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No it's awful. No fighting game should implement this at all. It obstructs the view and the player has to look away from the action to see it.
I don't think it's that bad. Some people take silly things WAY to seriously.
Not bad. Shouldn't replace the default way of playing but I would like to see it as an option. You don't have to move your eyes that much further and it looks better than having the interface on the screen obscuring stuff.
The super, life bar and timer are all in one spot too which you means less eye movement in a match, because you can glance at everything like that at one time since it's in the same place.
as an option yes default no options are good too have
@ #2
How does it obstruct your view? You actually see more of the screen this way which is nice. Also, the much larger bars which are on the left and right side are EXTREMELY easy to see with your peripheral vision so that you don't even need to move your eyes up/down to look at bars.
In other words, your reasoning is pretty bad (obstructs view, really?) and you mostly sound like the person who hates change.
Should it be default? No. Should it be an option? Hell yes, it's pretty nice.
It makes sense, but its hard to adjust when we're so used to something. Being able to draw a horizontal line with your eyes to gauge difference in close matches is one advantage of this UI. I think it would be quicker to tell who has the life-lead.
@ #10
Honestly, when do you ever need the vertical space for a Street Fighter game? Marvel, maybe but it was a lot more of an issue in MvC2 than anything.
Biggest issue I have with it is the vertical bars, and the fact that you'd need to move your eyes much further away from the action to read all the information. It's also waaay too much info to be shoved in the corner like that. I'm looking for health, and I might spend a split second longer because I looked at something else like Super meter or something like that.
Looks cool. I tried swapping the hc guage and life bar in mvc3 but its odd. I wouldn't mind having different hud options
More options is always nice. If you dig the bars on the side for home use, then cool. But as much of an HD/Widescreen freak as I am though, the only way to do it for tourney play (without serious "under the hood" work) is just the sidebars.
3sOE's widescreen is probably the best and easiest way to do it as it's basically just zoomed in; cutting off the top and bottom of the background. While this is a bit better than stretching out the picture, it still takes some time to get use to it, and not fit for tournament play.
its nice as an option i dont see it sinking well as a default ...
but as an option its great especially with a replay functionality ...that way you get to appreciate more of whats going on in the screen and the beauty of the backgrounds ...
then again i think it would be cooler if say ...
on each side you have the character inputs !!! ... that way you can see if someones buffering anything (kinda like when you're offline and you hear stick sounds ... ) that would be kinda cool ... yes it would completely destroy some characters .. but hey ... im just considering it as an option again ... plus if you mess up an input ... it eliminates the WTF moments cuz u can quickly glimpse what you did wrong ... just a thought ...
this is pretty nifty but why can't they just expand the rest of the stage?
I would personally be interested as an option to see if its better but just in case it werent i would want the option to switch back just in case it was hindering me.
I agree with some posters, with sf games the life bars are fine as the games are not occupied with that space. Marvel would be more appropriate as action does occur in that areas at times.
Again would be great as an option however not a default
I don't like it. Eye movement needs to be used strategically, especially in a fighting game.