Also should add Arcana Hearts 3 to the list.
I only listed stuff that hasn't been released yet. I assume you play? I was too cheap to buy it (especially because the competitive scene showed no signs of really taking off), but it seems pretty interesting.
Can I assume from this that some of you play Arc System Works games? I have recently been playing a lot of BlazBlue.
Skullgirls is looking pretty exciting. I was impressed with the recent rundown of Parasoul's gameplay and pleased with most of the changes they have made. As some of you may know, the project lead is Mike Zaimont, aka MikeZ, a well-known tournament player of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. His experience with those games really shows both in the game mechanics and in the competitive balance decisions.
One of the things I like best about GG and BB is the way individual characters play really differently from one-another. They do this by having four basic inputs: weak, medium, strong, and "drive" (or "dust" in GG). Moves involving the drive button engage a character-specific mechanic that can be anything from magnetically pulling the opponent to setting up a customizable grid of laser turrets to controlling a puppet with its own attacks and health. This makes BB and GG really diverse and fun, but it also creates a sort of barrier to entry, because the character-specific mechanics are often complicated to learn, especially when laid on a framework of links, cancels, etc. on par with SF or MvC.
What's great about Skullgirls is that they seem to have made each character play differently without making the player reinvent the wheel with each one they learn. So far, it looks like you can pick up Skullgirls and be out of the button mashing phase in just a couple of hours. I love the complexity of high-level BB, but I also like the idea of a similar game that I can actually teach my friends to play.
