Samurai Shodown 2019: The fighting game outsider is back and ready to shake up the scene
Samurai Shodown is one of those fighting games you may have heard of, but may have never played: its a retro classic, a staple of arcades around the world – and now, in 2019, its back!
The series has been on hiatus for a decade or so – the last mainline game in the series dropping on the Xbox 360 back in 2008. In that time, weve seen fighting games evolve and change: Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur and more have all drastically changed their design philosophies, adding new gauges and mechanics, complicating the setups, moving away from the retro games players know and love.
Samurai Shodown – despite a fancy new lick of paint that makes it all look more modern – is sticking to its guns.
The 2019 version of Samurai Shodown has been built by developers from the Neo Geo era: artists and programmers that worked on fighting game classics like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Capcom VS. SNK.
So not only has the game got this retro flavour thanks to the artisanal craftsmanship of the studio, its also got the passion of people that know and love the series.
And that comes across in how it plays: classic characters like Galford, Charlotte and Haohmaru are joined by a few newcomers – and they all handle with that high-risk, high-reward heft that the series is known for.
Samurai Shodowns appeal has always come from the fact that an entire match can be shifted in one fell swoop. If you land a massive counter on an enemy who whiffed a move, you can take up to 60% of their life off with one hit.
This creates a tension in matches that keeps you on the edge of your seat in every encounter: you know that one mistimed move, one cocky play, one super move pulled off frames too early will destroy your chances of victory.
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The 2019 iteration of Samurai Shodown has been built on three core principles: legacy, evolution and revolution.
The developers wanted to honour the series legacy and draw on the best elements from its massive 25 years plus bank of history. They wanted to evolve the presentation and the graphical setup of the title – and to that end theyve succeeded. The inspiration of Japanese Sumi-e art is clear, and the ink-heavy shading techniques really add to that heavy, weighty feel of the weapons and mechanics.
Finally, the revolutionary aspect comes from the AI system the studio has brought into the game – we didnt hear too much about this at the event, but were promised that a new Dojo mode will learn from player inputs and actions and create robust, next-gen Ghost versions of players that you can choose to upload to the games servers.
This means youll be able to download and fight other players data, even if Read More – Source
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