5/30/08
Objective Tangent: Pros and Cons of One Hit Kills
By MixMasterLar
with inserts and notes by nestlekwik
Since the first Atari Boxing game came out (and whatever might have happen to come out before that), the fighting genre has tried many things in an attempt to improve how the games played while helping its replay value. Since the first, we have been graced with such techniques as jumping, blocking, running, rolling, parrying, air combos, air blocking and a lot of neat material I’m leaving out. Most have become standard issue now and every game we can think of within the genre has them, while others were implemented, failed to make an impact and later ditched. The newest technique that the genre has been experimenting with for the last few years is what we like to refer to as “instant kills” or “one-hit K.O.s" - a single move that can win the bout for you. Many games have tried it and a few made it work, but a lot of developers - especially those making 3D games - have stayed away from such things. With Namco adding in a form of instant kill in the upcoming Soul Calibur IV, I feel that the technique is here to stay for a bit. But are they really that great or merely a cheap move to win whenever you care to?
What are you doing?
First, let’s define exactly what people think of when we make mention of this mystic move.
A one-hit kill is generally a move that can only be executed when certain conditions are met, require a player to do something that is “out of the norm” from the average day at the fights and also requires an advanced input command. A great example is Guilty Gear XX, where a player must save up half or more energy and then press all four attack buttons to enter rage mode - just so they can have a short time limit to enter a super move-type command just to pull the move off (for those who are familiar, I believe the most common GGXX command is QCF, QCF + HS). Sounds like a lot of work, but with some practice then most every player can pull it off at least once in awhile. One-hit kills must also kill anything. In only one hit. But I guess you figured that out by now
However, some people have referred to air combos and juggles as being “instant kills” if pulling the combo results in 100% of the opponent’s heath bar being depleted. An example is in the first Virtua Fighter, where Jeffry can knee someone in the air, punch a couple of times, headbutt and then pancake the opponent for every bit of HP in the round. While not a “One Hit Kill” in the truest form, it’s about as hard to pull as one and gets the job done. Thankfully combos like that have been taken out of most major games (including the later VFs), so no need to fear them anymore. Essentially, anything which allows players to string a death command that a player has no defense against has been hotly debated in the fighting and gaming community. The question remains: Do one-hit kills justify the skill of the player who pulls them off in a pinch or can pound out commands to stringent timing or are they just cheap shortcuts to piss off opponents?
While one-hit kills or knockouts definitely have a place in titles such as Bushido Blade or boxing titles as a measure of counter-attacking, timing and positioning, the real matter of the fact is their place in traditional one-on-one fighters where, normally, a dozen or more attacks are necessary to put your opponent on their back for good. Perhaps the true origin of the one-hit kill can be traced to the very obscure Time Killers (arcade cabinet and one of the Genesis' rarest games). Being dizzied in Street Fighter II was frustrating, but getting dizzied in Time Killers was just downright embarrassing. When an opponent was dizzied at any time in the round, pressing all five attack buttons (yeah, five. Evidentially a "head" attack button was deemed necessary) would unleash a frenzy attack which dismembered and then decapitated the opponent for an instant, and gory, victory in the round.
Because the title never broke beyond cult status, even it in its BloodStorm follow-up, one-hit kills never really gained mainstream notoriety until Guilty Gear XX (X2), even after being featured in Guilty Gear, which, again, never amounted to much outside of the United States through its low-key Playstation (One) release (these one-hit kill fighting games are a bit of a collector's item, eh?). Even though XX brought the series more into the spotlight than it had ever been before, not many more people jumped onto the Guilty Gear train. Through solid reviews, all most took away from the game was the gimmick of one-hit kills. Is that really fair?
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