I'll say this forever: DLC killed the unlockable secret characters. They mention Tekken 3. One of the coolest things was beating the game with everyone to see who you'd unlock. I miss that.
I don't think it killed it so much as developers were too lazy to make some fighters unlockable. Options like those are still possible today even with DLC
I mean Smash Ultimate made most of the roster Unlockable. (except the original 8 non unlockable N64 characters) But then again it wasn't hard to unlock them.
@@MrDp115 i don't think it's lazyness as much as logistics. They want maximum profit out of their game wich leads to Dlc and other post launch types of monetization.
Yup, kinda killed the replayability for me when it comes to fighting games. Unlocking secret characters was great incentive to play the arcade mode with multiple characters back in the day. New characters via DLC makes sense unfortunately, in this day and age. Games have gotten pretty expensive to make, competitive deadlines and easy revenue via DLC characters to mention a few reasons
I know alot of people in the FGC don't really care about fighting cpus but strong single player options really justify the purchase and replayability for alot of people. Single player and online are equally important.
it’s easy for anyone to see things from a bubble (including competitive players). but most of them can probably empathize with single player offerings too since we’re all people who enjoy playing games in general.
Better AI would do the most to improve everyone's single player experience. If we could get adaptive AI that plays like the aggregate skill of people in lower ranks or that shadowed the top players for each character, new players would always have a fair match to learn the buttons with and competitive players could train against an approximation of Tokido's Akuma even if they'd never get matched against them for real Fighting game AI being either utterly brainless of input reading system cheaters has done the most damage imo.
one aspect of unlockable characters I like that you guys didn't touch on, is that it encourages trying new characters, whether its learning the base roster and mechanics or picking up a new character because you just unlocked them
@@pious83 the best flex is when someone challenges you to a match and you let them pick your character. That’s the most chad move you can do in a fighting game.
Gotta say. I’ve listen to Matt for a long time and I’ve followed max enough. But it’s a goddamn treasure watching Justin grow into this. I don’t know much but Matt and Max have always been into this kind of thing whereas I’ve watched Justin grow immensely throughout this podcast. It’s hands down one of my favorite podcasts now. I can’t say I’m well versed in fighting games. My community was never big. I honestly have one friend that will entertain me and play fighting games with me. But damn. These guys exude hype and every topic has been awesome and I’ve loved every episode. Love you guys. FIGHT ON!
I'm kinda the same way. For ages, I'd either play against friends, at the arcade, but beating the game, learning the game lore from the ends and if there was single player content, I'd go wild with that. Alpha 3 was a Godsend for me. I spent so many lunchbreaks (I lived close to my high school so I could go home for lunch) playing the different Survival modes and World Tour was such a blast! Only recently with SFV did I venture into online. While I like it, I'm so used to the single player content being the draw for me.
@@tmma1869 . And I SoulCalibur VI has actually more single player content than most FGs nowadays, but of course, compared to its predecessors (especially SoulCalibur 3) it pales in comparison.
@@tmma1869 Same here ngl. I had the same problem with SF5 as content was being released before Championship Edition came out. I knew it was coming, but my dumbass was impatient. 😓
I’m not a huge online gamer. When I do play online it’s usually in brief spurts. But I absolutely love single player content. NRS knows that. I hope more studios do that in the future.
Single player content is super important, not everyone has the desire or skill to go online and be thrown into the lion's den, and just want to play for short bursts alone, especially people without friends who play fighters. It's odd that for a while people acted like it wasn't important, I remember a few people claiming SFV didn't "need" an arcade mode because online is more important, which I super disagree with. Plus growing up with the Tekken, Smash Bros, and Mortal Kombat games from childhood as well as Blazblue and Guilty Gear during the Ps3 era There was always fun offline stuff to do that were unique and had unique rewards for completion, and that made it very noticable when games started to slowly strip it all away to eventually becoming little more than a $60 versus mode.
Soul Calibur's single player content is what kept me playing long enough to say "Hey, maybe I should actually learn some of Ivy's moves." 23 years later I'm still maining her.
I don't think I've ever invested as much time and effort in a fighting game as I did with Soulcalibur III on PS2. Story mode was great but Chronicles of the Souls was the real deal. The fact that you could create your own squad of up to five OC characters and lvl them up while playing a mix of RTS/fighting game as you progressed though the story earning gold, customization items, new fighting styles and even secret unlockable characters just blew my mind back in the day. Such a simple idea turned out to be my favorite game mode in what became my favorite SC game and one of my favorite games of all time. No online, no DLC, no ranked, just great single player content. I miss Soulcalibur III
I've had this idea forever, I've always wanted to see a "director mode", where you could program 2 characters to go through a series a moves and make an actual choreographed fight. Give you control of the camera and music and voice lines and some visual effects. Let people create their own badass fight scenes in your fighting game and share it online.
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend probably had like the best single player content for a pure fighting game that I know of. Arcade Mode, Unlimited Mars, Abyss Mode (which is basically fighting game roguelike), Story Mode for each and everyone of the characters with multiple endings and Gag Scenarios.
Max's opening is an excellent summation of Single Player content. It felt great to hear huge personalities for the FGC talk about how important single player content is. I've been saying for a while that a huge chunk of the people who play fighting games don't really want to play against other people, I know that sounds crazy but it's true, so it's important to give them something to do. But more importantly, single player content is one of the best ways to keep a game alive. You want new players to check out your game? Well if it only has online and the scene is kind of dead, there's no point. If it's got good single player content, then yeah you can always recommend it to them.
This so much. I've never been into PvP but after hearing you gush about darkstalkers and the entire NEOGEO library for two years now, I've been willing to try a few but if I can't even work up to PvP against CPU the way I did in smash, I'd rather just watch Thorgi videos than actually play these games.
To me single player content in fighting games isn’t just a big story mode or game modes in general. Allowing you to unlock things such as skins, accessories, stages and maybe even characters is extremely fun to me and gives me a reason to keep me playing single player modes.
Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign (beat em up mode) was very elaborate and had a lot of effort put into it. It had many collectible customize items which often had special effects within the beat em up mode, like increased defense or attack, additional elemental damage, etc. It also had online co-op! which was amazing for a fighting game. Glad you talked about this topic, because it's mad important. Hopefully more FG devs realize the importance of single player content and put more effort into it going forward. I'm tired of fighting games releasing with barebones single player content.
I was gonna mention T6's campaign. While it wasn't the deepest single player mode out there it was a lot of fun, and lent itself well to Tekken's 3D mechanics
CHRONICLES OF THE SWORD!!! That mode was AMAZING in Soul Calibur 3. Talk about engaging as hell for a fighting game, unlocking all of the hidden characters because almost every NPC you met could be unlocked as an actual character you could use. Ugh, PS2 was the days
I played soul calibur 3 as a kid an I absolutely loved that they had a RPG campaign built into the fighting game. I've been sad to never see that return.
We've been BEGGING to see Chronicles of the Sword return for years. SC6 had Libra of Souls but it wasn't nearly as potent as SCIII's. Who knows if Bamco even listens...
I guess my question there would be "how much did it cost them to implement, did it pay considering how many people bought the game, and how much MORE expensive did it get when everyone shifted to PS3 / Xbox 360?" I do not know the answer to that particular question, but if it follows the trends of previous questions I've asked about why modern gaming is what it is, I'm afraid I can predict the answers...
@@goranisacson2502 . SoulCalibur 3 was very ambitious and the most complete experience in the franchise, but with a terrible management. The worst offender was to make the game exclusive to PS2 (which was by the time already in its last breaths of life), obviously that was going to hinder the sales a great deal, especially when SC2 was released for 3 different platforms (and add that it also featured Link, who was the major sales booster for SC2, if we are honest).
I think it would be cool for SF6 to have a "Final Fight" mode which would be a side mode where you play essentially an old final fight game with the visuals of sf6. Or honestly just any beat em up mode in a Capcom game would blow my socks off.
I'll say a fighting game with underrated single player content was KOF XI. It had 3 arcade modes one with the default tag mechanic, one with classic KOF 3V3 style and a Single entrant mode, a survival mode where you fought till you lost and a 40 mission challenge mode that if you beat all unlocked everything. Besides those it 4 secret mid bosses that if the requirements were fulfilled you could fight them and unlock them that way plus the sub and final boss were unlockable after beating them aswell,7 console exclusive unlockable characters and unique artwork for the edit teams when you beat an arcade run with them instead of the default team ending
KOF 2000 and 2001 had 2 separate arcade modes single version and team version 3v3 with strikers. What I liked about those games was the party mode was where u defeat a certain number of opponents to unlock a certain character(s) and theyre mostly striker characters u unlock specifically a maniac striker for the character on the base roster. Whoever on the base roster u used as a striker u can choose alternate version of said character or an entirely different character. Memory mode has u beating certain number of characters. Once u beat enough opponents and meeting certain requirements you'll be able to access each of the previous KOF games from 94-99. Its a really fun mode u can engage in SNK should really bring these back. They also have survival modes an time attack which is standard of all FGs
Back in the day, my sister was the one that got me into Namco games like the Soul Series & Tekken. It was always awesome seeing the sheer amount of content you could get. Khan Super Session and the other alt soundtracks, Edge Master Mode, Tekken Force, Tekken Bowl, etc. It was just fun in those days to slowly see what was at the finish line. With Toshinden 3, we kept thinking "oh THIS is the end. Oh snap, is this the final boss? Oh no Veil is the final boss!" There's a certain magic that was lost now that you don't unlock things anymore or have as much focus on single player content. Rival Schools in the PS1 era had discs worth of stuff.
Completely agree. I miss unlocking things. Playing certain characters or certain modes over and over to get certain endings, costumes/skins or secret characters. Seeing the story, lore and mythos expanded upon in so many ways. Now everything is online or DLC. For anyone who grew up in the 90s and 2000s, these modern games feel half baked for single content. Even NRS, the current masters of single player stories, have had too much lootbox mechanics for unlocks.
I thoroughly agree with Max's point about single player content gradually creating fans willing to go online. I don't like competitive games personally, but I played League of legends with my brothers against bots for a long time then graduated to ARAM with just us going against each other and eventually Intermediate bots got so easy even as much as I dislike PVP I consented to a few matchs, it didn't take because I need more incentive to play anything PVP but I was on the right track. Likewise I don't like online FPS games but I played Destiny 1 for it's sandbox shooter with just passable single player content and even that was enough to eventually get me into enjoying the multiplayer mode: because there were rewards for the single player content if I participated in that. Then there's Smash which has gradually lead me along over the years to the point where I actually do want to go online one day...when I have time. As for my ideal single player content in fighting games I've got a few ideas: find a way to adapt concepts like board the platforms and break the targets to every fighting game to help learn positioning and hitboxes through more tangible scenarios, take the idea of trophies from smash and merge them with Dark Souls item description lore building make that a big part of the collection process and finally make the quirky minigames part of each individual characters goals and motivations. Like a character who's all about making money: make their score equate to cash earned then give them a luigis mansion style sliding ending based on how much they earned. Or a character is military oriented give them shooting gallery style minigames.
I agree that single player content is important for fighting games because it grabs casual audience attention and eventually makes them fans by basing on my own experiences and other people's experiences but I do feel that more fighting games should give players more options other than online. Personally I think what makes good single player content is fun mechanics, storytelling, or replayability, The tutorial mode and mini games in Guilty Gear Xrd were fun and kept me playing while also teaching me the mechanics of the game itself, Soul Calibur 6 and Guilty Gear Strive might not follow the trends of fighting game story modes but the do a good job at telling a story while also giving us an understanding of the characters personality and motivations which was most prevalent in the Soul Chronicle part of the story mode where it went into detail about the characters even newcomers like Groh, and Azwel while Strive had a non playable story mode that develop the characters while also giving an interesting antagonist, and Kof 15 has a good usage of replayability with having different endings while also having secret endings with different combinations of teams. I definitely want more effort put into single player content in order to enrich the experience if playing a fighting game.
Soul Calibur 2 and 3 had some of the best single player content I've seen in a fighting game. Hell, even the basic arcade mode for SC3 had branching paths and quick time events and shit.
I’d love to see NRS add Konquest back. You can still do fights and cutscenes. But having some exploration, secrets, lore, and fun gameplay elements outside of the typical round based fights would be a way to keep the experience fresh. I also think adding a beat up campaign for levels and boss fights being round based fighting game fights would also offer great variety to story modes.
Nearly the entire Blazblue series totally nailed single player content, which is what got me started with fighting games in the first place and kept me interested in the series.
For me, my single player nostalgia moment was the entire Orochi arc storyline. It actually got me hooked on Japanese mythology (I was in high school back then and my literature subject was heavy on mythologies). Comparing to single-player story arcs between Capcom and SNK at that time, I'd pick SNK always.
Granblue's single player mode is Warzard with an equipment progression based on the gacha's grid system. Beating it lets you participate in time attack events against the bosses which happen every couple months, and unlocks Beelzebub for free.
I was always bothered with how the DLC characters in Tekken 7 get absolutely no story mode or the arcade mode has zero endings. Meanwhile Eliza who is considered DLC has a story mode? Okay Namco. Toshinden 3... that's the game I played the shit out of. I had to earn EVERYONE lol
Oddly, it's the indie space that's still embracing single player content now, what with Skullgirls's story modes for every single character and 100 missions, Rivals Of Aether's complete mod support, as well as Them's Fightin' Herds RPG/Fighter/Platformer hybrid story that teaches you game tech as you go through it. The only big fighter I can think of recently with expansive single player content outside of The Cinematic Story Mode is Granblue Versus.
36:00 What was awesome about Smash going as far back as at least Melee or Brawl, was that there were multiple unlock methods for each character. You could do the 72 hour thing for Mewtwo or just by playing a ton of matches. So even if you didn't know the alternate methods, you'd still find the characters just by playing.
Fighting Herds has the most unique i've seen and they're a small indie team. It had sort of a top down snes rpg mode, with platforming and unique enemies and bosses and im imagining what could be possible with these full price big budget games.
Yeah man offline experience in fighting games is a lost art, I played over 100 hours of Street Fighter Alpha 3 on PS1 because the game was so freaking good And for me the first game that pops into mind when talking about offline modes is Tekken 3, you had Arcade mode, Time attack, Survival, team battle, Tekken force and Tekken Ball like that was a LOT of content to keep you occupied with our having to challenge someone else
My favourite single player mode in a fighting game is World Tour in the console versions of SFA3. Basically a massive arcade ladder with RPG elements where you can choose the order you fight the characters in on a world map and use EXP gained in fights to level up and unlock new moves and customise your character with them. If I recall correctly you could also import your custom characters into the main game and use them in Arcade, versus etc. Would love to see it return in the future
For me Guilty Gear XX was a great single player game merely for how every character had like 3 different endings-routes, and then Soul Calibur 3 where you played a campaign-rpg like map with your original created character
I really wish there was a streets of rage type mode in fighting games. Same inputs that you'd use in a vs match. So your constantly learning the game. I think that would be fun and would remove the insanity of jumping online and losing for me. More game modes that help you learn the game, would be perfect for a casual like me.
Whoa whoa whoa...Tekken 7's end fight between Kazuya and Heihachi in the volcano was epic as hell. I get Akuma stole the show and the story in general wasn't great but you can't tell me they didn't nail that last one with the bits of history tossed in during(!) the actual fight.
@@deanbrooks7297 You might be right. But I've got Haze on my Playlist, and I had to rewatch that fight right after posting that comment. I'm a Tekken ho so I'm mad biased but I honestly can't think of a more dramatic and incredible fight in fighting games. It was executed flawlessly and I really hope that it gets replicated and expanded upon by other franchises. The shot with Heihachi blank eyed, only to hit back with a headbutt gets me every time.
T7’s major flaw (and also present in T6’s Scenario Campaign) was that it basically screwed over every side character. Whatever own story (jokey or otherwise) they were undergoing basically went nowhere since T5 or 6.
@@Senumunu maybe I'm the minority but I kinda liked Akuma. The tekken story dosent take itself too seriously so it was fun having Akuma be a real part of the story.
Definitely loved the Killer Instinct endings being different depending on requirements. I'd love to see more fun stuff hidden in a future SF games. I dig Max's idea of having storymode diversions based on something like that. "Oh crap, you fought G and got a time out, Q and Crimson Viper showed up!" Just making it not so linear could be a lot of fun.
One of my favorite podcasts by far. I've never really played fighting games but always loved the genre, so learning the history from you fine gentlemen has been very enjoyable. I'll watch whatever you guys put out.
Soul blade gets slept on. It had weapon master too and it was cool! The weapons carried over into arcade mode and the weapon master mode also had unique story beats that fleshed out the story between the characters and added context and unique challenges. It was so cool
This is what I came to mention. Soul Edge/Blade was ridiculously inventive and never gets the love it deserves. Back then no one really got into the series until Soul Calibur on Dreamcast though, and you can hear that when people talk about it.
Bloody Roar 2: The New Breed had an incredibly fun setting called "Any Cancel Point", you turned it on and it just made it so you could cancel just about any animation, at any point, into any special attack. That game is excellent even without that mode, but with it? Just an insane party.
Man I REEEALLY miss unlockable characters, that shit got me hooked in games like Tekken 5 and every anime licensed fighter ever. And for tournaments and stuff there could be a tournament setting where you could use all the characters in local and lobby versus, but for online ranked and single player modes you had to unlock them.
Co op in fighting games would be so much fun that’s probably the only way I get get some of my friends to play too. Also we need a fighting game music episode!!!
Ya’ll should look into Granblue versus story mode. It has online coop which is like SF dramatic battle. Blazblue had unlimited/boss versions of all its characters on its older releases and another mode that let you level up your character in speed/power etc. persona ultimax also has this mode as well under a different name
I've yet to find a fighting game with more single player content than SCIII, the game had a story mode with branching paths for all playable characters which also had QTEs whitin its cutscenes that could lead to slightly different outcomes or even different endings altogether. Chronocles of the Sword which starred your custom character as the protagonist in a Command and Conquer-esque type gameplay. The Soul Arena with all the crazy gimmick fights like fighting the big statue, the tag game with the shop vendors, the wall bounce fights and the super hard Nightterror boss fight. The immense amount of customizable parts that you had to buy on the three different shops one for clothing/ armor, one for weapons and one for gallery content as well as the tutorial mode which taught you all the mechanics one by one from beginner to expert difficulty with weird olw man Olcadan, not counting the normal 8-fight arcade ladder that was also in the game. I wish modern fighting game devs would at least put 20% of the amount of content that SCIII had to offer.
SC2 and 3 were sick as everyone will attest, but I gotta say I really enjoyed my first exposure to Blazblue: Calamity Trigger and GGX2#R's Visual Novel with branching paths/unlockable artwork as well. I was really invested in BB's story and characters at first, but the story content got too overwhelming to follow since it was literally like adding a whole 15-20 hour VN experience to the story with every expansion. But between fleshing out the characters and story over actual events and interactions (as opposed to the more arcade "and then this happened, the end" approach) and all the dope unlockable artwork that you'd get for exploring all the different paths, I feel like that really enhanced my value and enjoyment with the games.
I know ppl like to debate if this is a fighting game or not however def jam fight for NY had loads of single player content also the story mode never got boring on top of that.
The whole time I watched this, I kept thinking of a Street Fighter mode that was based on events in the franchise. Every big fight in every medium recreated as a boss challenge. I want to play as Chun Li in her undies battling Vega in the apartment. I wanna play as Guile against M. Bison in the room with the stupid TV wall. There's tons of Udon content that could work. Hell, modify canon fights. Have Gen start the match with half the HP from the Raging Demon and then have to win against Shin Akuma.
This is a solid idea, remaking iconic fights could be a blast and a unique take on a boss rush mode! I loved how in Soul Blade, some fights had special stipulations "Li-Long has been poisoned, you have to win the fight in X seconds!" Or there would be in a fight with a character only able to be beaten if you break their weapons.
I know this is an older video but I just finished street fighter 6 world tour 100% and honestly had an amazing time. I haven’t jumped into tanked or anything else and I’m already 40ish hours of content in. I love single player experiences in games and am happy I’m seeing more care being taken with them
I think SCVI’s Soul Chronicles are super underrated. A lot of people are turned away by the lack of animated cutscenes, but they have way more depth and nuance than most other fighting game story modes, especially for the DLC characters. I have a video about that coming out next week.
Storytelling wise that mode is one of the best I have seen in a fighting game, and the static illustrations look really cool to me, actually. But the mode fails for completely in execution, to be honest, and that's because of the terrible static AI, the enemies barely even move and that makes that mode SUPER boring. There are very few battles in the Soul Chronicles, and to make it worse after swallowing many minutes of dialogue, once you start to play you face standing dummies as enemies, that is a total fail. After such epic interactions between the characters, for example Amy with Azwel, or Cassandra with her timeline counterpart, Groh with Curtis, Mitsurugi with Iska or Setsuka's master, Hwang with Gabok, Kilik vs Inferno, etc, you only get to fight against standing dummies, that totally ruins what could had been one of the best story modes ever, Soul Chronicle needed a difficulty setting option at least. There is no real replay value with that mode, in its current state there is not really a difference between playing it or watching a RUclips Video of it. You don't play at all anyway. And Libra of Souls suffers of the same problem for most of its fights.
The Seth thing about learning move was kinda already done with Ace in sfex 3, you learn moves and the more you use it, it level up and was getting better. Also, I had a lot of fun with all those Rival Schools mini games on disc2, me and my friends played so many hours in those just to get the highest score, especially the baseball game.
On character unlocking, I think more devs should take DBFZ's approach. There, they made character unlocking exclusive to the story mode and left the entire roster available for versus, training, etc. This way, casuals keep their satisfying progression system while TOs don't have to worry about playing new setups for 5 hours. (I know DBFZ didn't completely commit to this setup w/ the blues and 21 but it's still a good idea)
With me Single player is my main go to, story modes, arcade modes, training, missions and the simple reason is...i crack playing online there is just something about my brain that puts me under a ungodly amount of pressure and i never knew why
Matt is my spirit animal in this pod. FINALLY someone brought up how glorious, clunky, and awkward Deception and Armageddon’s Konquest modes are. It’s a weird balance of epic and lame wrapped into a neat ball
As someone who regularly gets his butt kicked online, it’s nice to play Single Player content where I (usually) stand a chance. I always love Arcade Modes (look at my username), but story modes and other weird single player modes are some of my favorites in the genre.
Matt may have joked about Bob, but Yugo Ogami (Bloody Roar) is a guest character in DreamMix TV World Fighters. This game, released at the tail end of 2003, is the last official appearance of any Bloody Roar character since Konami bought out Hudson.
I would love a MK game where the konquest is a mash of shaolin monks and deception. Have a big map for realms you can explore with hostiles you can fight on the map and friendly settlements you can get quests from and find hidden fights in the classic setting or shaolin monks format. That sounds amazing.
One of the reasons why I love Tekken 4 out of all the Tekkens is because I was able to experience it in the first days of release in the Namco arcades. Not only did I like aesthetic, the music, the stages, and overall feel of T4, but I was able to enjoy unlocking the secret characters. Then I got the home version and they had Tekken Force which I also loved. That first week of a FG in an arcade were exhilarating. You can't capture that lightning in a bottle anymore.
Chronicles of the Sword was pretty cool, 3 was also the only Soul Calibur create a character that had unique movesets for each weapon type instead of just using the movesets of the preexisting characters. Wish they'd bring that back since it made them feel more unique
I just got DOA6 on sale and must say I’m impressed by the single player content! Fleshed out story mode, quests mode where you have to achieve certain objectives in fights vs the CPU, and WOW you can actually unlock character customization through ear able in-game currency! There are definitely issues, but it’s a good model for single player content!
Now if only it wasn't 60 gigs of space on my PS4. I wish it was a smaller size so I could actually get around to playing it more than whenever I feel like smacking people with Honoka's ass.
That business model doesn't work in single player unless you have huge content to choose from to spend your currency like MK. DOA5 and old entries worked better, just unlock costumes and characters through completion rates with characters in arcade and time attack
DoA 5 is even better. The higher difficulties of something like survival are mad hard. You have to get good. On the highest difficulty you have to beat 100 characters in a row. I keep coming back to it and trying it. I haven't beaten it yet but u am getting further every single time.
When it comes to unlockable characters, I kinda want to see a fighting game try a "Tourney Mode" or something as an accessibility option that would allow you to play all the character while it's turned on. Could be good for tournaments or when playing with firends, and if the player wants to unlock the characters by themself they can turn the mode off and have at it. An arguement against it could be that most people would just leave the option on, making unlocking the characters redundant, but for people who enjoy unlocking characters (such as myself) I believe this could be a good middle ground. A possible solution to the redundancy issue could be that you get a special costume for unlocking the character too, idk.
You could make it work almost like using cheats. You can play as all the characters, but certain things are restricted (you can't use them in certain modes, you can't customize them, etc.).
@@SpikeTheLucario Yeah, maybe they could be restricted to the main vs. or multiplayer mode (and possibly online vs. if we take online tournaments into consideration)
Damn Tekken Force Mode needs a comeback!! Well fighting games with modes other than just arcade and online vs. We need that back in general. I find the games are sold at full price for little content.
PLEASE BRING BACK WORLD TOUR! Make it over the shoulder for traversal then when you encounter a fighter shift the camera back to the 2.5D Street Fighter camera position.
Great vid. I would love to see a video on Beat em ups and how they fit into the fighting game universe. Besides the capcom beat em ups, thinking about it the mid 2000’s was filled with beat em ups that had fighting game (usually arena) modes and would love to hear you guys discuss the topic. Some off the top examples The Bouncer, Urban Regin, Castle Crashers, The Warriors, etc.
What I'd love to see is: Motor Kombat, Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat all remastered and made its own like "mini game collection". Soul Calibur Chronicle of the Sword/Soul Calibur 1-4 remastered. Tekken campaign w/online coop, polish it and maybe make it a simple 2D side scroller. Mortal Kombat tag team game (whole heartedly agree with this) This video brought back so much good memories while I was growing up. I didn't realize how much fighting games I've played/loved, mainly because I wasn't that skilled at them.
Absolutely soaking this episode UP. Besides appreciating the competitive side as a spectator, I love CHOWING DOWN on meaty single player content. If the game is fun, put me in fun and crazy scenarios if I don't feel like getting sweaty with real people. I'm THAT GUY that 100%d Soul Calibur 2 and Soul Calibur 3's Weapon Master/Chronicles of the Sword modes (shoutout to Matt for remembering those modes, that shit was rad!). NRS' story modes were fun, but I'm sour on these fun campaigns being largely absent in modern fighters. I'd love to see Street Fighter tackle character driven routes with unique dialogue and fights that highlight how fun they are - not necessarily needing to focus on whatever insane shit Dictator is up to this week.
On the notion of using Paul to power punch the ball in Tekken Ball and it being "unstoppable"... it is. Any charged ball can have the charged negated by using a throw on it, and it puts it in a weird state where some attacks that wouldn't charge the ball now charges it.
On the topic of grinding out characters, I had kind of an interesting idea; bear with me on this On the OG Xbox there was this game called MX vs ATV unleashed, that me and my brother loved to play the free roam mode in. However, all of fun vehicles (Helicopters, super fast motorcycles, etc) were, of course, unlockable. However, there was a cheat code menu, and if you put in the code T00LAZY, you would unlock all vehicles… until the console power cycled; they weren’t permanently unlocked and saved to your file, you just had temporary access to them. I think that’s a really good balance; you could have a “tourney code” that unlocked all characters in a fighting game, but for them to be permanently unlocked without the code, you would need to progress in single player content. Idk, I just thought it was a neat idea
Since Justin keeps bringing up Naruto and with that intro segment of the Lars collab in NUNS, just wanna say that the story mode in NUNS 2 was so damn good. Quick time events, expanded story fights that turned into epic boss battles and unique character movesets different from the regular movesets in said boss fights. I was so sad when the boss battles in later entries were stripped
Yeah Storm 2 easily had the best Story modes the boss fights were incredible Storm 3 I really didn't care for there were so many big important fights that should've been bosses that were just regular fights. Like why was Naruto and Bee VS Itachi and Nagato not a boss?
SC3 was the best single player experience in a fighting game I’ve ever played. I built a create a character team with my siblings and would pass the controller around as we worked together to clear each chapter. It also has awesome mini games like the big ass statue fight and will-o the wisp.
I love when you illustrate what you're saying with pictures, or quick videos. I know it's a podcast first and foremost so, I get it. But I wish you did it more on the poverty games for example. Love the show anyway, great idea boys, best of luck.
I'm not finished watching the video but when the conversation mentions the "dip-switch" modes I was immediately reminded of vanilla SFIV and the survival mode. it had this really cool idea of making SFIV play like specific other games in the series and making you fight under those rules (i.e. no ultra, no ex, no focus, no dash a la sfii or no ultra and no focus a la sfiii.) I wish SFV would have used that with the arcade mode when they added that. making a v-reversal or v-shift behave similarly to focus or something would have been a nice nod with specific moves breaking that focus. or giving everyone the ability to parry and universal overheads a la sfiii. the creativity was definitely appreciated in my book
While I personally think SE is overrated I do agree it has a lot of elements that I would want built on for a fighting games single player. Unfortunately, they tend to ignore platform fighters in these discussions.
I think Smash Run and Melee Adventure Mode are better within Smash. Also wouldn't be surprised if other platform fighters had great stuff, but I respect SE.
I've been playing fighting games at a casual level for about 30 years now. I don't play online at all. There's been so many games with great single player content, and so many that I wanted to play but had to pass on because they had next to none. Matt's idea of a stage builder is a fun idea. I think a weapon fighter where each character has their own army that fight each other in the background would be cool. Or maybe you customize them yourself for online play. I think a lot of games could cross pollinate their ideas well. For example, MK:D's konquest mode would work pretty well in the Street fighter universe. Go to different cities and meet other characters, and then fight in tournaments. MK:D and SC2 had some of my favorite single player content of any of them. Idk if most people would consider Dissidia a fighting game, but Duodecim has a metric shitton of SP content. It made NT all the more depressing when it launched with fuck all. I think the biggest hurdle for fighting game devs going forward is making tutorials designed for people that don't know how to play fighting games. Teaching them the fundamentals is vital to get them interested in the gameplay and to continue playing. Most people barely understand how fighting games work (myself included tbh).
I was thinking in mentioning Dissidia 012 too, but the game is actually a single player focused game first. The multiplayer is like the plus. It still focuses a lot on RPG mechanics.
I also heard that the multiplayer in that game was superbusted, and people didn't really like it because the game mechanics were mega-unbalanced... partially because that playstyle just didn't lend itself well to human versus human. And that kinda feels like the curse we're dealing with- you practically need Mortal Kombat / Smash Bros level budgets to make a fighting game with good, varied singleplayer content AND balanced gameplay for online / versus, but it's like no company but Netherrealms and Nintendo has any faith in fighting games at all these days, and even then Netherrealms seem to be in constant economic trouble nowadays and Smash becomes a life-consuming vortex for its developers. Makes me scared that it's just not economically feasible to make a fighting game these days if you don't got Smash / Warner Bros money to throw around, unless you follow the Street Fighter method- minimum single player, go ALL IN on costume, stage and character DLC.
Dunno if someone did it already but: In Tekken 3, finishing the Tekken Force mode unlocked Boskonovitch. I think it also had something to do with unlocking Gon. In Tekken 4 it was useless. In Tekken 5 you could unlock Devil Jin by doing that. But you could also unlock Devil Jin by finishing with every base character. Also you could get gears that cost a lot of money. In Tekkn 6, the only purpose of the mode is to give Lars and Alisa a story mode, give you an easy way to unlock characters ending through a 4 match long arena mode and last but not least, grind cosmetics without having to spend money on 'em.
A lot of my modern fondness of Tekken and my falling out with Street Fighter 5 is the prevalence of single player, offline content to just let me get a feel for the game. Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 7's endless "treasure battle" mode where you unlock all the crappy cosmetics for the characters wasn't necessarily getting me any in game items I actually wanted, but just the ability to select a mode and fight constantly with AI opponents that ranged in skill and having my time somewhat rewarded was enough to keep me invested in the game enough to a point where I was confident enough to go online.
I really hope Capcom brings it when it comes to single player content in Street Fighter 6. They kind of got there at the end of Street Fighter V, but it took a while to get there. Even Smash has been backsliding when it comes to single player content in recent years.
The first thing I think of as a good way to enhance the single player is to take a look at Tekken 3 modes. They added so much more to the experience and help elevate the game for casuals and veterans looking for something to have fun with. Notably the Tekken Force mode would be a great place to set the foundation; having your favourite character take on loads of grunt enemies using the exact same moves they have against other characters in the regular mode is really satisfying as you can experience the same combos you love but in a different context. Having a progression system a la River City series would be great too. Idk if each character having their own levels is too much work, but if it is, an alternative could be shared levels that have different events depending on the character I guess
As a player who never cared (nor will ever care) about online multiplayer, these SP modes are vital for me to enjoy a game. As a first rule all of them should have at least Arcade Mode with individual endings. You'd think that's pretty obvious but lately we've seen games REMOVE endings from Arcade Mode or removing Arcade Mode altogether, which is insane. Tekken 7 and DOA6 come to mind, also SFV did it wrong like you guys mentioned. As for a main Story Mode, I'll go with Matt and another iteration of the Deception Konquest formula. Man that was amazing for me.
As a casual, and a blind player to boot, I rarely ever find myself coming back to mortal Kombat 11 now because of how arduous everything was to unlock. You had to get half the stuff from the crypt or from those over the top towers, and the crypt is completely inaccessible for blind players while the towers are difficult to say the least since you have to contend with all of the extra nonsense they've got going on in the background. That game desperately needed and unlock everything DLC.
I absolutely love Soul Calibur 3's Chronicles of the Sword. Me and my siblings would create a character each and just pass the controller around. So much fucking fun.
Yeah, PS2-era MK I played religiously, Deception in particular. Conquest mode in Deception (having the option to fight online being the novelty as it was at the time was great, too) I played religiously. As tedious and a bit convoluted it got sometimes as you guys pointed out, I was compelled to continue playing it. MK Chess was pretty addicting as well and Puzzle Kombat was neat, too. Actually just about every single player mode games that was mentioned here, I heavily engaged in. I was honestly hoping something climatic after completing The Devil Within mode, but...oh well.
I have been watching all of you individually forever I cant believe I am just finding out about this podcast. I have already listened to a few. Very cool guys.
It would be nice if the online modes also had the crazy settings. Ranked could be default regular fights, and Casual has special modifier playlists people can set up and distribute. I would like story content for most fighting games. I like understanding the characters, its easier to get invested and stay invested if the story is fun. Being able to customize characters and get alternate costumes and gear is cool. I feel like I just want an Action RPG, but then there’s a fighting game with those characters included, lol
Watching a Smash direct before the launch of Ultimate, Max reacted to the Smashdown mode and said something like "That looks so much fun, I can't wait to play with Yo Videogames", and them he never even touched the mode; he most likely doesn't even remember this mode exists or what it is. Smash has A LOT of modes, but most people forgot 80% of them. Max also forgot he played the Story Mode of DOA 6 at launch.
I feel like stuff like Smash Ultimate put them there as a Goodbye but because it was legacy. If some brand new IP fighting game had the same amount of content that smash does I don't think Many players would touch it because of the sheer amount it becomes intimidating even if it's fun. I look at stuff like BlazuBlue has a Perfect amount of extra content outside of Verses. Like Unlimited Mars, Abyss, Gag scenarios. It probably depends on each franchise.
Thank you Justin, Matt, and Maximilian for this great episode. As a former arcade crawler who has limited/spotty internet, the offline are what I have been using to get me by. VF4 evo's simulated tour of Japan's arcade is where I spent much of my PS2 time as fighting games go; coupled with it's ability to watch the simulated fights of some of Japan's top players made it more than worth the price of admission. As for great single player content goes I would invite you gentlemen to try Giant Gram 2000's CAW mode (only on Dreamcast) where you learn moves by taking bumps from specific characters whom you trained with. Also I wouldn't mind if you could have a customize able version of an existing characters that the player can change the stats on (an ability to allocate a capped amount of points to certain moves and or stats ala a MvC CPT Commando with less health but more dmg to ultimate) then store locally and take it a friend's house to play against said friend's version.
Exactly, though in the case of SC3 something that hindered it greatly was its exclusivity to PS2, and add that it it was released at the last leg of life of the PS2 to make it worse.
I'll say this forever: DLC killed the unlockable secret characters. They mention Tekken 3. One of the coolest things was beating the game with everyone to see who you'd unlock. I miss that.
Same.
I don't think it killed it so much as developers were too lazy to make some fighters unlockable. Options like those are still possible today even with DLC
I mean Smash Ultimate made most of the roster Unlockable. (except the original 8 non unlockable N64 characters)
But then again it wasn't hard to unlock them.
@@MrDp115 i don't think it's lazyness as much as logistics.
They want maximum profit out of their game wich leads to Dlc and other post launch types of monetization.
Yup, kinda killed the replayability for me when it comes to fighting games.
Unlocking secret characters was great incentive to play the arcade mode with multiple characters back in the day.
New characters via DLC makes sense unfortunately, in this day and age. Games have gotten pretty expensive to make, competitive deadlines and easy revenue via DLC characters to mention a few reasons
I know alot of people in the FGC don't really care about fighting cpus but strong single player options really justify the purchase and replayability for alot of people. Single player and online are equally important.
it’s easy for anyone to see things from a bubble (including competitive players). but most of them can probably empathize with single player offerings too since we’re all people who enjoy playing games in general.
@@Sune Yeah, Fighting games need more single player content.
Better AI would do the most to improve everyone's single player experience. If we could get adaptive AI that plays like the aggregate skill of people in lower ranks or that shadowed the top players for each character, new players would always have a fair match to learn the buttons with and competitive players could train against an approximation of Tokido's Akuma even if they'd never get matched against them for real
Fighting game AI being either utterly brainless of input reading system cheaters has done the most damage imo.
Absolutely agree. Single player is as important as On-line for fighting games
fighting a hard CPU in tekken 5 is more fun than fighting a real player in tekken 7
one aspect of unlockable characters I like that you guys didn't touch on, is that it encourages trying new characters, whether its learning the base roster and mechanics or picking up a new character because you just unlocked them
It also added arcade replayability alongside that.
Nothing more fulfilling in a fighting game than having a good understanding of the entire roster.
@@pious83 the best flex is when someone challenges you to a match and you let them pick your character. That’s the most chad move you can do in a fighting game.
@@larrykeach In Soul Calibur, one of my mains was Edgemaster. For that reason.
@@pious83 ooh that’s a fun one. Well played.
Gotta say. I’ve listen to Matt for a long time and I’ve followed max enough. But it’s a goddamn treasure watching Justin grow into this. I don’t know much but Matt and Max have always been into this kind of thing whereas I’ve watched Justin grow immensely throughout this podcast. It’s hands down one of my favorite podcasts now. I can’t say I’m well versed in fighting games. My community was never big. I honestly have one friend that will entertain me and play fighting games with me. But damn. These guys exude hype and every topic has been awesome and I’ve loved every episode. Love you guys. FIGHT ON!
Very sorry for not proof reading post. But seriously, I love this podcast. Just waiting for a fighters destiny deep dive. Love you guys all.
Honestly single player content is what I look for in a fighting game, never been one for online
Same, here. I kind of like playing againts other people but i like the single player content a little bit more.
@@Alan27symbiote really liked MK11 for the krypt and constant unlocking, that came me coming back and trying towers almost every day
I'm kinda the same way. For ages, I'd either play against friends, at the arcade, but beating the game, learning the game lore from the ends and if there was single player content, I'd go wild with that. Alpha 3 was a Godsend for me. I spent so many lunchbreaks (I lived close to my high school so I could go home for lunch) playing the different Survival modes and World Tour was such a blast! Only recently with SFV did I venture into online. While I like it, I'm so used to the single player content being the draw for me.
@@tmma1869 . And I SoulCalibur VI has actually more single player content than most FGs nowadays, but of course, compared to its predecessors (especially SoulCalibur 3) it pales in comparison.
@@tmma1869 Same here ngl. I had the same problem with SF5 as content was being released before Championship Edition came out. I knew it was coming, but my dumbass was impatient. 😓
I’m not a huge online gamer. When I do play online it’s usually in brief spurts. But I absolutely love single player content. NRS knows that. I hope more studios do that in the future.
Well Namco knew how to do it, back in 1996 with Soul Blade. Weird how they veered away from it over the years?
Same here my man
Single player content is super important, not everyone has the desire or skill to go online and be thrown into the lion's den, and just want to play for short bursts alone, especially people without friends who play fighters.
It's odd that for a while people acted like it wasn't important, I remember a few people claiming SFV didn't "need" an arcade mode because online is more important, which I super disagree with.
Plus growing up with the Tekken, Smash Bros, and Mortal Kombat games from childhood as well as Blazblue and Guilty Gear during the Ps3 era There was always fun offline stuff to do that were unique and had unique rewards for completion, and that made it very noticable when games started to slowly strip it all away to eventually becoming little more than a $60 versus mode.
Watching this in 2024 and knowing that SF6 has world tour mode has given me a good chuckle.
Favorite show, favorite podcast. You gents are crushing it, thank you.
I forget that Matt isn't in fact, a blue skeleton man...
Soul Calibur's single player content is what kept me playing long enough to say "Hey, maybe I should actually learn some of Ivy's moves." 23 years later I'm still maining her.
That should be the goal of all fg single player modes
@GreyPolar I feel the same waaaay..
They peaked with single player content in SC3 - its been kinda boring since then outside of character creation
@@Christian-rn1ur And unfortunately that was the one that destroyed your memory card. Still a great game though
@@FaminedNinja . there is a very easy way to avoid the file corruption, but not many people seem to actually know about it.
I don't think I've ever invested as much time and effort in a fighting game as I did with Soulcalibur III on PS2. Story mode was great but Chronicles of the Souls was the real deal. The fact that you could create your own squad of up to five OC characters and lvl them up while playing a mix of RTS/fighting game as you progressed though the story earning gold, customization items, new fighting styles and even secret unlockable characters just blew my mind back in the day. Such a simple idea turned out to be my favorite game mode in what became my favorite SC game and one of my favorite games of all time. No online, no DLC, no ranked, just great single player content. I miss Soulcalibur III
Totally agree with this.
I never played SCIII, but that sounds amazing!
I've had this idea forever, I've always wanted to see a "director mode", where you could program 2 characters to go through a series a moves and make an actual choreographed fight. Give you control of the camera and music and voice lines and some visual effects. Let people create their own badass fight scenes in your fighting game and share it online.
An in-game TAS mode would be sick.
I've never thought of that, but holy shit, that would be awesome.
damn you reminded me of early 2000's newground fighting game montages in flash with sprites from MK and SF games
All 4 of you need to check out "your only move is hustle" a TAS fighting game
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend probably had like the best single player content for a pure fighting game that I know of.
Arcade Mode, Unlimited Mars, Abyss Mode (which is basically fighting game roguelike), Story Mode for each and everyone of the characters with multiple endings and Gag Scenarios.
Max's opening is an excellent summation of Single Player content. It felt great to hear huge personalities for the FGC talk about how important single player content is.
I've been saying for a while that a huge chunk of the people who play fighting games don't really want to play against other people, I know that sounds crazy but it's true, so it's important to give them something to do.
But more importantly, single player content is one of the best ways to keep a game alive. You want new players to check out your game? Well if it only has online and the scene is kind of dead, there's no point. If it's got good single player content, then yeah you can always recommend it to them.
This so much. I've never been into PvP but after hearing you gush about darkstalkers and the entire NEOGEO library for two years now, I've been willing to try a few but if I can't even work up to PvP against CPU the way I did in smash, I'd rather just watch Thorgi videos than actually play these games.
To me single player content in fighting games isn’t just a big story mode or game modes in general. Allowing you to unlock things such as skins, accessories, stages and maybe even characters is extremely fun to me and gives me a reason to keep me playing single player modes.
Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign (beat em up mode) was very elaborate and had a lot of effort put into it. It had many collectible customize items which often had special effects within the beat em up mode, like increased defense or attack, additional elemental damage, etc. It also had online co-op! which was amazing for a fighting game.
Glad you talked about this topic, because it's mad important. Hopefully more FG devs realize the importance of single player content and put more effort into it going forward. I'm tired of fighting games releasing with barebones single player content.
I was gonna mention T6's campaign. While it wasn't the deepest single player mode out there it was a lot of fun, and lent itself well to Tekken's 3D mechanics
Mowing down bad guys with a machine gun while playing as Xiaoyu will never get old
CHRONICLES OF THE SWORD!!! That mode was AMAZING in Soul Calibur 3. Talk about engaging as hell for a fighting game, unlocking all of the hidden characters because almost every NPC you met could be unlocked as an actual character you could use. Ugh, PS2 was the days
I played soul calibur 3 as a kid an I absolutely loved that they had a RPG campaign built into the fighting game. I've been sad to never see that return.
We've been BEGGING to see Chronicles of the Sword return for years. SC6 had Libra of Souls but it wasn't nearly as potent as SCIII's. Who knows if Bamco even listens...
I guess my question there would be "how much did it cost them to implement, did it pay considering how many people bought the game, and how much MORE expensive did it get when everyone shifted to PS3 / Xbox 360?" I do not know the answer to that particular question, but if it follows the trends of previous questions I've asked about why modern gaming is what it is, I'm afraid I can predict the answers...
@@goranisacson2502 . SoulCalibur 3 was very ambitious and the most complete experience in the franchise, but with a terrible management.
The worst offender was to make the game exclusive to PS2 (which was by the time already in its last breaths of life), obviously that was going to hinder the sales a great deal, especially when SC2 was released for 3 different platforms (and add that it also featured Link, who was the major sales booster for SC2, if we are honest).
I think it would be cool for SF6 to have a "Final Fight" mode which would be a side mode where you play essentially an old final fight game with the visuals of sf6. Or honestly just any beat em up mode in a Capcom game would blow my socks off.
Looks like your wish came true!
I'll say a fighting game with underrated single player content was KOF XI. It had 3 arcade modes one with the default tag mechanic, one with classic KOF 3V3 style and a Single entrant mode, a survival mode where you fought till you lost and a 40 mission challenge mode that if you beat all unlocked everything. Besides those it 4 secret mid bosses that if the requirements were fulfilled you could fight them and unlock them that way plus the sub and final boss were unlockable after beating them aswell,7 console exclusive unlockable characters and unique artwork for the edit teams when you beat an arcade run with them instead of the default team ending
KOF 2000 and 2001 had 2 separate arcade modes single version and team version 3v3 with strikers. What I liked about those games was the party mode was where u defeat a certain number of opponents to unlock a certain character(s) and theyre mostly striker characters u unlock specifically a maniac striker for the character on the base roster. Whoever on the base roster u used as a striker u can choose alternate version of said character or an entirely different character. Memory mode has u beating certain number of characters. Once u beat enough opponents and meeting certain requirements you'll be able to access each of the previous KOF games from 94-99. Its a really fun mode u can engage in SNK should really bring these back. They also have survival modes an time attack which is standard of all FGs
Back in the day, my sister was the one that got me into Namco games like the Soul Series & Tekken. It was always awesome seeing the sheer amount of content you could get. Khan Super Session and the other alt soundtracks, Edge Master Mode, Tekken Force, Tekken Bowl, etc. It was just fun in those days to slowly see what was at the finish line. With Toshinden 3, we kept thinking "oh THIS is the end. Oh snap, is this the final boss? Oh no Veil is the final boss!"
There's a certain magic that was lost now that you don't unlock things anymore or have as much focus on single player content. Rival Schools in the PS1 era had discs worth of stuff.
Completely agree. I miss unlocking things. Playing certain characters or certain modes over and over to get certain endings, costumes/skins or secret characters. Seeing the story, lore and mythos expanded upon in so many ways. Now everything is online or DLC. For anyone who grew up in the 90s and 2000s, these modern games feel half baked for single content. Even NRS, the current masters of single player stories, have had too much lootbox mechanics for unlocks.
I thoroughly agree with Max's point about single player content gradually creating fans willing to go online. I don't like competitive games personally, but I played League of legends with my brothers against bots for a long time then graduated to ARAM with just us going against each other and eventually Intermediate bots got so easy even as much as I dislike PVP I consented to a few matchs, it didn't take because I need more incentive to play anything PVP but I was on the right track.
Likewise I don't like online FPS games but I played Destiny 1 for it's sandbox shooter with just passable single player content and even that was enough to eventually get me into enjoying the multiplayer mode: because there were rewards for the single player content if I participated in that.
Then there's Smash which has gradually lead me along over the years to the point where I actually do want to go online one day...when I have time.
As for my ideal single player content in fighting games I've got a few ideas: find a way to adapt concepts like board the platforms and break the targets to every fighting game to help learn positioning and hitboxes through more tangible scenarios, take the idea of trophies from smash and merge them with Dark Souls item description lore building make that a big part of the collection process and finally make the quirky minigames part of each individual characters goals and motivations. Like a character who's all about making money: make their score equate to cash earned then give them a luigis mansion style sliding ending based on how much they earned. Or a character is military oriented give them shooting gallery style minigames.
Yesssss!
I agree that single player content is important for fighting games because it grabs casual audience attention and eventually makes them fans by basing on my own experiences and other people's experiences but I do feel that more fighting games should give players more options other than online.
Personally I think what makes good single player content is fun mechanics, storytelling, or replayability, The tutorial mode and mini games in Guilty Gear Xrd were fun and kept me playing while also teaching me the mechanics of the game itself, Soul Calibur 6 and Guilty Gear Strive might not follow the trends of fighting game story modes but the do a good job at telling a story while also giving us an understanding of the characters personality and motivations which was most prevalent in the Soul Chronicle part of the story mode where it went into detail about the characters even newcomers like Groh, and Azwel while Strive had a non playable story mode that develop the characters while also giving an interesting antagonist, and Kof 15 has a good usage of replayability with having different endings while also having secret endings with different combinations of teams.
I definitely want more effort put into single player content in order to enrich the experience if playing a fighting game.
Soul Calibur 2 and 3 had some of the best single player content I've seen in a fighting game. Hell, even the basic arcade mode for SC3 had branching paths and quick time events and shit.
That was even the arcade mode, that was the story mode, the Arcade mode is apart from it, but it's called Quickplay.
@@SeventhheavenDK Oh yeah, that's right. Totally forgot about that. Just goes to show how much content that game had.
SC3 Conquest Mode (sp?) where you play as your own character was excellent. My friend and I replayed it constantly. SC2's was good too.
I’d love to see NRS add Konquest back. You can still do fights and cutscenes. But having some exploration, secrets, lore, and fun gameplay elements outside of the typical round based fights would be a way to keep the experience fresh. I also think adding a beat up campaign for levels and boss fights being round based fighting game fights would also offer great variety to story modes.
Nearly the entire Blazblue series totally nailed single player content, which is what got me started with fighting games in the first place and kept me interested in the series.
For me, my single player nostalgia moment was the entire Orochi arc storyline. It actually got me hooked on Japanese mythology (I was in high school back then and my literature subject was heavy on mythologies). Comparing to single-player story arcs between Capcom and SNK at that time, I'd pick SNK always.
Granblue's single player mode is Warzard with an equipment progression based on the gacha's grid system. Beating it lets you participate in time attack events against the bosses which happen every couple months, and unlocks Beelzebub for free.
I was always bothered with how the DLC characters in Tekken 7 get absolutely no story mode or the arcade mode has zero endings. Meanwhile Eliza who is considered DLC has a story mode? Okay Namco.
Toshinden 3... that's the game I played the shit out of. I had to earn EVERYONE lol
Oddly, it's the indie space that's still embracing single player content now, what with Skullgirls's story modes for every single character and 100 missions, Rivals Of Aether's complete mod support, as well as Them's Fightin' Herds RPG/Fighter/Platformer hybrid story that teaches you game tech as you go through it. The only big fighter I can think of recently with expansive single player content outside of The Cinematic Story Mode is Granblue Versus.
Story for characters is from skullgirls mobile and it's only half the cast
36:00 What was awesome about Smash going as far back as at least Melee or Brawl, was that there were multiple unlock methods for each character. You could do the 72 hour thing for Mewtwo or just by playing a ton of matches. So even if you didn't know the alternate methods, you'd still find the characters just by playing.
Fighting Herds has the most unique i've seen and they're a small indie team. It had sort of a top down snes rpg mode, with platforming and unique enemies and bosses and im imagining what could be possible with these full price big budget games.
Yeah credit to them that's pretty unique in today's genre.
Yeah man offline experience in fighting games is a lost art, I played over 100 hours of Street Fighter Alpha 3 on PS1 because the game was so freaking good
And for me the first game that pops into mind when talking about offline modes is Tekken 3, you had Arcade mode, Time attack, Survival, team battle, Tekken force and Tekken Ball like that was a LOT of content to keep you occupied with our having to challenge someone else
Dude Alpha 3 was my game loved it.
@@leeyoung7826 SFA3 is the difinitive version of the game and id truly single player content done right it really is a god send fr.💯💯
My favourite single player mode in a fighting game is World Tour in the console versions of SFA3. Basically a massive arcade ladder with RPG elements where you can choose the order you fight the characters in on a world map and use EXP gained in fights to level up and unlock new moves and customise your character with them. If I recall correctly you could also import your custom characters into the main game and use them in Arcade, versus etc. Would love to see it return in the future
For me Guilty Gear XX was a great single player game merely for how every character had like 3 different endings-routes, and then Soul Calibur 3 where you played a campaign-rpg like map with your original created character
I really wish there was a streets of rage type mode in fighting games. Same inputs that you'd use in a vs match. So your constantly learning the game. I think that would be fun and would remove the insanity of jumping online and losing for me. More game modes that help you learn the game, would be perfect for a casual like me.
You guys rock. I genuinely appreciate these podcasts. Absolutely genius for the fgc.
Whoa whoa whoa...Tekken 7's end fight between Kazuya and Heihachi in the volcano was epic as hell. I get Akuma stole the show and the story in general wasn't great but you can't tell me they didn't nail that last one with the bits of history tossed in during(!) the actual fight.
It was great however everyone got super burnt out by the time the hype stuff came up
@@deanbrooks7297 You might be right. But I've got Haze on my Playlist, and I had to rewatch that fight right after posting that comment. I'm a Tekken ho so I'm mad biased but I honestly can't think of a more dramatic and incredible fight in fighting games. It was executed flawlessly and I really hope that it gets replicated and expanded upon by other franchises.
The shot with Heihachi blank eyed, only to hit back with a headbutt gets me every time.
T7 has some amazing presentation aspects but the narrator and Akuma take it apart from 2 different angles
T7’s major flaw (and also present in T6’s Scenario Campaign) was that it basically screwed over every side character.
Whatever own story (jokey or otherwise) they were undergoing basically went nowhere since T5 or 6.
@@Senumunu maybe I'm the minority but I kinda liked Akuma. The tekken story dosent take itself too seriously so it was fun having Akuma be a real part of the story.
Definitely loved the Killer Instinct endings being different depending on requirements. I'd love to see more fun stuff hidden in a future SF games. I dig Max's idea of having storymode diversions based on something like that. "Oh crap, you fought G and got a time out, Q and Crimson Viper showed up!" Just making it not so linear could be a lot of fun.
One of my favorite podcasts by far. I've never really played fighting games but always loved the genre, so learning the history from you fine gentlemen has been very enjoyable. I'll watch whatever you guys put out.
Soul blade gets slept on. It had weapon master too and it was cool! The weapons carried over into arcade mode and the weapon master mode also had unique story beats that fleshed out the story between the characters and added context and unique challenges. It was so cool
This is what I came to mention. Soul Edge/Blade was ridiculously inventive and never gets the love it deserves. Back then no one really got into the series until Soul Calibur on Dreamcast though, and you can hear that when people talk about it.
1:05:20 - hot damn the capgods granted our wish haha! Cant wait to hear yalls take on all this next episode 😄
Bloody Roar 2: The New Breed had an incredibly fun setting called "Any Cancel Point", you turned it on and it just made it so you could cancel just about any animation, at any point, into any special attack. That game is excellent even without that mode, but with it? Just an insane party.
Man I REEEALLY miss unlockable characters, that shit got me hooked in games like Tekken 5 and every anime licensed fighter ever. And for tournaments and stuff there could be a tournament setting where you could use all the characters in local and lobby versus, but for online ranked and single player modes you had to unlock them.
Co op in fighting games would be so much fun that’s probably the only way I get get some of my friends to play too. Also we need a fighting game music episode!!!
Great episode!! Tekken's customisation and Smash Bros.' challenges and unlocks always kept me hooked without even playing online that much
Ya’ll should look into Granblue versus story mode. It has online coop which is like SF dramatic battle. Blazblue had unlimited/boss versions of all its characters on its older releases and another mode that let you level up your character in speed/power etc. persona ultimax also has this mode as well under a different name
I've yet to find a fighting game with more single player content than SCIII, the game had a story mode with branching paths for all playable characters which also had QTEs whitin its cutscenes that could lead to slightly different outcomes or even different endings altogether. Chronocles of the Sword which starred your custom character as the protagonist in a Command and Conquer-esque type gameplay. The Soul Arena with all the crazy gimmick fights like fighting the big statue, the tag game with the shop vendors, the wall bounce fights and the super hard Nightterror boss fight. The immense amount of customizable parts that you had to buy on the three different shops one for clothing/ armor, one for weapons and one for gallery content as well as the tutorial mode which taught you all the mechanics one by one from beginner to expert difficulty with weird olw man Olcadan, not counting the normal 8-fight arcade ladder that was also in the game. I wish modern fighting game devs would at least put 20% of the amount of content that SCIII had to offer.
SC2 and 3 were sick as everyone will attest, but I gotta say I really enjoyed my first exposure to Blazblue: Calamity Trigger and GGX2#R's Visual Novel with branching paths/unlockable artwork as well. I was really invested in BB's story and characters at first, but the story content got too overwhelming to follow since it was literally like adding a whole 15-20 hour VN experience to the story with every expansion. But between fleshing out the characters and story over actual events and interactions (as opposed to the more arcade "and then this happened, the end" approach) and all the dope unlockable artwork that you'd get for exploring all the different paths, I feel like that really enhanced my value and enjoyment with the games.
lars being in naruto was the coolest thing to me as a kid because my dad played a lot of tekken and it felt so insane of a crossover
I know ppl like to debate if this is a fighting game or not however def jam fight for NY had loads of single player content also the story mode never got boring on top of that.
The whole time I watched this, I kept thinking of a Street Fighter mode that was based on events in the franchise.
Every big fight in every medium recreated as a boss challenge. I want to play as Chun Li in her undies battling Vega in the apartment. I wanna play as Guile against M. Bison in the room with the stupid TV wall. There's tons of Udon content that could work.
Hell, modify canon fights. Have Gen start the match with half the HP from the Raging Demon and then have to win against Shin Akuma.
This is a solid idea, remaking iconic fights could be a blast and a unique take on a boss rush mode! I loved how in Soul Blade, some fights had special stipulations "Li-Long has been poisoned, you have to win the fight in X seconds!" Or there would be in a fight with a character only able to be beaten if you break their weapons.
Street Fighter should have a Final Fight mode.
I know this is an older video but I just finished street fighter 6 world tour 100% and honestly had an amazing time. I haven’t jumped into tanked or anything else and I’m already 40ish hours of content in. I love single player experiences in games and am happy I’m seeing more care being taken with them
I think SCVI’s Soul Chronicles are super underrated. A lot of people are turned away by the lack of animated cutscenes, but they have way more depth and nuance than most other fighting game story modes, especially for the DLC characters. I have a video about that coming out next week.
Storytelling wise that mode is one of the best I have seen in a fighting game, and the static illustrations look really cool to me, actually.
But the mode fails for completely in execution, to be honest, and that's because of the terrible static AI, the enemies barely even move and that makes that mode SUPER boring.
There are very few battles in the Soul Chronicles, and to make it worse after swallowing many minutes of dialogue, once you start to play you face standing dummies as enemies, that is a total fail.
After such epic interactions between the characters, for example Amy with Azwel, or Cassandra with her timeline counterpart, Groh with Curtis, Mitsurugi with Iska or Setsuka's master, Hwang with Gabok, Kilik vs Inferno, etc, you only get to fight against standing dummies, that totally ruins what could had been one of the best story modes ever, Soul Chronicle needed a difficulty setting option at least.
There is no real replay value with that mode, in its current state there is not really a difference between playing it or watching a RUclips Video of it. You don't play at all anyway.
And Libra of Souls suffers of the same problem for most of its fights.
The Seth thing about learning move was kinda already done with Ace in sfex 3, you learn moves and the more you use it, it level up and was getting better.
Also, I had a lot of fun with all those Rival Schools mini games on disc2, me and my friends played so many hours in those just to get the highest score, especially the baseball game.
On character unlocking, I think more devs should take DBFZ's approach. There, they made character unlocking exclusive to the story mode and left the entire roster available for versus, training, etc. This way, casuals keep their satisfying progression system while TOs don't have to worry about playing new setups for 5 hours.
(I know DBFZ didn't completely commit to this setup w/ the blues and 21 but it's still a good idea)
Yes. DOA5 LR did this too with costumes and it works well
How did TO's deal with DBFZ's actual unlockable characters btw? (Blue Goku, Blue Vegeta, Android 21)
Not going to lie. Even small things like cpu vs cpu is really fun and i'm always a bit disappointed when a fighting game doesn't have that option.
Ikr? And nowadays with twitch channel points you can have salty bet streams like the super best friends used to do in the past
Smash Bros Melee tournament mode filled with CPUs was some good fun back in the day.
@@SolidSnake240 Me too. Betting on who would win in Brawl or SF4 was so much fun.
With me Single player is my main go to, story modes, arcade modes, training, missions and the simple reason is...i crack playing online there is just something about my brain that puts me under a ungodly amount of pressure and i never knew why
Matt is my spirit animal in this pod. FINALLY someone brought up how glorious, clunky, and awkward Deception and Armageddon’s Konquest modes are. It’s a weird balance of epic and lame wrapped into a neat ball
As someone who regularly gets his butt kicked online, it’s nice to play Single Player content where I (usually) stand a chance. I always love Arcade Modes (look at my username), but story modes and other weird single player modes are some of my favorites in the genre.
What Justin described with a Seth power copying campaign is literally what happens in the Sonic Battle story mode.
I can not tell you how much I fucking loved the SC3 chronicles of the sword.
Rival Schools also had a ton of mini games and single player stuff
Matt may have joked about Bob, but Yugo Ogami (Bloody Roar) is a guest character in DreamMix TV World Fighters.
This game, released at the tail end of 2003, is the last official appearance of any Bloody Roar character since Konami bought out Hudson.
I would love a MK game where the konquest is a mash of shaolin monks and deception. Have a big map for realms you can explore with hostiles you can fight on the map and friendly settlements you can get quests from and find hidden fights in the classic setting or shaolin monks format. That sounds amazing.
One of the reasons why I love Tekken 4 out of all the Tekkens is because I was able to experience it in the first days of release in the Namco arcades. Not only did I like aesthetic, the music, the stages, and overall feel of T4, but I was able to enjoy unlocking the secret characters. Then I got the home version and they had Tekken Force which I also loved. That first week of a FG in an arcade were exhilarating. You can't capture that lightning in a bottle anymore.
Chronicles of the Sword was pretty cool, 3 was also the only Soul Calibur create a character that had unique movesets for each weapon type instead of just using the movesets of the preexisting characters. Wish they'd bring that back since it made them feel more unique
I just got DOA6 on sale and must say I’m impressed by the single player content! Fleshed out story mode, quests mode where you have to achieve certain objectives in fights vs the CPU, and WOW you can actually unlock character customization through ear able in-game currency! There are definitely issues, but it’s a good model for single player content!
Now if only it wasn't 60 gigs of space on my PS4. I wish it was a smaller size so I could actually get around to playing it more than whenever I feel like smacking people with Honoka's ass.
And only $1500 of dlc lol
I played a ton more of DOA5 than DOA6.
That business model doesn't work in single player unless you have huge content to choose from to spend your currency like MK. DOA5 and old entries worked better, just unlock costumes and characters through completion rates with characters in arcade and time attack
DoA 5 is even better. The higher difficulties of something like survival are mad hard. You have to get good. On the highest difficulty you have to beat 100 characters in a row. I keep coming back to it and trying it. I haven't beaten it yet but u am getting further every single time.
When it comes to unlockable characters, I kinda want to see a fighting game try a "Tourney Mode" or something as an accessibility option that would allow you to play all the character while it's turned on. Could be good for tournaments or when playing with firends, and if the player wants to unlock the characters by themself they can turn the mode off and have at it. An arguement against it could be that most people would just leave the option on, making unlocking the characters redundant, but for people who enjoy unlocking characters (such as myself) I believe this could be a good middle ground. A possible solution to the redundancy issue could be that you get a special costume for unlocking the character too, idk.
You could make it work almost like using cheats. You can play as all the characters, but certain things are restricted (you can't use them in certain modes, you can't customize them, etc.).
@@SpikeTheLucario Yeah, maybe they could be restricted to the main vs. or multiplayer mode (and possibly online vs. if we take online tournaments into consideration)
Damn Tekken Force Mode needs a comeback!! Well fighting games with modes other than just arcade and online vs. We need that back in general. I find the games are sold at full price for little content.
PLEASE BRING BACK WORLD TOUR! Make it over the shoulder for traversal then when you encounter a fighter shift the camera back to the 2.5D Street Fighter camera position.
you absolutely nailed it, 100% prediction
Great vid. I would love to see a video on Beat em ups and how they fit into the fighting game universe. Besides the capcom beat em ups, thinking about it the mid 2000’s was filled with beat em ups that had fighting game (usually arena) modes and would love to hear you guys discuss the topic. Some off the top examples The Bouncer, Urban Regin, Castle Crashers, The Warriors, etc.
What I'd love to see is:
Motor Kombat, Chess Kombat, Puzzle Kombat all remastered and made its own like "mini game collection".
Soul Calibur Chronicle of the Sword/Soul Calibur 1-4 remastered.
Tekken campaign w/online coop, polish it and maybe make it a simple 2D side scroller.
Mortal Kombat tag team game (whole heartedly agree with this)
This video brought back so much good memories while I was growing up. I didn't realize how much fighting games I've played/loved, mainly because I wasn't that skilled at them.
Absolutely soaking this episode UP. Besides appreciating the competitive side as a spectator, I love CHOWING DOWN on meaty single player content. If the game is fun, put me in fun and crazy scenarios if I don't feel like getting sweaty with real people. I'm THAT GUY that 100%d Soul Calibur 2 and Soul Calibur 3's Weapon Master/Chronicles of the Sword modes (shoutout to Matt for remembering those modes, that shit was rad!).
NRS' story modes were fun, but I'm sour on these fun campaigns being largely absent in modern fighters. I'd love to see Street Fighter tackle character driven routes with unique dialogue and fights that highlight how fun they are - not necessarily needing to focus on whatever insane shit Dictator is up to this week.
On the notion of using Paul to power punch the ball in Tekken Ball and it being "unstoppable"... it is. Any charged ball can have the charged negated by using a throw on it, and it puts it in a weird state where some attacks that wouldn't charge the ball now charges it.
On the topic of grinding out characters, I had kind of an interesting idea; bear with me on this
On the OG Xbox there was this game called MX vs ATV unleashed, that me and my brother loved to play the free roam mode in. However, all of fun vehicles (Helicopters, super fast motorcycles, etc) were, of course, unlockable. However, there was a cheat code menu, and if you put in the code T00LAZY, you would unlock all vehicles… until the console power cycled; they weren’t permanently unlocked and saved to your file, you just had temporary access to them. I think that’s a really good balance; you could have a “tourney code” that unlocked all characters in a fighting game, but for them to be permanently unlocked without the code, you would need to progress in single player content.
Idk, I just thought it was a neat idea
Since Justin keeps bringing up Naruto and with that intro segment of the Lars collab in NUNS, just wanna say that the story mode in NUNS 2 was so damn good. Quick time events, expanded story fights that turned into epic boss battles and unique character movesets different from the regular movesets in said boss fights. I was so sad when the boss battles in later entries were stripped
Yeah Storm 2 easily had the best Story modes the boss fights were incredible Storm 3 I really didn't care for there were so many big important fights that should've been bosses that were just regular fights. Like why was Naruto and Bee VS Itachi and Nagato not a boss?
SC3 was the best single player experience in a fighting game I’ve ever played. I built a create a character team with my siblings and would pass the controller around as we worked together to clear each chapter.
It also has awesome mini games like the big ass statue fight and will-o the wisp.
I love when you illustrate what you're saying with pictures, or quick videos. I know it's a podcast first and foremost so, I get it. But I wish you did it more on the poverty games for example. Love the show anyway, great idea boys, best of luck.
I'm not finished watching the video but when the conversation mentions the "dip-switch" modes I was immediately reminded of vanilla SFIV and the survival mode. it had this really cool idea of making SFIV play like specific other games in the series and making you fight under those rules (i.e. no ultra, no ex, no focus, no dash a la sfii or no ultra and no focus a la sfiii.) I wish SFV would have used that with the arcade mode when they added that. making a v-reversal or v-shift behave similarly to focus or something would have been a nice nod with specific moves breaking that focus. or giving everyone the ability to parry and universal overheads a la sfiii. the creativity was definitely appreciated in my book
1:05:30
"SF6 needs a Konquest mode, call it World Tour"
IT HAPPENED
AGAIN
I'm honestly really surprised Subspace Emissary wasn't brought up. It's honestly the best singleplayer mode in a fighting game ever imo.
While I personally think SE is overrated I do agree it has a lot of elements that I would want built on for a fighting games single player. Unfortunately, they tend to ignore platform fighters in these discussions.
I think Smash Run and Melee Adventure Mode are better within Smash. Also wouldn't be surprised if other platform fighters had great stuff, but I respect SE.
I've been playing fighting games at a casual level for about 30 years now. I don't play online at all. There's been so many games with great single player content, and so many that I wanted to play but had to pass on because they had next to none.
Matt's idea of a stage builder is a fun idea. I think a weapon fighter where each character has their own army that fight each other in the background would be cool. Or maybe you customize them yourself for online play.
I think a lot of games could cross pollinate their ideas well. For example, MK:D's konquest mode would work pretty well in the Street fighter universe. Go to different cities and meet other characters, and then fight in tournaments. MK:D and SC2 had some of my favorite single player content of any of them.
Idk if most people would consider Dissidia a fighting game, but Duodecim has a metric shitton of SP content. It made NT all the more depressing when it launched with fuck all.
I think the biggest hurdle for fighting game devs going forward is making tutorials designed for people that don't know how to play fighting games. Teaching them the fundamentals is vital to get them interested in the gameplay and to continue playing. Most people barely understand how fighting games work (myself included tbh).
I was thinking in mentioning Dissidia 012 too, but the game is actually a single player focused game first. The multiplayer is like the plus. It still focuses a lot on RPG mechanics.
I also heard that the multiplayer in that game was superbusted, and people didn't really like it because the game mechanics were mega-unbalanced... partially because that playstyle just didn't lend itself well to human versus human. And that kinda feels like the curse we're dealing with- you practically need Mortal Kombat / Smash Bros level budgets to make a fighting game with good, varied singleplayer content AND balanced gameplay for online / versus, but it's like no company but Netherrealms and Nintendo has any faith in fighting games at all these days, and even then Netherrealms seem to be in constant economic trouble nowadays and Smash becomes a life-consuming vortex for its developers. Makes me scared that it's just not economically feasible to make a fighting game these days if you don't got Smash / Warner Bros money to throw around, unless you follow the Street Fighter method- minimum single player, go ALL IN on costume, stage and character DLC.
Mk deception konquest is GOATED af to meb
Dunno if someone did it already but:
In Tekken 3, finishing the Tekken Force mode unlocked Boskonovitch. I think it also had something to do with unlocking Gon.
In Tekken 4 it was useless.
In Tekken 5 you could unlock Devil Jin by doing that. But you could also unlock Devil Jin by finishing with every base character. Also you could get gears that cost a lot of money.
In Tekkn 6, the only purpose of the mode is to give Lars and Alisa a story mode, give you an easy way to unlock characters ending through a 4 match long arena mode and last but not least, grind cosmetics without having to spend money on 'em.
A lot of my modern fondness of Tekken and my falling out with Street Fighter 5 is the prevalence of single player, offline content to just let me get a feel for the game. Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 7's endless "treasure battle" mode where you unlock all the crappy cosmetics for the characters wasn't necessarily getting me any in game items I actually wanted, but just the ability to select a mode and fight constantly with AI opponents that ranged in skill and having my time somewhat rewarded was enough to keep me invested in the game enough to a point where I was confident enough to go online.
Tekken is so complicated it really needs a good pve mode that allows newcomers to experiment and learn their character. Hopefully T8 will have it.
I really hope Capcom brings it when it comes to single player content in Street Fighter 6. They kind of got there at the end of Street Fighter V, but it took a while to get there. Even Smash has been backsliding when it comes to single player content in recent years.
also like they did with jojos for the ps1 and hd version they have the hole arc kinda playable
The first thing I think of as a good way to enhance the single player is to take a look at Tekken 3 modes. They added so much more to the experience and help elevate the game for casuals and veterans looking for something to have fun with. Notably the Tekken Force mode would be a great place to set the foundation; having your favourite character take on loads of grunt enemies using the exact same moves they have against other characters in the regular mode is really satisfying as you can experience the same combos you love but in a different context.
Having a progression system a la River City series would be great too. Idk if each character having their own levels is too much work, but if it is, an alternative could be shared levels that have different events depending on the character I guess
As a player who never cared (nor will ever care) about online multiplayer, these SP modes are vital for me to enjoy a game. As a first rule all of them should have at least Arcade Mode with individual endings. You'd think that's pretty obvious but lately we've seen games REMOVE endings from Arcade Mode or removing Arcade Mode altogether, which is insane. Tekken 7 and DOA6 come to mind, also SFV did it wrong like you guys mentioned. As for a main Story Mode, I'll go with Matt and another iteration of the Deception Konquest formula. Man that was amazing for me.
As a casual, and a blind player to boot, I rarely ever find myself coming back to mortal Kombat 11 now because of how arduous everything was to unlock. You had to get half the stuff from the crypt or from those over the top towers, and the crypt is completely inaccessible for blind players while the towers are difficult to say the least since you have to contend with all of the extra nonsense they've got going on in the background. That game desperately needed and unlock everything DLC.
You guys said a while in that Soul Calibur 6 didn't have good single-player content, but there was a lengthy custom character RPG story mode.
I absolutely love Soul Calibur 3's Chronicles of the Sword. Me and my siblings would create a character each and just pass the controller around. So much fucking fun.
Yeah, PS2-era MK I played religiously, Deception in particular. Conquest mode in Deception (having the option to fight online being the novelty as it was at the time was great, too) I played religiously. As tedious and a bit convoluted it got sometimes as you guys pointed out, I was compelled to continue playing it. MK Chess was pretty addicting as well and Puzzle Kombat was neat, too. Actually just about every single player mode games that was mentioned here, I heavily engaged in. I was honestly hoping something climatic after completing The Devil Within mode, but...oh well.
I have been watching all of you individually forever I cant believe I am just finding out about this podcast. I have already listened to a few. Very cool guys.
Soul Calibur 3 has it right. Huge starting roster and unlockable side characters from the character creation pool. Loads of modes too.
It would be nice if the online modes also had the crazy settings. Ranked could be default regular fights, and Casual has special modifier playlists people can set up and distribute.
I would like story content for most fighting games. I like understanding the characters, its easier to get invested and stay invested if the story is fun. Being able to customize characters and get alternate costumes and gear is cool.
I feel like I just want an Action RPG, but then there’s a fighting game with those characters included, lol
Watching a Smash direct before the launch of Ultimate, Max reacted to the Smashdown mode and said something like "That looks so much fun, I can't wait to play with Yo Videogames", and them he never even touched the mode; he most likely doesn't even remember this mode exists or what it is. Smash has A LOT of modes, but most people forgot 80% of them. Max also forgot he played the Story Mode of DOA 6 at launch.
I feel like stuff like Smash Ultimate put them there as a Goodbye but because it was legacy.
If some brand new IP fighting game had the same amount of content that smash does I don't think Many players would touch it because of the sheer amount it becomes intimidating even if it's fun.
I look at stuff like BlazuBlue has a Perfect amount of extra content outside of Verses. Like Unlimited Mars, Abyss, Gag scenarios.
It probably depends on each franchise.
Thank you Justin, Matt, and Maximilian for this great episode. As a former arcade crawler who has limited/spotty internet, the offline are what I have been using to get me by. VF4 evo's simulated tour of Japan's arcade is where I spent much of my PS2 time as fighting games go; coupled with it's ability to watch the simulated fights of some of Japan's top players made it more than worth the price of admission. As for great single player content goes I would invite you gentlemen to try Giant Gram 2000's CAW mode (only on Dreamcast) where you learn moves by taking bumps from specific characters whom you trained with. Also I wouldn't mind if you could have a customize able version of an existing characters that the player can change the stats on (an ability to allocate a capped amount of points to certain moves and or stats ala a MvC CPT Commando with less health but more dmg to ultimate) then store locally and take it a friend's house to play against said friend's version.
Rival schools and soul calibur 3 had great single player content. It might have been too ambitious for the community at the time.
Exactly, though in the case of SC3 something that hindered it greatly was its exclusivity to PS2, and add that it it was released at the last leg of life of the PS2 to make it worse.
Haven't watched yet but will say i only play fighting games for the story so can't wait to listen and love single player content