Invincible VS Has People Talkin'...

Let's go. Invincible versus beta transpired. It happened. There was a lot of drama. There was a lot of people trying to get top 20. There was a lot of people trying to hit concise goals to make their name show up in the credits. Yeah, there was a ton of people playing. The one thing that I had an idea of when I played it was there's a lot more people that are not usual fighting game players that are jumping in and trying this, which is a very good thing, which is what kind of what you want. And the reason I could tell that is, yeah, the usual fighting game streamers were streaming it. But you know what I saw? I saw an astronomical amount of pages. So many people, just a [ __ ] ton way, way way below any of like the fold. you had to keep scrolling and there was just like hundreds and hundreds of people streaming this to zero viewers or one viewer. And that means like oh so this is definitely pierced into a little bit different of like the zeitgeist. It's actually that's a good thing. That means that there's more chances for people to fall in love with this and become competitive fighting game players or get into the FGC. That is literally how that [ __ ] works. You know, you have to get into normal town, bro. That's good that the game has that appeal. And for the most part, I'll go to plenty of other channels and I won't watch the FGC heads talking about it. I'll actually watch average folks that play just games and they like fighting games, but they're not like, you know, nerds like us. And dude, the response has been super positive. Like people are like, "It doesn't look have the greatest graphics in the world, but man, it's really fun." Everyone would say the same thing, which is what I was trying to communicate that like it doesn't visually look crazy, but it's really fun. And then I realized uh as some of the feedback started happening that like the typical fighting game folks of like the modern FGC aren't really vibing with it very much, which is fair cuz it does not play like a normal fighting game. I realized I've been here before. I've been here with a game that everybody was criticizing how it looked. Everybody was criticizing what you can do with it. And the people that were adjacent to that were effectively the top Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter 4 players that just did not like it. It did not do any of the things that the normal current fighting games did. So all the people that are of the modern scene really criticized Killer Instinct. Where does this eventually go? Well, Killer Instinct becomes one of the most respected fighting games of all time. One of the most well-received fighting games ever of like all time. Makes it to most top five lists and [ __ ] And that's because it was different. It was not doing the exact same things as all the other games. It had different solutions. And to me personally, like that's kind of what I'm into. I like fighting games that like tickle my brain in weird ways. And the cool part is that Invincible Versus is literally a mixture of Marvel vs. Capcom and KI. I don't feel like I'm playing any other game right now where it's just like all the pieces are just square piece goes into square hole like type of stuff. Like it did not feel that way back in the day. What happened? All the current FGC at the time wasn't really into this [ __ ] But you know what? Know who liked it? A bunch of old heads. Most of the time in KI back in the day, it was me and VA that loved this [ __ ] and we were meeting each other in grand finals all the time in the weeklys. The exact same [ __ ] is happening all over again with Invincible Dude. It's the exact same [ __ ] Now we get a versus game that doesn't really play exactly like a Marvel 3. Like it isn't the most beautifully animated thing in the world and some things do need polish and there were some bugs here and there, but it's asking you to play it and engage with it differently and it's got like a lot of systems. The game is mechanically dense and I think there is a detriment that some of the mechanics in the game, especially the defensive mechanics, which are my favorite, I actually really like the way push blocks works in this game and I love heroic strike and I like its breaker system. I think it's very fun. I have not played a team game with some really crazy defensive mechanics in a while. I'm going to break down some of the reasons why I enjoy it. The game gives you a lot of stuff to cover a lot of situations, but does not tell you how you need to play it. It's like an older game. And for people that don't know what I mean, the majority of modern fighting games are really designed by like people that have played a ton of fighting games and want fighting games to work and respond in a way that makes sense. Option A beats option B loses to option C kind of thing. And most of the game is just massaged in a way where a lot of those interactions are going to work that way in some way. And that's fine. It makes logical sense that a lot of fighting games nowadays are that way. but it lacks sort of like the spontaneity of older games. They just had systems that cover things and characters that do stuff and they're not trying to make an overall really imbalanced game. They're just like have fun. There's going to be some busted [ __ ] There's going to be some crazy stuff. Nowadays, we can patch that which is very cool. And also, people just call that kusog. People call that like a trash fighting game because so many fighting games are so intrinsically designed nowadays. There's no universal crossup. There is no one way of how I need to go in and mix somebody. The one thing that I got asked time and time and time again by everybody else, how do I open people up in this game? Well, you have a throw that leads to full combo. You do have a boost dash that makes literally cross-ups nearly unblockable, but they weren't traditional tools that you would need to open people up. You know, the game is trying to provide you options. as an example. A lot of people were complaining, "My dude, these supers are safe on block. These wake up armor moves are safe on block." In my brain, as I was playing through it, I was like, "Yeah, you're right. It's really hard to stop somebody. How do I get around that stuff? Maybe I'll back up and punish with a super. That kind of works." And then I started realizing, wait a minute, I don't know any of the frame data, but I do know one thing that does work. Heroic Strike. And a lot of people didn't realize that heroic strike, which is the game's alpha counter, can be tagged on. It can also be assisted after. So you could turn a move that has a lot of blocks stun into a full punish opportunity. It doesn't need to lead to a tag situation where that can be broken. No, no, no. You can assist after, dude. So you cannot commit to like really big DPS move. No, no, no. I'm going to heroic strike that ass because I don't know what the punish is. And eventually when people started throwing out the big [ __ ] I would just wait for the big [ __ ] Boom. Guarantee the punish. I'm not looking at these as punish opportunities anymore. I'm looking at them as heroic strike opportunities. That started working. The difference is is that like I said like three or four people that I was playing were even using Heroic Strike at all. Nobody was really using it. I And that that's that's an issue with the game's tutorial is that the game's tutorial does not tell you that the game's alpha counter you can do things after. A lot of people also were criticizing the game that it's too slow that the characters are stilted in movement. And I was like what characters are clunky and weird when you don't understand how to get them moving. But guess what game is like that? Every single old versus game. try smoothing in X-Men versus Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom or Marvel 2, they are stiff as [ __ ] Marvel 2 is like one of the looser ones, but still if you want to actually move characters around really fast, you have to start wave dashing and [ __ ] But invincible like why am I'm going to knock somebody down and why am I wave dashing across the screen when I can I and they just wake up with a DP? What the hell am I doing? I would just boost dash. Boom. But yeah, that's what I was doing. And it was like, oh, this is working out pretty good. Now I'm using a little bit of my offensive defensive gauge to guarantee I get good oki. And then people started to be like, "Oh [ __ ] it was working way too much cuz people were used to jumping out." And I was like, "All right." Also, if you have like nearly any character in the game except monster girl and people are trying to play footsies with you and [ __ ] boost dash from full screen and do a low. They are literally in your face grabbing you. You can also car the boost dash into a grab. So zip and I grab you. That means that you have to start jumping around. Now the neutral gets a lot more chaotic because the ground is nuts. Also, you can chain it. I was starting to play Allen and I could dash and then go up, forward, and down. I'm playing Jill all of a sudden. Boop. So, I was like, "Holy [ __ ] I'm literally Jill from Marvel 3 with an eight-way air dash during her super." Another thing that I like about it is that landing attacks is hard. Some characters have some really obvious [ __ ] Mark, fireball, forward, light. But if you wanted to land like a jump in down M or a jump in L or a jump in like M, that shit's hard. And when you find your hit and you get that timing figured out, dude, I had people that were hitting their timing good in top five. I was like, "God damn, these guys figured this [ __ ] out." And then what I really loved about it is that the high level of the game really started to change like how it looked and how people were playing when I got clean matches. when I actually like, damn, that was a clean [ __ ] round. It felt good because I had to hit the timing. I had to land all this neutral. I had to like do all this [ __ ] And here's the benefit of it. All that stuff is really hard. You know why? The game's combo system is extremely lenient. You can just do button button button special button button button special button special. You know, you do whatever you want, dude. It's not hard. It's like KI where combos are not necessarily the thing that like is the most interesting aspect of the game. The interesting aspect of the game for me is like defense and neutral. Like it's it's hard to control and to be good at it when in other games they give characters just like really really crazy good active tools all the time. And now you got to like figure it out. I understand why it would not vibe with everybody because it does not play like a modern fighting game. It plays like a sandbox. They got all of these weird things and all of this goofy [ __ ] And I think the game is very accessible at like a low to midle, bro. You just press [ __ ] and cool stuff happens. Like literally, you're not really utilizing the mechanics the way that like are used to cover some of the crazy [ __ ] And I do think that some things are going to get toned down. I don't like the dumb combos which is like bounce bounce bounce bounce. I think that [ __ ] sucks. Like every single character at high level once you eventually landed the hit with like two bars of resources. You could just kill people. Luckily the devs are aware of this. They saw that. They don't like it either. Yeah. The nice part is that the game isn't out yet and some of that stuff needs to get figured out. A thing that also bugged me too is that super powerful character assists like Eve's assist is insane, right? You can follow the assist like it's a sonic boom and you cannot interrupt her. It's like the projectile one. The back assist on Eve. The same thing with the back assist on like Battle Beast. Insane. Monster Girl has an assist where she appears from the top and falls on you into a into a ground bounce and I'm like, "How was I supposed to stop that shit?" So I like threw you or something like that and all of a sudden I was like, "Ah, that feels a little unfair." Also, goofy stuff like throwing does not lead to invulnerability. Throwing is just like you grab them and you can still be hit by [ __ ] So characters lingering assists, even if I grabbed you, the lingering assist would hit me and then you get damage on me. That feels kind of like robbery. That does not feel necessarily good. But I love the fact that back throw is super strong. I love that. I love that like back throw leads to combos lead to scale combos, but leads to full combos. I really dig that we got a fighting game that gives us a lot of interesting like that's crazy and hyperactive and fast that has a lot of interesting two-way interaction here and there, but also it doesn't feel like anybody's playing the game the way it should be played yet. That's what I like about it. I I started getting some matches that were clean and I would go back and watch my matches that were clean and I was like, "Fuck, that was a good game." That felt good to actually get the things that I wanted that the timing of the attacks and in neutral and all those situations. It feel they felt good. It felt like I'm figuring stuff out. I'm I'm coming to conclusions and solutions quickly. The issue is is that the combos weren't that interesting at high level, but I was having a lot of fun with it. Even as somebody that wasn't a fan of Invincible, I just kind of liked the game's systems. There still needs to be some stuff ironed out, but I found the game to engage me. really digging that I was having to find solutions to some of these like really powerful problems and really powerful moves in some of those ways. It's in an interesting spot right now. I don't think it's an absolutely perfect game. I think based on like a beta, there's just some fun [ __ ] that engages me and makes me have a good time with it. And I I'll I'll just say this from a personal standpoint. Not all super competitive fighting games are guaranteed to be fun. Just because a game is like incredibly competitive and super balanced, that does not mean that it's going to be fun. Fun is very much in the eye of the beholder. Some people will find fun out of fighting games just by beating ass and winning. However, sometimes, and most of the time, the most fun fighting games will almost always become competitive. The most fun games, even if it's [ __ ] Mario Party, dude, will become competitive. People will make that [ __ ] competitive. In that way, I am very much in the boat where I'm okay with the game doing weird things and having us to come up with weird solutions because to me, I had a lot of fun coming up with those solutions in these systems that they all make sense. Was everything like super polished? It wasn't. But I was having fun. I was looking for other people that were using some of these defensive mechanics like against me. And bro, that literally brought me back to KI days where it was like, I just want somebody that is using all the mechanics in this game to fight with me, dude. I feel like in the little bit of time that we had to lab and grind to top 20 and all the stuff that people were doing. There's just a lot more to it that is going to get figured out. All I can say is that like I had two streams where I played it for 6 to 8 hours and I could not believe how fast that time went by. I couldn't believe it. Heat. Heat.