Agreed, the top 8 of SF4 was just fantastic to watch. SSBM was also a great series of games, though I was crushed to see amSa miss the top 8. His Yoshi is absolutely mind-blowing to behold–yet another guy who’s taken “heretofore disregaded lower-mid-tier character to the stratosphere out of nowhere” story there; his showing at CEO a couple of weeks ago was the stuff of legends.
Finally, while MvC3 is still a “first to miss a block gets 3-0’ed” shitfest, the emotion of Justin Wong’s run-up to the final and eventual takedown was just amazing. Plus, barrel roll!
Between this and RedBull Battlegrounds (Starcraft 2 tournament running concurrent with EVO) made this a fabulous weekend for me, since I had little to do. I am not a big DOTA guy, but I did watch TeamLiquid’s run through TI4, since I love their SC2 team… They dropped pretty early, though, so my total DOTA-consumption was pretty low compared to SSBM, USF4, UMvC3, and SC2.
This year’s BlazBlue finals were the best thing I’ve seen in a long time and definitely the highlight of what was, overall, an all-around fantastic Evo this year. BB finals have been pretty good in the past, too, but not always given much air time. I’ve enjoyed Dacidbro’s commentary for years now, and I really thought he and Xie did a really great job. Plus, I think Tiku’s Tager [1, 2] was every bit as impressive as Snake Eyes’ Zangief. Incredible Top 8, and a truly excellent job by both Dogura and Garireo in providing a memorable GF match.
I’ve heard some noises to the effect that BB will be replaced with GGXrd next year; I really hope that’s not the case. I’ll hold out the dim hope that both games can have a tournament presence. Anime needs more respect!
Evo was all-around fantastic this year, actually. Axe’s Pikachu in Smash Bros. was pretty awesome, and there were a lot of really fun matches, I thought. It’s too bad that the hype kind of died down due to the grand finals being basically the Smash analog of a fireball battle: too slow and technical for most of the audience to really get invested. Given all the energy around the game, the fact that Nintendo finally got its act together and sponsored Evo, and some of the stuff Sakurai’s been saying, this could be the start of some good momentum for competitive Smash. Please don’t screw it up, Nintendo…
Between this, Kings of Cali, and Pokemon Nationals, it’s been a great time for competitive games! I guess it’s time to go back to MOBA dominance, though. :(
Rose was pretty heavily buffed in this version- a damage boost and her EX Soul Spiral now can’t be stuffed on startup (though it can now be thrown). Fortunately folks who attempt to throw her on wakeup can be countered by a wakeup forward kick (which on counter leads to a small combo) Also, she wasn’t hurt at all by delayed wakeup, as she isn’t a pressure character. I use Rose myself as one of my two characters (I use Rose and Hawk mostly)
Seems to me that the Nintendo sponsorship is an early move so they can pull the strings to get their new Smash game played at EVO next year. Hopefully for everyone’s sake the game is highly regarded and people want to play it, which seems like a long shot. Otherwise this could get messy for the Smash community.
Damage boost is nice and helpful but doesn’t fully cover her former flaws by any means. The new EX Soul Spiral is a mixed bag since it can be thrown now. It’s a nice thing to have for sure but still not a very strong wake up option. Wakeup forward kick can be countered by plenty of great options - it’s still going to be a guessing game stacked against her. Delayed wake up I think is Rose’s biggest buff as it gives her a little bit of extra wiggle room on wake up which has always been her biggest weakness. She still has the same issues getting characters like Yun, Rufus, and Akuma off of her.
People on the internet are now calling her OP which is silly. Rose has been an underrated character for a long time but I wouldn’t consider her any more than a solidly above average character. Rose won EVO because Luffy played out of his mind - not because she is the most dominant character in the game.
I think that’s part of it, but I’m not sure that’s all of it. Nintendo’s been pretty content to ignore Evo, up until last year when they were ready to pursue some draconian measures to keep Melee from being streamed. That’s been consistent with their weird aversion to having their games played in a particular way (c.f. tripping in Brawl) and their aggressive stance against the monetization of their content by third parties. To go from that to running their own tournament, albeit not a particularly ‘serious’ one, at E3 and openly embracing Evo seems like a pretty big 180 for a relatively conservative company. (It might just be part of their direct-to-consumer marketing strategy, though…) Some of the announced changes to the game itself sound kind of encouraging – things like making Final Destination playable with other stage themes.
I’m sure I’m overly optimistic, but I’d like to see what a Smash Bros. that’s tuned towards being a competitive, balanced fighting game could look like at Evo. I think it’s done pretty well for itself already, despite its developer considering it to be a party game above all else, and I think it offers something that’s different and legitimately interesting compared to the other fighting games.
But generally, yeah, if the Smash scene doesn’t accept Smash Bros. U as a worthy successor, it’ll probably kill the game at Evo. Melee’s 13 years old at this point, and it’ll look silly if the preferred version of Smash is two releases back.
Last year’s Melee thing was lawyers going over PR, which is why it got resolved almost immediately.
Tripping in Brawl was part of Sakurai’s kneejerk reaction to Melee being “too hardcore,” along with some other design decisions that have been reversed in SSB4. SSB4 itself features a lot of new changes that are specifically designed for competitive players, like removing character changes (Zelda, Sheik, Samus, and Zero Suit Samus are all standalone characters now, rather than Zelda transforming into Sheik and Samus losing her armor when using her Final Smash), and one of the new characters, Rosalina, has a rather advanced core gameplay mechanic for something considered a party game. It’s already been stated that the goal is to make something that’s a good balance between the hardcore design of Melee and the casual design of Brawl, and a lot of what we’ve seen is a good indicator that they’re serious about it.
The goal is one thing but I’m not sure Nintendo is capable of pulling it off. Smash was never supposed to be a serious competitive fighter - its enormous competitive success was an accident as far as Nintendo is concerned. Now they are stuck trying to please hardcore fans but their priority is always going to be party game first. No matter what they do anyway I’m not sure anything is going to be good enough to please people who have been playing Melee for over a decade. Even if they make a killer hardcore game they are still almost guaranteed to end up with a heavily fragmented community. The Melee roots unfortunately might be too deep at this point. I hope for the best but they have a daunting task ahead of them.
You’re right about those calls to nerf Rose being silly
As for Smash Wii U- usually the content competitive and the content casual gamers want, there’s very little overlap between them. It’s possible to make a game to satisfy both audiences, you just have to make it where you can get the content you want without having to sit through that which you don’t.
That said, this is something FG devs have been terrible at traditionally.
Certain egregious sins this gen
Achievements for winning 100 MP games
SFIV back in 2009 making you beat the single-player mode 25 times to unlock a character
Soul Calibur and Mortal Kombat each making you play a long, boring campaign mode to get all the characters
The game that got it right to me was Persona. Plenty of content for both, but each side could access all the content they would want by playing the game their way.
As a counter to arguments that SSB4 will be a better competitive game than Melee (or even on-par):
Project M makes Brawl almost-playable as a competitive game and is actually pretty fascinating to watch as someone who pumped a lot of time into Brawl, but it looks like SSB4 is walking away from more and more elements that make for exciting, high-level watchability, even if they’re making minor concessions like a “hardcore” MP variant with no items or whatever.
Except cosmetic content, anyway. The navigator (announcer) unlocks all required you to play single-player content, primarily Score Attack, which in P4A is nigh impossible for casual players and still incredibly difficult for competitive players (the opponents all have buffs that make BlazBlue’s Unlimited characters look well-balanced in comparison).
