Inspiration vs. Imitation: Icons: Combat Arena, Rivals, and Smash
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- čas přidán 1. 08. 2018
- Icons: Combat Arena is a platform fighter that recently released on Steam. Should you play it? Well, that answer is... complicated. In this video, I talk a little bit about the development history of Icons (and Project M), its pros and cons, and compare it to another Smash alternative -- Rivals of Aether. I contrast the two games in their overall design and approach, and discuss where I think Icons stands to be improved.
I think you should definitely check out both Icons and Rivals of Aether, and see for yourself what you think. Icons is going through some growing pains, but I have no doubt that it will only get better as time goes on! Rivals has really come into its own lately, and is an all-around solid game. Try them both!
Shout out to the talented folks at Wavedash Games for making Icons, and for their previous work on Project M. Also to Dan Fornace and the whole Rivals team for their excellent work on Rivals of Aether.
EDIT: There seems to be some confusion about Icons: Combat Arena's input delay.
Most games have a few frames of input delay, fighters included. What makes Icons is unusual is that its natural time to process a command is 3 frames (according to the developers), and then an additional 3-frame buffer is added on top of that for a total of six frames, in order to bolster netcode. This is unfortunate because, without that buffer, the game could have a lower latency during offline matches, but they want online and offline to feel consistent with one another and so enforce the delay even when it's not necessary.
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Check me out on Twitter: / theatlasone
Support the channel on Patreon: / theatlasone
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Music:
Project M Main Theme - • Project M Theme
Project M 3.6 "Metal Caverns" - • Project M 3.6 "Metal C...
Rivals of Aether - Fight and Flight (Air Armada) - flashygoodness.bandcamp.com/t...
Rivals of Aether - Fiery Ambitions (Fire Capitol) - flashygoodness.bandcamp.com/t...
Rivals of Aether - Oceanic Breeze (Merchant Port) - flashygoodness.bandcamp.com/t...
Icons: Combat Arena - Main Menu Theme
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I am AtlasOne, and my channel is devoted to in-depth and analytical gaming content. This ranges from everything to information dumps about upcoming games, to deep dives into specific developers or games. I want to create the type of content that I enjoy myself, and hope you'll stick around if you find it interesting or enjoyable. Thanks for your interest! - Hry
Rivals made we want to play Smash AGAIN. Icons makes me want to play Smash INSTEAD.
yikes bro
Rivals with workshop is terrific
I like rivals more
Ok but I disagree with rivals
@@yellowjacket3668 wdym
The whole Blizzard look of Icons was the biggest turn off for me.
Same. Battlerite was a way better comparison if one needed to be made. Blizzard is just never a good place to start looking for similarities, as they tend to have been a heavy chance to have been deriving their work from somewhere else.
edit: oh you meant for the game. It's honestly less Blizzard, as OW/HotS is very "plastic doll"-like. Less cartoony.
Same. Personally, I've never been a fan of Blizzard's art style, and I think it's gotten worse with time - imitating it does no favors for me.
My personal turn off was being told that I'm not allowed to play because they don't want to compromise the standards of games.
Locking out entire regions was just a massive middle finger to me so I just gave up on it
Blizzard's artstyle is a lot more attractive than this. The art itself for ICONS is good (and I hate Overwatch's artstyle), but the colour palette and texture designs are very ugly. HoTS artstyle works because of the game it's in, and the artstyle is definitely more refined than what's seen in ICONS. If they can tweak their colour design and not have their characters clash too much with the style of the stages, then I feel it'd be great, at least for me.
Like someone else has said I personally see this more as Paladins than Overwatch. Which honestly looks faaaar more refined than Icons. Not that its anything special, just giving my opinion.
The Virgin Icons vs. The Chad of Aether
And then, you have the ultra-chad Fishbunjin 3000
Where you can play as Ronald Mc'Donald
Slap city all day
Can we get SSF2 in here?
3agle Thadcity*
"No other fighting game deliberately imposes an input delay for offline play"
*flash backs to SFV launch 8 frames*
Exactly what I thought.
I assume many games do this nowadays. Tekken 7 and a lot of the rollback games too. They can all hit lower input lag if they didn't design their game logic around netcode.
@@BlueLightningSky Well, Smash Ultimate's online netcode is different than offline. Before patch 8.1, all versions of online had a tick rate of 30 hz while offline it was 60 hz, meaning it pretty much counted your moves 30 times a second while offline was 60 times. After 8.1, all offline and online 1v1 w/out spectators have an input delay of 4 frames while every other online mode has an input delay of 5 frames. So there is some difference in the netcode.
Icons has a very unattractive style to it. The art looks generic and the animations are really, REALLY stiff and clunky looking
Might as well hire the Japanese
The lighting's all off, and it just doesn't fit together.
...not to mention it's literally just blizzard
Sounds like a team of coders tried to make the art look good.
Um, yeah, like melee?
@@TSMSnation That's not a good thing
Here’s a seriously damning thing that I don’t see enough people comment on regarding Icons, and it wasn’t even mentioned here: the stages, the stages, _the _*_stages._* Even derivative characters can have a chance to stand on their own if they’re not executing the exact same strategies the exact same way, but look at what we have on display: Battlefield, Final Destination and Smashville reskins ad nauseum. That also does harm to the new characters as well; you’re now just playing “what if” Smash characters on Smash stages. Rivals avoids that by having some organic geometry rather than a given amount of floating platforms.
This is because the people who make smash clones are "hardcore" Smash players, and they only ever play Battlefield and Final Destination because they want smash to be something it isn't.
Rivals definitely has a little more stage variety, even in "basic" (competitive-legal) stage modes. Now if we just could turn off hazards for Aether stage modes....
That's what happens when you make your game hyperbased on e-sports and tournaments instead of general gameplay and content. Even the most "hardcore" will get tired of just playing with 8 characters and the same flat platform arenas, specially when compared to Project M.
There were some factual errors that people have already pointed out, but everything about your presentation from speaking voice to editing is significantly higher than I'd expect to see from a channel your size. Keep doing exactly what you're doing man, these are the kinds of videos I want to see in the platform fighter scene!
ok what is factually wrong, can you specify?
@@ghoulofmetal He said "no other fighting game deliberately puts input lag offline" when in actuality pretty much all fighting games put input lag offline, even melee.
@@thecrabman2074 yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's not deliberate for other games
@@ghoulofmetal Brawl had all-star mode before Project M
@@TheTrains13 He should've clarified "All-star mode" as if you haven't played Project M, you wouldn't know the difference. Brawls all-star mode is fighting every member of the game, Project M still has that. It also has a Special mode called All-Star Mode for Brawl/Multiplayer, in which players can pick multiple characters per stock. So instead of having 4 lives as just Sonic, you can have each of those stocks be a separate character. Once you lose a stock, you automatically switch to another character.
If you keep up with the development with the games you’d see where their character problem comes from. They don’t see the characters as clones, they see them as archetypes. To them Kidd isn’t a Fox clone, he’s a space animal. The issue is that that’s not how archetypes work, every grappler doesn’t play like Zangief.
As someone who studies and works with archetypes since forever, that is _painful_ to hear.
*"To them Kidd isn’t a Fox clone, he’s a space animal. The issue is that that’s not how archetypes work, every grappler doesn’t play like Zangief."*
Worse still is that they're not even general archetypes like "The Grappler" or "The Long Range Fighter". They're Melee/Smash specific archetypes. "The Spacie", "The FE Swordsman", "Captain Falcon".
Yep, I 100% agree, and I even pointed out this problem to the dev team on their subreddit, only to be ignored. All in all, though, it certainly feels like the people making this game have a very narrow view of fighting games, coming only from a Melee-centric perspective.
Certainly not helping the case of smash players being stereotyped as knowing nothing *BUT* Smash then.
Ryu is the basic archetype and Capcom mocked games who copied Ryu. Look at Dan as an example. You don't copy a character and expect it to work.
And yes, its very clear by this games execution, the dev team does not have the experience it takes to make a fighting game of any sorts. I've won a game because cause a lag spike occurred while my opponent was recovering because the game completely drops frames. Say what you will about Smash 4, going to Namco was the right move in terms of developers. The fact Namco is doing Ultimate shows experience is vital. Polish, Online, and balance. While Smash 4 is weakest in online, it still is usable. You die much less to lag spikes in 4 than Icons.
The Icons team did an AMA on reddit about a month ago, and I asked them what separates the game from other platform fighters:
*Q:* What would you say separates Icons from the numerous other smash-like games that have been released over the past few years, such as Rivals of Aether, Brawlhalla, Slap City, and Brawlout?
*A:* Can we pause for a moment and look at how amazingly DIFFERENT the platform fighter genre is than it was back in 2015?
Back when we did our first AMA, Brawlhalla and Rivals were still super young, and when people thought about "Smash Clones", it was pretty much just Playstation All Stars and TMNT Smash Up. And they were always called "Smash Clones."
Now, you have a new platform fighter coming out or getting announced almost every month. You have games taking very different directions and approaches. They're able to reach different audiences and expand the genre way beyond what it was before.
It is a fantastic time to be a platform fighter developer, and I'm sure we're going to see many more.
To answer your specific question: our secret is online. We look at games like League of Legends and Rocket League (and even games without League in the title), and we see they're built around connecting players online as fast as possible. In Hearthstone, you can load it up and be playing a match in just a few clicks.
There are other angles we focus on too, of course. Competitive play is important to us, we love our IP and the opportunity for telling stories both in the bame and beyond, and we believe we hit the right mix of both accessibility (allowing new players to start learning to play) and depth that rewards play over a very long time.
Looking at the fighter landscape, we don't believe there's an "online first" entry that's at the level we want to do. So, we built everything around online. The matchmaking, the home screen's flow, and of course the netcode itself. Pretty much every decision in Icons' development is through a lens of how it supports connecting players quickly online.
This is also what we see people most respond to during testing. Being able to get home and fire up the game and quickly play 4-5 matches against different players is an "aha" moment for many platform fighter fans. - Matt
Interesting that they think the game's claim to fame isn't even gameplay related
they do realize ppl can netplay with melee since 2017 right? Not to mention, the lag is equal to console (only 3 frames) compared to their 6 frames (which in honestly too high for almost any competitive game). The fact that they believe the online play is what sets them apart proves they have no real direction. Everyone in the melee community knows how legit netplay is, and it continues to get even better thanks to Faster Melee. Also, ummm, RoA HAS ONLINE PLAY! rofl
They honestly think online play sets them apart from Brawlhalla, Rivals of Aether, Brawlout, Slap City, etc? I know Brawlhalla, Rivals of Aether and Brawlout all have online play (although I'm not sure about slap city as I haven't heard of it until this video), so it really isn't a really impressive feature anymore, and probably all four of the listed games have it, meaning they really need to work on uniqueness.
ughh that's some dry blurb they hit you with... Their communication is as bland as their artstyle lol
The first sentence from them was an instant red flag.
Icons just feels really misguided, and it probably should not have been a F2P game with how it's monetized.
Especially with fighting games, or whatever you'd consider Smash to be. F2P has a very specific set of genres it works with. Smash clones are *definitely* not one of those, they're probably more of an active deterrent to fans of Smash if anything.
Paying money for a bootleg? Are we living in China?
I wouldn't buy it even if it was 1$
I played Brawl when as a kid
Also Icons characters look like they are... Drowning in those stages, the color and detail of the backgrounds are devouring the actual models, they dont stand out it looks really jarring
🤔🤔🤔sounds a bit like our favorite stage, final destination
The art might actually be the least original and most boring part of the game. It reminds me of Overwatch slash Paladins.
shotgun6X True. It's like they took the Overwatch designs and drained any fun and originality from them. The unlockable characters have way better designs than the ones they put at the forefront
Though both Overwatch and Paladins have much better Designs.
Well one of the artists is well known for telling people to "steal like an artist". One of his instagram posts was him tracing over top of someones uncredited work from pinterest and encouraging others to do the same. That's what happens when you're unoriginal you just become a cheap imitation of the things you steal.
@@dungofrungus7659 Yo Kienan Lafferty is a dope artist with some extreme skill. You took that completely out of context. If you actually watch the videos where he talks about "stealing art", its not that literal. He very specifically shows you how to take things like poses, design elements, concepts, and turn them into your own things. Very explicitly says not to steal things blatantly and try to pass them off as your own. Anyone who does art knows that taking direct inspiration from other works of art is key to making dope artwork.
Yeah but Paladins has a more fantasy tech feel to it
Please, can we all stop saying that Icons is developed by PMDT members? There are only 4 exPMDT working at Wavedash Games, and only 2 of them are actually developing content that would have been analogous to their work for PM, the other were hired to offer direction.
The majority of Wavedash game is staffed by former Riot, Blizzard, Bioware, Sony, and Twitch employees.
I didn't mean to imply that *all* of Wavedash was staffed by former PMdev. All I meant was that that's where it started, but I take your point. My bad for not being clear enough. EDIT: Still though, you can feel the PM's DNA in Icons for sure. It's obvious where the inspiration comes from, and just how big an impact the small number of PM developers have had on the game.
That explains a lot.
worsedoughnut don't be coy; PM devs are here and so are their ideas.
No their not, I promise the heart of PM remains in brawl modding. Besides the project lead for icons never touched PM once; actually, I'd go as far as to say he's the reason this game turned out as bad as it is.
thank you for clarifying this. i feel the video should have talked more about the failed monetization method. but he definitely showed me one reason as to why i have fun with the game more than others. they definitely have shot themselves in the foot by locking these more original characters. now that i know more about the other people involved, i understand how they had decided their awful monetization.
If it was me I would have talked about the animations as well. Alot of the animations in Icons feel super stiff and just outright bad, while alot of RoA's flow really well. Animations are a key component in fighting games since they help let the player know exactly what the characters are doing. I agree with every point you made as well, I bought all the dlc for RoA because it was different and wasn't just a smash reskin, while Icons felt like it had nothing going for it and there was no reason for me to play it over Smash.
And some rpped straight from Smash. the Marth clonr has several identical animations.
THIS. The stiff, soulless animation combined with the nonexistent feedback to your attacks just makes the basic fighting feel insanely unsatisfying. It's like your moves have nearly no impact. That's the exact thing that Smash Ultimate turned up to 11, so to go from that to this is just disgusting. Hopefully they iron that out with updates
The floaty physics aren't doing it any favors either. That bad combination of slow, stiff animations, bad hitsparks/FX/SFX, and the floaty appearance of movement makes the game look downright amateurish. I may not care much for Melee, but I will never deny how amazingly it gives everything oomph and impact because of that very combination of factors. The characters there have weight, sound effects were very representative of what they were trying to convey, whether a sword slash or a rock hard blow, and when you were sent flying, boy did you fly.
Even Brawl, floaty as it may be, made it feel like characters were taking some serious blows.
Icons though? Just looking at it I'm reminded of beginner MUGEN developers whose characters end up with some less than stellar feel because of their animations, physics, and SFX.
Coincidentally (not really) the original characters have the BEST animations in that game, they feel natural and airtight, I love all the original characters, but I hate how they made clones of smash characters!!
(I blame the ex-Blizzard and Riot employees at Wavedash for that blackhole of artistic expression)
Bruh it’s like you read my mind. You ACTUALLY listed every reason why I prefer rivals over smash, and why I play rivals competitively and smash casually.
damn.... you really don't sound like a new youtuber, you sound like you've been doing this awhile good job man
0:42 "They tried to make all the characters viable"
Didn't you say they tried to make it more like melee?
cries in bowser
A lot of people are bringing up that there's more ex-Riot, Blizzard, Bioware, etc. devs than former PMDT members, and I think that's an important thing to note, since there's a lot of problems with the game's presentation - from the lack of impact that attacks have to the fact that the characters' proportions don't feel quite right for a fighting game (look at how games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear - and even Smash - give their characters proportionately large appendages). A lot of these decisions are being made by people who don't have a background in fighting games, and it shows.
That said, I think that not quite accurately guessing what people want out of their game the first time around has been a recurring problem with Icons. On top of the roster thing, there was also the Evo 2017 reveal trailer, which got a ton of flak even from fans of the game because they pretty much entirely focused on aspects of the game that were similar to Melee while downplaying or even outright ignoring ones that made it stand out from the crowd, instead saving them for gifs on their twitter.
.....ok now what about Slap City? :3
Slap City is the second best Smash clone next to Rivals, and has even more potential.
First Best*
Sounds lewd
"uhm something something slap city" wasn't a good enough review for you?
to be fair, I wrote this comment BEFORE I got to that part, so I apologize in that sense XD
My take:
Icons is ugly, boring, poorly animated, and has no identity of its own. It just takes other ideas, mashes them together and says “look at this.”
Rivals is fun, has beautiful graphics, great animations, and an entirely original roster while still maintaining what makes Smash fun. It also has non-multiplayer content which is a big plus.
Well said.
and also workshop characters on PC
Only thing I disagree with in this video is that Zetterburn in RoA does have a direct Smash analogue: he has all of his normals lifted directly from PM Wolf. I think, though, that this is completely forgivable. Having one character that plays similar to a spacie (a character that every PM and Melee player is familiar with) is I think very beneficial to getting PM and Melee players to try the game. There's a lot of PM/Melee players who play RoA as well, but when I'm showing someone the game for the first time I'll often tell them to try out Zetterburn, because he's the simplest and most familiar. However, even in Zetter's case he has oodles of new mechanics and tricks, while also having some moves (laser/shine) toned down from PM Wolf.
I really wish you had talked about animations more. Animations are everything in a fighting game. You NEED to be able to immediately tell what move your opponent is doing, and snappy, clean animations tell you a lot about how strong, ranged, and fast you should expect a move to be if you're not someone who has studied frame data in depth. Icon's animations look... floppy and samey, and as superficial as this sounds, a lot of them are missing particle effects that would greatly improve readability.
Wasn't Zettaburn the first character made because if he was, then that would make sense
I majorly disagree that you'll feel at home if you're a PM player. To me it felt A LOT more like smash 4 with wavedashing. Stupidly defensive. Different feeling in a bad way.
Wow. I was watching the video and automatically assumed you were a channel with at least 100k subs because of how professional you come across.
It would be interesting to see a part 2 with rushdown revolt and how it differs
Rushdown Revolt is actually interesting, currently playing the early alpha of it
@@xavibun ik it is so fun to play
@@thewolfenknight37 I'm hoping it takes off. I appreciate the spark mechanic a lot. They also did a good job at decloning the characters from their Melee counterparts.
@@xavibun yeah, my only complaint is that rush is just an auto wavedash which means u can get max distance wavedash with 1 button. I would prefer if they changed rush to be a short wavedash and have a manual wavedash be default longer than rush wavedash even if it was imputed to be shorter. That way it rewards technical skill but also is a crutch for people who can't wavedash
@@thewolfenknight37 That would be great actually. They're taking in all the feedback from their alpha so do let them know about this.
12:08 "at least one more on the way"
Devs: releases custom characters steam workshop
This is exactly the kind of content I like in CZcams, this is the first video of yours I watched, I'll stick around to watch some more
Raymer is legit badass, as well as the other unlockables. It hurts when a game isn't a showcase of what the developer creates, but a mirror of other mainstream things around it.
Amazing video, but a few things:
Whilst talking about tweaked RoA mechanics, you should have mentioned how air dodging doesn't put you in free/special fall - allowing it to be used offensively.
You mispronounced Clairen, but no biggy.
You could have talked about the pay-models as well. RoA is p2p and Icons is F2P, which is why a lot of people were attracted to Brawlhalla and why people could be attracted to Icons. You could have also mentioned how in RoA skins are (mostly) event-based instead of randomly rolling them or paying for loot boxes. When you buy DLC characters, you buy that character for money. There's no other option to buy them with in-game credits, the in-game credits in RoA don't even buy you any emotes, icons, etc. All they buy you is stages and characters for local use, and you should get enough credits within almost an hour of gameplay, whereas earning currency in Icons is grindy and random.
I hope Icons does more to itself to set it apart. Currently I am very disappointed with the game, it feels like another moneygrab similar to all these BR games popping up - but we'll see. I'll give it time.
> You mispronounced Clairen, but no biggy.
Haha, this whole time I've been reading it as Clarien. Thanks for pointing that out, and for the rest of the feedback.
Wow this video blew up. I swear I watched it less than a week ago and it only had like 6k views. 40k now. Either way, you deserve it man. I've never played icons or rivals, and yet I still thoroughly enjoyed this video.
Slap City is another one of the smash clones to come out but one of the core reasons it's actually fun is because the entire roster feels original and fun to play with. None of the cast are apparent smash clones
Great video! I stumbled across icons from an ad and this video filled me on everything I wanted know. Very impressed by the high production value as well, it must've taken some time to make! Keep up the great work!
Wonderful video that summarizes a lot of my thoughts about the Icons release while providing new info as well.
Great video man, good editing and rock solid commentary.
I love Smash, Rivals, and Icons. But Icons does seem to be in a sort of self-made rut at the moment. I really hope they can right themselves before full release. After all, early access is early access.
You let off Icons way too easy. Granted I haven't played since it released on steam but my god did I have a lot more bad to say about it
Go ahead, I'm interested in hearing more criticisms of the gameplay since I haven't played it, but don't like how it looks.
The gameplay wasn't the core issue. There were a lot of bad animations and awkward visuals but I can forgive that.
The main issue my friend and I encountered was around controller support. He had an xbox controller and I had a usb ps3 controller knock off and neither of ours worked with the game. Same with a gamecube controller using the Wii U adapter. The game said on steam "partial controller support" but no one ever specified which controllers. Maybe that's fixed now.
Another issue was no pausing, or even being able to open a menu mid match.
This culminated in a shitshow because I accidentally unbound my special button before entering a match. I couldn't open a menu to rebind it nor could I pause to exit. I just had to jump off the ledge to get out of the match.
To top it all off there were more pay to play heroes than free to play. Talk about a kick in the balls. It's an early access game for god's sake. I wouldn't mind if the game was pay to play but there's no way I'm going to cash out to be a beta tester for a game that I already wanted to uninstall.
And this is me trying to be objective. I have a lot to say about the character designs and overall art direction but I'll let you come to your own conclusions on that.
Why wouldn't a game allow you to pause mid match? That sounds incompetent. Not having a lot of controller support does kind of suck especially if it doesn't specify what controllers it does support. I can see what you mean with pretty much all of your points.
Most fighting games have an option to make pausing occurs when holding the start button instead of pressing it, to prevent players to get disqualified in tournament for having pressed start by accident or if the button bugs out and decide to press itself. However getting rid of the option all together is just absurd, I do concurr.
This is impressive! Hopefully this video goes viral and you grow bigger, you deserve it with high quality info, argument based opinion and awesome narrating. Good job man.
Rivals is the best designed platform fighter for competetive play imo. The only reason its not fully the best is that i think the lack of shield and ledge might be offputting to a newcomer, but thats soley based on me playing smash for 12 years
I remember playing the little Super Smash Land, and being baffled at how good it was.
Aether rules.
If Icons wanted to be such a direct Smash clone, then they should have gone full force into it. If you don't want to rely on your own identity, then be the best clone you can be. A seven character roster is not that. Other Smash-inspired games have excuses for smaller rosters, because they are designing original characters with original moves in original stages with original gameplay. Icons was reskinning Smash (or an idealized version of it). Take that Project M work, churn out a bunch of original models for the paper-thin legal liability, and then start working out from there. If you don't have faith in your original ideas, then start adding them after you've already achieved "best possibly direct Smash clone". Don't just try to do both halfway.
dude this was a really good video! Looking forward to watch more!
Thank you for this video! Thanks for your time and your work :)
Rivals is in the workshop, now. We're getting all sorts of characters that I never even thought I'd be able to see, and a lot of them are even working on balancing and other issues, too.
I'm Rivals all the way, man. Excellent video!
can we appreciate that Rivals of Aether was made by the same dude that created that Gameboy demake smash game???
So good.
*so gooood*
Wait really?
holy shit i have to sit down for a second.
Weeaboo Trash I don't know if you're being sarcastic or genuinely surprised :-(
i'm genuinely surprised, I didn't know.
Weeaboo Trash oh nice!
Well, in super smash land, one of the secret characters was Vaporeon, with a completely original moveset, so interesting in fact that he ended up becoming that quadruped killer whale thingy I forgot the name that appears on Rivals!
So cool, really.
oh yeah I remember that now, Vaporeon and Orcane are like identical.
This video is supper well put together. I really like it and it was a great first impression.
Amazing amazing video man. Very good quality and for under 2k subscribers! Subscribed, best of luck to you!
The main thing that makes me sad about icons is that one of the main animation designers was silentdoom, who was in charge with a lot of the new animations of project m like samus's roll,and charizards pretty fiery fair claw and taunt animations for example, and i really likes his work and perfectionist mentality. Ironically he complained about the smash bros sonic up taunt animation because it was stiff and jittery kind of like a lot of the icons animations and it makes me wonder with the stiff animations if he wasn't trying or his work experience didn't transfer well to icons. It's a shame to see him fired, but icons is in fact a game that needs improvement in a lot of areas.
Given how the game turned out, Silentdoom's probably glad he's not associated with Icons anymore. :p
I love how much rivals is growing! I got the game a few years ago when it was still in its beta. I got it in early access and I still love it! Can’t wait for the switch version. Can’t believe I was one of the first people to notice it!
Thank you for convincing me, man. I just picked up Rivals of Aether last night because if this video.
Wow this channel is a gem. 800 subscribers with this level of video quality? Count me in
The art style and unique attributes to the characters that defy Smash expectations go a long way toward making ROA and Slap City more appealing than the other Smash clone attempts.
This video is excellent, definitely sub worthy. Could see a lot of time and effort was put into this and it shows. That Slap City comment hurt though.
Slap City is great. I thought it would be better to use one primary example of a contrast to Icons in this video, so I went with Rivals since I have more experience with it!
AtlasOne I think it was a good move to keep it to just Icons vs. Rivals, especially considering that Rivals has had more development and time to recieve imput. That being said, a video about Slap City by you is something I am fully interested in seeing, knowing how much of a curveball it was when it started getting attention, especially compared to Icons
thank you for putting the project m theme at the start of this video, I really missed it.
Hey, never saw your channel before, but great vid. Very clear speaking and good pave and solid use of visuals. Subbed.
when you said 6 frames lag even offline I just couldnt continue, what a huge fail, no thanks
When I saw the Icons commercial playing at... was it Evo 2017 or was it this year? Either way, all I saw was the characters acting exactly like melee characters, which made me instantly not interested. I mean why would I care for a melee clone if I already don't like melee? And it's not even that it looks like a melee clone, it looks like a cheap melee clone.
Lets hope the game just improves.
if you don't like melee, Icons doesn't seem interesting
if you like melee, Melee still looks more interesting than Icons
they buried themselves in this
@@luissilva1954 absolutely!
This vid is very very underrated. Good job dude
I really liked your video! Keep up the good work my guy!! (P.s I found your channel from typing Heimerdinger meme which is just hilarious to me)
I honestly feel like there can be no Smash stand-in at this point. The gameplay is so ingrained into Smash's identity, that anyone who attempts something similar will just be seen as an imitator. Not to mention the roster. You could have original characters on par with Overwatch, but it still couldn't beat Smash's line-up of Nintendo all stars. That's what sells Smash. The internet broke when Sonic was announced because of these characters' history. "You can have an all-around character fight a speedy lightweight? So? But you can have gaming's most iconic rivals finally duke it out in an official game? That's incredible!" You see what I mean?
Well.....there's also the whole "playable on PC" thing. You can outdo Smash Bros. in the regard that it's stuck on Nintendo consoles.
Ted the Fullbringer Well true, but it'll never be seen as more than, "the Smash equivalent for non-Nintendo users." And really, that's a luxury no other game can really afford. People buy consoles just for Smash because any other game is just seen by them and others as a cheap rip-off. And while that is kind of bad for games like Rivals of Aether, it speaks to the power of Smash as a series.
Great video, and your channel shows a ton of potential. Some advice: Try no to put so much text up to read on screen.Or if you do, make it *very* sparing amounts of text. It's too much for a someone to listen, watch, and read all at once. Your voice work is also way above average, I'd love to see more of your stuff.
I didn't feel like there was too much text on screen, and he even iterates any large amounts of text also through voice, so you can clearly see the cons and pros and his points being made.
Where's Waldo
I swear, by just looking at the tumbnail of the video, i thought it was going to be about Overwatch and Paladin. That says a lot about the artstyle of Rivals.
Bro you sound refined. Keep it up, love the passion you clearly feel for these games.
3:23 LOL 2018 we were so naive.
Here before you hit 100k👌
this channel is underrated.
Nice video.
The quality of this video made me think you had thousands of subs, not 500! Really impressive man, cant wait to see more
I love the video, however i would have liked it to be extended to discuss more of the competition Icons has to overcome, specificslly Brawlhalla, as it is another free to play platform fighter than instead of copying smash took core mechanics and introduced a multitude of new ones. I myself have invested thousands of hours into fighting gsmes (mostly platform but many in traditional and 3d traditional as well) and i have the same feeling from icons. I truly love the devs, but feel it is lackluster in its current state. I know Pixel and co can make a truly incredible game (pm was freaking dope) and i really want icons to be good
Anyways catch this sub
yeah, it's kinda sad that no one in the smash community ever mentions Brawlhalla. I mean it's janky, but if Icons is constantly talked about, then I think Brawlhalla is worth a mention as well
Sub worthy, came from the reddit post in roa subreddit.
This is a great review! I like how you reviewed the game without bashing it. I too wanted it to be a great game. I think you hit the nail on the head with every point mentioned. Great review!!!
dope review. Ive never heard of this game before so appreciate the organization of your topics
I made a similar video on this a while back, but you said anything I could have tried to say with much better detail and clarity, so great job on this video. One thing I have to ask though, it was to my understanding that even Melee and Smash 4 had some frames of input delay built in? The Beefy Smash Doods had a video on it a while back, so I find it a little odd to hear people having issues with it in Icons if it's something that people who've already played Smash before would have been used to.
Most games have a natural input delay -- just the time that the game takes to process an input and then act upon it. Icons is unusual in the sense that the base input delay is (according to the developers) three frames, and then they intentionally add an additional 3 frames on top of it to help the netcode. This is fine for online play, but it is completely unnecessary when playing locally, which is how legitimate competition takes place in the fighting game scene. This means input delay is essentially doubled for no reason while playing offline, even though it doesn't need to be.
As far as why people notice it more, I can't really say. Anecdotally, I can mention that everybody I've played the game with has immediately noticed how sluggish the inputs feel and commented on it. Whether that's due to input delay or other problems with dropped inputs that get reported, I can't really say. All I know is that Icons has very muddy inputs that tarnish the entire experience.
That's the natural input delay that exists from the time it takes for the signal from your controller to be interpreted by the game. Icons is then adding 6 frames between the interpretation and the execution.
@@TheAtlasOne People are accustomed to a certain amount of input delay. 3 frames difference is actually very noticeable. If it were possible to have 0 frame input delay, we would feel that too.
For example on newer versions of the dolphin emulator with a low latency monitor, you can get under 3 frames of lag while playing melee. This gets hilarious when you get onto netplay and literally have to ADD frame buffer to make the game play like it should.
Smash bros is also fun because it haves recognizable characters.
You aren't playing with a plumber of short stature and mustache, you are playing with Mario, the Mickey Mouse of video games.
This is exactly the reason why Marvel vs. Capcom infinite died. We don't wanna play with a fast character that attacks with claws, we want to play as Wolverine, one of the most iconic X-Men.
Play characters, not functions.
@@TheHawtWingz Egad, that "functions" argument is so painfully true... you can have two characters with the same 'functions' in their kit, the same playstyle, but people will still ultimately prefer one or the other.
You just made me realize the most annoying part of watching Icon's gameplay: I'm watching a bootleg smash when it's only these copycat characters. When I saw 2 original characters duke it out, I actually enjoyed what I was seeing greatly. The guy with the spear (wow, made me realize more why smash needs one: A heavy character is more balanced with greater neutral range, like with a spear) gives a fix to one of the main problems with heavys in games like this, and the Bebop reference just has cool moves that aren't really part of smash (the, I assume, down smash with his guns both pointed down reminds me a lot of Noel from BlazBlue but that may just be a coincidence). If they did what Rivals does and just added a few moves to relevant characters as references, I'd appreciate it, but having a character that's just a reskinned smash character is just bad and lazy (especially since their models look stiffer than the original ones, almost like they adapted them verbatim from smash into a different engine).
And the delay does matter since most competitive tournaments will use local play to reduce all lag (and smash already has problems with delay based on port placement).
Nah Your point is bad imo. We play any games because of game play - not because of characters or plot. So the reason why I'd like to get Switch and play Smash Ultimate is because of game play - not because I Can play as one of my fav pokemons. Also I don't understand what's the diffrence between the character and a copypaste with the same functions as character if this functions makes this character "character . For example how can I make Mario and not make a character with mustache and plumber uniform then the mustache and plumber uniform is what makes Mario "Mario"
@@user-wy3ow4yc6e If that was the case, MvC:I would still be relevant because it allegedly (never tried it) plays the best of any of the MvC games, and yet it ended up flopping entirely due to bad presentation
I am so glad you referred to the character specific things as mechanics rather than gimmicks like everyone else does; gimmick just has a negative connotation. The characters each have a unique mechanic (sometimes more than 1), which adds to the individuality of the game and its cast.
Surprised by how few subs you have considering the quality of your work. I assume you must be new.. or unlucky. In any case, keep your work as great as this and they will come. Well done.
This my sound weird, but despite enjoying the hell out of PM, I actually want this game to feel less like melee, and half the roster is not doing me favors.
Hear me out: I have friends who don't play melee but love smash 4 and are hella hyped for smash 5. The use of melee's messy glitches to create special tech is something I hate. This is a terrible way to bring in new players and convince friends to try it out. That bar is way too damn high for newbies and I want people to keep playing.
In the end, you nailed it. This lacks identity and appeal to me, mechanicallu and visually. I REALLY wanted to like this.
Jordan Nguyen “messy glitches” all glitches are banned in tournament play
@@EmilyRose-wt8nt I phrased it poorly. I guess I mean tech coming from exploiting the design. I.e, wavedashing. If there's tech that clearly wasn't intended or emphasized, I don't think it should make it to standard play.
There comes a point in which the old rushed (but still great) game just isn't accessible to newcomers because the high floor requires tech.
I think Sm4sh does this well, as outside of Bidou and some cancels, you can play pretty damn high level or at least intermediate level without using exploited tech.
Jordan Nguyen tbh, the tech is not required, you don’t see puff or IC mains win by utilizing extreme tech skill. That primarily goes to spacy and mid tier mains. And things like wavedashing and L-cancelling are intentional. Wavedashing was to solve the problem of airdodging through stage. L-Cancelling is a nerfed version of smooth landing from 64, it survived an engine change. I guess they said “they might be mad if they can’t shield immediatedly upon impact of landing. Those are easy to learn, so easy that you’ll find countless noobs wavedashing within a week of picking up the game.
Can we stop saying this shit, it makes no fucking sense
@@thenerdscrossing no
Great video, and I agree with almost everything that was stated in this video, however, there was an error that I would like to address, and that is when you said "No other fighting game imposes this kind of input delay". This is actually factually not true, and in recent cases, street fighter 5 actually has the same input delay as ICONS, in 6. Even popular games can enforce this concept for more consistent play and have it work, but aside from that, excellent video, and I look forward to seeing more content!
On Reddit, the developers explained that the game has a natural input delay of 3ms, and that an additional 3 is added on top of that to bolster their netcode, for a total of six. This means that even when playing offline, you're stuck with 6 frames of input delay where only three is strictly necessary. This is what's unusual about Icons -- lots of other fighters have an input delay because the game naturally takes time to parse commands. Icons is the only one I've ever heard of that deliberately adds more on top of it while playing offline, in an attempt to have online and offline feel similar.
Doing some research, there's the potential that the Street Fighter V input delay may have been intentional but when the US team saw the backlash they immediately walked it back and went into damage control. likewise, the tekken games did it in similar fashion and fans assumed it was done in games like Tag Tournament 2 to make the game similar on and offline.
even if you want to deny that, Skullgirls did put in "-ascendhigher" which is most certainly a deliberate introduction of input delay.
Awesome video! Keep it up.
If it makes sence, you force me to not disagree with you. your arguments are so well presented that i'm subscribing at this very moment.
seriusly, your content is amazing, this is the first video i've seen from you and I just want to see more even if I don't know what kind of content you make. GGs
Icons looks so slow, floaty, and lacking in "oomph" when attacks hit.
Melee on PC exists and it's called Melee.
Fantastic video. I've been a dedicated competitive melee player for over a decade, and if I pick up icons it'll be because of this video. Also, I didn't realise Rivals has added character specific tutorials since I last played. I will definitely check those out!
One comment I want to make is that developers have to be careful of what original content they want to add to their game. I bought Rivals when it was in beta, and the thing which eventually turned me off the game was drift DI. As a melee player, the concept of drift DI was as foreign as standard DI would be to a traditional fighting game player. Every other radical change like parrying and no ledges was something I could accept and learn to love for its uniqueness, but drift DI alienated me from the game. I'm sure that it adds a level of depth to the defensive game that melee techniques like crouch cancelling never could offer, but it introduced a barrier to entry that I was never motivated enough to climb.
I’ll give you a sub man. You sounded like a guy who has at least 100k subs lol so I was very surprised. Keep up the good work!
My real gripe about Icons is how the team took the best characters from Smash and brought it to their game, making its identity literally, "the Smash game Melee fans were waiting for," as oppose to Rival of Aethers is clearly inspired and took a spin on Smash, separating the two.
Almost all Smash clones will always have Marth, Fox, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf and Sheik as "Melee fans wanting to make their own Smash games!" which reminds me a lot like Riot, "The Blizzard fans that wants to make their own Warcraft!"
Being inspired, like RoA, is one thing because you still have your original ideas and concepts to differentiate, but wanting to make your own by simply taking what was good about War3/Melee isn't inspiring nor appealing.
Personally, everything about Icons is unappealing. The character models, the UI, the layout.... everything is just a copy/paste from other popular games into one. (Remember when Flappy Birds was taken down, then you have those other Flappy Bird copies?) that's what it is, no sense of originality (except for the three original characters).
My thing is, if you are going to make a "Smash" game, don't take everything from Melee, be your own identity and make the game yours, not a copy of. If I wanted to play Melee, I'm turning on my Gamecube instead of playing a "Melee-inspired "Smash"".
The saddest part is that PMT were the first group to do a Smash mod and understanding how Smash works, but in the end, all they will ever be is just modders and fans of the originals. It pains me to say that the knowledge PM devs have is immense, but they couldn't take that knowledge and made their own community game that wasn't Smash Bros. for the longest time. Tsk tsk, they will always be the Riot of Blizzard, second best.
*"(except for the three original characters)."*
Afi & Galu seem like the only real original characters to me. Raymer is a Spike Spiegel/Ezreal fusion (but with worse hair) with R.O.B.'s laser ricochet mechanic, and Weishan is just Guan Yu/Xin Zhao.
He meant original in their gameplay compared to smash not their overall designs
@@wakkaseta8351 ...and even then, Afi and Galu are just sea-creature versions of Shisa or Fu Dogs. But they, Rayner and Weishan have GAMEPLAY elements that set them apart from the usual plate of Melee copy-pasta, which is the point.
What about slap city, the best of the bunch.
*multiflexes violently*
D U M B B E L L
something something
Rivals of Aether is better
no
What I love about rivals in the emphasis on stage control through unique mechanics. From the rock, to spreading plants or Ice or fire.
I really like this video, because I remember seeing alpharad do icons videos and thinking it looked really cool, but also seeing comments on twitter recently about how icons didn't seem very interesting. This gets at both, and that icons still has potential. (And also about my favorite platform-fighter, Rivals.)
Also, something, something, Slap City.
Rivals is amazing and had some big momentum early on from being played at Summit and Genesis. However, all the melee peeps shifted their focus to the prospects of Icons. HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!
Feels like Icons legit made all the competitive Smashers skeptical to play non-Nintendo platform fighters.
Fuck Wavedash games.
THERE CZcams I SAW IT, NOW LEAVE ME ALONE
after playing a fair pit of icons with intent to get into it and take it seriously like you mentioned at the end of your video, I'd say you hit the nail on the head. I was really interested in the game and it has some seriously fun points, but it just doesn't feel good to play it for long(though admitedly some of that comes from tilt off the face of the planet when I run into Zhurongs online) Now that you've confirmed for me that this is infact the PM crew, I have even more hopes for the future that they'll embolden themselves and try making more of their own content cuz I loved playing project M so much, but not because it made things more like melee, but because of the new things they did with the new and other characters and the fun awesome new content they made while also making a game that felt good to play(once I got the hang of it, cuz back then I was just getting into the more competitive platform fighter scene).
Hope this video gets more attention, you did very good and make a lot of good points.
You know, I downloaded rivals and fell out of it but after watching you go on about it I almost want to play it again lmao.
Great video by the way.
I personally do not think that anything will really surpass Melee. Project M, in my opinion, was a better game than Melee. It offered new stages, new characters, new music, and a far more balanced roster. The only thing that may turn people off is the engine because it feels different. But you still have all of the same options as in Melee. It's just more. But not nearly as many people play PM as they do Melee. I've asked people that I know that play Melee about other games such as Rivals, PM, Icons, Slap City, etc., and they always respond with this: "Why would I play something that is like Melee when I can just play Melee?" This leads me to believe that almost none of them care about anything outside of Melee. Nothing will ever be nearly as good for them. They would rather carry around CRT TVs than play something that is basically the same thing but on a more convenient platform. That being said, I do think there is a market for Melee-like games. It's a smaller audience, for sure, but it is an audience. Those people that like the ideas and concepts of Melee, but don't like Melee or they want more out of Melee. Like personally, I love updates, assuming they don't break the game. I like reading about what has changed. I do not like playing the same game for 15+ years. Sure, the meta may change, but it is still the same game; you are just playing it differently. Project M, Rivals, and other games allow for far more changes, for better or for worse. If the changes are too bad, they can be fixed. But overall, I personally believe it is better to update the game and have it changed rather than leaving it stagnated. I would love to see Icons thrive for this reason. It will never replace Melee, but it could be a good alternative for people who aren't as dedicated as that community.
I hear what you are saying, but you gotta be a bit more sympathetic. The analogy is something like asking top tennis players to get into squash. Or top baseball players to try cricket. If they already love and enjoy the more popular game, why would they look for an alternative? Not to mention, games like squash and cricket probably have more competitive integrity and originality than Icons. You see a similar thing happening with players getting back into Starcraft Remastered (aka Brood War). Sure you could play starcraft 2, and im sure one day starcraft 3, but brood war was just that good of a game its still worth playing 18 years later.
I agree platform fighters is a legit market, but you are absolutely correct that making it "like Melee" will be there biggest downfall. As a Melee player, theres nothing that would make me happier than a remastered version. Same exact gameplay, same characters, maybe a few map tweaks and more maps added with modern graphics. Thats it tbh, and I've heard other community figures voice the exact same sentiment.
I agree, this is the exact same thing that is happening with Enchanted Portals vs Cuphead, they literally ripped off the game they tried to get inspiration from
Great video!
I personally love how the Rivals characters are like mixtures of Smash characters. Ranno is a fun combo of Sheik and Greninja, Absa is a mix of Zelda and Pikachu, etc.
"no other game has a buffer even in offline"
Ultimate is quaking
He was talking about an input DELAY, not a buffer. Ultimate does not have an offline delay.
Good review, I enjoyed it. But Clairen is about as close to Marth as Zhurong is. And Zetterburn is PM Wolf with fire.
You took the words out of my mouth.
Your channel deserves more fame than it has
slap city 🙏
That game is just plain fun, and that's how it markets itself.
I don't rate games by how close they are to my preference, but instead to how they were intended.
That said I give slap city a 9/10 for fun
Not gonna lie the character designs look really boring and generic they look like they came from other games instead of staying with a theme to give itself some sort of personality like in aether the animals have an identity to all of them instead of generic warrior in armor with big weapon and warrior with sword and big elf lady and futuristic man in future armor , and the animation doesn't help because they make them look really stiff the only characters that at least look appealing would be those two tiki fellows
You got a sub really well thought out vid
Holy shit you deserve more subs great vid