>Looking for a new fighting game >Ask the GameStop employee if the new fighting game is tight or loose >She doesn't understand >Bring out a diagram explaining what's tight and what is loose >She laughs and says "it's a good game sir" >Buy the game >It's tight
@@user-n9990 Subjective. Samurai Showdown is my favorite fighting game franchise because its emphasis on knowledge checks and out witting your opponent who basically plays the same game as you. You chip at each other's health until you find an opening in your opponents playstyle and capitalize on their vulnerabilities. I find that more fun then watching your character in a feature-length combo because you couldn't block the 5th 50/50 mix up in a row. I'm not a fan of taking turns going from block string to blocking until someone messes up. Not to mention, I'd rather lose to someone who outsmarted me, than to someone who simply picked a better character than me. Not saying "tight" fighting games don't have obvious metas or anything, but it is WAY less obnoxious than the "loose" fighting games, and the balance is more confined. A low tier character in Street Fighter is not as unviable as a low tier MVC character. Edit: I am not sure where you are getting this trend from. SF is still one of the biggest games out there and it's on the tighter side of the spectrum. Despite it's flaws, people still enjoy it. Fantasy Strike is an amazing fighting game, and it's tight as all hell. If you mean tight fighting games aren't as much as a visual spectacle as loose games, then sure. Visually, loose games are more entertaining for the casual audience to look at, but the only people who care if a fighting game is visually exciting are the spectators, not much the players. The players mainly care if the gameplay is fun and intuitive (excluding netcode, art style, etc.). Context since they deleted the comment: They basically said tighter games tend to be less fun than looser games. And basically, I'm saying what's fun is subjective.
Fried Chicken thighs had the best synergy in the series, perfect rooster, inventive bone in bone out tag system and the best sizzlest combo structure. Not to mention how oily that movement was, fried chicken thighs is the best.
I've always loved fighting games but always been terrible at them. This whole channel is like a secret inner sanctum that I never thought I'd be a part of.
I think a great way to show looseness is how much player expression is visible through just gameplay. All game has player expression, but how much depends on the game. Good example would be Melee where commentator Toph, figured out he’s playing Leffen who was using an alt account or something within the first 2-3 interaction when he was playing net play.
Another cool example: For a while in ultimate, there were 3 top players using Aegis, and each one had a distinctly different style. - Cosmos was primarily a Mythra player, he mostly uses bnb combos, gets you offstage and then fishes for F smash edge guard or ledge trap setups. He also likes to tech chase under platforms with lightning buster or up smash. - MKLeo favoured Pyra. Instead of going for bnb he’ll frequently bait out air dodges or panic options and punish with Dair > imagination. He also goes offstage with Mythra quite a bit more than average. -Sparg0 had the most dynamic style, often switching character in the middle of his combos and still continuing the string! He also loves to switch multiple times in disadvantage and offstage to mixup his recovery. Nowadays they each play different characters but it was neat to see their different interpretations of the same character for a while.
For me Tekken 7 hits the sweet spot in terms of "looseness". Every character in the game has some sort of unique execution/ decision making that you can get good at. The game inherently encourages you to grind out a character and get good. At the top level you see character specialists with a beautiful synergy of execution, knowledge and reads that's very fun to watch.
I wish Max wouldn't kill this discussion. His description of loose mechanics helped me pinpoint exactly what it was about games that I liked. I made me realize that freedom and unpredictability are absolutely critical in every single one of my favorite games.
I think Pokken's phase shift system (where it switches between 2d and 3d) is an example of a "tight" mechanic that helps increase competitive depth: shifts from 2d to 3d occur when a player fills out the hidden phase shift counter, (in 2d, moves add different amounts of points to the counter on hit) At a basic level, it acts as an anti-infinite system that forces a return to neutral, with the 3d phase only lasting for one heavy hit acting as a second buffer layer to neutral play. At high level play, you need to be actively weighing and changing your move choices and combo composition up based on if causing a shift or staying in the 2d phase would be more to your advantage/optimal: Maybe you have the other player in the corner, and have to pick between a combo that's safer or does more damage, but the counter is almost full and it'd cause a shift and would let the other player out of pressure, vs one with less immediate returns but would keep you in the 2d phase and your advantage state as a sort of reset. Or maybe you're at low health but almost have full meter, and you have to choose between a higher damage combo that keeps you in the current phase, and one that does less but would cause a shift, giving you bonus meter and allowing you to get burst and use your super and enables health regen. The system does limit what options you can preform at any given moment and overall combo length (though there are much longer combos people have found and use since Max first tried the game in 2016, I really hope he checks it out again at some point), but it makes high level play way more dynamic and really rewards adaptive skill and punishes flowcharting and empahsizes neutral play. The way the game handles attack heights (where they exist for moves to bypass and punish each other during their active frames, rather then to bypass and punish blocking) also encourages similar values with adapative play, enabling more returns to neutral and reversals, etc. Overall I'd put Pokken in "Kinda Tight" since while the phase shift mechanic really does constrain your options at any given moment (or rather, results in less optimal upsides), there's a HUGE amount of variety in the playstyle of characters, not just between each character but in how different players of the same character can use them: Two players can use Braixen or Weavile or Mewtwo in very different ways and still be successful and high level play, and low to bottom tier characters still make top 8s or win majors not that infrequently. There's also some pretty nutty tech with some characters and some systemss, like Thermodynamics to use 2d phase moves even in the 3d phase.
Damn, I had no idea Pokkén Tournament had such an involved system for phase shifting. I remember when I tried it for the Wii U, it was probably the easiest fighter to pick up and play that I'd ever tried; Smash Bros. included. I really ought to pick up DX one of these times.
@@Pixygon Yeah, the game's really technical, it's just not really obvious from it's marketing or even at first glance while playing due to how different some of it's systems are (as I said, the height system being for reversals and punishes rather then to open up blocking). If you do check out DX, i'd also be happy to answer questions/direct you to community resources, etc.
As someone born in the 80s, I grew up with the slang use of "tight", meaning cool/awesome etc. So this list kept fucking with me when Max was calling a game tight lol
You could argue that Melee is even looser but that the competitive scene has tried to keep things like certain infinites in check. Even still though there are some crazy matchup and stage specific chain grabs that can just delete stocks, as well as ledge camping that can abuse invincibility frames to timeout opponents.
Melee's placement feels like it'd still be the same for the most part, based on Max's definition, since even with all that it's like only mostly limited to the good characters. Unless *Bowser* of all characters can do stuff and whatnot
@SNES Nes As someone who can only play Smash at a casual level, I still find Melee more fun than Brawl in terms of movement and game feel, and slightly more enjoyable than Smash4. Ultimate really managed to find a perfect balance for game feel in terms of speed and balance imo.
@SNES Nes I agree with Nick. Content is great but game feel more important in the long run, and frankly if you're on this topic at all, you should already know that. I recommend Project M/P+ as the actual best factoring in both game feel and content.
@SNES Nes Ultimate is the best when it comes to character roster, but Melee is overall the best when it comes to giving players freedom (particularly because of dash dancing), though Ultimate has some improvements, such as landing lag on aerial attacks reduced to the point that L-canceling is no longer needed, and the run->ground move cancel (which started with run->upSmash in Brawl; in Melee, you have to use a workaround since it's not an actual mechanic in that game).
Was thinking after listening to Max explaining how the "Loose vs Tight" is, I was all "Skullgirls is hella loose man. Everyone plays the characters in different ways" and he also puts it there. Tells me he explained his system rather well hehe
Still has the most flexible version of Ken, yes even more than Smash Ultimate's Ken who was purposely toned down for a more ease of access for Smash's simplified controls. CvS2 just has so many incredible versions of existing characters (yes even the mega green cheese that is Blanka)
But thats also the best part because for atleast the philly fgc tournaments for that game would be separated by groove making it more interesting and always different . Cvs 2 seriously needs to be redone.
Something I gathered from this whole conversation is that the games that balance how loose/tight they are tend to be favored more by both competitive and casual players. Take Smash Ultimate, for example. I'd argue that to a casual player that game is simple to pick up and enjoy, but more options open up when players get deeper into competitive play. It doesn't force experimentation and overwealm new players, it gives people the options to play at whatever pace they'd like while still having the Looseness to keep competitive players engaged.
I pretty much agree. The kinda tight/loose area seems to be the area with the most success. Get deeper into the loose region and it's mostly a competitive players only game that most newbies will never be able to break into, whereas you get too deep into the tight region and you really start to lose hardcore players and are only really met with casual players that prefer having limitations. Of course, there are exceptions (I know GG fans were pretty hostile to how tight Strive was, even while it was more loose than a lot of its peers, and a lot of Tekken fans got sick of how loose T7 was with Rage and the like, even though it doesn't delve very far in the loose region).
that's actually a really good description of why Ultimate has done so well, I would love it if traditional fighters could learn something from that. Like it's so much easier to coerce my friends into playing smash with me than literally any traditional fighting game, they all think it's way too hard to get into. It comes back to the whole thing about how bad fighting games are at the onboarding process for casual players.
Fantasy Strike player checking in. Max is absolutely right in that the game is very much designed to be tight as hecc. You have buttons, every button has a purpose, every button has a weakness, and its up to you the player to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each button to beat out your opponent's buttons. I personally love it because instead of trying to maximize damage or learning core mechanics, I can focus on learning matchups, learning player habits, and general neutral stuff immediately after booting up the game. It is the MOST strike-throw game that has ever strike thrown. It's the perfect game for people who hate training room (though it still has a fully featured training room for when you want/need it). Incidentally I hate training room.
As someone who watches Will It Kill a lot, every game that's made it on there goes in Damn Loose and everything that hasn't made an appearance goes in Damn Tight
He says he's killing but tier lists actually open the discussion with actual material ahah. This discussion gonna be interesting. I can already see all the reaction videos of people being 'tight' (no pun intended) about max takes
Hearin max talk about the SFL category brought me to tears from laughing because it so perfectly describes GunZ: The Duel, a game I spent an unhealthy amount of time on in my childhood.
I agree with the tekken thing, there's so many things that make the game feel loose. Like, oh if I get a counter hit I get a crazy combo or if their back is turned or depending on the stage with certain charters you could eat 70% combos.
I just recently got back into fighting games after a nearly 2 decades long break. I bought all the most modern and even previous generation of titles I played long ago. I got MK11+X and SF5 & 4 for example. My favorite to play has been MK11 with Tekken 7 being a very close second place. I did play a ton of Tekken 3 and Tag and I was very pleased to find out everything I learned way back when could still be applied to T7. I will continue to be a fan and tout my fandom as long as they continue to reward legacy investment. But I can't even put my finger on exactly what it is about MK11 that makes me enjoy it. I'm kind of surprised that most folks seem to crap on the game. My only complaints with it has been that special moves seem to be a bit too difficult to execute and the inputs in general are very obnoxious. When your dancing around with someone in neutral and a spear or w/e comes out when all you wanted to do is poke out a punch for example. And I get especially frustrated, screaming at the game "Oh, finally decided to toss one out did ya?!" But I was hoping this list would help me understand something I'm not seeing. It did not. But cool list anyway.
I don't believe it was on the potential list, but I'd like to nominate Melty Blood: Actress Again Current Code for Mega Loose. Imagine if grooves in CvS2 fundamentally changed your characters movement, special moves, and normals on top of system mechanics. The moon system genuinely triples the roster of the game to 93 playable characters, and within those characters you can find tons of player expression, especially in the high and mid tier characters like c-seifuku and f-akiha (Go1's go to). The aerial mobility and difference in mobility from character to character and moon to moon (c-aoko has triple jumps AND a double airdash) makes the game a beautiful chaotic dance
This reminds of reading through the instruction booklet of Bloody Roar: Primal Fury on how being in different forms opened up more cancel windows to the point where in Hyperbeast, you could infinitely use supers and cancel *any move into another* and the fact that I still understand very little of what you could do in that game.
This is a good list because you don't want something too tight and it make you crack in the first minute or something to loose and it's just too much to explore
It's not a tier list. It's a list determining what's loose and what's tight. Not a tier list. A tier list is "Which game is better than the other." That's not the case in this situation here.
@@danielsmithiv1279 it's still a tier list. Just of a different kind determining what is tight and what is loose based in his preference which is loose. And also tier list is in the title of the video. Bruh lol
Honestly is probably one of the better ways to know what type of fighting games you'll like. I always consider MVC 2 super fun because it's so loose and wild but I couldn't get into Smash Ultimate because it felt stiff after awhile. It's speed, "stiffness", and subgenre that really forms a fighting game's identity to me in my brain of brains So this is a good tier list
Yeah, amazing tierlist. Because for me, the shit ass crazyness that was mvc2 was intriguing, but I wasn't skilled enough for it, and even when I understood fighting games and got really good at sf2, third strike and Virtua fighter, I couldn't comprehend the crazyness. Too much stuff going on for me. Perfect list for people based on what they want
This video reminded me of something. I didn't really think about it because I only played it for a couple of hours and deleted the game. Limiting the number of specials in MK11 is an incredibly stupid idea. That's one of the main reasons that turned me off MK11.
Man I totally agree!! The variations suck man, it’s so lame how they basically gutted every characters combo potential by splitting up all the special moves between 2 or 3 variations. Like just give us access to all the characters moves and let us explore possibilities. Also the gear system was not nearly as well done as it was in injustice 2
It depends on how you think about it. Technically every fighting game character has limited specials because the devs could've kept making more. You're looking at it as if they made a fully fledged character and split them into pieces but you could just as easily look at a single variation as a complete character and the alternate moves as an addition to the character.
@@_Jay_Maker_ You aren't comprehending. My point is that a complete character is an arbitrary concept. for example lets say sub zero had all the moves listed in mk11 equipped so he literally had all variations at once. if they added more moves after that and made them equipable to different variations it would still by op's logic be limiting the number of specials despite having all the moves he initially wanted.
@@jeremyroberts8822 MK11s gear system wasn't great, but INJ2 wasn't much better. The grind to get gear was a lot better in MK11, it's just that it wasn't customizable enough. But INJ2, you'd play for hours and get everything for every other character except your main, and even when you got pieces, it kinda just ended up being, "do you want armored look #1, or armored look #2." If they do it again, they need legitimate variety, on top of bringing back MK11s way to unlock the pieces.
MK11 was just a big step back imo. Less fun, less interesting characters, slower pace, and more restrictive. Hopefully they can correct course with the next one.
20:00 at the beginning when you were trying to define loose, Melee instantly came to mind. The way we play that game is planets away from what the devs intended.
VF is tight simply because there’s established rules and you can only do so much but it does it in a way to make every character unique yet balanced, it’s the perfect FG in terms of, “Honest and dishonesty” in the right amount.
There's also a distinction between whether a game is tight or loose, or whether it has emergent gameplay. Something like VF is definitely tight as you claimed, but due to the emergent gameplay and the variety of options, it adds looseness to it. KOF is also similar in that regard, the frame data, interactions are quite set in stone to where there's obvious, concrete answers in the game, but due to the speed of the game, options provided in the game as well as the emergent gameplay aspect of it, it adds quite a bit of looseness to it. 3S is both intrinsically loose, as well as contains emergent gameplay. The amount of options handed to you on offense, defense, neutral, the various amounts of ways you can choose to approach your decision making gives you a ton of freedom for how you choose to play. While this adds to it's emergent gameplay style of fast pace, decision making, the game is also emergent in and of itself. Like yin and yang, both complementing eachother which is part of the reason to this day the game is so beloved. Just my thoughts, I love that this topic is being discussed because for future games developers will (looking at you, NetherRealm, early SF5) be forced to add expression to their games and the freedom to let players do as they please, but still hold the structural integrity of the game to where it doesn't become insanity like HnK.
So many people completely wrong in the chat for this video, for example someone saying too tight means no fun. Too loose almost always means you make one mistake and your opponent can easily do a combo that kills you at full health and infinite combos. I personally think tight is preferred, but I know many lean the opposite way.
Same. I also like knowing "Right, my opponent has these options and I have these options. My job as an attacker is to enforce my options or open them up with something unorthodox, as a defender it's my job to determine which option they will most likely be going for and do something to beat that." I like that strategic element, where both of us know what is going on, what our tools are, and what those tools do. If a game is too loose it's like "I have no idea when I'm even allowed to play the fucking game since they can cancel into this safe launching special at 8 different points in this attack string which they can also dash cancel out of to just reset it indefinitely. If I want to beat that, my only choice is to do the cheapest most broken shit I can learn and steal the game. This sucks." I like games I can sit and have a think about and understand what could've been done in each situation. A lot of the times with loose games the only thing to think about is "Guess I should've guessed better lol."
What people don't say or realize is those same games where one combo kills tend to have such hard and complicated movement that pulling off that combo in the first place is so difficult by virtue of that insane movement.
this reminds me of the Doom eternal debate where within the Doom community some people where arguing that eternal limits player creativity compared to Doom 2016 because some weapons are designed to work better against some enemies like the plasma rifle shredding through shielded enemies even though you still had plenty of creativity if I where to categorize does two games I would say 2016 is hella loose to a detrimental degree where there's not much strategy or player engagement just use whatever weapon while Eternal is Loose there's definitely by design weapons that work better than others in specific situations but there is still multiple ways you can approach a scenario
I really liked arcana hearts 3 for the level of creativity you can have not only w/ the arcana system, but for just the variety of moves that every character has. I hope max checks out the franchise soon, as it is a hidden gem within arcsys's library!
Arcana heart 3 rules, but it's full of creepy little girls and really doesn't play well to an audience that isn't into that. That's the only problem with the game in my opinion
@@drakenforge4276 same but I'm describing the reason most people aren't even going to pick it up in the first place, and especially the reason that a lot of people are never going to stream it
I would personally switch Soul Calibur 6's position with Tekken 7. Movement differences aside, lethal hits and Soul Charge allow for some nutty variety for combos and damage.
Yeah. I really don’t agree with SC6 being tight. Reversal Edge alone, despite people not liking the Rock Paper Scissors aspect, gives you like 7 different options and somehow even more if you tie. Not to mention the mind games of the threat of ring outs and the crazy positioning to set up for those, while still having the same wall and back turn punishment that Tekken has.
I was thinking the same thing after he ranked tekken. Didn't think he would talk about SC6 so I started thinking about where I would put it in comparison to tekken.
Bro. I had always just skipped through the video, and I didn't know the chicken tenders was MK9, so I just accepted it as 'the chicken tenders are pretty loose'
Ditto. Was just looking at the playbar and thinking about how I wished the video was longer when it cut to the complete tier list. This was very interesting.
Smash 4 is a really weird game for this honestly, especially compared to Ult. I'm obv biased as a s4 Shulk main, the character with the most tech that was super insane which mostly got removed in Ult, but on one hand Ult's speed adds a lot for it as well as some movement being less restricted, while on the other hand it feels like a lot of characters have been homogenized. So much character specific stuff was toned down, practically every windbox was removed, overall the game is just as janky as smash 4, but it's got less individual charm for each character (Note I'm saying this mostly about the base cast, the DLC is insane). Ult has better balance so you *see* some more of what has to offer, but I think smash 4 had a more interesting and diverse (base) roster gameplaywise even if Bayo Cloud and maybe a few other top tiers dominated every tourney. Even at the bottom tiers, Ganon feels like he had more ways to approach him in s4.
Hard disagree. The ways in which the cast got homogenized opened up options for characters. As someone who mained a low/mid tier in Ike in Smash 4, it was definitely highly restricted as to what options you're allowed to do, because too many of your buttons are too slow. In Ultimate the homogenized jump squat and auto-L-cancel means even slow characters can throw out safe aerials. It allows characters like Bowser to feel like he doesn't have a lot of endlag on his attacks because he can cancel out a lot of the lag simply by fast falling. Grounded options are also more accessible for slower characters since you can use standing moves out of a run, it means you don't have to do "the smash 4" run-up shield all the time. Ultimate definitely way looser than Smash 4 in most cases. Your Shulk player bias is showing :)
@@brain_tonic Yeah that is pretty fair, the lowered landing lag across the board does a LOT for the looseness, but at the same time it feels like so many character's gameplans are more the same. I do think Ult overall is more loose but I wouldn't put them far apart from each other, they both are and arent for different reasons imo. that or my Shulk bias is reaching critical mass lmao
In MK11's defense, there are alot of things that allow for character expression: i.e flawless blocking, neutral ducking, wavedashing, etc. It's just a matter of how easy it is to do them. All three of those things are what you see at high levels and never in casual. Main point is: I think every fighting game significantly opens up past a causal level.
Don’t need to do super surprising stuff to be kinda loose. Combo routes can get pretty nutty in Ultimate, especially with stuff like z catch aerials or character specific stuff like psi magnet combos and link bomb combos. Movement and general speed of the game is also pretty high which adds freedom. Being able to use standing buttons out of run, having 3 frame jump squat meaning you’re always 3 frames away from being able to use an aerial are also freeing.
I did not know we used 'loose' and 'tight' to describe fighting games. I can't wait to talk to my mom about my favorite fighting games using my newfound words.
A ton of this depends on the actual characters a person plays rather than the game itself. Like if you play Negan vs Kuni II in Tekken 7, Or in KOF, if you play Leona vs Terry. A part of this almost is reflective of what characters Max has played in these games. There's like a standard deviation of one or two spots for some of these games and where they should be.
"WhEn EvErYoNe Is Op No OnE iS oP!!!1!1"- People who forget MK9, where even the objectively bottom 1 Sheeva had broken OP shit, but most of the roster was unusable in tournaments because the top tiers were so damn BROKE
They removed a lot of the higher level mechanics in Smash ultimate compared to 4. No more perfect pivoting or shield dropping, (dropping through platforms while keeping shield up) In terms of universal options I think they removed more than they added. Since also they changed how the c-stick operates being a macro removes the BIDOU control method. (makes the analog stick able to do one frame movement inputs very easily) The only universal mechanic that ADDs to the game imo in ultimate is the change of parries/perfect shield.
I didnt think perfect pivoting added much variety to the game. Compare it to ultimate where characters like Terry and Ken who has charge partitioning, RT Coiling and a lot of kara-cancelling moves and they never removed it in later patches. The C-stick macro actually characters to do those kinda things. It allowed the players of those characters for free flow as most of their moves cancel into eachother. I recall there were a lot of Japanese pro players on the dev team for ultimate and they leaned towards more characters specific tech than universal, and in addition to 90+ matchups. Makes the game very hard and loose. Also the parry mechanic is also good choice for this kind of game as it allows momentum shifts in a match, it just needs to be a lil better. Ultimate is a hard game, and a lot of players are seeing it now.
I think Melee should AT LEAST be in the second highest tier here because of one very simple factor, Melee has by far the loosest Defense we’ve ever seen in a fighting game. Shield light shield powershield shieldrop dash away wave dash away waveshine amsah tech DI SDI teching tech roll sit for as long as you want before doing a late tech after you got knocked down roll ledge stall and there’s definitely some I’m missing. It’s just on a completely different level, and most of these are just things the community figured on their own. By comparison something like guilty gear which is a very loose franchise we get many more defensive options than the average fighting game (still not as much as melee) but they’re all intended except debatably some niche option select stuff some characters have. Most of the melee stuff is from people messing around with the engine and figuring stuff out, that is a sign of a not just incredibly but historically loose game
With how many bad match ups there are in games like mk9 they tend to be more tight in reality. For every loose Kabal there is a poor tight soul that has to fight him
melees place is crazy considering most of the basic tech in the game is literally efficient glitching LMFAO, wave dashing, all the different tech with characters, then adding in adjustable weight/physics. It's not exciting but Sakurai actively looks down on and has worked against that conpetitive scene and nature, and yet it still only escalates. Yoshi was thought to be kinda mid to low (compared to the spaceys, peach, and shiek. Not counting Iceys since they mostly wobbled), and yet some dude grinded out Yoshi for years, hours every day, and dusted a major. Was crazy
Max, you played yourself doing this; the conversation will only get louder, especially for games that went untiered like TFH or Garou or Brawlhalla or Rivals of Aether or Pokken or DoA5
I immediately said HNK and SSBMelee. Hokuto No Ken is *more* loose; but the entire act of moving around has been torn the fuck open in Melee. Not even accounting for the exploits we see at every single tier in the game. The low tiers in Melee are atrocious; but aside from Kirby and Zelda, these characters are not tight the way that Chun Li or Wolverine are in MvC2. Even Ness, Roy, and Mewtwo break the game
Kinda? It’s more about freedom in how you’re able to play the game. You know how in old SNES games when you jump you’re forced to commit to that jump? You’re not allowed to control your movement in the air. You’re not allowed to stop. You’re not allowed to even attack. You’ve made a decision and you’re forced to commit to it. That’s tight. Then take a game like Mario Odyssey where you can jump three times and throw your hat in any direction into some special move if you hit the right combo. That’s loose. In terms of fighting games, Max basically is defining games in which you’re allowed to play how you want (loose) and games in which you’re forced to play how the developer wants you to (tight). You could even define certain mechanics as tight and loose. Wavedashing is loose. Animation canceling is loose. Techniques that give you freedom in how you choose to act.
Kinda wished he used the term "stiff" or "rigid" instead of tight because every time he says that word I can't help but think he's just saying the game is really good lol
I wonder how much Max knows about the technical bullshit inside Smash Melee I doubt he's counting stuff like Samus bomb slides or Luigi's slidey wave dash or Link's super jump
What do you mean? He put melee in hella loose. Along side games like mvc2 and cvs2. The amount of freedom and options and player made tech in those games are just as much as melee.
@@LycanDreams9159 Yeah but I'm pretty sure he was only considering the mainstream stuff, I.E wavedashing and dash dancing allowing for the fast, freeform movement the game is known for. Also the nature of it being a platform fighter contributes to how positioning and stage presence can completely alter strategies on the fly. That alone would definitely qualify it for "hella loose" and i have no problem with that. I'm just wondering if he knew about the WEIRD stuff and if that was considered in the ranking
I love how Max treats Fight of Gods as if it's that one girl he slept with. The one that he doesn't care for because of her personality but looks fondly back on because the sex was fun.
Smash is by nature pretty loose because of the full range mobility, 3D collision and the whole "Analog-ness" of how the game works. But the series goes like this is loose to tight I think: [Melee -- 64 - Brawl - Smash 4 --- Ultimate]. Max' reasoning for melee makes a lot of sense, but after branching out of Smash to play other fightings games old and new about 11 years ago, I haven't really played any game that feels looser than Melee, and I played one of the worst characters in the game, Roy. Though granted I haven't played HnK or GG1 lmao, but I really like CVS2. Characters are bad in Melee usually because they don't have tools to deal with holding down or their mobility is too limited and/or their approach options are too risky, but they mostly all have an incredible amount of variety in the way you can play them. Some characters like Ness and Mewtwo are trash but their combo routes are some of the most variable and most execution demanding in the game, combos for everyone change all time on the fly as well because of DI. The top tiers are more powerful than the rest of the game, but they aren't as far above as MVC2 god tiers. You don't have to change the lower tiers a lot to make them very good, Project M demonstrated that well. And you also don't need to change much in the top tiers to make them balanced, or even bad. Smash 4 is pretty tightly designed but rage honestly destroys a lot of gameplay design integrity, you can often die at 0% from a like one or two hits from center stage or into the top blastzone just because your opponent is over 100%. Ultimate tightened things more and is basically the game that Smash 4 wanted to be, it's still loose as a smash game tends to be at base, but you can really feel the designers' hands on many things and the neutral, combo game and other interactions like edgeguarding are much more restrictive compared to Melee. I think you can argue in the looseness of Brawl, because unlike Melee it was designed out of the gate to be extremely restrictive but the mechanics and design have some many glaring gaps that it is absolutely the most different playing smash game from the intended and BY FAR the smash game with the least viable characters because some of them are just crazy omega level bullshit and the rest are absolute garbage dump bad. The game is also riddled with bugs and glitches that affect how the characters play, something that happens very rarely in any other Smash game.
I was thinking that 4 is looser than Ultimate too. In 4 there is way more BS with rage and ladder combos. Ultimate also has much less tech compared to 4.
I think this is the best take about Smash fitting in this tier concept I've seen. Nice explanation! Brawl, although his reputation, is a surprisingly crazy game indeed
Viewing this, I’d argue Brawl goes into SFT. I’m not a competitive person I don’t know much. But the fact is, it’s less of a, “you’re only allowed to do this at this time” or “these characters at the top tier get the nutty shit but the rest falter behind”, and is more of a, “You are not allowed to do anything.” I’m pretty sure the intentions of Sakurai alone place it down there, cemented by the fact that one character defined the rest of the tier list.
11:35 ish well faster mean more option usually (Inquisitor in DNF dual got alot more option in the second beta compare to the previous one and I think it mainly just because she run faster and walk faster now and you can fell it you got more option you can do now you don't just thow the fire and can't do mixup out of it now you can run to the enemy and do things.) So yah I agreed movement spd give more option making it more "loose"
This is like a hot take of hot takes in which, indirectly, non-excessive "looseness" is deemed as the best trait, so, depending on whether Max is a fan of the game or not, he will base this "looseness" on mobility, variety of options, or combo posibilities. Proof? His fave games are on high spots and he avoided putting one of the tightest games ever on the bottom (because he loves it), which is KI1, a game in which all chars play the same, there's almost no mobility, and it's literally based on absolutely restrictive arbitrary rules. But, he must be right (according to himself in this video), because all his fans on his stream agree with him, in which if anyone disagrees with him, people there will turn against them, because that's how live streams work. Now the list is "definitive", and this comment will get buried by dislikes instead of liked so it can be addressed, not because it is wrong, but because "how dare you disagreeing with the streamer I like!?", making things stagnant.
Now this is where this comment ultimately falls apart. That KI game is Killer Instinct 2013. With this, you clearly haven't watched the video as nothing you just said is even remotely right about KI 2013.
@@ayewanq7412 Well, aside from ignoring that what you initially said was wrong, he said "here, or _maybe_ even here"... None of which was the absolute bottom where it should be because of the reasons I already mentioned. So, no, it does make sense.
Comparing Smash 4 and Ultimate is kinda weird cause the offense of Ultimate offers more freedom and the game is generally faster than 4 but they also removed a lot of player found tech like perfect pivots and made the mobility and “general control” of your character more restrictive if you think about things like sticky platforms, the short hop airial macro that making buffered full hop airials impossible, c-stick airials affecting your momentum, and the general gripes with the buffer system, to the point where some people say Smash 4 felt more “fluid” to play than Ultimate.
Personally, i prefer "designed" games, but i also prefer when game have more options. My top 5: 1. Virtua Fighter 5 2. Persona 4 Arena 3-5. Guilty Gear XX, BlazBlue, KOF. I prefer Virtua Fighter over Tekken, but most likely not because of tight/loose thing. VF feels more dangerous/intense and that's what I like about it.
