Nohbl
Smash Journeyman
What are your thoughts on Strong Bad's and the crew's new platform fighter?
Gameplay footage:
NEW PLATFORM FIGHTER - Icons: Combat Arena | Alpha Gameplay Pt. 1 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9IyMu17iuY
Just watched the first match.
Personally I had qualms about the character design. It's a lot more uniform than Smash, as the game seems to have a futuristic space theme, and the characters are basically all humanoid. This is not a sin or anything, as pretty much all other fighting games have full or major majority human casts, but the fact that Smash has a significant diversity of creatures, in part due to the large presence of Pokemon, is a big part of its appeal that Icons is not incorporating.
They aren't too bad, however, the characters.
I think the aesthetic of the game is a bit bothersome. It's got that dull, muted look the past two generations of games tend to have, which I personally am tired of at this point. I would have liked to have seen a better use of light and color, but I don't have solid suggestions on what that'd look like or how they'd go about implementing that idea.
And one more issue I have is that the moves are dull. The animation isn't so smooth but that's not my concern. It's that I can't recognize what the inputs are; there isn't much visual flair accompanying the moves. I can clearly see the up specials being used in recovery, but they just look like super jumps, and don't seem to have utility outside of recovery nor an attachment to the character's personality; they just look like super jumps. And I can't recognize any other special moves besides Raymer's blaster and Xana's grapple. If you compare Xana to Ganondorf, her lack of special visual effects attached to her moves makes her seem like a much less interesting character, and Icons a much less interesting game. The lack of flair, combined with the underwhelming hit sound effects and to a lesser extent the character voicing, brings no impact.
Those are some of my thoughts. Apologies if it's not entirely coherent.
Gameplay footage:
NEW PLATFORM FIGHTER - Icons: Combat Arena | Alpha Gameplay Pt. 1 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9IyMu17iuY
Just watched the first match.
Personally I had qualms about the character design. It's a lot more uniform than Smash, as the game seems to have a futuristic space theme, and the characters are basically all humanoid. This is not a sin or anything, as pretty much all other fighting games have full or major majority human casts, but the fact that Smash has a significant diversity of creatures, in part due to the large presence of Pokemon, is a big part of its appeal that Icons is not incorporating.
They aren't too bad, however, the characters.
I think the aesthetic of the game is a bit bothersome. It's got that dull, muted look the past two generations of games tend to have, which I personally am tired of at this point. I would have liked to have seen a better use of light and color, but I don't have solid suggestions on what that'd look like or how they'd go about implementing that idea.
And one more issue I have is that the moves are dull. The animation isn't so smooth but that's not my concern. It's that I can't recognize what the inputs are; there isn't much visual flair accompanying the moves. I can clearly see the up specials being used in recovery, but they just look like super jumps, and don't seem to have utility outside of recovery nor an attachment to the character's personality; they just look like super jumps. And I can't recognize any other special moves besides Raymer's blaster and Xana's grapple. If you compare Xana to Ganondorf, her lack of special visual effects attached to her moves makes her seem like a much less interesting character, and Icons a much less interesting game. The lack of flair, combined with the underwhelming hit sound effects and to a lesser extent the character voicing, brings no impact.
Those are some of my thoughts. Apologies if it's not entirely coherent.
