Fighting games with good single player?

[FPLOON]

Melee also had a reasonable amount of single player content if I remember correctly (which I may not be).

Spoiler: It did... Classic, Adventure (my favorite), All-Star (after it's unlocked), and a few other single-player modes that escape me from lack of playing them as often as the others...

 

[chuckman1]

The genre tends to suffer from lackluster single player, can you think of any fighting games that offer a fun single player experience?
I think Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 had a pretty good story mode, Soul Calibur 2 and 3 were ok.

Tenkaichi isn't a fighting game brah, it's an arena brawler... thing.

DBZ fighting games are: Budokai 1-3, Burst Limit, Shin Budokai 1-2 and Another Road, Super DBZ, that one on PS1.

Mortal Kombat 9, Injustice and Mortal Kombat X have extensive single player. Although as a fighting game I don't rate. At all.

are we really making a distinction between a fight and a brawl? They seem the same to me. I think just because it has a behind the back camera angle doesn't mean its not a fighting game.

 

[14341210]

Blazblue is definitely heavy on the story part, but the presentation style basically comes off as a visual novel. If you can work with that, BB is the way to go!

 

[Danny Dowling]

The genre tends to suffer from lackluster single player, can you think of any fighting games that offer a fun single player experience?
I think Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 had a pretty good story mode, Soul Calibur 2 and 3 were ok.

Tenkaichi isn't a fighting game brah, it's an arena brawler... thing.

DBZ fighting games are: Budokai 1-3, Burst Limit, Shin Budokai 1-2 and Another Road, Super DBZ, that one on PS1.

Mortal Kombat 9, Injustice and Mortal Kombat X have extensive single player. Although as a fighting game I don't rate. At all.

are we really making a distinction between a fight and a brawl? They seem the same to me. I think just because it has a behind the back camera angle doesn't mean its not a fighting game.

Well... yeah, they play completely differently to standard fighting games. On the basic level in a fighting game you have a camera angle which gives both players an equal playing field on one TV, that is a standard for every fighting game. Then you actually come to the button inputs themselves and how they operate; Tenkaichi has single to 2 button mashing as a combo mechanic. There's no real timing, no need to learn proper inputs, characters don't really have any sort of unique properties. In short there's very little that makes a fighting game a fighting game in Tenkaichi.

Let's look quickly at what we have in 2D games that gives it depth: cross ups, combos, meter management, pokes, spacing, links, buffering... the list goes on.

Let's look at what you get in 3D fighting games: spacing, movement, whiff punish, frame punish, just frames, pokes, spacing, links, buffering, launchers, mix ups... again, the list, on and on.

As for games like Tenkaichi or Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm... well I'm sure there's something there strategy wise, but the basics and the things that actually make it technical, short in supply though those things are, are extremely dissimilar to fighting games. And if the core mechanics are different then the genre is different.

However, if you are looking forr those kinds of games then I recommend Gundam Extreme VS. It is the same sort of over the shoulder game but the control scheme is nailed to 3-4 buttons and managed to get a fair competitive following in the Japanese arcades and also had a tournament in one of the cast off rooms at an EVO at least once.

 

[lepito]

Soul Calibur probably has the most fully-featured single-player. I think when fighting games consider single-player they should concentrate on a wider variety of modes for casual play instead of attempting to adapt the competitive versus format into a story. Like, Blazblue and Guilty Gear Xrd try to do the whole visual novel thing and it doesn't really work because you get to actually play the game once every half an hour. Other than that they have some pretty good single-player modes though.

I remember Tekken 5 had a pretty awesome never-ending arcade mode that just got harder and harder. It also came with this cool 3D beat-em-up minigame on PS2.