I am not good at fighters. Whats a good one to start with?

[beng76]

I have always been interested in fighting games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters and such. When I play someone I usually get destroyed though. Whats a good one to learn the moves on and get the basics from? I just never played them much in the past but would like to give them more of a chance. 

[JDarkside]

Persona 4 Arena simplifies things significantly (though be aware that series comes with huge P4 and P3 spoilers if you haven't played them). You can also try Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, which has one of the more simple set-ups among Camcom fighters (though the team system takes some getting used to). There's also Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, which has some of the most simple inputs in Capcom's fighting library.

[Weasel]

Injustice, Mortal Kombat, and Skullgirls have really good tutorials.

[alphex]

The Versus games have a shitton of mechanics, I would not recommend starting with them (or Arcsys titles).

It depends on how you learn. If tutorials are important to you, listen to Weasel. However, Street Fighter IV is a very easy game as far as mechanics go, so you might want to look into that one. In other words, you might also just pick up a game with a smoother learning curve.

I learned the basics with Street Fighter Alpha 2, but that was 15 years ago. The game might be way too archaic for your liking.

[Vokkan]

For 2D fighters:

Stop jumping
Learn anti-airing
Learn combos
Learn mixups
Learn footsies
Learn about frameadvantage and what's safe/punishable

(for 3D fighters it's just combos, mixups and frameadvantage)

[alphex]

Also, start throwing. It completely ruins the opponents flow and asserts space control.

[Dingo]

I would recommend Street Fighter II. It's the most basic fighting game you'll get that teaches all of the fundamentals. Once you have a comfortable understanding of it is when you should start branching out. Anything after that starts to add new mechanics to the basic gameplay which could distract from the fundamentals.

[Feynman]

I agree with Street Fighter 2. It has a small character roster and characters have few special moves, which reduces the amount of rote memorization required. It plays at a much slower pace that modern fighting games, giving you more time to react and making complex combo inputs easier. It allows for both basic and more complex combos without anything more advanced like air combos and super cancels and such, so you can learn how to string together a solid combo without dealing with anything too crazy.

With all the extra stuff that later fighting games would add stripped away, Street Fighter 2 allows you to focus on learning and mastering the basic concepts and tactics that form the foundation of fighting game skills.

[beng76]

Thanks for all the tips guys. I may pick up a few of these and give them a chance.

[caoslayer]

The game I would suggest to start with is street fighter IV just because it is the most played game out here and it is easy to find varied skill games. You could try games with easier to do moves and combos but those are only played by people playing serious and so you need a more mainstream game so you can find casual players.

Inside street fighter IV, most people points to Ryu as the starter character since he can do anything pretty good, zoning and going to offense but I would recommend you someone like guile that only have two special moves and force you to use the basics to win, also he have one way to be played that never changes regardless your opponent. Anyway just try to pick someone you can do the moves and feel confortable with but try to learn beforehand if he have some cripping weakness, by example, grapplers make awful starting characters because they are owned by zoning badly in the sense that even mastering the game, you can easily lose the match.

By the way, not everybody can become a good fighting game player the same way not everybody can become a good sport player, there are physical and mental requirements for that. So settle for having fun and learn, the most important thing of a fighting game for me is facing someone better than me and by rematching getting better by figuring his battle plan and countering it.

[shelverton]

Street Fighter 2 or 4 all the way. I also found King of Fighters pretty easy to get into but those have much harder arcade modes IMO.

I would stay away from the likes of BlazBlue for the time being though. They are some of my favorite fighters but it took A LOT of practice and wasn't much fun in the beginning.

For 3D fighters I'd recommend Dead or Alive or Tekken for starters, especially Dead or Alive which is easy enough to get reasonably good at. Don't touch Virtua Fighter just yet.

[beng76]

Yea I am leaning towards picking up a Street Fighter game again. Thanks for the comments guys.

[Bobinator]

Jan 11, 2015 11:42:07 GMT -5 Weasel said:

Injustice, Mortal Kombat, and Skullgirls have really good tutorials.

All of these are good, but if you want a "traditional" fighting game that's closest to most of the other stuff out there, you'll want Skullgirls. The tutorial's a lot more extensive on that one, too, and it's actually really good about explaining stuff for new folk. It's also a pretty fun game on its own. It's really fast, it's easy to just get into and do fancy combos just by stringing moves together, and the character design is definitely interesting, even if it gets a little skeevy now and then.

A lot of people are probably going to recommend Street Fighter 4 to you, and I can understand that, since it's basically the current "standard" of fighting games at the moment. I wasn't super fond of it, though. It felt way too slow, somewhat clunky, and I felt like the guy sitting back and blocking everything had the advantage far too much of the time. It's not so great on teaching you how to play, either, if that's a dealbreaker. Still, I could just be a cranky old fighting game hipster, so don't mind me.

[Vokkan]

I'd not recommend SF2 just because how hard it is finding people to play against. Beating AI opponents is nothing like beating human opponents. You can practice certain things against the AI (reactions mostly) but if you're just trying to defeat the AI you'll just learn to exploit AI holes.

SF4 really only adds the focus mechanic, which can be ignored. The only drawback I see is that SF combos require very strict timing, so you'll spend a lot of time just practicing your links.

[caoslayer]

Jan 11, 2015 17:18:56 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

Jan 11, 2015 11:42:07 GMT -5 Weasel said:

Injustice, Mortal Kombat, and Skullgirls have really good tutorials.

All of these are good, but if you want a "traditional" fighting game that's closest to most of the other stuff out there, you'll want Skullgirls. The tutorial's a lot more extensive on that one, too, and it's actually really good about explaining stuff for new folk. It's also a pretty fun game on its own. It's really fast, it's easy to just get into and do fancy combos just by stringing moves together, and the character design is definitely interesting, even if it gets a little skeevy now and then.

A lot of people are probably going to recommend Street Fighter 4 to you, and I can understand that, since it's basically the current "standard" of fighting games at the moment. I wasn't super fond of it, though. It felt way too slow, somewhat clunky, and I felt like the guy sitting back and blocking everything had the advantage far too much of the time. It's not so great on teaching you how to play, either, if that's a dealbreaker. Still, I could just be a cranky old fighting game hipster, so don't mind me.

Actually the slow pace and being able to block stuff is the thing that makes SF4 the better game to learn, when you get hit you know why and can learn why you lost.

When I play something like MvC3 or SFxT I feel that I lost because the opponent used a kind of unblockable crap so the enfasis is going full attack with no through or I failed to block a single jab that leads to a combo for 80% my hp or worse with the same feeling when I win, I don't feel like I played better but that I got luckier in the game of pulling the jab into combo.

And still the game is no slow at all when you are fighting against the twins, ibuki, guy, viper or rufus, there are some characters made for rush up and excels at it just happens that being defensive and playing by punishing mistakes is an option.