judaspete

I'll second that the team that made Power Stone was just great in a way that most cannot live up to, but I think there is a bit more to it. Power Stone was simple, and that is not meant as an insult. Your base form had one attack button that did a 3-hit combo, one button to pick up or throw things, and one button to jump. That was basically it. That simplicity made it important to gain advantage by finding other weapons and picking up power stones. You didn't use that 3-hit combo to deal damage, you used it to make your opponent drop their power stones. It was a frantic thrill trying to be the first power up, and then a whole new thrill trying to playing cat and mouse once someone goes Super Saiyan.

Most other arena fighters have more complex fighting mechanics, and less cat and mouse mechanics. It never feels quite as good because Power Stone got the formula perfect the first time.

ARMS came close though.

@bigsocrates: Wet had similar gameplay to Max Payne, but on top of slo-mo jump shooting, there was slo-mo wall-run shooting, and slow-mo rock-slide shooting (this game had all the hyphens). Plus you had a kitana. Plus, it wasn't depressing.

It was however, a bit janky, and the major boss fights were almost entirely QTEs, so I get why it didn't review all that great.

@bigsocrates: "I think that we all have 6/10s... that we thoroughly enjoyed and that are 8/10 or 9/10s for us personally."

I have a few of these. Anyone remember Wet? I totally get why it didn't review all that great, but to me it was what Max Payne should have been.

I figured such an overlooked system would have a few hidden gems that folks missed out on due to the Jag's bad reputation. So far, that does not seem to be the case. It just sucked.

You're love of the Amico is a thing of beauty. Gives me chills.

😆

@bigsocrates: You are probably right. DOA is the butt of some jokes, but it lasted longer than most other 3D fighters in the end. Something about side-stepping turns a lot of folks off I guess. Tekken is basically the last one standing, perhaps because 7 nerfed the effectiveness of side-stepping.

I like DOA and think it deserves more credit for actually being fun. But there is no getting around the fact it was marketed as a boob physics simulator first and foremost, especially once the Extreme spinoffs came about. At that point, saying you liked it for the fighting was like saying you had a Playboy subscription for the articles. It might have been true (Playboys used to have an unexpectedly large number of words in them) but no one was ever going to take you seriously.

That said, there is no denying Virtua Fighter is more technical and was taken more seriously by the FG community, and that series had an even earlier death than DoA. So while I don't have any answers, I suspect it was more than just boobs holding the series back. Perhaps being exclusive to Xbox during a formative time for fighting game e-sports was another problem? Japanese players are big chunk of this group.

Honestly, I have encountered very few modern controllers that I didn't like. Like if you go way back, the Atari joysticks aren't great, and playing NES games on something with round edges sure beats the OG rectangle, but it's been a long time since I felt a 1st party gamepad was getting in my way. N64 had an impractically large pad, but having essentially two different setups made it work well for a lot of different types of games. GC button layout was only an issue for 2D fighters, but the system had very few of those anyway. Dualshock 1-3 were a bit small, but very practical with their layouts. DS4 improved this a lot. DC probably should have had a second stick but had great ergonomics. XBox controllers click too loudly, but are great otherwise.

Have to agree with @ben_h:. A Switch Pro controller with analogue triggers would be perfect, and fortunately it basically exists in the 8Bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth.

Look, I don't like throwing the fanboy/girl label around, but I do think it had an influence here. The first few years of the PS3 were kinda shaky for PS fans. They came off PS2 being the clear dominant "team", and were suddenly presented with an expensive console, that was losing out on exclusives, received oftentimes inferior ports of multiplatform games, and a year head start for the main competition. They NEEDED Killzone 2 to be the Halo Killer that the first game wasn't.

To be clear, I don't think it was a bad game, it had a lot going for it (especially production values), just got a bump from the 1st party effect.

Yeah, I agree. It's not a big deal, but they should have had the policy in place to begin with, and never sold the game in countries where PSN is not available. If a company pulls the rug out from under their customers, review bombing is a fair reaction.