What is the better fighter? Street Fight IV or Super Smash Bros. Brawl?

[The_vagabond7]

Khuutra said:

The_vagabond7 said:

Khuutra said:

--OkeyDokey-- said:
Khuutra, maybe you should wait until you've played both games before you get into this argument...

This is a very fair point, but I want to stress that I'm not saying that Brawl is as deep as Street Fighter IV. It almost certainly isn't. I'm just saying that Brawl's depth is not readily apparent to people who play in the tournament style, or who judge it by the metric used for other fighting games.

This is kind of an oxymoron. The hardest core, most dedicated, most serious players...seek the most simplistic shallow way to play? Don't you think they would be searching for depth, rather than stripping it away for the sake of making it easier for everybody to play? They play the way they do because every other way results in a devalueing of the games depth, reducing it to a party game where skill isn't as necessary as luck. Competitive players add depth, they don't remove it.

That is the rhetoric I am sure they use, but the removal of any sort of skill - that includes item management and environmental interaction - means that the experience is necessarily less deep.

Like I said, they plumb the depths of the character vs.s character interactions, but their plumbing occurs in a vacuum where the environment does not play a part and none of the game's other systems come into play.

Four lives.
No items.
Fox only.
Final Destination.

Dig it? Within those parameters (I am not being serious about that meme, I know that not all that many levels are banned from tournament play and most characters are viable) they go as deep as they can, but they do not operate outside of that. This turns Brawl into a fighting game like Street Fighter, when it is not that. It is considerably different, and has many other modes of play and factors which add to its depth, not remove it.

If you want to pretend that the removal of features and skillsets somehow adds to depth, you are free to do so, but I will not be taking you seriously. There is a difference between "character vs. character mechanics" and "depth", especially in Brawl, which is not a traditional fighter.

Of course, it's still kind of moot, isn't it? Because depth isn't the almighty metric of quality.

Variety isn't the same as depth.