It really is all about Dead or Alive Ultimate. (My gamertag is "Sirlin Prime" fyi.)
In this thread, I tried to find a competitive game to play that isn't sports or driving, doesn't reward "aiming" as a skill, doesn't involve "leveling up," and so on.
http://www.sirlin.net/.ubb/Forum10/HTML/000040.htmlAny fighting game would meet those criteria, except for the online part...until now. DOA is extremely playable online and puts the online implementation of other fighting games like CvS2 and GGXX to shame. Note that MK is a buggy, poorly made game that has put itself to shame without needing any help from DOA.
I always looked down on DOA as the pretty game with no gameplay. I think I now see it for what it is: a very simple gameplay system that is solidly put together. It's a tiny candle to VF's errupting volcano of depth. Even Soul Calibur is deeper (mostly due to sidestepping system based around horizontal/vertical attacks, and the "A" and "B" throws that have to be reversed differently.) Virtua Fighter has an intricate system of throw reversals, evades, and guard cancels (like the k-g cancel) that allows for deep guessing games. DOA just scratches the surface, but it still alows for yomi (knowing the mind of the opponent) and still has some good positional fighting elements (distancing between you and your opponent and your positions relative to obstacles in the arenas).
It's the networking features that really shine. The "arcade rooms" of 2-8 people, all watching, all using voice, and waiting their turn with their "quarters up" is great. It's exactly what my friends and I wanted CvS2's online (or any fighting game's online) to be in the first place. More importantly than any of that, though, the lag is amazingly low. It's proof that fighting games can work well online...something I was beginning to seriously doubt. Some people have said it only works well beause DOA has "not many inputs compared to other games." This is totally false, as the smoothness of DOA during a flurry of fast inputs is far less laggy than even moving your character selection box around in ggxx. I've noticed that in ggxx and cvs2, there are many situations where you see the enemy jumping in and you think "normally I would uppercut now, but because of the lag between my input and the move coming out, I would have had to dp about 1 second ago. Oh well." This is not how DOA works.
When there is lag during a DOA game, it is as if the entire game is in slow motion for both players. This is exactly how it should be. Yes, that means you have more time to input moves (and counters!) than you otherwise would. But that is a much lesser crime than the system other online fighting games have used. If your client has to "skip ahead" in time to catch up to the other player, it's toally disorienting and you can't tell wtf is going on. If the system tries to keep both players in sync by enforcing a lag between your inputs and those moves actually coming out in the game, then you have the very terrible situation I described above. Under this system, you have to do all your moves ahead of time...sometimes so far ahead of time that you have to do your response to the opponent's move before he even does his move. Imagine if you were playing against a friend at your house (not online) and you just set the game speed to be slow. That's what it feels like during the most laggy moments of DOA online. First, the game is still very playable even if the game is slightly slowed down and b) this doesn't happen very often.
Other fighting game companies really need to get their act together. DOA is kicking all their asses in online, and in 3d graphics. They are the gold standard in those areas. If their gameplay was improved (better throw reversals, better sidestepping for starters), they could really rise to the next level.
This has all really snapped me back into reality. It seems like kind of a joke to seek out competition in the form of level-based pvp in an mmorpg. In DOA (or chess, or Magic, Warcraft3), both players are on a level playing field (with regards to the materials they take into the fight) from minute 1. There is no need to "level up" for 100 hours first. There is no concept of fighting when someone is checking their mail in town or caught off guard. You're both ready, you both have equal access to all characters, moves, and techniques, and you don't need to rely on other people in any way. It's a one-on-one game, not a group-on-group game, so there's no concept of "my rock class can't beat that paper class one-on-one."
Anyway, feel free to find me online in DOA.
--Sirlin
