This strikes of skewed priorities. .
The priorities are skewed, yes, but I'd suggest that they're skewed in a frankly better direction by focusing on social play. Fighters, as a genre, are subjected to a number of expectations and demands that make very little sense to me within the context of what they actually
are, and I just wished reviewers and consumers alike would evaluate these games on their own terms.
Long before I got into any fighting games, I was an avid player of RPGs. I pretty much consumed games exclusively for their narrative content, rich single-player experiences, and so on, which allowed me to look past the crippling gameplay problems which pervade the genre. Beyond mere balance issues, of which there are many,
even the venerable and beloved Final Fantasy games are rife with outright glitches, most of which would be game-breaking to some degree or another.
We forgive these games, however, because we realize that they are primarily narrative experiences rather than gameplay experiences, much like we forgive Super Mario Bros for failing to captivate us with a hackneyed rescue the princess plot that was already stale in 1981. We like that game and its descendants because they give us taut gameplay and not because we especially care about the Mushroom Kingdom's high society.
Excepting Blizzard, which has the budget, the clout, and the consumer goodwill to say "it'll come out whenever the hell we please," it stands to reason that development time and resources are rare and precious. This is likely why narrative-based games tend to have buggy, poorly balanced gameplay, and why play-driven games aren't especially inspirational, plot-wise.
Well, what about fighting games? They actually occupy a very odd generic space. In one sense, they gesture strongly toward narrative in that they're populated by large numbers of unique, fully-realized characters, most of whom we can control. That ability to identify with a character compels us to learn more about him or her.
Conversely, the deep mechanics and controls of these games would indicate that they're primarily play experiences rather than narrative ones, which is quite true. Unfortunately, however, that's an incomplete assessment. Consider that fighting games take place on closed arenas. There's no open world to explore. Hell, there's not really anything sufficiently large or complex to be called a level--fights in these games are confined to what may as well be pocket dimensions. As such, the single-player gameplay experience of any fighting game is never fulfilling. We want more back story, more control, more space, more challenges, but these things frankly exist beyond the scope of what a fighting game truly
is.
Today's fighters have attempted to address this issue by essentially making their titles into variety packs. Whether it's undermining gameplay with wacky challenges and restrictions or outright including alternative "modes" which are actually different games from different genres, thrown together with little care or oversight, these extras actually have precious little to do with the actual experience of a fighting game
qua fighting game.
In fact, that experience really only comes out through head to head play, usually against an opponent, or now (thanks to SCV's much-improved AI) the computer. Project Soul presented a game that is, at its core, a celebration of the actual fighting game experience. Their goal was to do one thing very well as opposed to spreading themselves too thin. It doesn't have mini-games--it's not Mario Party--but it shouldn't necessarily be judged for that. I seldom see complaints that Chessmaster's story was underwhelming.
In the end, fighting games are in an uncomfortable position: the characters, aesthetics, and so on prime us to want them for narrative content, while the generic limitations of 1 on 1 fighting leave us wanting ever more. Still, if I can love a broken game like half the Final Fantasy series, or if I can love the narratively empty experience of Mario or even checkers, for that matter, without demanding each in turn provide me with something for which they're not built, then I think it's only fair to approach fighting games in the same manner.
