What is the best Fighting game ever?

Please let me know what Fighting game franchise you think is the best ever on the poll.

Leave a comment on which game in particular you liked from the franchise. (eg. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance on PS2)

Dead Or Alive 5

Easy To Learn, Fair and Carfully Balanced (except in Tag Battles), Simple Too Play, Lots of Depth and Challenge and Variety of Fighting Styles (not the most buts its good).... Oh and BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBS ! ! !

Definately the Best of the 3D Fighters and Fighters Over All.

Personally? My favorites are Tekken & MK, a tie.

But, the highest skill ceiling and the best competitive game is Virtua Fighter

I personally have played Virtua Fighter but have heard many good things.

Maybe Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Those are the two I continually go back to. Everything about them is classic--from audio to visual design to balanced gameplay. I can't think of any fighting series that is more iconic than this era of Street Fighter.

@SovietsUnited

Buy this game for me and I'l agree with you ! :)

yet another fighter-poll without SNK-games..my favourite is: world heroes perfect

1 dead or alive series 2 street fighter 3 soul calibur 4 MK

From the ones I've played, Soul Calibur 2 is a near perfect game for its genre. It has an abundance of fun modes, a ton of unlockable content and when reading the character and item bios, it actually has interesting lore and good character stories. Plus the production values are so great that it's still a pretty game to this day (and yes I played the Gamecube version, Link rocks).

Here is mine, the tekken series! me playing in this video btw:) Been playing the tekken series since day one back in the 90s. Have tested out all the fighting games you mentioned and even fighting games from the 80s like kumite fighting and international karate which i played allmost religiously on my commodore 64 in my childhood, also before i got into tekken i was into Street Fighter II and the Mortal Kombat series just to mention a couple, for me though no fighting game in the world can beat the depth and the level of skill you can achieve in the tekken series, that for me combined with the awesome gameplay it has to offer, it is truly the best fighting game series ever created.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for me.

@ojmstr

Tekken is certain complex but I wouldn't call it deep. Infact its prone to Optimal Strategies that eliminate Interplay and depth Entirely turning fights into a challenge of who can land the 1st 30 hit combo, because. Its the only thing you need to learn. Unless you're fighting that giant robot.

The input control schemes also have a high skill floor, infact they don't actually make sense for a controller. All it does is chase away noobs, preventing the growth of the genre. I also thought Tekken was Awesome but ever since Virtau Fighter and Dead Or Alive.... I just can't go back.

Gotta go with Street Fighter but some other big favourites of mine are:

• Blazblue
• Tekken
• Dead or Alive
• Marvel vs. Capcom
• Soul Calibur
• The King of Fighters
• Darkstalkers
• Capcom vs. SNK
• Killer Instinct

@Lulu_Lulu: I don`t know where to begin, first of all Tekken Tag 2 to use that as an example even though it`s a spin.off title from the original series has 53 playable characters and each character alone has aproximatly 150 unique moves with different animations and only that alone should give you a hint that the latest tekken installements has more depth to the gameplay than any other fighting games out there and just to add, one single move in tekken usually have multiple inputs on your controller. And on top of that you have all these other standard moves in the core gameplay like grabs, specialgrabs, countermoves, specialmoves, escapes, tagmoves, lowcancels, chickens, siderolls, backrolls, frontrolls, pickups (oki) sidesteps, special escapes, and lots of lots of more....

The combosystem is also where this game shines, it`s a risk and reward type of gameplay with alot of strategy and pure reflexes involved, allthough i do understand that the combosystem might be unforgiven for the avarage player and i kinda hope they will nerf that aspect of tekken in tekken 7 so it will become a little bit easyer for the average gamer to get into tekken.

Just my thoughts on this, we might not agree but let`s agree on this, a complex 2d fighter can never beat the depth of a complex 3d fighter, it might be more fun and viewerfriendly for the avarage person out there but it can never have that much depth to the gameplay like a 3d fighter has. Depth does not allways equal the greatness of how good a fighting game should be but for me it is a huge factor that i take into consideration. Btw there are no 30 hits combos in tekken, and no you really need to learn a whole lot more than combos and juggles to become good at this game.

I`ts a long time i played Virtua Fighter and Doa but from what i know they both have only around 20-30 characters each. Virtua Fighter has the deepest gameplay of them both but VF lacks characters which again influence on the depth of the gameplay of the whole game in general.

@ojmstr

"..... specialgrabs, countermoves, specialmoves, escapes, tagmoves, lowcancels, chickens, siderolls, backrolls, frontrolls, pickups (oki) sidesteps, special escapes, and lots of lots of more...."

Yeah thats very nice but none of which are usefull If I knock you off your ass and into the air, thats The Optimal Strategy, and 99% Of all competitive games suffer from it because they understand the difference between Options and Viable Options.

How many of those moves are available in each Context, when you're locked in a combo, when you're on the floor, when you're in the air, when you're forced to have your back turned..... What moves are availble in all these scenario ? Doesn't Matter, Combos are the way to go, the longer the better. Thats how I play tekken and it would work if.... If Executing long combos was consistant. I play with a controller that I don't want to break so flicking the stick and pressing the face buttons (awkardly I might add) all within a fraction of a second without something eventually snapping into pieces makes this strategy unviable half the time, but with a fight stick its clear there is only one way to win... With an endless barrage of attacks and no respite. It works, it can be countered by a professional but everywhere else this exploit will never fail you.

Trying to explain my prefence for DoA will take a much longer wall-o-text than this one so I'l just say its basicly the oppasite of Tekken.

Oh and one more thing, Tekken may have alot of Fighters but they are severely short on Fighting Styles, or maybe it only seems that way since some styles Are better than others and some fighters are just clones like Christie and Eddie. Only professionals can make use of the microscopic differences between the two, reminds me of Ken and Ryu in Street Fighter.

As for Depth, I think thats the be all and end all of a fighting game, I think depth is the whole point. I'm a total slut for depth. :)

@Lulu_Lulu: You have to knock me off my ass first of all and that might be a problem if i block your for example 14frame launcher move, then i have a timewindow to launch you back with lets say a 12frame jab which will hold you up in the air a little bit and take maybe 25% of your lifebar depending on if i could juggle you to a wall or not. If i had launced you with a 14frame move i would have taken 50% of your life, If i had launced you with a 16 frame move which is considered a superlauncher i could take as much as up to 80% of your life and even a death combo which takes all of your life in tekken 6 but to do this you need skills, mad skills bro.Thats just basic of the tekken combosystem, if i was gonna explain how tekken works in depth you would need a book as thick as a bible, im not kidding:) You also have 10 framemoves and even down to 8 framemoves to poke with making openings and so on, in these situations you can, counter, sidestep,sidewalk, sidegrab, even teleport if your one of the ninja characters, there are so many options and variables in the different situations your in and thats why i love tekken so much.

Just to continue to answer you questions >>

Q What moves are availble in all these scenarios ?

A) "How many of those moves are available in each Context, when you're locked in a combo,

B) When you're on the floor

C) When you're in the air

D) When you're forced to have your back turned

E) Combos are the way to go, the longer the better

F) Tekken may have alot of Fighters but they are severely short on Fighting Styles

G) As for Depth, I think thats the be all and end all of a fighting game, I think depth is the whole point. I'm a total slut for depth. :)

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Answers

A) No moves are availible when your locked in a juggle (aircombo) The whole deal is to not put yourself in that situation, there is math involved in this as you can see above when im talking about frames, you must react quicly and answer to my moves with the different frames of whitch my moves where utilized with.

B) You can actually do a whole lot of stuff when your on the floor, aproximatly 10-13 different options give or take depending on what character your using, everyting from attack to defend.

C) When im in the air with Alisa my main character, i can do so much dude;) Some of the characters in tekken got great movements and some don`t, big characters for instance don`t have these abillitys but they have other advantages like strength instead, it is a very balanced fighting game i would say.

D) When your forced to have your back turn and your opponent is up close just hit D+1, protip;) most of the characters also has a variety of movesets in (BT) position.

E) You can actually play this game the way you like, you do not have to rely on combos but your right, the longer combos the better in most cases. I can not stress this enough but there is so much more to tekken than just the combos;) Mindgame, reaction, math, setups, movesets, strings, all the basic stuff you need to know that is very important and off course your combos and not to mention the length of your combos to utilize max wall damage and so on and so on.....

F) You are kidding!? :)

G) Me to man, depth and gameplay are the most important factors in a fighting game for me at least, would`t hurt with a good story in tekken for ones though:)

Hope tekken 7 will have a better story than the previous tekken games, Mortal Kombat are doing a great job in that department.

@ojmstr

Well do you now realise how ridiculous a game is if its all about who gets to land the 1st hit that would lead to a combo ?

Anyway I don't count frames or playing any fighting to the point of learning each characters vulnerable and invulnerable animations for each move and what could be cancelled, the truth is theres a buttload of cancels that the game doesn't tell you about because many of them are unintended, they are basicly glitches reserved for tournament level exploitation.

Another thing is.... Any move not available as a core mechanic to every fighter doesn't factor in to the equasion for me, I want good core fighting experience that don't completely hinge on who I choose at the selection screen. Have you ever played against someone who waits for you to make a choice 1st so they can choose a fighter best tailored to exploiting your fighter's weaknesses ? I have and its annoying and I can't stop him from doing that, its not his fault, its the developers for designing fighters thats so asymmetric from the core mechanics that the fights become one sided.

Speaking of Balance, theres two types of balances. Global Balance and Local Balance.

If you look at chess, its a balanced game, every player has the same number of chess pieces and types, nobody has an advantage at the get go, thats Global Balance, but Halfway throw any chess game, as moves are made and pieces come off the board, somebody is going to be at a disadvantage, Then in that scenario is What you would call Local Imbalance. Now local imbalance is not a bad thing so long as it doesn't not lead to checkmate scenarios. Which basicly means the battle shouldn't have a clear winner or loser until the last punch is thrown, which tekken really sucks at. Since its all about preventing certain scenarios from happening instead of how to deal with each scenario while its happening, its entirely possible to lose a fight prematurely. Say you have 40% health, already you've lost by the 1st hit of a long combo. Because what are you going to do about it ? It doesn't have a mechanism like Dead Or Alive's Counter Movers that atleast give you 3 chances to break out of a combo after its already been initiated, so long as you're feet are touching the ground.

I get that these are fun for the people using them but so many developers these days overlook the person who its being used against. Which is what leads to so many scenarios where most of the fights are preemptive and predictable. You've played Tick Tack Toe right ? For me most fighting games are like that, "if I do this then he'l do that, then I'l do this and he'l respond with that...." and this will go on and on until I settle on a move he can't counter without changing characters, all this before the 1st punch is thrown, because alot of what happens in between is decided by that 1st hit, which is boring not just for the victim but both players involved.

I can't just play a game because I mastered its system more than others have, I want something anyone can get into.

@ojmstr

They are only good at stories by fighting game standards.... Which sets the bar painfully low. Even Naruto and DBZ have little going for them.

Soul Calibur. The fighting mechanics are amazing, the story mode is great, the other cool game modes they offer are great ect.

Just Soul Calibur 5 really slapped fans in the face with the little content offered for single play and story mode. Online was great tho.

Street Fighter 2 Turbo is my favorite fighting game ever, I got tired of fighting games and didnt really play them in my later teens, but in the 90s this game had me hooked,

Guilty Gear is great. Has an enjoyable story, tons of varied characters, and as the series has gone on the gameplay has gotten great. Characters have lots of options and depth and (usually) can handle many situations, and there are never unbeatable characters. AC is my favorite, but AC+R is more balanced. Xrd will probably be pretty great and there isn't anything outright bad about the game for the most part.

@Lulu_Lulu: If you want to be technical about it, there is an absolute tier list for chess. White is top and Black is bottom, simply because white goes first.

There is definitely room for games with and without absolute rewards for getting in and starting a combo. Regardless, you started off saying you don't play fighters with a truly competitive mindset, and you have essentially said you have issues doing basic things on a controller, so you don't exactly have opinions with much weight on the subjects you like to try and talk about.

A word you should probably start using is 'momentum'. Gaining control of the pacing of the match is an example of this, and is typically started when you get the first hit or get in and starting being able to pressure your opponent. A ton of matches at high level aren't decided by the first hit or the first combo, because BOTH players are skilled and (should) understand what both characters want to do. They understand the universal systems and the character specifics, so they are capable of both maintaining and escaping momentum.

Also, just because a game dev doesn't explicitly intend for something to happen doesn't mean it's a glitch or whatever, and even if it is there is nothing stopping them from enjoying it and/or changing it slightly to become a a thing they actually want to keep. Games are supposed to be sandboxes that gamers try to break apart. I disagree with a lot of things you say, but you're fun to bicker with.

@Lulu_Lulu: For me and people who understands the core mechanics of tekken, the gameplay evolves alot around what happens before you get that one devestating hit, the juggles (aircombos) only works as an extra layer of the depth in the gameplay, imagine how tekken would be without the combosystem they are using now, it would be like tekken was 16- 20 years ago in the Tekken1 Tekken2 times, the combosystem Namco is using today is just a natural evolvement of the series going hand in hand with it`s long time fans all over the world, and i can admitt it might be a little to hardcore for people who has not been following the series over the years, and like i said i hope Namco will do something to make it a little bit easyer for people to get into tekken and make it so everyone can enjoy it.

Well, i guess you and me have different views when it comes to symatrical and asymatrical games, it seems you like 100% order like a chess game and i like at least a little bit of chaos in there to make things more unpredictable and at the sam time making room for variety in the gameplay, in a game like tekken that is ok because there are so many others factors that are equally if not even more important to get that upper hand.

I get what your saying and i respect your opinion, i just don`t see it the way you see it and you don`t see it the way i see it.

Anyways, nice talking to you, night time here, logging off.

@OneSanitarium

I don't think we've ever "discussed" anything outside of fighting game threads before... Just thought that was wierd.

Anyway, "momentum" doesn't sound evil and diabolic enough, I suffered many defeats this way and prefer to use a term that reflects that level of lethality.... Like "Slippery Slope", thats what David Sirlin calls it. :p

accordind to legend, the combo (like many other concepts in games) started off as a glitch, the creater of Street Fighter realised he could string attacks together if he executes each one before the previous one is finnished, completely unintended ! And you can still see that in the way Street Fighter 4 is today, they didn't they didn't go back and rework it to allow for more deliberate combos like the ones in Mortal Kombat, they still feel just as disjointed as they were when they were 1st conceived all those years ago. A game like that is difficult to balance. I could never get use to it, I gew up on the Deliberately Designed Mortal Kombat not the "Accidental Discovery" of Street Fighter's mechanics.

Anyway, I don't have the tools or the mental capacity to be good enough at Steet Fighter or Tekken so much so that I transcend from fighting with executing moves to tangoing with my oppenent, I'l always struggle with the controls and gameplay, thats what I'm really fighting against in those games, they will never become second nature to me, okay maybe they could but I don't have enough years in my life to bring that possibility into fruition.

Which makes Dead or Alive even more awesome ! :) you know what.... lets just make a brand new word for it.... "MAWESOME" ! ! ! :D

@ojmstr

YES ! Exactly !

Finaly somebody who gets me ! :)

I like variables that interupt and shorten strategies and Double Blinds that Make the game unpredictable, something that can never be completely mastered.

I mean lets be honest.... Idiots have more fun playing chess than smart people do.

@Lulu_Lulu: It's because I like fighting games a lot.

Well there are multihit moves in SF, so the combos, at least in the form of just several consecutive hits, weren't exactly a glitch. What eventually became known as canceling is the product of input leniency (IIRC, the only cancleable moves where those that were fast enough, like 5 frames startup or fast, don't quote me though) that the devs didn't intend. They apparently would have removed it, but they thought the game was less fun without them.

Most cancels in recent games, like a strong 99.9% of them I'm pretty sure, are pretty goddamn intended. Even in SF4. The predetermined inputs for MK and Injustice are some things I dislike about them, and even with those, they don't force players to follow specifically outlined combo routes. Just specific sections they have to go through. And beyond that, neither MK or IGAU are heralded as the epitome of balance. Maybe you could say it is difficult to balance a game like that, but some games allow more free form combos, changing to almost whatever you want mid combo as you react to different scenarios occurring.

Something unintended, using a resent example, is in USF4 on the PC. Currently if you set the framerate to smooth, some weird occurances can randomly happen. Hugo can combo his crouching LP into his LP Clap, a move with much too long a startup for this to actually be possible. But a random glitch lets it. And even if you do the same exact timing over and over, there is not guaranteed that it'll work every time, because that framerate setting is wonky.

@OneSanitarium

And most of them aren't in the move list. Whether they are they or not this turns the learning process into a very frustrating experience. Playing any fighting game that way is like playing a shooter knowing everything under the hood the DP Units, The HP, The Spread Patterns and Density. Instead of just knowing the things the game tells you, like Shotguns only work close range, assualt rifles are good for suppresion, Snipe from a good vantage points. Simple bits of information not dependent on Numbers and Metrics. The best games have what you call "incomparables". These are features that cause an effect outside the scope of metrics, making each one unique, this should negate some of that "Frame" Creep.

No King of Fighters?..must be a westerner. From poll I picked SF :P

@Lulu_Lulu: Hehe, i get you man :) I can se what you mean.

Btw, would you mind explaining the basics of the newest DoA for me? Is it DoA 5 btw? i might get it and play it just for fun untill tekken 7 comes out.

@Lulu_Lulu: There is literally nothing wrong with letting a player figure things out themselves. And in my opinion, there is much fun to be had in system exploration. I've not played many FPS games that tell me what guns are good for what. If a game was my very first interaction with a form of a gun, I don't think I'd know right away I couldn't use a shotgun reliably against a distanced target.

I also don't think the comparison is far. Knowing what cancels into what just form general exploration is the same as knowing that there is bullet travel time, or that grenades have a distance around where you can get hurt from them without being directly at the detonation point. Knowing the in depth points in a FPS, from damage, to actual distance for that grenade explosion radius is less useful or practical than knowing frame data in a fighting game. You can spend a very, very short amount of time learning how to interpret frame data, or cancel points, or things like that, and, probably, use it in a practical way almost immediately. It's just the specifics of things you can probably tell from general play in more definite, detailed examples. You probably don't need to know the specifics to know a move is unsafe, especially not instances of a whiffed Shoryuken, but frame data can tell you how much time you have to punish/be punished for and is easily paired with frame data for the moves start up.

And beyond that, NO fighting game requires you to know these things to play. Maybe against good players, but if you play within your skill level, maybe just above, you won't need to know these things. Maybe you just don't get enjoyment from learning.

@ristactionjakso: Most ppl hated the story anyway I was hella pissed and didn't bother buy V.

• 1st they remove my favorite characters.
• Ivy the Ivy is now a joke.
• Completely crapped on Siegfried as I knew they would the minute they "removed" guard impact I was like ****!
• GOT RID OF AMY!!!!!
• Like are you serious Namco half the characters in the game were only viable UNLESS you had a good defense gz play our game devs.

Anyone who used ZWEI in tourney was trolling and rightfully so many lost. I mean you know they don fucked up when majority of players put half the roster in the BOTTOM tier like wow. For example, Siegfried was my main and hes completely useless now. Like much of the characters in the bottom tier compared to other hard hitting characters Sig's damage sucked, since Siggy was ALWAYS a defensive player he can't pressure for squat, stance switching still slow easy to punish (like really namco still), mid range sucks, and little to no moves combat fast characters other than wait for it.....guard impacting. Now if I mained Mitsurugi in prior SC games wouldn't care, but they messed up my Siggy so bad by removing a big part of his D game and not improving any of his weaknesses. When the devs stupidly gave half the cast the same exact problem final straw. You'd figure Namco would have learned from that one-sided SC2 tourney round. Wasn't even a proper round, Floe was just exploiting shoddy game design:

@OneSanitarium

Hey I like figure things out too, I just hate Metrics.

I love learning too. But I better be learning something practical instead of sifting through Statistical Data.

I was about to say, it's a pretty good list, but still missing many titles because the OP is too young to even know about them.

-Tobal
-War Gods
-The Last Blade
-Pit Fighter
-Rival Schools
-King Of The Monsters
-Ergheiz
-Power Stone
-TMNT
-Battle Arena Toshinden
-Eternal Champions
-Streets Of Rage
-Dark Stalkers
-Joust
-Karate Champ
-Fatal Fury
-Art Of Fighting
-Samurai Showdown
-Double Dragon
-World Heroes
-Hokuto No Ken (PS2 2D fighter AKA Fist Of The North Star)
-Weapon Lord
-Onimusha Blade Warriors
-Gundam Battle Assault
-Armored Core
-Gorou Mark Of The Wolves
-Real Bout
-Waku Waku 7
-Red Earth
-Arcana Heart
-Melty Blood
-Rumble Fish
-JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
-Final Fight
-Final Fantasy Dissidia
-Clay Fighter
-Primal Rage
-Ranma 1/2
-Urban Reign
-Bushido Blade
-Bloody Roar

I know I'm missing even still more gems.

Marvel v Capcom 2 and Dead or Alive 3 are my personal favorites, and just about the only fighting games I play these days.

Dragonball Z Budokai 3 without any question. That game is just my favorite fighting game without any contest. It's just so fun, such a shame there isn't a sequel to it

I was pissed that the story mode wasnt the same too. And as for all the new characters, they all sucked a$$. I still play as Nightmare, and always have in every SC except 3, Siegfried was my main in 3. They could have at least made the characters you create have old play styles from every previous SC. For example, have a Nightmare playstyle from Soul Calibur 1-5 to choose from, have a Mitsurgi 1-5 play style choice ect. A Nightmare custom character from Soul Calibur 2 playing in 5 would have been amazing.

And they could have at least added a updated new Edge Master mode and/or a updated Chronicles of the Sword mode. And went the SC3 story mode route. Everything about the game is a downgrade except for the online Global Collosi mode. That is a good mode.

Street Fighter II.

@The_Last_Ride: I like dbz budokai 3 as well. But the infinites in that game with sj4 goku and sj2 teen gohan was ludicrous

My Second favorite fighting series. Me and a buddy of mine playing in these videos, he uses Voldo and Hilde and im using only Cervantes

I pick Tekken with Street Fighter as a close second even though it was hard to choose, that series has been a favorite of mine ever since I played the first Tekken at 10 years old and Tekken 3 is still one of my greatest games of all time. As of writing this post I have Tekken 3 in my PS3 right now and I still can't believe how good the game is, it's still (besides the aging graphics) amazing to play and feels great.

@geniobastardo

Best fighting "Bewbs" Ever ! ;)

@geniobastardo

Yeah.... From Naruto.

For me. Tekken>Mortal Kombat>Street fighter. The rest are crap imo

when i saw this topic, i was like "oh thats easy tekken". but i want to get in to some of that UFC action though. and super smash bros. looks awesome.

Keep the comments, pictures and other fighting games that I did not think of coming guys.

I cant wait to see what Mortal Kombat X is like!