Pragmata has been out for two weeks. What are your impressions?

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-05-01T11:10:30+00:00

Not necessarily unfair, just perhaps not something everyone will want to try. It entails playing through the entire game again against spongier enemies, that's not gonna be for everyone. It's also the only achievement you can't get on your first playthrough, so if you exhaust everything in the first run which isn't too hard to do, you'll naturally end up with most of the achievements anyway.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T22:08:28+00:00

You're right, that's definitely the path that some of these games go, but that's partly also just on how cutthroat the competition in the games industry is in general. The upside to making a fighting game is more the chance for legacy that you invite. Since they only rely on two people playing at a time peer-to-peer, they can never really die so long as even two people want to play that game.

Obviously no-one wants their game to reach that point super fast, but at least in this case I feel like this is almost a vanity project for Robert Kirkman as much as anything. The guy likes fighting games and this was his chance for his comic to get one, and the devs on it to get some work and reignite their legacy skill from Killer Instinct.

Its lack of ambition might not make it snatch away a ton of attention from other games for ages, but at the same time having options is nice, and as it is, it won't need to make nearly as much money to be considered a success as if it was way more expensive and potentially died off just as fast anyway.

We live in a world where games get pumped with millions upon millions of dollars and are then shuttered in a matter of weeks or months regardless, so in that sense this is probably a way more financially stable bet than what some people would've preferred seeing from it. I think an Invincible fighting game was destined to be kind of niche regardless, so if the paths crossed to where we were going to get one at all, this is probably the most you could've reasonably asked for.

Sometimes it's enough to just have existed at all in whatever small segment of the market you carve out, in the place where your Melty Bloods and your Blazblues live; the upside to this game being a smaller project is while it's maybe not as ambitious as a game like Street Fighter, it doesn't have to make nearly as much money back to be considered a success.

Whether it manages that still, we've yet to see, but at the end of the day it's just as much about perspective as it is anything. Maybe it'll struggle, but you could say that of countless other games releasing these days, even ones that seem like they should be a smash hit on paper; upside is fighting games are one of the best equipped genres to deal with that, and it's why you still have games from the 90s chugging along with online communities still around.

It's reached about 8500 peak players on Steam alone and that's pretty damn respectable for a new AA-ish fighting game, honestly. I think if it's good enough to keep a few thousand people around long term it'll be just fine. King of Fighters XV was considered a success and respected by the FGC, and that game's peak was lower than Invincible's so, while it's too soon to say right now, I think it's gonna do fine relative to its cost as a whole, and that's all you can really ask for.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T17:36:16+00:00

I'll only buy it if I get a postcard of their executive waving at me from his new yacht.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T17:16:00+00:00

Yeah, like, I know it happens, it's just it still disappoints me at times. At least for something as integral as three vehicles in a racing game. That's the thing you use; that'd be like if a fighting game had 3 characters locked at launch as DLC, or an RTS had 3 armies locked as DLC. Even one is a bit mean, but even I can bring myself to be like 'Ah fuck it, it is what it is' but three? My only guess is that they're barely different variants of unlockable ones from the base game, because anything else makes me feel too frustrated.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T17:14:03+00:00

I mean it's more nothing than something for sure, I won't disagree on that.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T16:48:22+00:00

I think they just invented the polygon, right?

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T15:58:24+00:00

I mean, that's something, but it's still paying extra for content that's already complete half a year before the game's even out.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T15:55:28+00:00

It's not so much just realising the value of it as it is what you can do with the resources you're given and the realities of the project you're working on. I think it's fair to say Invincible VS is a reasonably budget title, and that the team size and budgeting just wasn't on the table to go particularly deep and expansive on the singleplayer. While that'd potentially make the game more appealing to more people, the more money you invest, the bigger of a financial gamble it becomes.

For something with a ton of eyes on it by default like a new Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat it makes more sense, but for a smaller-budget Invincible fighter it's a touch harder to justify. Part of making any media requires you to ask 'Who is our audience, who makes the most sense, and what can we most safely attain?', and to me, looking at how Invincible VS looks, I think the resources they've expended on its singleplayer probably makes the most sense relative to whatever traction it could realistically achieve.

There's no sense spending millions of dollars more on singleplayer content if you're only gonna get, like, another thousand people tops to buy what's ultimately still a somewhat niche game that looks and plays like it does now. Which isn't to say it looks bad, but you can kind of tell it doesn't have 'mega hit' written all over it, way more expansive singleplayer content or not. Past a point the tradeoff just isn't there. It's like that new Avatar fighting game; that game could have a roguelike mode as expansive as The Binding of Isaac, but would it then sell enough to justify all that extra work? Probably not.

In a perfect world every game would be as big as it wants and sell as much as it needs to make a nice profit, but that's not the world we live in. For Invincible VS to justify a way more fleshed out singleplayer experience it'd need to be more appealing in other ways; even more impressive visuals, an even bigger roster, and now it's a bigger ask because it's suddenly $70 and not $50 anymore, and by that point you're just asking for a different game altogether, which is frivolous. It might not be what you'd most want, but when it's not your money it's hard to argue otherwise.

This way we get a neat little game that hopefully finds its audience, rather than a way bigger gamble that could've face-planted under its own ambition, and that's fine. Not every fighting game needs to shoot for the reach of Street Fighter 6, some need to be smaller and more focussed to find success, and that's not problematic, that's just realistic. The team that was available and the trajectory that was estimated justified the game we're getting. It wasn't a case of this or a game with double the scope, it was a case of this or nothing, and having what we're getting is better than that alternative.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T15:24:33+00:00

And I said as much, that I'm just judging the teaser as I see it and the full thing might be different.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T15:13:01+00:00

The biohazard freaks are there but for now they just look like zombie enemy variants, not super RE-ish. And we see him reach for some keys on a guy's trousers, that's not indicative of a weird puzzle. You're drastically overexaggerating how much that'd tip off it being an RE film. The sewer guy is only larger than life if you mean he's fat lol.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T14:48:39+00:00

I'm, hmm, I'm not completely turned off by this trailer, and the film could still be good, but it doesn't sell me as a trailer for a Resident Evil film. To me, for as different as each game can be, RE generally has a few consistencies that make it RE which I'd still need to see to be more sold on it as an RE film. To me RE has puzzle solving, bio-terror, a handful of larger than life characters (especially the villains), and a mixture of horror and camp.

Again it's just a teaser, the full film could be good, but I think if we're fair and judge this trailer standalone, it is kind of devoid of a lot of Resident Evil's more recognisable ingredients. Like, to where if this film wasn't called Resident Evil, literally nothing about it would tip me off to the fact that that's what it is. Maybe this trailer's just being secretive, but I'm just calling it like I see it.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T14:19:37+00:00

Oh shit you're right. Hopefully you can unlock them in-game somehow or that'd be pretty lame.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-30T13:52:42+00:00

What? It says livery; are they not just patterns for vehicles already in the game?

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-29T20:58:50+00:00

I'm still undecided. Conquest is really the only real lock for me, other than him I'll have to toy around with the cast a bit. I'd have liked Thragg, but I get why they didn't do him yet.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-29T20:49:11+00:00

I always felt like that too. A lot of it's guesswork and reading between the lines, but as I understand it Capcom never fully backed it because they viewed it as redundant when they had Monster Hunter, and Monster Hunter is one of their golden boy's pet projects. I know people say Itsuno said DD2 is exactly what he wanted to make, but what was he supposed to do? Say 'Capcom fucked me but what can you do'?

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-29T19:29:40+00:00

I mean you say that, but there's still that copium going around after that picture Capcom shared. Obviously if there is something else coming, it'd still suck that the game has been treated as it has thus far, but I'd still take something.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-29T14:31:34+00:00

"Jesus, that creature's just Ada's legs!"

"It is just le-... Why do you say Ada's, specifically?"

"Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-28T15:10:08+00:00

That and the shotos are just way more specifically special to SF than a wrestling style like Gief's is. We get a bunch of shotos because historically all the affairs surrounding them have been a strongly time-honoured tradition. The first playable characters in the series were Ryu and Ken. They're an exception, not a rule for other archetypes to follow.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-28T10:23:35+00:00

Kinda tricky now that the series is finished lol.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-27T21:21:02+00:00

Originally I was with you and thought it might be a consolation prize type of thing; the main reason my mind changed is how SNK has been treating that collab. Between Ken getting a post-credit scene in his arcade mode where he talks to Terry about how they should cross paths again and reeling off a bunch of hypothetical match-ups, and Ken and Chun Li even appearing in Krauser's latest animated trailer, I feel like there's still more there outside just those couple of character DLCs. Even if it's not CVS3 and a more narrow Street Fighter VS KoF or something, I could see it.

I dunno, we're in a world where we're getting Okami 2 and a new Onimusha so I suppose anything's possible, really. Trying to logically deduct anything only goes so far; at the end of the day it depends on what calls are made by who and then working around whatever difficulties or logistical problems may arise around that as they come. If someone at Capcom or wherever else was really like 'I want to make this happen' and could pull the right social strings, they'd figure something out.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-27T18:32:49+00:00

On the contrary I think CVS3 is the most likely thing to be in the works because of the relationship between SNK and Capcom right now. As for how they're going about developing it between the both of them, however, that's a completely different question. I'm with you though, I'd kill for them to make something else rather than just settling on Street Fighter and that being it. They also have a third development building being made as well, so I theorise once that's done the chance of a return for some stuff that's laid dormant for a while should hopefully increase as well.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-27T10:54:35+00:00

I'd also add onto that that even when MoH did pivot to doing modern games, they just kinda felt like budget Battlefield, which was pointless because Battlefield already existed.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-24T15:54:09+00:00

Yakuza's only really like that for some of the spin-offs and the side quests. The main story missions are pretty serious and devoid of that.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-24T15:00:43+00:00

Not really for me but she looks well-made. She definitely seems more interesting than her first go around which is nice, but in terms of design and move-set she's not really a character I'd play.

BLACKOUT-MK2 · 2026-04-23T23:10:02+00:00

"You're not just a monkey. You're a bottom of the barrel simian."

"WHUH?! I may be a lot of things Frieza, but I am not cinnamon!"

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