Rising Thunder (PC)

Rising Thunder is a new fighting game from Seth Killian (ex-Capcom), Tom Cannon (EVO founder), and Tony Cannon (creator of GGPO). It's a rather interesting attempt to rethink the 2D fighter genre in a way that makes it more accessible without fundamentally changing the strategy and skill that players look for. Special moves are all mapped to ordinary button presses, and limited by cooldown bars. There are no fireball or dragon punch motions, and the game is pretty playable even on a keyboard. Despite this, it's still attempting to be a "serious" fighting game, and indeed I got completely wrecked by more experienced players when I played online.

Technically, it's really solid. Runs at a flawless 60fps, and no lag in sight. Visually/thematically, I can't help but pretend it's a sequel to One Must Fall 2097. In any event, it's an interesting experiment by some folks who know the genre inside and out.

How do you play it.

It looks like World of Street Fightercraft in terms of mechanics.

I mean that literally. Is it on Steam?

Interesting. I've been experimenting with playing in "easy" mode on some fighters lately to focus more on spacing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diff-chan

I mean that literally. Is it on Steam?

---

There's a beta (alpha?) you can download directly. Sign up on www.risingthunder.com and you should get an invite within a few days.

They've been handing out alpha codes. I believe that is the only way to play it right now, but lots of people seem to be getting them. Only xbox 360 sticks work at the moment from what I'm hearing.


Looks pretty slick coming out of left field as it did. I just wish the characters had any sort of personality at all. It's also annoying that this will have real GGPO and SFV will not.

I think the easy exectution is an interesting experiment, but in theory "cooldowns" are a big turnoff. Haven't played yet though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cigsthecat

I think the easy exectution is an interesting experiment, but in theory "cooldowns" are a big turnoff. Haven't played yet though.

---

I'm hardly the fighting game diehard you are, but they don't bother me, personally. It just becomes another component of the strategy, another kind of risk/reward. They balance the cooloffs reasonably, so for simple projectiles and the like it's less than a second and you can still spam pretty effectively, but other moves might be out for 3 or 4 seconds. In practice, it all seems to work.

Yeah it all makes perfect sense once you play it. I like it a lot.