After all the excitement new characters bring to the table, Famitsu is bringing things down a notch with a recent report on Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-‘s lobbies. These online stomping grounds will be rendered in 3D with arcade cabinets representing open matches, much in the same way Persona 4 Arena Ultimax’s lobbies functioned.
While players are waiting for open spots, they will be able to distract themselves by fishing in the lobby pond. Far from a mere distraction, however, this pursuit will earn customization parts and emotions for their online avatars as well as alternate colors to use during battle.
In addition, -REVELATOR- is also said to feature a revamped training mode for beginners that utilizes an on-screen arcade stick to visualize inputs, and a two-part story that pairs the original arcade chapters with a brand new narrative on consoles.
Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- launches for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on May 26 in Japan, June 7 in North America, and June 10 in Europe. Pre-ordering will allow access exclusive demo before the official release, though exact details are still forthcoming.
UltraChen TV is back with another installment of their Tuesday talk show. Tonight, James Chen and UltraDavid will be discussing a variety of topics, including upcoming changes to Street Fighter V, Radiant Entertainment’s acquisition by Riot Games, Final Round 19, and more.
The stream will be live in this article, but you can also visit Twitch to join the chat.
The folks over at VGBootCamp recently went live with another installment of Smash @ Xanadu from Xanadu Games in Baltimore, Maryland. These weekly broadcasts provide a great look at the region’s Smash community, with tonight’s stream focusing entirely on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
In addition to local talent, tonight’s Xanadu will feature appearances by VoiD, Hyuga, and Pink Fresh.
The stream is live below, but you can also head on over to Twitch to join the chat.
By now, it’s no secret that Street Fighter V was plagued by numerous issues in the weeks after its launch. Some, like matchmaking, continue to be improved by the developers, but others could still use some work.
In a recent video, Battle(non)sense takes a break from the world of first-person shooters to explore input and network lag in modern fighters. His research focused on Street Fighter V, Ultra Street Fighter IV, Mortal Kombat X, and Skullgirls, using a sophisticated setup to determine input delay in both offline and online environments.
As you can see, his findings are pretty shocking. Despite being the newest game on the market, Street Fighter V’s input lag is considerably higher than both the previous franchise installment and its direct competitors. On average, Street Fighter V features more than double the delay of Ultra Street Fighter IV, and more than four times that of Mortal Kombat X and Skullgirls, both of which perform admirably.
The culprit is V-Sync, a tool that adjusts framerate to match a monitor’s refresh rate. While this typically has the benefit of cutting down on things like screen tearing and other graphic distortions, it can have a disastrous effect on fighting games by increasing input lag. Unfortunately, Street Fighter V doesn’t offer an in-game option to disable V-Sync, forcing players to edit the game’s configuration file themselves.
Once this option is taken care of, however, things get a little better for Street Fighter V players, but not enough to match the lower input lag in other fighting games. This disparity also carries over into online play, even though Mortal Kombat X sees a dramatic increase itself.
The second part of the video shouldn’t come as much of a surprise for veteran fighting game players (higher ping contributes to higher input lag during netplay), but it still provides great insight into the different ways titles handle online play.
To remain competitive, Street Fighter V needs to be sure to cater to players who can’t make it out to tournaments every week. While training at home will never match the experience one gets from stepping outside their comfort zone, adding in-game options to mitigate some of those speed bumps would work wonders in closing the gap.
Let us know in the comments if this video was helpful, and be sure to give Battle(non)sense some love as well. His hard work is much appreciated.
While many of Final Round 19’s official rules are still unclear (clicking the appropriate link on their website simply downloads a document with a ‘Coming Soon!’ message), one in particular regarding Mortal Kombat X has caused quite a stir as of late.
According to organizer David Richardson, the tournament will be allowing the use of the game’s newest downloadable characters, just two weeks after their release. For comparison, the Evolution Championship Series ruleset, which most tournaments adopt to keep parity throughout the year, makes characters released within three weeks of their events illegal during competition.
Apart from the unfortunate Kung Lao bug caused by Kombat Pack 2 fighter Alien, this decision raises numerous questions about viability and fairness. Is two weeks enough to time to learn how to counter these new characters at a high level? Furthermore, can players master using them at a high-level, so much so that it would throw a wrench in an otherwise level playing field?
We caught up with Razer’s Carl “Perfect Legend” White for his thoughts on the matter. As a longtime tournament competitor, he doesn’t agree with the decision, saying that there hasn’t been enough time to learn the massive amount of matchups the Kombat Pack 2 characters added to Mortal Kombat X.
This sentiment is shared by NetherRealm Studios’ Ed Boon. “Players need time to learn new character matchups, so to include new characters that are less than three weeks old doesn’t make a lot of sense,” the creative director explained on Twitter, stating that it’s less about promotion and more about giving competitors ample time to practice. “It’s more important that all players have a fair shot at winning,” he concluded.
Attempts to contact head tournament organizer Larry “ShinBlanka” Dixon for his unique insight went unanswered, but we will be sure to update this article as soon as we receive a response.
We also want to hear from you, our readers, on this matter. Below, you’ll find a poll with a simple question: do you agree with this decision? Feel free to follow up with specifics in the comments.
Final Round 19 is scheduled for March 18-20 in Atlanta, Georgia. More details can be found here.
While many of Final Round 19’s official rules are still unclear (clicking the appropriate link on their website simply downloads a document with a ‘Coming Soon!’ message), one in particular regarding Mortal Kombat X has caused quite a stir as of late.
According to organizer David Richardson, the tournament will be allowing the use of the game’s newest downloadable characters, just two weeks after their release. For comparison, the Evolution Championship Series ruleset, which most tournaments adopt to keep parity throughout the year, makes characters released within three weeks of their events illegal during competition.
Apart from the unfortunate Kung Lao bug caused by Kombat Pack 2 fighter Alien, this decision raises numerous questions about viability and fairness. Is two weeks enough to time to learn how to counter these new characters at a high level? Furthermore, can players master using them at a high-level, so much so that it would throw a wrench in an otherwise level playing field?
We caught up with Razer’s Carl “Perfect Legend” White for his thoughts on the matter. As a longtime tournament competitor, he doesn’t agree with the decision, saying that there hasn’t been enough time to learn the massive amount of matchups the Kombat Pack 2 characters added to Mortal Kombat X.
This sentiment is shared by NetherRealm Studios’ Ed Boon. “Players need time to learn new character matchups, so to include new characters that are less than three weeks old doesn’t make a lot of sense,” the creative director explained on Twitter, stating that it’s less about promotion and more about giving competitors ample time to practice. “It’s more important that all players have a fair shot at winning,” he concluded.
Attempts to contact head tournament organizer Larry “ShinBlanka” Dixon for his unique insight went unanswered, but we will be sure to update this article as soon as we receive a response.
We also want to hear from you, our readers, on this matter. Below, you’ll find a poll with a simple question: do you agree with this decision? Feel free to follow up with specifics in the comments.
Final Round 19 is scheduled for March 18-20 in Atlanta, Georgia. More details can be found here.
To say that King of Fighters XIV is the leakiest fighting game in recent memory wouldn’t be much of a stretch. Far from a couple of unknown characters, the entire cast was revealed through forum posts months before the game was even announced, and official reveals since then have matched those leaks perfectly.
But we were still in the dark when it came to the newcomers on the King of Fighters XIV roster. For example, we knew one of the newcomers fit the “Mysterious Hooded Man” trope, but how much of a spoiler could a basic description like that be?
Well, fans no longer have to wonder, because we were recently provided with what appears to be a legitimate character select screen, or at least a mock-up of one. Folks are still not entirely sure where it originated, but the earliest source we could find is a Twitter user by the name of shen-woo, which was then picked up by JohnGrimm in our own forums, and then finally plopped at our feet by the one and only Laban.
We want to thank everyone involved with bringing this to our attention, and also take the time to tell those of you averse to being spoiled that now is probably a good time to vacate the article.
As you can see, the image above depicts the entirety of the King of Fighters XIV roster as described in the aforementioned leaks. New characters are outlined in red, highlighting the fact that three full teams are comprised of newcomers. These include the Another World squad made up of Samurai Shodown’s Nakoruru, Sky Love’s Love Heart, and Dragon Gal’s Mui Mui; the South American team; and the Official Invites, who were previously listed as the Palace Wan team.
The photo also gives us our first glimpses of the mid-boss and final boss of King of Fighters XIV, a “Russian billionaire” and “non-human species” respectively…if the leaks are to be believed.
While we don’t speak Chinese ourselves, a friendly community member has assured us that the text at the top of the image is grammatically correct, a key point that many fake leaks get wrong. It mainly highlights the large cast, stating that a total of 19,600 team combinations are possible thanks to the 50 playable characters.
King of Fighters XIV is slated to release for PlayStation 4 sometime this year. Stay tuned for more details, and be sure to let us know what you think of the new faces in our comments.
The folks behind Super Desperation Radio–Giby, Lord Walkman, Sanchez, and SuperFX–recently moved from IPLAYWINNER to Team Spooky, but that doesn’t mean their content has changed. We’ve gone long enough without them on the front page, so you can look forward to checking out their show every Monday night right here on the Shoryuken.
Tonight, they are set to go live with another broadcast, discussing topics like Alex in Street Fighter V, HackerFight 5.0, Final Round 19, Fightcade, and more.
If you have yet to check this stream out and are in the market for a new fighting game talk show, we highly recommend tuning in now.
The folks at Wizard World Gaming are set to continue their young tournament series when the convention lands in St. Louis, Missouri next month.
Players can expect to compete in a smaller lineup consisting of Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. The organizers will be offering $7,000 in cash prizes, with Street Fighter and Tekken each receiving $3,000 and the remaining $1,000 set aside for Naruto.
This news comes after the organization’s successful showing in Portland, Oregan, which saw players like Evil Geniuses Justin Wong and Ricki Ortiz, Pandora House’s LPN, Panda Global’s Rip, and even WWE superstars The New Day come together to celebrate fighting games. Future events are scheduled to take place in Philadelphia, Sacramento, Orlando, Chicago, Austin, and Pittsburgh.
Wizard World Gaming lands in St. Louis the weekend of April 1. More details and online registration can be found here.
Ever since video games entered online spaces, players have been divided by home consoles. These days, Microsoft has Xbox Live, Sony has PlayStation Network, and never the twain shall meet. In terms of the fighting game community, this has generally created a sharp ravine between opposing sides, in essence halving the amount of players you’ll have a chance to run into during netplay sessions.
Fortunately, it appears as if that has a chance of changing in the future.
In a recent letter to the gaming community, ID@Xbox director Chris Charla announced that the company will, moving forward, allow developers to take advantage of cross-network play. “This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks,” he explained.
The first game to take advantage of this option will be Rocket League, the high-speed, motorized soccer game created by Psyonix. While at this point in time it’s restricted to play between Xbox One and PC, Microsoft has provided an open invitation to other platforms…like, say, PlayStation Network.
While this is huge news, it doesn’t mean every fighting game moving forward will be playable between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The developers themselves have to take the initiative in allowing this functionality, and it’s likely Sony will need to sign off in a similar capacity to really get the ball rolling. And it goes without saying that titles like Street Fighter V and Killer Instinct won’t be included due to their exclusivity.
What do you think of this development? Feel free to sound off in the comments.
