From Street Fighter to Smash Bros to Soul Calibur, fighting games have always been intrinsically linked to my multiplayer experiences. There’s an energy that seems to emanate from fighters that ensnares people, turning even the most timid into snarling beasts, hungry for their next victory, before reducing them into quivering wrecks as they are KO’d by a superior opponent in a matter of seconds. It’s this rapid fluctuation between emotions that helps to make these games so entertaining in a multiplayer situation.

For me, like many, my first experience with fighting games was Street Fighter II. Unfortunately, it was “Special Champion Edition” for the Sega Mega Drive and I only had the standard three button controllers. Being a kid at the time though I had no idea that the game was designed for six buttons and living in the UK meant that I didn't get to experience the SNES version until recently because no one I knew owned the console.


The Mega Drive port of Street Fighter II - avoid unless you have 6 buttons

Despite this, Street Fighter II was the first game to ignite the raging fire of competition within me when it came to gaming. My first (and long-standing) opponent was my younger sister. I would regularly force her into playing on the basis that if she could beat me at least twice we would change games to play the two-player race mode on Sonic 2 but if she didn’t win then we would continue to play Street Fighter until I got bored.

However, there was a problem. During this period my fighting style was mainly dedicated to E. Honda’s “Hundred Hand Slap” and Blanka’s “Electricity” attacks, simply because they were incredibly easy to initiate. Looking back, this was a ridiculous technique and it’s unsurprising that after a few weeks of gaming my sister was becoming fluent in countering my attacks and began winning more and more matches, inevitably leading to incredibly dull racing in Sonic 2. Eventually it got to a point where I would refuse to play with her. I was too stubborn to adopt new characters and as she gradually got better at the game I’d become more enraged at every defeat until we finally stopped playing altogether, returning to co-op games like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage.

As the Mega Drive aged it was forgotten as the Nintendo64 and PSone took its place but it wasn’t until the GameCube that I returned to fighting games seeing as the N64 had virtually none and I didn't own a PSone until after the PS2 had been released, thus missing the Tekken series and later Street Fighter games.

When I first bought the GameCube I continued using it much like the N64, playing Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion, Wind Waker and other similar titles. It wasn’t until I was at a friend’s house that I found a new fighting game that was just as exhilarating as Street Fighter had been all those years before. I was drawn to the game from seeing the box on the floor with Link on the cover. After a small amount of pleading I convinced my friend to fire up their GameCube and play.


The game that reintroduced me to exhilerating gameplay

The game was Soul Calibur II. I sucked – but I didn’t care. It broke the monotony of roaming 3-D worlds, replacing it with untethered exhilaration. I ordered myself a copy of the game and played it religiously for months, unlocking virtually everything and achieving a level of versatility with every character along the way. Not long after this Soul Calibur III was released. I’ve never owned a PS2 but the same friend who introduced me to the series did – and they’d pre-ordered the game!

Around a week after release, we organised a get together of around a dozen people to just hang out, watch movies, play videogames and drink. The result was incredible! I arrived a little early to find the PS2 setup with Soul Calibur III already loaded. As people began to arrive we alternated matches with one person staying in until they were defeated. We continued this for several hours, all the while becoming progressively drunk, but the atmosphere was amazing. Both casual and hardcore gamers had been ensnared by the game’s energy, sharing the victor’s triumph, the loser’s despair and the next challenger’s anticipation.

It didn’t matter if you were “good” or “bad” at the game, what had been brought to the forefront was the shared emotional experience of everyone there. No other multiplayer game has achieved this for me. There’s something about fighting games that seem to unlock more of an emotional response than other multiplayer games. Even though games like Mario Kart, Wario Ware and Guitar Hero all give excellent multiplayer experiences, they aren’t able to replicate the excitement and emotions produced by a Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur or even Smash Bros game. Personally, fighting games will always hold precedence over any other multiplayer genre thanks to the emotional responses they incite but also through the uniqueness of each match. No battle will be exactly the same as any other. No two people will have the same fighting style or character preferences. No other multiplayer game will provide the same intensity of a fighter.

{CONTAINS SPOILERS}

I have had my 360 for about a week now and having jumped from mainly 16bit games for the last 12 years into the current generation, Halo 3 served me fairly well as an introduction to the Xbox as well as the world of online gaming. However, there were parts of the game that I found to be irritating, infuriating and at times underwhelming.

The main reason that I used Halo 3 as my introduction to current gen gaming was based on both the immense popularity of the series and that I had played the first game on PC early last year and I found it to be very enjoyable, despite being awful at it. Jumping straight into Halo 3's campaign mode, I was launched directly into some straightforward combat which allowed me to become familiar with the controller design and layout and after half an hour I was playing fairly proficiently.

However, for me, certain sections of each mission felt somewhat awkward. This was especially true for any area that required the combination of vehicles and AI. It seemed to me that when they weren't driving into walls or hangar doors the AI were driving directly into cannon fire which, not surprisingly, would result in the vehicle exploding. One of the worst cases of this was during my encounter with the first scarab tank where in between being blown up there were a couple of deaths that were the result of the AI driving off the map! Other instances of unbelievably stupid AI driving finally forced me to relinquish weapon control and take charge of the wheel. Thankfully I didn't wait until the final level to do this which meant I had had some practice with controlling vehicles before escaping the halo ring.

Another feature that I did not enjoy whilst in campaign mode was the "boss" battle. One of my major complaints with the series as a whole is the lack of boss battles and Halo 3's attempt at one was pitiful. Seriously, having Spark as the game's only boss was ridiculous considering he is basically a metal cube with a laser. For me a boss should at least be challenging but it took me only moments to defeat the robot. Surely Bungie could have thought of something better than this.

Nonetheless, having gone on to complete the campaign I was further annoyed by the final cut scene. Not only at this point did the game feel like there could have been a couple more levels to play through but the reward for finally defeating the Covenant was severely underwhelming. Not only was the cut scene short but the fact that Master Chief is supposedly dead made the whole game feel pointless. (Note: I played through on normal but have seen the extra minute or so of footage shown for completing on legendary through youtube.)

To summarise, for the most part, when involved in direct combat with enemies, the campaign mode was very enjoyable. However, the idiocy of the AI and my personal dissatisfaction towards the game's ending spoilt the final result and I doubt that I will replay the campaign anytime soon.

In spite of this, one of Halo 3's redeeming features is the online multiplayer (another first for me). Having played and failed spectacularly at LAN games on the original Halo, I was expecting a similar experience with Halo 3's multiplayer. To my surprise I found that the online play was both enjoyable, challenging and stopped me from trading the game in. Although I haven't yet invested many hours into online gaming, I can see Halo 3 being the gateway drug until I discover something more alluring.

Overall, I feel that Halo 3 served me well as an introduction to current gen gaming. Whilst I did have my issues with aspects of the campaign and feel that it holds little for me in the way of replay value, the game literally saved itself thanks to its online capabilities which I can see myself using more heavily in the coming weeks and months.

My rating: 7/10

Hello! I've been lurking around the site for a couple of weeks now after discovering RetroforceGO on iTunes and thought it was about time I stepped out into the community - so here goes:

I love retro games, especially the 16-bit era.
The Sega Mega Drive is the best console of all time.
I own a SNES, Mega Drive, N64, PSone, Gamecube, XBOX360, Gameboy Pocket and Gameboy Colour.
RPGs and platform games are awesome.
Some of my favourite games include: Streets of Rage, Sonic 2, Sonic and Knuckles, Final Fantasy VI, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Dragoon and Mario Kart.

As well as games I am heavily into music and enjoy almost anything that's not pop or rap.
I play a lot of guitar and have recently started writing my own stuff which I will be recording soon.
I read a lot of fantasy fiction and 19th Century literature.
I'm currently taking A Levels in English, History and Film and as long as I get the grades will be going to university next September to study Japanese.

That's all for now but I will be posting a couple of blogs in the next few days.

TTFN - the-wolf
=]