad example to use for the issue of objectification, however. Actual fighting games tend to have a fair amount of fan-service and objectification on both sides of the line gender-wise. See: All the fighters that go bare-chested or are half naked that are male as one example. DoA even has one or two of them, like the Bruce Lee ripoff character.
I'd argue that it's more important to check the story related things I mentioned above, and compare how much time the game takes pointing out the female characters "assets" in a fan-servicey way compared to the story as a whole and the male character. If the fan-service takes priority over core aspects of the game itself (It is going to happen, no matter what the cultural norms are. The key component is if it's overblown and/or demeaning in nature.) then it's probably a bad thing in that case.
But using your own example Ivy wouldn't be bad. She's one of the most powerful characters in the Soulcalibur universe and has always been a self-motivated character. She's never once been a damsel in distress or anything like that. Her strongest relationship with a male character is the on with her father, who she wants to kill.
I botched my last sentence in that post. It wasn't related to the rest of the post, but an aside of me being curious of males that are targeted to females in fighting games. Remy from SF3 just stands out for me as a very rare example of that.
As for Ivy, I really like how she looks in Soul Calibur V. She's still the busty dominatrix (which I have no problem with), but she's not falling out of her clothes anymore. I'll admit I haven't really followed the game, so I don't know if they still have that stupid clothing damage thing.
Sort of? Your armor can be broken but it doesn't have any sort of mechanics tied to it and everyone is pretty modestly dressed underneath. Ivy's design in SC5 really is drastically better and as I mentioned, even the devs realized she had attained full on Power Girl status and made the conscious decision to tone her down.
That's a massive improvement. In general, SC5's female characters all got far more modestly dressed and don't have boobs the size of the moon anymore. It's definitely got one of the best female cast of characters out there right now tbh.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
But using your own example Ivy wouldn't be bad. She's one of the most powerful characters in the Soulcalibur universe and has always been a self-motivated character. She's never once been a damsel in distress or anything like that. Her strongest relationship with a male character is the on with her father, who she wants to kill.
Only if you take part of what I said into account.
The lower half of my post addresses the rest of her issues to some extent or another.
SC5 easily has the most modest Ivy of the entire series:
TOGSolid on
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I'd say Tekken does female characters the best. No one is overtly sexualized (those in revealing outfits don't have breasts the size of planets, at least) and personality wise, they're largely more likable than the main Mishima family characters.
Even got a FtM transgender character representin' without being a cheap joke or having something 'wrong' with em.
It's kind of a weird balancing act in some ways. Let's say you have a fighting game and the girls in it are quite ugly, for example. Well, in some ways that is problmeatic itself. It conveys the idea that women that are tough and capable or that can fight are unattractive. Of course, if you make them over the top sexy than it is just pandering, exploitstive fanservice. Ideally a fighting tsme should have a variety of female characters that run the gamut.
Sometimes you get a single character that can split the difference by themself. Take Baiken for example. She's certainly well endowed, and her outfit while not skimpy can be revealing at times. On the other hand she's missing an eye with an obvious scar on her face, is missing an arm, and has a very gruff personality and smokes from a pipe.
Unfortunatley I can't hold everyone up to the design level that was found in guilty gear, lest I be constantly disapointed.
It's kind of a weird balancing act in some ways. Let's say you have a fighting game and the girls in it are quite ugly, for example. Well, in some ways that is problmeatic itself. It conveys the idea that women that are tough and capable or that can fight are unattractive. Of course, if you make them over the top sexy than it is just pandering, exploitstive fanservice. Ideally a fighting tsme should have a variety of female characters that run the gamut.
Sometimes you get a single character that can split the difference by themself. Take Baiken for example. She's certainly well endowed, and her outfit while not skimpy can be revealing at times. On the other hand she's missing an eye with an obvious scar on her face, is missing an arm, and has a very gruff personality and smokes from a pipe.
Unfortunatley I can't hold everyone up to the design level that was found in guilty gear, lest I be constantly disapointed.
Guilty Gear is civilization. Truly the gold standard for fighting games. The minor skimpiness to her outfit, thanks to her demeanor, never felt like it was all that sexual, it just felt more like it tied into her don't give a fuck raw attitude.
Let's be honest, most female Tekken characters are based on fetishes just like the ones in other fighting games.
Anyway, found some more actual info about the game. I don't know why they're being so stingy if the release isn't that far off.
So, you get to equip 2 different psi abilities (Psi Amps) for each fight, and there are 8 confirmed. There are also EX versions of at least some of them, though I've only seen the effects of one detailed.
The ones I could find are:
- Flamebody. Character ignites. While on fire they do more damage but their health slowly drains.
- Some sort of aoe psi explosion that knocks opponents away.
- Steel Skin. When active the character takes less damage. With EX Steel Skin they gain armour on their moves.
- Invisibility. Character turns invisible and regenerates health.
- I saw hints that there's some sort of psi drain that will either steal or just remove an opponent's psi meter.
- Psi Hammer. A ground pound that does some damage.
Those may be the only ones shown right now. They did say some of them might have to be unlocked--that was unclear.
Wish somebody had talked about the controls. I'm certain it's being designed with pads in mind, but I want to make sure it's playable on a stick. It being a 3d fighter it probably will be. The most they usually get is 4 buttons.
I don't think there's any sort of story mode, instead there's a challenge mode that gives extra combits, which are the game's currency and used to unlock stuff.
Guilty Gear has the worst characters ever. Except for Jam. She's pretty cool. And Baiken is alright.
Let's be honest, most female Tekken characters are based on fetishes just like the ones in other fighting games.
Oh yeah, I'm totally into capoiera Brazilians and strong-headed aikidokas and rich blonde arrogant ballerinas (wait Street Fighter beat them to it with Karin olol) and female assassins and Native American scientists and cyborgs with detachable limbs and androgynous kenpo fighters and Middle Eastern guardians of great power and MILF kangaroos and Pandas.
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Gotta be mentally ill to enjoy attention from the opposite sex am I right?
I know that they are in the minority, but why psychological issues? And what psychological issues? Curious to hear your perspective.
That's pretty damn sexist/hosed up. I'd ignore it.
Some people just like showing off. Either themselves, or their work. I know a few cos-players who are women, and they put an insane amount of effort into the costumes they make. And they're probably on the far low end of the scale when it comes to the people who take it seriously.
It's a hobby. And like all hobbies, people have different approaches to it. Part of the hobby is unwinding in said costume/partying it up after hours. Or showing off the insane level of work you put into a set of clothes. Granted, someone who runs around in a thong that rides up their arse, and a skimpy bikini, or something similar, is probably looking for a certain kind of attention. But it seems more of an enthusiast thing.
Also, there may obviously be exceptions (Like DoA, which has fan-service by the tonnage, but doesn't make it a core gameplay concept.), but from what i've seen, most "girl fighting" games are damn creepy. And one nearly killed gaming at my college.
We used to have weekly tournaments in the college student lounge where we'd play Smash Bros and other similar games. Some (Very "goony", unkempt, and generally everyone assumed he had some issues. Got caught looking at naked pictures of women on his laptop with his hand down his pants at one point in the lobby, and almost got kicked out of the college as a result.) brought some sort of 2D fighting game in that he must have imported from overseas, and claimed it was an awesome game on par with our usual line-up. For the record, the sort of games we'd play there were games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros Brawl mostly. Later, we added MvC to the line-up, too.
So since it was a fairly laid back affair, and people would bring in games to try out all the time. Just about everyone, thinking this guy must have a reason for liking this game so much, gave it a shot and lined up some matches. As it turned out, that was a mistake. A huge mistake.
Not one of us lasted five minutes into the second match. It was the most awkwardly uncomfortable, obviously fan-service thing ever to grace the screen. Half the crowd that was watching got up and just left, shaking their heads, or just tried to pretend they were there for some other reason. And the last two people who tried to stick it out eventually got up, shut it off, and told him to get that crap out of there.
Nearly killed the whole gaming get together between classes for about two months, too, after that. Since every time we tried to get it going again, said creepy guy (And later, some of said creepy guys horribly racist/creepy friends who had the same interests.) would try and force his line-up of horrible games on the gathering, or just bother everyone into where a lot of people stopped showing up. After awhile we just stopped bothering until they focused their attention elsewhere.
Wish I could remember the name of the game. It had young girls fighting, and lots of "drawn" cinematics with panty shots and such. The sounds they made when they got hit or attacked were the worst part, though. Sounded like they were having sex. Couple that with the auditorium we used to play it in, with huge speakers, and it sounded like there was a lesbian orgy going on in the place.
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DoA is actually a decent game. Not even sure it should qualify as a "girl fighting" game. Only reason I sort of count it is because the creator of DoA is one sleazy dude who obviously thinks of some of the characters as fan-service material. It was, I think, implied that that might have lead to him resigning from his position at the company that made it too, back when that whole thing was an issue.
Also, the fact that it has a much larger male cast than the female cast helps, too. Also, that the fight mechanics (At least, in the last game.) were awesome. It only got really creepy after the release of the last actual game in the series. Which is when the "volleyball" (Read: Not volleyball, I checked that game out, it has straight poledancing scenes you can unlock in it, in fact.) stuff started to come out.
The drunk guy you can play as is probably my favorite character in any fighting game ever, given the number of hilarious moments he has and how he plays.
You have to fight his crappy balance and absurd move-set just as much as you do the enemy, but the enemy usually has no clue what the fuck you're doing half the time. Bringing him into an online match was sure to get you some nasty tells since people couldn't cheese wins, when the guy you were playing as might actually seriously fall over on his ass, and then proceed to do some sort of drunken break-dance as he desperately flails at you (While you're out of range.), trip you up when he suddenly scoots forward on his ass, then hop up and non-nonchalantly kick you in the teeth like he intended to do that all along.
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This is fact.
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I'd also like to know of examples of characters that are fanservice towards women, but are not "empowered". The only one I can think of is Remy from SF3...
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Seriously, he's awesome. Much as DoA deserves some criticism for the blatant fan-service, and especially the insanely creepy volleyball games. I can't hate the game when it has characters like this:
That can take out characters like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden with drop kicks to the groin, from the ground.
Everyone else's "quest" in DOA4 involves them stopping someone from destroying the world, fan-service, getting famous, or getting the respect of their big brother or some crap.
His quest? To find the ultra-booze, the greatest booze in the world. And drink that shit dry. Along the way he pretty much pisses everyone off while drunk off his ass, kicks their ass in his story mode, and picks a fight with a world destroying threat (and casually punches it out while having what appears to be a blackout).
And he does find the ultra-booze in the end. And it's awesome.
There's a funny scene in other characters story modes, too. Depending on the character you play as, a second character shows up (Backlit by white light as he charges into the room.) in the generic ominous evil scientists laboratory, at the final boss fight (against the generic energy being/super-boss) to help fight you. The supporting character obviously then obviously gets one-shotted since tag team fight mechanics don't exist.
What happens if your "supporting character" is Brad Wong, however? He shows up in the room before yours in his "victory pose", knocking back a forty, backlit by the light...And continues chugging the thing down until the door closes again. The main character doesn't know what the hell just happened, as evidenced by them essentially going "What the fuck just happened?". They never explain how he got past all the horrible crap your character did, or why he's even there.
Compare this to some of the games in the OP, which, looking them up, are pretty damn fan-servicey in terms of their presentation, and story. If DoA qualifies as a "girl fighting game", then i'm not sure what wouldn't.
Edit: Looking up the volleyball games, did you know that they programmed age to be a multiplicative variable that increases boob jiggle? This, I assume, means if you say you're eighty years old, they're basically gravity-less. Really damn creepy, and it implies all sorts of things about the elderly, I guess.
Edit: Elena in DoA (At least 4.), wasn't even that fan-servicey, as I recall. She wasn't showing any skin, or anything. She just wore a very stylized cat-suit. Which as far as objectification of women in gaming goes is pretty tame. Hell, I can't think of many of the more established games having blatant fan-service in them as a main feature, as of late.
The exception would probably be that whole Ivy thing in the last SC game. Which was a pretty big case of objectification going so far that it became disgusting. I remember reading a gaming magazine and seeing a picture of her as one of the previewed fighters, and her cleavage looked like someone had transplanted her ass to her chest with the way her costume was designed.
Shun Di.
Nearly 100 years old now and still getting drunk and beating on people. Like a real man. Plus, his drinking is actually a core game mechanic.
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He's not nearly as unpredictable as Brad, however. All of his moves appear very deliberate and to the point in their execution.
It's hard to tell from just watching videos, but both the player playing Brad Wong and the player he's fighting often have no fucking clue which direction he's going to move in next. Part of the reason is that the very vague way he moves around makes it hard to rely on "tells" to tell you what you should do next.
Every aspect of his animation is meant to screw with players who have gotten the conventional methods of figuring out how to predict an attack by animation down pat. The only way to really "tell" what you need to do for most people is to concentrate really hard on the game and his moveset. Sort of like if you were drunk.
This leads to situations where he might fall over flat on his ass, or start randomly break dancing out of nowhere. Or just appear that he's lost his balance, leading to him kicking backwards while throwing a punch forwards to keep his balance. Which leads to everyone involved cracking up laughing, even the guy who gets his ass handed to him. What's really funny is when/if you trick a new player into playing him, at which point it's almost like a drunken Deadpool got transplanted into a serious fighting game.
That being said, more games need drunk reindeer men with their heads on fire. Or just drunks with inexplicable and hilarious movesets that are designed to confound everyone.
Edit: Fighting games as a whole (Excepting the kind in the OP.) tend to portray women as being fairly empowered, no matter what they wear. Since if there's a story mode, odds are they'll be in it, kicking ten kinds of ass to reach their goal.
The problem comes with some of those niche games, which, in the interest of creating pornographic material utterly pervert that concept through the story of why they're fighting.
For example, looking up the plot of Variable Geo (One of the "girl fighting" games that was listed in the OP.) on Wikipedia revealed this about its plot:
It's glorified (creepy) masturbation material with a fighting game tacked onto it, essentially. Apparently there's a big market for this stuff in Japan given that there's 14 Variable Geo games that Wikipedia knows of, and apparently there's quite a few other similar games out there.
Shun has a drinks counter. Every time he takes a drink he becomes stronger. After a certain number of drinks he gets new attacks and new properties for his moves. A Shun with 30 drinks is pretty much the most powerful character in the game. Every character also has certain moves, often slaps, that will lower his drinks counter, basically sobering him up. He also sounds like an angry bird, which is awesome.
A bunch of the VG games are straight-up eroge. The series still managed to do more than that, but not to the extent that Melty Blood did.
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I never played it, but back when it was a thing I remember people arguing that it had solid gameplay to make it more than a jerk session for neckbeards.
I'm sure it was the neckbeards jerking it who were saying these things...
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
You know, I never expected a fighting game could be more "rapey" than Battle Raper.
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Word.
Fuudo, current SSF4 champ, used Lion and changed to Shun. Guy is a beast with it.
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The title is what makes me think it won't have good gameplay. Guys will buy it on the fact alone that it's girls fighting. It's pretty obvious what they're doing here.
Ivy is quite possibly one of the worst examples, as the poor woman gains a cup size each game, but loses clothing to go with it. It's hardly "empowering." The empowered thing is bullshit because it's fighting game and no shit everyone is an asskicker. Unless your name is Dan, I guess? Yes, it is. But it's part of an issue with how gaming treats women in general.
As for Ivy, I really like how she looks in Soul Calibur V. She's still the busty dominatrix (which I have no problem with), but she's not falling out of her clothes anymore. I'll admit I haven't really followed the game, so I don't know if they still have that stupid clothing damage thing.
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It's there, but they toned it down a lot(just armor damage, little to no clothing damage). It also rarely happens. There's still some eye-rolling character design choices, but on the whole they got rid of a lot of the eyeball gouging fanservice that happened in SC4 for SC5. It was pretty funny/sad how so many complained about the reduced fanservice though.
This? Nope. Not giving it a chance when there's so many better fighting games around.
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IT was sad how they made a huge deal about toning down the rediculous boobage, then proceeded to have the first ad be a shot of massive Ivy cleavage in her second, "makin up for the first" revealing custome as the first ad.
It was kind of like one big ass juke.
Besides now you can change proportions in the CAS so you make your own rediculously skimpy sluts.
I have to disagree with excluding the nature of the game as meaning a character is not empowered. Ivy, of course, isn't empowered at all. I'm convinced that by the end of it, someone was just doing it as a running gag and to parody the whole thing. Some of those pictures of her they released were downright grotesque at times.
If a character has a story where they are self motivated, are willing to compete on par with the male characters, and are generally not clinging to a man like they're in some sort of shitty sci-fi novel throughout the entire story, and are capable of acting on their own, then yeah, i'd say they're fairly "empowered".
On the other hand, if the content of the story involves them being non-entities, or, even worse, in situations like that Wikipedia plot synopsis up above, then i'd say the opposite is true.
Fighting games are a bad example to use for the issue of objectification, however. Actual fighting games tend to have a fair amount of fan-service and objectification on both sides of the line gender-wise. See: All the fighters that go bare-chested or are half naked that are male as one example. DoA even has one or two of them, like the Bruce Lee ripoff character.
I'd argue that it's more important to check the story related things I mentioned above, and compare how much time the game takes pointing out the female characters "assets" in a fan-servicey way compared to the story as a whole and the male character. If the fan-service takes priority over core aspects of the game itself (It is going to happen, no matter what the cultural norms are. The key component is if it's overblown and/or demeaning in nature.) then it's probably a bad thing in that case.
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Sort of? Your armor can be broken but it doesn't have any sort of mechanics tied to it and everyone is pretty modestly dressed underneath. Ivy's design in SC5 really is drastically better and as I mentioned, even the devs realized she had attained full on Power Girl status and made the conscious decision to tone her down.
She went from this:
http://www.gossipgamers.com/soulcalibur-v-character-roster-leaks-ivy-returns-two-new-characters-unveiled/sc5-ivy-02/
That's a massive improvement. In general, SC5's female characters all got far more modestly dressed and don't have boobs the size of the moon anymore. It's definitely got one of the best female cast of characters out there right now tbh.
Only if you take part of what I said into account.
The lower half of my post addresses the rest of her issues to some extent or another.
This game is really hard to google.
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Even got a FtM transgender character representin' without being a cheap joke or having something 'wrong' with em.
Sometimes you get a single character that can split the difference by themself. Take Baiken for example. She's certainly well endowed, and her outfit while not skimpy can be revealing at times. On the other hand she's missing an eye with an obvious scar on her face, is missing an arm, and has a very gruff personality and smokes from a pipe.
Unfortunatley I can't hold everyone up to the design level that was found in guilty gear, lest I be constantly disapointed.
Guilty Gear is civilization. Truly the gold standard for fighting games. The minor skimpiness to her outfit, thanks to her demeanor, never felt like it was all that sexual, it just felt more like it tied into her don't give a fuck raw attitude.
Anyway, found some more actual info about the game. I don't know why they're being so stingy if the release isn't that far off.
So, you get to equip 2 different psi abilities (Psi Amps) for each fight, and there are 8 confirmed. There are also EX versions of at least some of them, though I've only seen the effects of one detailed.
The ones I could find are:
- Flamebody. Character ignites. While on fire they do more damage but their health slowly drains.
- Some sort of aoe psi explosion that knocks opponents away.
- Steel Skin. When active the character takes less damage. With EX Steel Skin they gain armour on their moves.
- Invisibility. Character turns invisible and regenerates health.
- I saw hints that there's some sort of psi drain that will either steal or just remove an opponent's psi meter.
- Psi Hammer. A ground pound that does some damage.
Those may be the only ones shown right now. They did say some of them might have to be unlocked--that was unclear.
Wish somebody had talked about the controls. I'm certain it's being designed with pads in mind, but I want to make sure it's playable on a stick. It being a 3d fighter it probably will be. The most they usually get is 4 buttons.
I don't think there's any sort of story mode, instead there's a challenge mode that gives extra combits, which are the game's currency and used to unlock stuff.
Guilty Gear has the worst characters ever. Except for Jam. She's pretty cool. And Baiken is alright.
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Oh yeah, I'm totally into capoiera Brazilians and strong-headed aikidokas and rich blonde arrogant ballerinas (wait Street Fighter beat them to it with Karin olol) and female assassins and Native American scientists and cyborgs with detachable limbs and androgynous kenpo fighters and Middle Eastern guardians of great power and MILF kangaroos and Pandas.
Especially Pandas.
This is all that needs to be said to know that the game will be shit. These are the guys who retooled and reused the Fight Club game engine
and reskinned it to make Supremacy MMA
and they're reskinning THAT to make Bellator MMA
(and they forgot to even register the official bellatorgame.com site they're advertising)
It's a gimmicky cash-in.
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The only one I'd favorably suggest is EA MMA, which is as close to a fighting game as these sports games can get.
It's quite a well-designed game which utilizes a good ratio of reactions and mindgames in its gameplay.
There's two different series of MMA games. One good, one absolutely terrible. Iric.
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