When Echo Fox created its fighting game division early this year, one of the things that they did was sign away a a number of top players from rival team Evil Geniuses, such as Justin Wong and Yusuke Momochi. Aside from these players however, another EG veteran also made the move to Echo Fox: team manager Antonio “AJ” Javier.
At NorCal Regionals 2017 Mark “BornFree” Sheridan got the chance to talk to AJ and discuss a few things. In the interview below, AJ gives us a few behind-the-scenes glimpses into the workings of Echo Fox’s fighting game division, including recruitment, as well as working with team owner Rick Fox. Additionally, he also goes into what esports teams look for in fighting game players, and what players need to do if they want to get picked up.
It’s tough to create a fighting game and carve out even a small slice of a dedicated community. Indie devs, even more so than triple-A studios, face big obstacles: netplay being practically a requirement, a steady stream of content or balancing, and–most of all–a compelling, standout system. Slice, Dice & Rice from Dojo Games made its initial mark with a unique name and loose inspirations from PSone-era Bushido Blade. But can comparisons to big names alone attract players to give this dueling game a try?
Hell-themed SDR, sprinkled with Japanese names and references, pits its fighters in lightning-quick duels to the death. Everyone has the same basic attacks: a quick horizontal slash, a powerful heavy attack that can’t be parried, and an anti-air vertical slash. Everyone can jump, air-dash, parry, as well as dash-cancel or parry-cancel their attacks before they come out. Sounds broken? In practice, it just turns the game into a sudden death dance. Not every strike ends the duel, though. If hit with a tip of a blade or otherwise nicked, ‘tis but a flesh wound. It’s possible to get wounded enough to be unable to jump, but it’s quite rare to occur.
The cast includes eight characters. You’ve got your standard samurai with a sword and a large parry window, speedy bird-like Tengu, fist-fighter Benkei, and creepy deathlord Shinigami. All in all, the cast is diverse, distinct, with unique appeal. Whichever character you play, the duels turn into series of baits, parries, cancels, and missed strikes, but they have the potential to end in one decisive blow. There is a bit of an Arc System Works air-dasher feel, as all characters can jump and air-dash, almost in slow motion a la’ House of Flying Daggers.
There is good character diversity, despite the lack of a special attacks. Benkei has only fists and a two-hit combo, which feels a little pointless, since the second attack can still be parried anyway (it does open up possibilities for mindgames, though). His parry is actually a counterattack. However, he needs generally more hits to score a kill, so he feels very underwhelming as a character. Why pick him when you can go with someone who can more easily score a decisive blow? Sexy fighter Tomoe feels much more viable with her quick dashes, though her divekick looks awkwardly animated as it auto-corrects and switches sides at the last moment. It also felt like the designers couldn’t decide which air moves stop momentum and which keep it up. Her normal air slash awkwardly makes her go backward if you air-dash forward.
The only issue with the matchups is that counter-picking would be a problem in a competitive environment. It seems that some characters can beat each other so cleanly, it’s easy enough to boost one’s chances just by switching. And while the fighters feel distinct, it’s not really difficult to just play another one, since there are no moves to learn. Either blind-picks or accepting the fact that everyone will counterpick each other is the reality Slice, Dice & Rice faces in a competitive environment. Why pick a character who sometimes needs to land multiple strikes over someone who is much more likely to end the duel immediately?
For example, I pit Yojimbo against Yoketsu. Yojimbo carries his sword sheathed, and his moveset seems to suggest a high-skill-ceiling character. He has one of the slowest air-to-ground “helmbreaker” slashes and a very short window on his parry. Yoketsu wields her huge sword like Siegfried from Soul Calibur, can easily backdash his charging attack and punish. It seems like a painful match-up for Yojimbo, who does have a fast slash, but many weaknesses. Yoketu’s parry is also unique in that it also hits, so even if you miss a parry, you always interrupt a slower attack. It seems really strong. She also has super armor on one of her slashes. It feels as though there are a lot of beneficial mechanics are piled up on her.
Online play is a glaring omission, especially since the fighting game community is so scattered. It wouldn’t be too difficult to bring a laptop to casuals and ask some people to check it out, but quality online play is a big factor in keeping it the game alive. This should help counter-picking (at least in game one). Simultaneously, without a near-perfect connection, duels might turn out messy lag-fests and lose out on the calm precision of local duels. Dojo Games wants to see how the community will receive the game first; netplay is something they said they are considering.
Story Mode is mostly an Arcade Mode with entertaining, poetic passages between fights and occasional basic dialogue between fighters. Rice does actually play a role in the tale… and it’s pretty ridiculous. There are a couple of interesting fights, with some “boss” versions of existing characters, some unlockable in-game.
It also introduces us to Unagi, the only “resource” in the game. When the enemy is about to strike, there will be a red warning circle, and the game slows down a bit. The slowdown is a bit unwarranted because it only messes up the typical parry timing that you might have practiced. It was hard to tell sometimes if it was Unagi slowing my game down, or small performance hiccups.
Performance, sadly, is a bit of an issue. I tested on my mid-range laptop, and overall the game runs fine (apart from some random crashes which happened to occur a lot, just when I took the device to a local gaming venue). There’s a way to reduce graphics quality, though it doesn’t feel like the visuals get noticeably worse. The visual and audio aesthetic is really well done. SDR is made in Unity, which is known to be a bit of a resource hog.
What hurts the game more are strange hitches in framerate. Maybe this would be less of a problem (and I initially didn’t realize that Unagi slows down the game a bit, so some of this is probably in the mix as well) if I had a more powerful device, but a smooth framerate and performance is something the creators should strongly prioritize. If Dojo Games imagines players bringing their game to locals or tournaments, it’s not going to work well because mobile computers often don’t have the same capabilities as stationary machines. Games like Divekick or Nidhogg, SDR’s most direct competition, can run on toasters with Windows XP. Adjusting the settings does help a lot, though.
As this was a beta build of SDR, hopefully, some of the performance issues can be smoothed out. There are still a few obstacles in the game’s way to popularity–like lack of netplay, characters that seem a little unbalanced, and some performance issues–but Dojo Games can work it out, with some polish. If you’re into similar dueling games, but wanted something a little more technical than the speedy Nidhogg, you’re probably going to like Slice, Dice & Rice. I’d recommend at least giving the game a shot, because the potential is there–but it needs more polish and better clarity in the game mechanics it’s trying to implement.
Slice, Dice & Rice is out on Steam today for a limited-time discounted launch price of $8.79 (20% off of the full price of $10.99).
During last week’s Injustice Watchtower live stream, NetherRealm Studios Community Specialist Tyler Lansdown mentioned that he would be going on the road for a special broadcast this week. We now know that there will be the official unveiling of the single-player Multiverse Mode that was discovered at the Insomnia Gaming Festival. The event, which will take place in Los Angeles, California, will feature appearances by Ed Boon, Lansdown, and Ray McCaffery from NRS, Beyond The Trailer’s Grace Randolph, Maximilian, and more–as they’re interviewed by Chloe Dykstra. There are slated to be giveaways and perhaps some unannounced surprises in store, so be sure to tune in.
As we reported, the update to Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], will include a new character, Enkidu. As information slowly trickles out before its Japanese release on July 20th, the Amazon Japan pre-order listing unexpectedly included an interesting tidbit.
Amazon leaked UNI info yet again. Description totally says ”2 new characters for consoles”. https://t.co/uTt1qUkXt9
The Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] Amazon Japan page states that “a total of 4 characters will enter for the first time.” Phonon and Mika are two, Enkidu is the third character, and the fourth has yet to be revealed. Speculation circles around Uzuki and Erika Wagner.
Erika WagnerUzuki
In addition, the page confirms some of the gameplay modes we’ve seen from UNIST screenshots: Tutorial, Mission, and Chronicle Modes. Pre-ordering the game also includes the soundtrack as a bonus.
Stay tuned, until French Bread officially confirms the character.
At the last Killer Instinct World Cup, the top 16 was generally business as usual. However, there was one name that we weren’t used to seeing: Valoraxe. Finishing at 9th, this Cinder from the UK made sure that though his was a new name, it was one you won’t be forgetting any time soon.
Since returning from the World Cup, Valoraxe has continued to hammer home that he is one of the best players around, consistently doing well at events throughout Europe. SRK caught up to him at Hypespotting 6 in Scotland, where he had already taken victory in both the single and team Killer Instinct tournaments.
Keegan “Interrobang!?” Spindler: You were the main EU force at the KI World Cup. When you went out there, how did you feel Europe stacked up against everyone else?
Valoraxe: Well basically at the World Cup, the Europeans were the bottom of the pack. There was a feeling of “We’ll be polite to them, we’ll give them a chance.” There was much more excitement about the Japanese, with players like Domi and Rat, who were the guys expected to surprise people.
But we had Le Chat Noir, a French player, and Itamaster, an Italian online player. Itamaster unfortunately didn’t adapt to the offline environment, but Le Chat Noir did quite well. He took out a Canadian player, but that was about it. As for me, I just went in and did whatever I wanted. It worked out.
Interrobang!?: Apart from you, the European representatives didn’t do amazingly. How does Europe get up to the same level as the American players?
Valoraxe: What we need to do to get better? Honestly, it’s mostly because the Killer Instinct scene is quite shallow here. For the UK in particular, we are mostly online. There’s a couple of tournaments in the year where people are coming together and playing offline, but there aren’t enough. The main reason we’re not up there is that we don’t do big offline tournaments, our guys don’t travel. I am the only guy in the UK who really travels right now. Smash King used to travel around the country–not even to Europe and America. Nobody travels.
KI is underrepresented as well, so prize money is not up there. Lots of people think “if there’s no big prize money, why bother?”
Interrobang!?: Is that how you would get more people involved? Bigger prize pools?
Valoraxe: Prize pools would definitely be a start. You know, get more eyes turned in that direction and the bigger the prize money, the bigger the attention. But I think the game is in a different spot right now. It’s constantly changing, which is a good and a bad thing.
It’s good because it’s up to date and people are on top of it. It’s also bad though, because it can discourage people from getting involved. I know some people in the UK, Smash King included, who didn’t really like the change to Season 3, and it put people off playing.
Part of the problem is that it’s a coin toss, you know? Either your character gets lucky and gets buffed, or it gets nerfed, or there’s a mechanic that you don’t like or makes your character redundant–which makes you feel redundant. It’s just luck of the draw I guess.
Interrobang!?: Like you said, the game is changing all the time. How do you feel about your character, Cinder, after the changes to Potential Damage?
Valoraxe: Cinder is a lot stronger. People seem to think that Cinder is broken, at the moment, because the potential damage change means that Cinder can get a lot of white life on you and when you break, only half goes away. It’s still a sizable chunk if he burns you out properly. It means that you can go straight into a level 4 or massive damage combo. Or, if he wants, he can just reset the fire and keep you in white life for the whole round and afraid to push a button. So people are terrified about that, but they really shouldn’t be.
Cinder has very limited ways to open you up. His grab game is weak, he only has one grounded overhead–and it’s very slow and easy to counter. The only thing he can do to open you up on the ground is either frame trap you, throw or tick throw you, or try and go for a cheeky air combo. Cinder really struggles to open people up on the ground. He has to do crazy things, crazy setups, and have constant resets. He has to be constantly thinking ahead to get something started, and a lot of people don’t seem to realise that. A lot of people only see the full screen low infernos, the massive white life cashouts, the safe DPs–which is not safe, it’s actually minus six, people just don’t know how to counter it. That’s their problem, not mine.
I think the character is fine. He’s actually very well balanced. I do think the white life change is very strong on him though. At the end of the day, Killer Instinct is a funky game with a lot of funky characters. If you can’t adapt to it, that’s your problem.
Interrobang!?: Speaking of adaptation, what would you like to see going into Season 4 of Killer Instinct?
Valoraxe: Honestly, I don’t really want to see another Season of Killer Instinct. I’d really like to see a new KI, since I think that this one is getting a bit bloated. There’s too much going on, too many changes and glitches now. I really think that they need to hit the reset button with a new KI, get a big marketing push, throw some money behind the game and really show people that they should be playing Killer Instinct.
Having said that, I’d like to see a powerhouse grappler.
Interrobang!?: Because you play Zangief in Street Fighter V.
Valoraxe: Yeah, I play ‘Gief in SFV. I only do it because I can’t be bothered to learn combos, so I just SPD people. Because that’s easy. To be honest, I just say powerhouse grappler because I think its cool. I just think it would be cool to see a guy with a battleaxe who plays a bit like Astoroth, where he hits you with the axe and it turns into a command throw. I just think it would be badass. That’s just what is cool to me.
As for Cinder, what would I want to see? Personally, I’m happy with Cinder as he is. I think the only two changes I would recommend would be his shadow Trailblazer, which is the EX Flame Tornado forward, I would like to see it have the principle of Fulgore’s cyber dash, a fullscreen that hits five times. And the reason why is because you can’t do unbreakable Ultras then, since you will always do the five hits after the low inferno into it. Also, it will give Cinder options on the ground, especially against strong zoning characters. It may take him over the edge though, but then you could take a couple of things away from him. Make the DP more minus, maybe. Why not? Minus enough that you can always punish with crouching medium. I think that’s fair. Cinder is fine though. He’s fine as he is. He has clear weaknesses, but he’s fun to play.
Interrobang!?: Interestingly, over the last few months you’ve used a bunch of different characters in tournament. Have you settled down on Cinder now?
Valoraxe: Yeah, Cinder’s always been the one. I’ve been using other characters because I wasn’t confident in the mirror. ShadowKageNinja was the guy who made me change characters, because I was sort of like, oh okay, maybe I shouldn’t play the mirror. I should’ve though. I should’ve just played the mirror and got it over and done with. But now I’ve learned that lesson.
Having said that, I’m in the process of picking up a couple more characters properly. I’m thinking about Eyedol, because a fast, in-your-face character like Eyedol is seriously fun. I’m learning Tusk as well, because a Viking with a big sword. That’s awesome right? And then Raam too. Because, well, ‘Gief.
Interrobang!?: I love Raam, but there’s not many strong players for him.
Valoraxe: LetalisVenator. He went to the World Cup, picked Raam and did work. But it’s the same with Cinder, really. There’s only a couple of players who really know how to play Cinder. Properly. They see all the Trailblazers and all the air juggles and yeah, that’s one part of his play. But you’re not thinking about the mindgames involved, the frame traps. Cinder has so much kit, it’s just about finding different ways of opening it up. There aren’t many players who can do that at the moment.
But I think that’s true of nearly every character in the game. They have a lot of potential, but don’t have anyone making use of it and doing work.
Interrobang!?: Do you have any EU players we should keep an eye on this year?
Valoraxe: Coopstar. Coopstar is one of the best in the UK right now. He’s definitely got some chops on him. He won VSFighting last year. That tournament was a real learning experience for me, but Coopstar definitely earned the win.
Interrobang!?: So are you heading back to the USA for any events?
Valoraxe: Yes! The Killer Instinct World Cup is on again next year in San Antonio, I should be there for that. I’m also heading out to Combo Breaker in May to compete in KI, and CEO in June. Those are the two big majors that KI is announced for, with a nice prize pot, so I’ll be down there representing the UK. If anything else is announced for Europe or America, I’ll probably be attending. I’m just hoping to do us justice, to show off that the UK has really strong players.
I also want to prove that I’m the best Cinder in the world. There’s some argument about it, but I figure that as long as I keep beating people, no one will be able to argue for long.
Interrobang!?: Lastly, what about pineapples on pizzas?
The recent update to Street Fighter V included a batch of new colors for the characters’ Story and Battle outfits, added colors numbered 11-15 for each. Among these, one of Cammy’s Battle outfit colors is particularly interesting.
Color 15 of Cammy’s battle outfit looks suspiciously like one of the iconic outfits of a certain X-Men team leader. Now, while some would say that this is only coincidence, the accompanying description from Sgt. Ashida adds: “Color 15… You don’t think she can fire off an optic blast, can she?!” This leaves no doubt that this is a shout-out to Cyclops.
In addition to this, color 14 of the same outfit could be yet another X-Men reference. This time, the purple and blue outfit resembles Psylocke, another prominent X-Men character, who has also appeared in various Marvel vs. Capcom titles.
Using Cammy for these shout-outs is fitting, since she was a staple of the Versus series; she debuted her iconic “Killer Bee” look in X-Men vs. Street Fighter long before she returned to Street Fighter in the home version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.
The question now is whether or not this is a hint regarding the inclusion of X-Men characters in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite! Despite being series icons, there’s speculation that X-Men characters may not make the cut in MvC:I, due to various license concerns with Fox. We’ll learn more about this as Capcom reveals more information on the game in the coming months.
SNK’s The King of Fighters XIV has just received a new update on PlayStation 4. The update seems to be a relatively benign one, focused mostly on squashing a few stray bugs for both the game system and the characters. However, it also brings with it a few balance changes for the cast.
A number of the changes revolve mostly around things that could be considered bugs: these include certain backdashes having invulnerability against low attacks, and some overhead attacks not connecting in certain situations. There are some notable balance fixes, though, including toning down some of Sylvie’s damage off her “Paula Experiment,” and a number of adjustments for DLC characters Whip, Vanessa, and Rock Howard.
These aren’t all the things that have been changed. For the specifics of these and other changes, check out the official patch notes here.
A number of fighting games are temporarily marked down for PlayStation Plus members to pick up.
A few notable fighting game titles are currently on sale on the PlayStation Store, as long as you’re a PlayStation Plus member. Here’s what’s available:
Street Fighter V: $19.99 (down from $39.99)
Street Fighter V (Deluxe Edition): $39.99 (down from $79.99)
Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- [PS4]: $14.99 (down from $59.99)
Mortal Kombat XL [PS4]: $23.99 (down from $39.99)
Skullgirls 2nd Encore [PS4/Vita]: $4.99 (down from $24.99)
This PS Plus sale is on until the morning of May 2nd. Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2 is just around the corner, so it’s a good idea to grab -REVELATOR- on the cheap and upgrade for a lower cost when REV 2 hits on May 26, 2017.
Earlier this week, the nearly five months of silence regarding Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was broken, as we now have a release date and pre-order details. Though we caught a glimpse of some leaked gameplay footage yesterday, we now also have an official gameplay trailer, formally introducing us to seven new characters with their pre-match introductions.
Though some of the action is similar to the leaked footage, we get a more detailed look at character’s Hypers, some of the possible setups of the new Active Tag system, and the Infinity Stones–as well as a very dirty sequence with newcomer Ultron trapping Hawkeye in a box generated by the Space Stone, for some mixups with his drones that definitely bring back that signature “Mahvel” feel.
Catch the full video and immerse yourself in the hype, below!
Stay tuned to Shoryuken as MvC:I news items continue to arise. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite releases for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam on September 19th.
This upcoming mech battler will now be available for PlayStation 4 in the West, as well as Japan.
Get ready to team up and boost, burst, and bash some metal-on-metal in Gundam Versus! Bandai Namco have announced that Japan’s upcoming mech fighter is also on the way to Western shores, via a new trailer highlighting the game’s various team/multiplayer modes, boost mobility mechanics, unlockable Striker supports, and Burst system–and lots of awesome in-game battle footage.
Gundam Versus is coming to PlayStation 4 in Japan on July 6, 2017; expect a Western release sometime in Fall 2017.
