Most Anticipated Video Games

[ToonFaithful]

My god, as if I needed any more reasons to pre-order...

GTA V....

[Foggle]

My god, as if I needed any more reasons to pre-order...

GTA V....

Will be amazing, for sure. Great trailer! More focused on Saints Row right now, though.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I had to move my KOF13 preorder to Super Mario 3D Land. Sorry, Atlus. You should have planned the release better, I only have so much money these days, and few things get priority over Mario and Sonic to me.

[Rynnec]

Alright Namco, you're getting my money.

January 31st can't come soon enough.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Eh, SC5 looks like more of the same as SC4 to me. I'm sure that there will be a lot of combat tweaks that can make the game very different for hardcore fighting fans, and there are certainly enough new characters, but as a very casual fighting game fan myself that's not nearly enough to convince me to buy a game like this at full price. I'm already content with SC4 so I'll just stick with that as my main go-to fighting game this gen until maybe SC5 drops in price by at least half. That's just me, though.

[talonmalon333]

I haven't found SC to be very great since II, really.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

SC2 was my favorite in the series. I really didn't like SC3 very much, it was pretty mediocre. SC4 was a good game, but not anywhere close to as good as the first 2, IMO. As it stands I'm not very interested in SC5, as it just looks like more of the same as before without much new to offer.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That's because they keep straying from what made the series great in the first place. You want meaty single player? THEN BRING BACK ALL THE AWESOME MODES FROM SB AND SC1! Heck, if they would just steal the Conquest mode from SC2's arcade they could have a fresh online mode that would be fairly unique.

They need to stop stripping what made the games great which was not just the simple yet engaging combat, but all the original extra modes that were just as fun and added meat to the game. The extras have blown for a while now.

[talonmalon333]

SC2 was my favorite in the series. I really didn't like SC3 very much, it was pretty mediocre. SC4 was a good game, but not anywhere close to as good as the first 2, IMO. As it stands I'm not very interested in SC5, as it just looks like more of the same as before without much new to offer.

How come you like 1 better than 4? I haven't played the original in ages, so I forget how good it was.

[Spark Of Spirit]

SC1 is still personally my favorite. It's the tightest and smoothest game in the series, has tons of stuff to do (I even spent hours on the opening customization thing... that never reappeared in a SC since), and it has the best bonus content of every game (barring the super cool single player mode of SB which was slightly better than the one here)... Personally, it's my favorite pure 3D fighter. SC2 is still good, and added a lot of cool stuff, but then 3 came which was totally rushed and undercooked and 4 which didn't really do anything to stand out.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

SC1 is still personally my favorite. It's the tightest and smoothest game in the series, has tons of stuff to do (I even spent hours on the opening customization thing... that never reappeared in a SC since), and it has the best bonus content of every game (barring the super cool single player mode of SB which was slightly better than the one here)... Personally, it's my favorite pure 3D fighter. SC2 is still good, and added a lot of cool stuff, but then 3 came which was totally rushed and undercooked and 4 which didn't really do anything to stand out.

I love the first 2 games (not counting Soul Blade/Edge, which I consider to be good for its time but I don't think its aged as well as other 3D fighters have), but my main reason for preferring the 2nd game just a bit to the 1st one is how it handles Missions Mode, or Weapons Master mode if you prefer to call it that. I just felt that the challenges were more even and balanced, which is a little thing but for me it went a long way. The 1st game was great too, and I spent hours on MM (my favorite mode in the game by far), but some of those challenges were really frustrating in a way that was not a fun challenge (some of them just put bizarre conditions on your character that were more unfair than well thought-out handicaps, IMO). Most of the mode was still great but those few missions were really noticeable because I tended to get stuck on them for a while. That and I liked how SC2 seemed to have more branching paths than the first game did (though they were both still pretty good at this, overall). Oh, and I also like how there were multiple weapons to unlock for each character, even if I preferred using their default weapons in actual combat.

As for SC3, I think that we can all agree that its the worst in the series by far. Its not a bad fighting game mechanically or anything like that, but its just so light on content that I refuse to think of it as a full game compared to the other SC games, or maybe that's just because any extra modes it did have turned out to suck, big time (IMO).

As for SC4, it didn't really do anything noteworthy for the series and it was still pretty light on extra modes, but I will at least give it credit for one thing, and that's nerfing the characters with long-reaching weapons so that they would be MUCH less cheap than in prior games without actually feeling too weak or lame to play as themselves. In that regard it felt like a more balanced game than any of the previous entries in the series, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Kilik (seriously, anyone who uses him in SC 1-3 is a bitch). But then again they added in Star Wars characters, 2 of whom were ungodly cheap (with The Apprentice being cheap in Arcade mode and Yoda being downright broken and a joke of a character).

[Spark Of Spirit]

UGH, I forgot about those annoying Star Wars characters. Why does SC get saddled with all this promotion crap from Namco instead of Tekken? SC doesn't deserve that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, Tekken is considered to be their more "technical" fighter among hardcore fighting game fans, so I can see why they don't want to screw with that. As for Soul Calibur, I don't mind it so much because I can just ignore those characters completely as long as nobody else is being a bitch and decides to use them against me (usually they can be pretty unfairly cheap in multiplayer situations, which is what annoys me the most about them), but at the same time I don't feel that they add anything to the game and I'd rather not have them included. That said, I can understand why Namco puts them in. Licensed characters = more money. Its as simple as that. It may sound absurd when you read it that way, but it actually does increase their sales, even if its such a stupid reason, so really they are just doing it purely for business reasons.

[Rynnec]

What they really need to do for V is bring back Weapon Master mode from II. That mode combined with V's seemingly robust Character Creation would be absolutely wonderful. I have nothing against 3's Chronicles of the Sword campaign, but it just lacks the charm of Weapon Master. And the less said about IV's single player modes, the better.

For me, the best part of III was the character creation mode. I just love being able to customize my own character, especially in fighting games. It just gives you that personal sense of immersion y'know? IV's somewhat improved but more restrictive customization combined with its lackluster single player really made it an inferior game to me.

Also, while I may not care much for Ezio, at least he actually fits SCV's aesthetic. Namco is being real careful in choosing their guest characters this time around.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Hey, personally I'll still take IV's Tower of Lost Souls over III's Chronicles of the Sword mode any day. Sorry, but I thought that mode was crap (I respect your opinion on it, though). Not to say that ToLS is great, but it was at least passable, IMO.

I'm curious as to how exactly IV's character creation mode more restricted than III's? Perhaps I didn't play around with the one in SC3 enough, but I found a lot more options in SC4's CC mode than in 3's, to be honest.