Caltrops - Gamerasutra





	[quote name="skip"][quote]JM: What is State of Nothingness? How important is it to master, and can you rely on it to make comebacks? PM: State of Nothingness and Issens are two mechanics in one. Firstly, the meter for this is the small triangle above the life bar, and it starts at roughly 20% life. When your rage meter is partially filled but not maxed, you can press neutral D to Meditate, which will sacrifice your rage meter to shift the triangle further up your life bar. You can then activate this by pressing BCD when you are on your last round, your life is below the marker, and you still have your rage meter. Like Rage Explosion, doing this will permanently consume your rage meter, even if there’s another round afterwards. When activated, time is slowed to 1/4 normal speed, and the length of this time slow is affected by how much meter you’ve stored up. This lets you do normally impossible combos and blockstrings, and is effectively free 50%+ damage if you catch them jumping! If the opponent is grounded and still has his meter, though, he can burst out of any hits you get, so it’s not completely free.[/quote] I like how each mechanic is explained in such depth, although I guess fighting games have the advantage of having a devoted following who analyze each character and move thoroughly. This isn't really journalism either, but I liked this article from an online journal of games criticism about how players <a href="http://gamescriticism.org/articles/lange-1-1"> tend to play good characters</a> even when given options not to. Maybe it's why game designers don't bother creating subtle morality systems. Players are just going to choose the nice option anyway. [quote]39 percent of survey participants claimed to typically play a game only once. Within that subset of players, 59 percent of participants played the game as a good character. 39 percent of those who played the game only once did not expressly play good or evil, but claimed to make decisions “on a choice by choice basis.” Five percent of participants played only evil. A majority of these participants (55 percent) said that they “usually” tried to really do in the game what they would actually do in real life. An additional 10 percent said they “always” did in the game what they would in real life, and 23 percent answered “sometimes.”[/quote][/quote]