Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints

Which fighting characters do you think have the most unique mechanics and why? Feel free to elaborate on each character as well.

You realize this list is going to be like, entirely guilty gear characters?

Lemme think.

Eddie comes to mind immediately, because he has control of a character separate from himself whose every move is controlled by releasing buttons rather than pressing them.

Arakune from Blazblue has a similar mechanic, except he needs to curse opponents, then he’s capable of releasing buttons to summon insect projectiles from all over the screen.

Ramlethal has 3d beat em up style attacks on her punch and kick buttons and remote swords that can be deployed and reeled in

Leo whitefang has a mode where he turns backwards and seriously can’t block or throw, but he can dash throw you and has a bunch of amazing normals with throw invincibility, also a counter move that beats your attacks.

Dhalsim, especially SFV dhalsim. There’ve been clones of him in a lot of other games, but it’s still a rare achetype.

Johnny needs to power up his mist finer by using coins that are a limited resource, and he can stick opponents with a cloud that makes his mist finer unblockable.

Crow in Rising Thunder had a super fucked up pressure game where he can continually hit people with normals, cancel them into close projectile tosses, then do a jumpin, mixup, and repeat until he lands a hit and confirm into a combo.

Jigglypuff is a highly mobile, small, short range poke based character. That’s weird by itself, then jiggs has an instant kill move.

Snake can launch projectiles directly on top of himself, plant mines in the ground, and stick opponents to extend combos or kill them, plus has a ridiculously good drill that can be used in combos and for (weak, but scary) pressure.

Bedman can perform moves, then have a duplicate of himself repeat them later on.

Venom can lay down pool balls and get them to rebound off each other.

Robo-ky has a heat meter and spends tension differently than the rest of the cast. Wants to build up heat and keep it close to the top, but also can blow himself up if he overdoes it.

Peacock has a ton of unique projectile tricks and extremely unique combo paths that rely on setting up projectiles to drop mid-combo.

Ice Climbers, they have the craziest chaingrabs, handoffs, desync tactics, and an infinite.

Yoshi. He’s Yoshi.

Peach, hovering and turnip projectiles for the craziest setups you’ll ever see.

Pikachu, just look at axe and capitulize. This character is nuts.

Magneto in MVC2.

FANG, a slow slow projectile that you can’t block, but which poisons you? Weirdness.

Elphelt, stance dancing weirdness, unblockables, grenades.

Beowolf, can hold opponents, carry them around, hype meter, stance/setup weirdness,

Bishamon, reversal-only DP, weird projectile

Fox/Falco

Kevin from Garou, Also B Jenet

Urien/Oro

Vega SFV

Doctor Strange

Phoenix Wright

Hakumen, weird meter, weird combos, weird counters

Juri, weird fireball

M Bison, head press

Zappa

Definitely others in games I haven’t played. Out of space.

Is it wrong for me to criticize 2D fighting games for being too similar? reasoning: they all carry the same fundamentals and to me personally makes less unique. also for the piece do 3D fighters suffer from this at all?

Yes. Stop.

I can’t say anything about 3d fighting games, I don’t understand them, I can’t play them, but you’re absolutely wrong for criticizing 2d fighting games for being too similar.

C’mon, you gonna criticize FPS games for all having the same fundamentals? or RTS? or Beat ’em up games? Platformers?

2d Fighting games are the most diverse genre I know of, because they have nothing else to fall back on. They can’t diversify by having different stories, different levels. Those aspects are barely a part of the experience. So they’ve had to diversify through making the characters and systems all unique.

http://xenozipnotes.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/fighting-game-mechanics.html
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2009/01/combat-systems.html

Here’s two lists of fighting game mechanics. These don’t cover what mechanics individual characters have, which would make a new list 5-10 times as long. Do you think there’s another genre with a list this big?

The fundamental strategy in every fighting game can vary a fair amount, between street fighter with a heavy emphasis on the ground game and block/throw, KoF with a faster game pace and a real high/low mixup game due to hops, anime fighters with air dashing and bullshit pressure games but also tons of defensive options, skullgirls and marvel with ridiculous combo games and team composition.

Consider just the range of projectiles in fighting games and the differentiation between how they’re deployed, how they move, and what function they serve. Do you see that much range in first person shooter games? in action platformer games? in Mobas?

Individual characters in fighting games are so dissimilar that people have trouble jumping between them.