Oh combos, how I love thee...so, I enjoy combos. After I saw Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, I wondered why the game did not have combos that looked as amazing as I saw in the film. Not to long after, Street Fighter Alpha was released and you immediately saw the influence from the movie. From the way the characters were drawn to...the combos, that is all. Unfortunately Street Fighter fanatics didn't quite see the joy of chain combos and so developers opted out on it during the next offering in the series.
I don't know what it is about combos that have me so caught up in doing them. I guess I just enjoy the fluid nature of them. Take a look at any combo vid, like this one, and you just can't deny that there is something awesome about them..that is until you get hit with one during a match then it becomes something that you might just deplore.("you filthy combo!") The big thing about combos is that they take good execution. The better your execution the more combos, the more combos, the more stylish it looks, and in some cases, the more stylish it looks, the bigger the damage.
Unfortunately, not all of us are incredibly dexterous. While I can admit I haven't consistently kept my muscle memory combos on point, I have been working on them on a regular basis. I haven't lost hope completely but I definitely wonder if I'm just not physically/mentally equipped to belt out the combos that I really want to execute...I mean gawd they can be so beautiful but damn it if they aren't hard to pull off sometimes. It can also be heart breaking when you've made some great decisions, and you have the life lead only to have it taken from one mistake. To sit in disgust while your opponent combos your life bar away mercilessly can be painful to watch, especially when the combos are extra long.
I often find the longer a combo is the more it can take you out of the game mentally but given the difficulty of certain combos, it's hard not to advocate on the side of reward for those who can do them. Now, I'm not saying that combos should be done away with but I can agree that maybe it would be a more engaging experience for everyone if they were shorter. I can understand that part of the love for fighting games are their execution difficulty but we all know that there is so much more to a fighting game then just execution.
There are mixups, there is spacing, mind games all sorts of things that I believe if focused upon will bring a lot more people into fighting games and I for one am all for it even if that means that combos have to take a hit. Recently, the combo system for the new Tekken 7 was explored noting that shorter combos could effectively create more damage. Some aren't to elated about this idea but others seem to be enthusiastic about this direction.
Make no mistake, I don't EVER want to see an end to combos. I believe they have their place in fighting games more then anything else but I can honestly say that getting hit by touch of death scenarios can be quite bothersome sometimes. I want a happy in-between and if that means killing combos is the solution, then I say it's worth at least trying this time around.You can always bring them back the next time around but if you don't try to bring more people in we may never see fighting games gain a bigger audience.
