No, no, don't be afraid. By "It" I'm simply referring to me and "ALIVE" being indicative of me actually having something relevant to post. For once.

My absence has been due to two things. The first being an inhumane amount of work *spit*, the second being an overcompensating amount of gaming. Obviously, I'm going to write about the second.

Where to start? I must say I've played a lot more Xbox than PC or PS2 of late, mainly due to the setup at home (the Xbox being hooked up to the PC monitor). The PC's dated and the PS2 is simply a schlep to set up and pack away, not to mention taking over the living room and hogging the TV.

Of the three fighting games I own, I spent a lot of (too much?) time on two, Virtua Fighter 5 and Soul Calibur 4. The other one, Facebreaker, is more your party-variety type of game. But I'll get to that shortly. First off, Virtua Fighter 5. I've had some exposure to VF 2 many moons ago, and one or two sessions with VF 4 on the PS2. Graphics-wise VF 5 is gorgeous. And it doesn't rely on fancy effects and flashy background action. You've got highly detailed characters (with customisable costumes and appearances) and simply stunning arenas wherein the ring-environments react to the scuffle taking place.

The fighters make use of various fighting techniques, some being more complex than others. There's a lot of depth in each character's movesets and it will take you a while to become competent with one character (never mind several characters or trying to master one). This complexity is often touted as one of the reasons that VF 5 is not one of the more popular fighters. Another reason is the apparent slowness of the fights, despite the fact that fights can end in the blink of an eye. There also isn't much of a story other than canon and brief character bio's in the manual, which is a pity. Nevertheless, I like this game and would recommend it to everyone who's interested in fighting games. If you can get a grip on this game, most other fighters will come much easier to you. That being said, VF 5 is definitely an acquired taste.

Next on the list is Soul Calibur 4. This is the version that includes Yoda. Darth Vader is also available, but only through DLC (which you have to pay for - meh). SC4 is also a stunningly gorgeous title for the same reasons as VF 5. One big difference in terms of gameplay is that the characters fight with weapons. These run the gamut from teeny weeny knives to humungous axes, along with your standard staple of swords, staves and weird stuff. The characters themselves are also quite interesting. There's been a trend in the series of late to turn the female characters into visual copies of Dead or Alive fighters. In other words, most of the ladies are physically unbalanced/overendowed. There appears to be a ratio of clothes to physique. The fewer clothing you wear, the bigger your... assets. This, for me, is tragic and cheapens the characters.

SC4 has slightly more of a story than VF5, but that's not saying much. The player can also customise fighters extensively. Depending on what your choice of weapon and clothing, you can equip your fighter with different skills. These skills cost points that are provided by your choice of equipment. This helps a lot in the non-arcade game modes (survival and challenge-type modes and pvp). The meh-ness comes in when you realise that you have two choices. 1) Customise your fighter is such a way that looks good/cool to you, but without enough points to equip decent skills, or 2) turn your character into a fashion monstrosity in order to be able to equip some much-needed skills. Unless you have some horrendously bad taste in clothing, you won't be able to equip the highest rank skills and get away with looking good. This only becomes a problem when playing in the Tower of Lost Souls and Special Pvp. However, most people only play Special Pvp once or twice before sticking to normal pvp.

Some new stuff that aren't game mode related are soul crushes, critical finishes and armour. Armour comes in three varieties (high, mid and low). Suffering enough abuse or an extremely powerful hit can break an opponent's armour. When a section of armour gets broken, your opponent suffers more damage from attacks to that region. Soul crushes is the game's way of punishing perma-blockers. If you block too much, your soul gauge starts to flash red. Should an opponent hit you with a Guard Breaking attack, you will be stunned and nicely set up for a Critical finish. If your opponent pulls of a Critical finish, you lose. Immediately. At least it looks nice though. Then, of course, there's Yoda. I'm sure a lot of people thought "WTF?" when they heard that Star Wars characters will be in SC4. Why???? Because the game is also advertising Star Wars: Force Unleashed. The trailer is included in the game. The protagonist in Force Unleashed, the Apprentice, is also in this game. While it's cute to see little Yoda unable to be thrown by opponents (he's too small to grab), I don't like the inclusion of these so-called guest (or bonus) characters. They tend to be either over-powered or slightly more than useless. I prefer new characters that remain part of the franchise or more detail in the game.

My major pain with this game is that once you finish the Tower of Lost Souls, there's nothing to keep you coming back to fight again. Fighting in Arcade mode becomes jaded after a while. VF 5, for example, has a quest mode where you fight various other "players" of different skill levels in something it calls Quest Mode. I found that to be much more worthwhile. The exception to this is obviously pvp. So you either need a connection to Xbox Live (and beware the community if you have it) or friends who like these kinds of games.

This brings me to Facebreaker. Facebreaker is a cartoony game in which different whacky characters box it out in a boxing ring. It's an entertaining incarnation of rock-scissor-paper. You basically trade punches and try to build combos so that you can hopefully pull off a Facebreaker. This move pulverises your opponents face and gives you an instant-win, regardless of remaining rounds. Your (and your opponents') faces also show the effects of eating all the different punches during the course of the fight. Each character also has a special move that requires a certain series of moves to pull off, which results in a stunned opponent, which enables you to build up towards that elusive Facebreaker.

Similarly, each character also has a specific weakness or trick to beating (at least when it comes to fighting the AI). Believe me, you need to figure out what the trick is to beating each opponent and be willing to exploit it mercilessly. If you don't, the AI will suddenly start ploughing the canvas with your face. Mercilessly. It is exactly this immense jump in the AI difficulty, which frustrates so many players. I've had one party-session with this game and halfway through a fight, both players start suffering from thumb-cramps. A few rounds later it turns into blisters. So, while this game is definitely something different and entertainingly quircky (in terms of its cast), after one playthrough you probably wouldn't want to suffer through the steep AI again.

Well, tune in next time for more on the other games I've been playing. I think I'll do the action games next time. Hopefully it won't take as long to write as this did.

tl;dr?

I recently played a lot of (fighting) games. Some were good, some weren't as good. Thank you.