http://www.risingthunder.com/So there is a new fighting game that was advertised at EVO. It is a free2play fighting game that goes the very casual route. It has a "dial-a-combo" system and the normal meter / super for special damage extending combos or a combo-breaker. Except it puts the super and the meter bar as separate resources. Now, most fighting games are hard to get into and most people who don't wanna spend the time grinding it down to get over the very steep learning curve that most fighting games have, will find this game a lot more rewarding and less frustrating to get into. The combo system in this game isn't based on motion inputs then a strict timing to press the corresponding buttons to get out a special move. Special moves are executed by just a button press, like a normal combo would be medium --> heavy --> special one (3 button presses in a row, no motion).
So far the game is in alpha and you have 6 characters to pick from, the games netcode is using GGPO so the netcode is pretty godlike, except the occasional disconnects between you and your opponent here and there. Currently there is only training mode and ranked, but the devs. will work on a way to host lobbies since playing with a friend is what everyone wants. The ranking / matchmaking of this game is one of the best I've seen in a fighting game so far. You have multiple tiers of skillgroup, kinda like in CS:GO. You lose / win one or two points for each loss / win and you rarely get matched with anyone outside of your own skillgroup. So if you keep losing you'll only play bad / new players.
Given that the combo system is pretty easy it's not very hard for veteran FG players to do good damaging combos and that might kill the fun for someone, but then again it should take a new player around 30 minutes in training mode to do the most damaging combos for their char. since the combo system is so easy (and fun).
Now for some technical parts of what you should know about the game mechanics and stuff in general when playing a fighting game:
The game got one superbar and one meterbar. The superbar is independent from the meterbar, which is not very common and honestly kinda refreshing. The superbar is refilled when you deal damage to your opponent and it usually fills up after one round, unless you got no damage in.
The meterbar in this game is also pretty interesting and got some unique things to it. You can pick between a defensive and "advanced" meterbar. The defensive meter enables you to break out of an enemies combo. While the advanced bar enables you to cancel (by dashing) your current move and continue a new combo from the hitstun your previous move delivered. You can only have one of the meterbar alternatives at a time and both options gives a lot of variety in terms of defense / pressure - damage. They also fill up based on damage you deal / take. You can also maximum do a 5 combo juggle in the air, preventing players from just mauling you endlessly.
Every character also has 3 special moves that they can use, but some characters atm can switch out one of their moves, so you can switch out one move for another based on your personal reward / risk of that move. The specialmoves however got a cooldown, often where the most damaging special move got a longer cooldown. This is pretty unique and does that someone can't just spam a move that is not easily punished and get away with it, it also makes sure that if you continue to get hit by your opponent he can't always do a max damage combo.
For some general knowledge what you need to do when getting into fighting games that often kills new players is very simple; Don't spam moves and buttons, this enables another player to just wait for you to spam your move and then punish you easily. Look out for where your opponent attacks on wakeup. If you start spamming attacks when you get back from a knockdown you're just killing yourself 90% of the time, block and wait for him to attack. When you get this down you should start looking for when the enemy does a grab, since grabs are the best way to open up a blocking opponent and this is a very important thing to get down. Also there is a thing called "crossups" where the opponent jumps over you and does an attack that attacks you on the other side of which you are blocking, so a good thing is to get down the switching of which side you are blocking on, and this is purely based on reaction and movement reading.
I will try to include more "tech" later, if I find something I have missed.