EVO 2014: The World’s Greatest Evo Recap

Click here for my beginner’s guide to Evo 2014 and the FGC.

Evo 2014 | Feel the hype. (PHOTO BY DAVID ZHOU | POLYGON)

So, Evo 2014 is over. It was mostly amazing. I’ve decided to give grades to things that stood out most to me. These grades are objectively correct.

EVO 2014: A Beginner’s Guide to the Greatest Video Game Tournament in the World

Get focused – it’s EVO. (PHOTO BY DAVID ZHOU | POLYGON)

OKLAHOMA CITY – EVO (short for Evolution Championship Series) is not just the greatest fighting game tournament in the world, but it is also the greatest video game tournament, period. Every year, fighters from around the globe converge on Las Vegas to test their mettle against the very best players on the planet. To be the best, gamers must out-perform all others on titles including Ultra Street Fighter 4, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee and many others. It is an exceptionally hype event.

The Mario Kart series – An Authoritative Ranking

Mario Kart 8 – Get it Friday.

OKLAHOMA CITY – With Mario Kart 8 dropping this Friday, it only seems appropriate to run back the previous seven titles and rank them from worst to best. I’m extremely excited about this. Here we goooooo!

Expanding The Mind Palace, Turn-Based Strategy Style

I recently looked at my photos on my iPod and this is what I saw:

There’s a Street Fighter in All of Us

There’s a Street Fighter in All of Us: A Glorious Look at What Makes the World’s Greatest Fighting Game Series Similar to the World’s Greatest Superhero

There’s so much that’s already been said about the Street Fighter franchise that I can’t even write “there’s so much that’s already been said about the Street Fighter franchise that I can’t write ‘there’s so much that’s already been said about the Street Fighterfranchise’ without plagiarizing someone” without plagiarizing someone.  Wait, what???  Anyway, I could recount all my fond memories of playing the games, like seeing the ubiquitous Street Fighter II at the gas station and wishing my parents would let me go to a real arcade to fulfill my destiny of becoming a videogame savant like that kid in The Wizard.  Or, I could write about the stalwart nature of the series and how, through impeccable physics and savvy tweaks to the system, the core gameplay has survived in the second dimension despite an industry-wide push toward gaming the in third dimension (I know SFIV has 3d character modeling. Thx.).  Or perhaps I could do something on how SF, and indeed the whole fighting game genre, stands for freedom of expression and the right for violent games to exist.  But I’ll leave those stories to better men.  Well, more interested men.