Dreamcast Retrospective Day 4: Power Stone

It is truly remarkable how many times I have seen fighting games attempt to utilize the element of 3D space and completely miss the point.

The element that the third dimension brings to a fighting game is that of being able to move around on more than two planes.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

3D movement in a fighting game should bring interaction with the environment, increased evasive abilities, greater defensive options, and in general a better sense of space. 

But yet time and time again, I see 3D fighting games totally miss the mark. 

I applaud Street Fighter IV for using 3D graphics but sticking to a 2D plane.  Far better that than do what so many other games have done and move into the 3D realm while not truly taking advantage of any of its strengths. 

For examples, look to nearly any 3D fighting game in existence.  So few of them have done it right that you can use just about any of them as demonstration of the point.

Dead or Alive almost gets it (a point which somewhat surprises me considering its utter failure to generate my interest in any other area of its design or gameplay).  Its large, open stages, decent level of environmental interactivity, and multi-level playing fields are aspects to be commended that other fighters perhaps should borrow from.  In terms of the game’s fighting mechanics themselves, however, 3D space plays very little part.  Quite simply, being able to move in multiple directions is not useful in a gameplay sense.

Far be it from me to claim to be a Virtua Fighter expert, but this game as well seems lacking in this department, though it’s a moot point considering its sheer depth in other areas.  As much depth as Virtua Fighter possesses, I was never able to glean much benefit from being able to move on a multi-dimensional plane in that series.  The movement is too slow and the evasive capabilities not geared toward that sort of evasion. 

Plenty other examples exist, but those two examples alone should show you that some of the biggest names on the market have somewhat managed to evade the point of having 3D space in your game in the first place.  Need we really delve into topics such as Mortal Kombat’s abysmal 3D incarnations to further belabor the point? 

I think not.

One modern fighting title that has gotten it right is Soulcalibur.  It has managed to develop its fighting mechanics in such a way that 3D space is vital to the strategy of a good Soulcalibur player.  Unlike any other fighting game, Soulcalibur manages to weave 3D space into the very fabric of the fighting mechanics themselves so that it feels as if it truly has a reason to take place in more than two dimensions. '

Well, unlike any other fighter save one, that is. 

Power Stone is an under-appreciated Dreamcast gem.  I cast no blame with the under-appreciated” label, for I am one of the under-appreciators.  I never played it nearly as much as I would have liked. 

Power Stone truly showed what was possible with a fighting game in 3D space.  No longer were the fighters tethered to one another with some invisible magic rope tied around their wastes, keeping them ever in close, face-to-face combat with no freedom to break away and move around. 

In Power Stone, you could roam around wherever the hell you wanted to.  You were encouraged to run around freely, interact with the environment, pick up items, throw things at the other player, and just generally wreak havoc.  Power Stone tapped into the true potential of an open space on a chaotic brawl like no other game.

It combined that wonderful hook with a wacky cast of characters, a great cartoony art style, and a general sense of over-the-top-ness that was really enjoyable.

Any fan of Super Smash Bros that has not played Power Stone is truly missing out.  Power Stone is very much in the same vein of quick, chaotic brawler, yet there’s a little more to Power Stone.  It is still simple, still accessible, but the 3D realm adds much to the proceedings. 

As if all that weren’t enough, there was also the additional task, on top of the fighting itself, of collecting the aforementioned Power Stones, which would randomly appear throughout the levels.  You see, in the Power Stone universe, every character has a super powered version of themselves they are able to transform into.
Obviously, you want this to happen for your character.  Equally obviously, you want to deny this happening for the other character. 

In order to make the transformation happen, you had to collect the shiny crystal things that would appear all around the levels, either by themselves or after breaking things.  This forced you to run around and be on the move, taking advantage of the 3D space, more than you otherwise might have had to. 

This frantic mixture of environmental interaction, object collection, and wacky, chaotic brawler is really like no other fighter I’ve played.  It was truly intense (not to mention sometimes truly difficult in the more-robust-than-you-would-think single player game). 

It was a tiny bit platformer, a large bit Smash Bros, a little bit action game, and a little bit Power Rangers.
Power Stone 2 bumped the number of simultaneous players to four while greatly increasing the environmental interaction, making it a bit more complex and appealing, but also immeasurably more chaotic.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

Anyone who enjoys fighting games, who enjoys action games, who enjoys a little bit of chaos, or who even has a passing interest in crazy games like Smash Bros really should seek out Power Stone and give it a shot. 
It’s still a fantastic game to play with a group of friends. 

Power Stone was a key part of the Dreamcast library.  It was addictive, chaotic, and easily accessible, while providing those all-important multiplayer titles that kept gamers pulling out their Dreamcasts when friends were over. 

It also, perhaps inadvertently, hinted at what truly could be done with the fighting genre in an open, 3D space and provided a unique fighting experience that’s still unmatched on some levels by anything other than its own sequel. 

So, Capcom, you seem to be on a fighting game bent as of late.  You’ve brought back Marvel vs. Capcom.  You’ve resurrected Street Fighter.  How’s about bringing us a Power Stone 3, hmm? 

I’d certainly be the first in line for it. 

The Mystery of Mortal Kombat

To celebrate my recent purchase of a shiny new Madcatz Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition Fightstick, I began scouring Xbox Live Marketplace for any demos of fighting games I might have missed. There wasn’t too much to be found, honestly, but one I did happen across was Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

It was only five dollars!

Ah, what could be better than a bit of old-school nostalgic fun with the wacky cast of Mortal Kombat, right?

So I plugged in my stick and fired up the demo. After only a few minutes, I was left with one question.

How in Raiden’s name did anybody ever like this game?

All the characters play the same. There’s no variety in move sets, aside from a couple of lousy special attacks per character. The movement is slow and plodding.

Oh yeah, and the game has the worst, most frustrating AI in the history of everything ever created by man.

I’ve poured over 40 hours into Street Fighter IV at this point (a small number by hardcore standards, but a lot from my more casual standpoint) and I’ve put nearly 30 into BlazBlue. These are games are different from Mortal Kombat, but surely the 2D fighting game basics I learned in them would translate into at least enough basic knowledge to beat the first character on novice difficulty in arcade mode, right?

Nope.

I’m not ashamed to admit, Kitana handed me my ass over and over and over again as I tried out an assortment of stupid-looking characters trying desperately to get the hang of one of them. Never mind that they all played exactly the same, I thought that surely one of those times I would be able to beat her.

And I did, eventually, through sheer dumb luck. Yay for me. Then I was promptly defeated by enemy number two.

See, the problem with the AI isn’t just its difficulty. Oh, it has plenty of that, don’t get me wrong. But good fighting game AI will make you feel like you’re fighting against another person (at least to as large an extent as possible). Mortal Kombat seems to revel in its cheap, cheating, cheesy AI.

At no point did it come even close to fooling me into thinking I was playing against something smart. I was simply playing against a series of canned responses. Had I spent more time with the game and figured out some of its patterns and learned more good patterns myself I could have gotten farther. But as that would have been the opposite of fun, I did not.

Some deep, dark part of me has a strange fondness for the Mortal Kombat characters. I can’t explain why. I hated all the MK games as kid, too. My next door neighbor used to sucker me into fighting him all the time and continually beat me to a pulp because I had no idea what I was doing and he didn’t bother to tell me. My times with every Mortal Kombat game I’ve ever played have been almost universally negative, with the sole exception of playing the surprisingly decent Shaolin Monks with a friend.

Despite all of this, I still occasionally play an MK game, hoping to find something decent and justify spending more time with these terrible characters I love for some reason, yet it rejects me every time because, well, all of the games are absolutely terrible.

Street Fighter holds up well and is still playable to this day.

Mortal Kombat is a giant pile of crap and always was.

I suppose I was hoping to fire up the Ultimate MK3 demo and find something decently fun enough to relive a couple of memories for a few bucks. Maybe I was even hoping for an experience like I’ve had with Street Fighter IV recently, where I finally discover the game’s hidden secrets and find out why it’s so much fun for so many.

But to have an experience like that, I suppose the game would have to be good.

Even the port of the terrible game was terrible. The menus were basic, amateurish, and ugly and the game had almost no options. I couldn’t even find a way to remap the controls to make them work better with my arcade stick. What arcade fighting game in its right mind, no matter how terrible, doesn’t allow players to easily use an arcade stick? Madness, I say. I know the game was an early example of an XBLA release, but man does it ever show how far we’ve come since the early days.

Well, I can definitely say this: had I bought this Xbox Live Arcade rendition of Ultimate MK3 based on some crazy notion of nostalgia that came from nowhere, it would have been the worst use of $5 I’ve had in quite some time.

Come to think of it, though, I haven’t tried Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe yet.... Maybe that one is better....

Out of My League

I make no apologies for the fact that I am a casual fighting game fan with decidedly average skills. I am not terrible, but I am not terrific either. I am constantly attracted to their depth, shiny graphics, and high replayability, however I simply do not have the time or inclination to spend the amount of time necessary to get to the higher levels of play.

Most of the time I am fine with this. It does produce more than the occasional frustration, as fighting games in general (to their detriment, I think) aren’t really built for a person like me. The casual player is an afterthought in the construction of most of these titles.

Still, when I find a fighting game’s mechanics to be fun enough, I will often fight through the punishing difficulty and fight through the complete lack of tutorials or any way to learn how to play the game within the game itself. I have fun with these games on the level that I like to have fun with them, and that’s fine for me. I wish I had more human competition and I wish I were less afraid to go online, lest I get torn to shreds by the type of players that actually like to go online with these games, but I still manage to have fun with them.

Spending the amount of time necessary to pull off some of the insane combos and techniques that the higher level players do would require a level of single-game dedication I don’t give to any genre. Sure I envy players that can do this, but it is a type of envy that is fully aware that my inferiority will be a permanent state of being. I do constantly strive to get better of course, but within the bounds of what is reasonable for someone with my abilities and relatively short attention span.

The more I play them, however, the more I continue to be frustrated with how much this genre seems not to be made for me. I yearn for a fighting game tailored more for a person like myself - with enough depth to satisfy, but with enough accessibility and friendliness that its difficulty is not punishing, its secrets not locked to all but those who put in huge amounts of time. Smash Bros. is one example of something that's at least in the right ballpark, but while that is certainly a fun title, it’s not exactly satisfying on the same level of depth as a true one-on-one fighting game.

These frustrations have only become more and more prominent recently as I have increased the number of fighting games I am spending a lot of time with. Previously, the only title that was able to hook me for long was Soulcalibur - about as close to the approachable fighting game nirvana as it currently gets. As I have written about previously, however, I have now managed to discover the joys of Street Fighter and have recently begun to become quite fond of BlazBlue as well.

Perhaps it is my inexperience talking, but the 2D fighting games seem to share a particular contempt for newcomers. It’s hard to blame them, really, as they must cater to a fan base more hardcore than just about anything else I can think of, but the problem remains.

As much as the genre frustrates me due to its stagnancy, I shall continue my search for those fighting games that manage to hook me. I have had tons of fun lately learning of the addictive qualities of Street Fighter IV and penetrating the weirdness that is every single aspect of BlazBlue.

This has indeed been a terrific period for fighting game fans and I am living proof that the genre’s newfound (and somewhat unexpected) resurgence has served to draw at least a few newcomers into the fray.

I can’t help but wonder, however, if the “member’s only” nature of the fighting game genre as it stands has turned many of those dabblers away. It nearly happened to me, were it not for my stubborn insistence to finally learn what the hell this Street Fighter thing was about.

I’m glad I stuck with it and I’m sure I can’t be the only one who has discovered the joy of fighting games in recent days (or in my case, at least the expanded joys of fighting games, as I’ve been a Soulcalibur addict for years). I hope that someday, sooner would be better than later, a developer realizes that there’s room for middle ground. I fully believe that someone could make a fighting game with enough depth to satisfy those that wished for it while maintaining enough fun (and reasonable difficulty levels) at a lower level of play to satisfy those that merely wish to make an entrance to the scene.

Meanwhile, I'll just continue my struggle to fit in while trying not to throw my controller at the wall too many times.