melee is very similar to marvel and brawl is very similar to SF, and I have a quick writeup as to why: Ill start with the neutral. fundamentally, the games are structured almost identically. both favor offensive over defensive on almost all fronts. the games have their defensive options, but they are not nearly strong enough to withstand the offense. thus, the greatest defensive option is to put up a strong offense. you will rarely see players in marvel just downbacking in neutral, much like youll never see melee players sitting in shield or rolling all over the place. both are easy to punish/open up, and they will get you nowhere. youll hear melee/marvel players say that the worse thing you can be doing is rolling/blocking (aside from getting hit), and theyre referring to this exactly. more likely, the neutral in these games are played putting the hurt on with projectiles or attempting to edge your way in/mix them up with movement, which brings me to my next point: movement the true separator between melee/marvel and street fighter/brawl is movement. in melee/marvel, you need to be able to control exactly where you need your character(s) to be. while the same is true for SF/brawl, melee/marvel have a plethora of movement options, not to mention their engines are just straight up faster. the game is more active with characters projectiles flying all over the place. the heavy movement (in combination with worse defensive options) leads to intense pressure and mixups. the concept of opening your opponents defenses exists in SF/brawl and to a great extent, but, as are SF/brawl, theyre a lot slower and more processed than breaking defenses in melee/marvel. most marvel players understand exactly what im talking about in regards to guard breaks and pressure, so ill talk about melees similarities. melee players use spaces as a perfect example of defense breaks, and its an excellent example. spacies can go to town on their opponents shield, and can force their opponent into making a usually poor decision under pressure (the equivalent to incorrect blocking in marvel), and now the defenses are down and theyre hit. while spacies have the best pressure in the game, they arent the only ones who can very offensively pressure defenses and open up an opponent. marth spaces his disjointed normals perfectly, and applies safe but effective pressure. falcon runs around his opponents shield, and if they sit there, they get grabbed or poked. peach uses her float and turnips to set up some of the most insane blockstrings ever. point is, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time in melee/marvel, youll suffer heavy punishment. youll suffer punishment in SF/brawl, but they arent as severe. which (I swear this isnt on purpose) brings me to my next point: punishment and combos. marvel is known for its very lengthy and OTK combos, and it sometimes gets a bad rep because of it. there are claims that this makes the game mindless: you get one hit and the game is all set. while one touch kills are pretty prominent, they do not overshadow the game’s neutral; in fact, they enhance it. you have to play a near perfect neutral because if you lose it and you get hit, you either have lost a character, are in a terrible position of blocking, your opponent goes for the reset, or something equally as bad (ex. viewtiful joe’s slow down super). when your character dies, your second or third character comes on the screen, where you’re susceptible to what is known as an “incoming.” incomings are notorious for their crazy setups, and there much worse than regular mixups since your opponent has time to set it up. all that having been said, my point is that you have multiple opportunities to play the neutral, but if you lose it, you’re in an absolutely horrible position. this is similar to melee conceptually. melee’s hitstun and engine allow for freeflowing combos that can rack up some serious percent and oftentimes cause the loss of a stock. if they don’t, you are most likely losing the neutral immediately after the combo, with your opponent dominating the stage. this is assuming the combo ended on the stage; more than likely, you were knocked off and need to recover. i compare edgeguarding in melee to incoming in marvel because they both give huge advantage to the player who won the neutral. in both situations, the player on the worse end is working exclusively to come back from a terrible position, while the player on the better end already won a large portion of the fight and has to work a lot less to secure it. the games are balanced enough to where the winning player doesn’t have the round set securely after just one neutral victory, but they do have an easily visible advantage. SF/brawl don’t reward neutral wins as much as melee/marvel do. SF has corners and brawl has edgeguarding, but it’s easier to come back from bad positions such as these. there are more instances of neutral happening, but they are less consequential. the punish game in melee/marvel are HUGE, as we all know, whereas SF/brawl plays a traditional footsies games that focuses more on defensive strategy and pokes. Combos aren’t incredibly lengthy and far from one touch kills in SF/brawl, and after these combos, the game most likely returns to the footsies game it was playing before. my last point for this post (since I have other points I didn’t touch upon) is the execution. we can talk about the execution required for combos in melee/marvel, but that’s one point I don’t think is valid, as SF has tough links that require precision, and anyone who’s played brawl knows that comboing in that game takes some really intense skill. this is more stemmed off of my points on movement, but I felt it warranted its own section. SF/brawl are, as previously mentioned, slower paced games by design, and don’t have intensive execution required for movement. you’re not everywhere at once in those games like in melee/marvel, and the movement is influenced by precise positioning for the footsies being played. the metagames for melee/marvel exploited the possibility of insane movement and made it a requirement. melee’s wavedashing, dashdancing, wavelanding, etc. is so crucial to micromanaging your space, zoning, pressure/offense, etc., and the same is true for marvel’s wavedashing, plinking, trijumps, etc. these techniques for movement are hard to perform, and very difficult to master, so melee/marvel has a steeper learning curve in this regard than SF/brawl, since new players will have trouble with movement and will be punished accordingly (the punish games also make for a steeper learning curve, but that’s been covered already). one last thing I want to address in this post is regarding the similarities between SF and brawl. SF is highly praised for being an excellent fighting game on all fronts, while brawl is heavily criticized. why is this? the answer is pretty simple: while I’ve been stating that SF/brawl prefer defensive strategy, SF does actually reward a smart offense in the form of combos. if you win SF’s footsie game and convert your stray hit into a combo, you’ve secured a solid lead and the game will continue, but your opponent has the ability to do the same to comeback from their deficit. in brawl, however, this is not the case; the game does not reward offense at all, as almost any offense is unsafe and can be punished. these punishes are short, but result in some form of a lead. this is in combination with the fact that brawl’s defensive options are incredibly effective, so much so that they are almost always the best option in a given situation. since approaching/taking the offensive is punishable and since defensive options are ridiculously powerful, nobody wants to approach, so after the first hit, the game can come to a screeching halt. this leads to games, more often than not, resulting to stalling and running down the clock to secure a victory. it’s been criticized as boring to play and boring to watch. I honestly hope smash 4 fixes these problems; I’d like smash 4 to play a slower and more defensive game, but also reward offense enough to fix the stalling and camping problems brawl suffered from. smash 4 has the potential to be the true different counterpart that smash players deserve. Note: I think brawl’s overly defensive gameplay was a contributing factor to its hatred and demise, with the real reason being meta knight. but that’s a whole big post for another day. I have a few more points but these were really what sprung to mind. I probably rambled a lot since I didn’t organize this so if anything doesn’t make sense, I can clarify. TL;DR: the connection between melee and marvel, and brawl to SF, is very accurate, as melee/marvel are both fast paced games that mostly favor offensive strategy over defensive strategy, whereas SF/brawl are slower and favor the opposite. I highly recommend reading the whole thing because I clarify the overgeneralizations in this tl;dr, though.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 07:48:37 +0000
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