What is Fun?

"Fun" is a three letter word that I have seen create contention in all sorts of discussion. Particularly discussion of games, both tabletop and digital. What is fun? According to a running gag on the videogames section of a certain imageboard, "fun is a buzzword for when you can't actually think of any reasons why a game is good." If you talk about utilising all the tools in a competitive game available to win, someone may say that you're prioritising victory over fun. There's a saying that any game is fun with friends. Are these accurate statements? Can we quantify this fun? I want to unpack this word in relation to games.

"I Want to Play Fighting Games on the PC. What's there to play?"

This question pops up everywhere. Facebook groups, conversations at local nerd gatherings and even while I got my hair cut once. Let's run through this based on your needs.

Guilty Gear's Buttons: Here's the Rundown

Guilty Gear is one of those rare fighting games that uses 5 buttons by default. Naturally, this often leads to newcomers being thoroughly confused as to how they should configure their buttons or have difficulty grasping the traditional default layout. To help you work this all out, let's have a talk about what each button actually does in the game. If you're feeling uncomfortable when playing, hopefully this will ease some of that.

Rise of Incarnates is in Open Beta Now.

Remember when I talked about it? Bamco's attempt at bringing Gundam vs Gundam to the West? Remember how I said it had none of the things that actually make that series satisfying to play?

Well, at the end of the last alpha it brought in a pile of things from the Extreme Vs games. Things like super meter to gain refills. You can even cancel an attack into a secondary attack!

You know what you can't do though? Dash cancel projectiles.

You know what is the entire crux of what makes Gundam vs a thrilling footsie game conducive to high latency environments and a wonderful teamwork game? Dash cancelling projectiles.

Every addition so far has been a superficial improvement. The sort of thing that appears to provide extra depth but ultimately doesn't because the fundamental core of the game isn't in the game. To cap it off, Bamco gave us this wonderful message when announcing the date for the open beta:


"Faster gameplay and shorter hit stuns
This aspect has evolved the most since the Beta. Numerous testers brought up slow gameplay speed as a major issue, and we admit that we watered things down because we were cautious about introducing an entirely new style of gameplay. We were proved otherwise. So you can look forward to some very fast, intense gameplay!"

In other words "we thought that releasing a game on the same platform as Quake 3 wouldn't have an audience that could grasp a game about space control and goading people into overextending so they can get hit."

And then they left the pace of the game the exact same as the last alpha anyway.

Please, do not play Rise of Incarnates. Play some Push instead.

Alright, let's talk about Xrd 1.10's Loketest

So, this weekend is the first location test for the first serious balance adjustments to Guilty Gear Xrd. Before I jump into what's going on with the changes, I'd like to talk about where the game currently stands. From there we can see what the aim with the update is and what it'll do to the game. So, let's jump in!

7wonders XX ^C +B

Let me tell you about 7wonders. It's a drafting card game designed by Antoine "Hanabi, Takenoko and Ghost Stories" Bauza. It was released in 2011. I played this game a ton last year. I'll be playing it likely just as much this year.

The game flow is pretty simple. Each player is dealt 7 cards. They each draw a card from their hand, place it face down and pass the remaining six on. Everyone then reveals what they've taken, picks up the hand passed to them and does it again. When there's two cards left, one is taken and the other discarded into the center of the table. After this draft, each player fights the two on either side and gain victory or loss tokens. This is done with three hands of cards and then scores are added up based on what you've taken.

F.K. Digital Updated WHAT?!? - A Super Cosplay War Ultra Infinity Primer

So it turns out that on Christmas Eve 2014, F.K. Digital, creators of Chaos Code went and updated their other fighting game. Super Cosplay War Ultra. That freeware game with the autocombos they first released in 2003. What a glorious way to end a year that saw a 1.2 release for E's Laf (and a sequel announcement!), Wonderful World updates bringing it ever closer to 1.0 and French Bread releasing a commercial cash-in licensed game! Oh and some dickheads charging money for Vanguard Princess on Steam when the same version is available for free.

So with that run-on sentence out the way, let's break down my platonic lifelong partner, Super Cosplay War Ultra ~Infinity~