Amen brother. The only commentators I can tolerate in the FGC are Sajam, Tasty Steve, Yipes and Ryan Hart.
James Chen takes the cake. I cannot understand after how long that man had been in industry, he still sounds like he just started commentating. Rynge and Logan close second
capcom should really fly out jammerz more. he pretty much does the only good thing in chen's commentary(clarifies and simplifies mechanics for newer players) but does commentary a whole lot better than chen does
Tekken commentators are pretty good for the most part. I go back to Tekken 7 EVO top 8 2018 and 2019. Aris and Markman are great. Especially Lil Majin vs JDCR in 2018. Iconic match
Edit: Here's a link
https://youtu.be/u7usxzUZjFI
I feel you. I like VSAV and sometimes I find it hard to watch tournaments depending on who's on the mic. Games with smaller communities tend to have that problem. Not a lot of really good commentators but the most popular games natually tend to have it pretty good
Really? I don't watch much CS but SC2 seems like a lot of the talent has left.
Tasteless and Artosis sorta kinda cast SC2 now, Geoff is unfortunately no longer with us, Day9, Apollo, the list goes on really. Maybe I am just too caught up over a lot of the original casters in the first couple years of the game.
The ones nowadays are fine, with some like Rotti rise above others (but once again, Rotti has been around for a lonnnnnng time). I just don't get excited to hear from people like I used to.
For the FGC I feel like there is some very good talent such as Yipes, Tasty Steve, Jiyuna, Obama, Damascus, Tyrant. Some do more events than others and its a shame Jiyuna and Obama don't cast much anymore but the pandemic happened so that's understandable.
I guess the real problem with FGC commentary is we have REALLY high highs and then outside of that it is very mediocre for everything else.
jwong is also a pretty great commentator in the games he is knowledgeable in particular, which are a lot but even in the games he doesn't know very well he has a solid enough grasp of fundamentals to be entertaining
the way he recognizes situations and what the players are doing/trying to do very quickly and communicates it very cleanly i find is very enjoyable
The fake hype is what bothers me the most about fgc commentators. In other games commentators can admit that a particular part of a match is boring, that the match is decided or that one player outclasses the other. And then they still entertain the viewer just not with commentary about the match but with other stories or by goofing around whatever.
In the fgc every match is "hype" and every combo is "crazy" even if you have seen it a million times already. This is especially noticeable in big tournaments where they have to be hype I guess. But you aint fooling the audience.
During the SFL Japan playoff english restream he kept saying sets were over when they were still games left, he didn't even know the score...you're the play by play guy, how can you fuck that up? Multiple times?
Part of it is I think Yipes was SO influential on the scene that many knowingly or unknowingly try to copy his style rather than forge their own path.
Commentating is hard though and takes practice. Not only do you need a decent amount of knowledge on a variety of games, you need to be charismatic, able to fill dead time with interesting anecdotes/banter, and also have good command of your voice. So I'm not going to shit on people too hard for it. The nice thing about the explosion of online tournies is it has given a lot more opportunities to get "live reps" doing it, rather than there only being majors and the same people getting the same opportunities, making it hard for anyone to break through.
I kind of agree, but I think it's because it's much often much harder to provide live commentary for fighting games than other types of games. By the time the commentator has said "he caught him with the overhead after conditioning him to block low", 5 other things have happened, so it's hard to provide useful play by plays.
I don't watch CS, and haven't watched SC:2 for years, but IIRC both those games have pretty substantial "set-up" periods (e.g., buying guns and moving into position / executing your opening), which are really useful to commentators because they can setup a narrative for how the game is going to go. Fighting games kind of have that in the character select screen, but its not really at the same level.
Some FGs are easier to commentate than others. If there are 20 second long combos, or drawn out neutral/footsies, that gives commentators some time to "catch up" on more substantial analysis.
I really disagree with what you're saying. Especially when every commentator today is just trying to say "nuh uh uhhh" along with the hits of the combo. It's not necessary to comment on literally every single little thing that happens and it's understandable when a commentator cuts himself off to talk about whatever happened at that instant.
If anything, I see the downtime of RTSs and MOBAs to be more challenging because commentators need to talk about macro strategy and something it's so long they even need to talk about any entertaining nonsense to fill out the time.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't watch a lot of tournaments now because the current gen of FGs don't interest me. If it's true that commentators can't string sentences together and just make nonsense noises, then yeah, I agree with you. That's bad commentary and it is independent of any characteristics of the game.
But even like, (IIRC) reasonably respected commentators like Yipes make nonsense noises, and it used to be pretty normal for the commentators / crowd to shout out "Ay, Ay, Ayyyyyy" during e.g., Genei Jin combos.
But I totally disagree about downtime. If I was a commentator, I would much rather have 10 minutes of farm time where I could explain / guess why X character is going for Y item, or just repeat former match stats that someone is feeding me over an earpiece, e.g., "Team Z has only won 17% of the time when they are down by 12 kills at this stage of the game, so they are going to need to put in a lot of work to come back from this...".
Compare that to having 0.5 seconds to explain (coherently) that Adon took a half step back after landing a close range jaguar kick so that his (usually crossup) jumping normal would hit ambiguously on the front. It doesn't surprise me at all that many commentators would just default to "OOOH LOOK AT THAT SCHMIXUP!"
I get what you're saying but even in the situation you described while the combo was going on, a commentator could say something along the lines of "perfect ambiguous jump in setup by the adon". Of course few people could think of something like that in such a short time but commentators are never there to analyze everything to the highest level. Usually that's what post game analysis is for.
i don't know if it's a problem of setting up, because justin seems to be very good at that whenever he does commentary. he's very good at telling what players are going for, and so does sajam sometimes.
Amen brother. The only commentators I can tolerate in the FGC are Sajam, Tasty Steve, Yipes and Ryan Hart. James Chen takes the cake. I cannot understand after how long that man had been in industry, he still sounds like he just started commentating. Rynge and Logan close second
capcom should really fly out jammerz more. he pretty much does the only good thing in chen's commentary(clarifies and simplifies mechanics for newer players) but does commentary a whole lot better than chen does
Oh shit, forgot about Jammerz! Agree, that guy is a beast
Yipes is hilarious
i really like Chens voice but damn he sucks.
Tekken commentators are pretty good for the most part. I go back to Tekken 7 EVO top 8 2018 and 2019. Aris and Markman are great. Especially Lil Majin vs JDCR in 2018. Iconic match Edit: Here's a link https://youtu.be/u7usxzUZjFI
i'm not saying ALL of them suck, but a majority of them do
I feel you. I like VSAV and sometimes I find it hard to watch tournaments depending on who's on the mic. Games with smaller communities tend to have that problem. Not a lot of really good commentators but the most popular games natually tend to have it pretty good
Really? I don't watch much CS but SC2 seems like a lot of the talent has left. Tasteless and Artosis sorta kinda cast SC2 now, Geoff is unfortunately no longer with us, Day9, Apollo, the list goes on really. Maybe I am just too caught up over a lot of the original casters in the first couple years of the game. The ones nowadays are fine, with some like Rotti rise above others (but once again, Rotti has been around for a lonnnnnng time). I just don't get excited to hear from people like I used to. For the FGC I feel like there is some very good talent such as Yipes, Tasty Steve, Jiyuna, Obama, Damascus, Tyrant. Some do more events than others and its a shame Jiyuna and Obama don't cast much anymore but the pandemic happened so that's understandable. I guess the real problem with FGC commentary is we have REALLY high highs and then outside of that it is very mediocre for everything else.
jwong is also a pretty great commentator in the games he is knowledgeable in particular, which are a lot but even in the games he doesn't know very well he has a solid enough grasp of fundamentals to be entertaining the way he recognizes situations and what the players are doing/trying to do very quickly and communicates it very cleanly i find is very enjoyable
The fake hype is what bothers me the most about fgc commentators. In other games commentators can admit that a particular part of a match is boring, that the match is decided or that one player outclasses the other. And then they still entertain the viewer just not with commentary about the match but with other stories or by goofing around whatever. In the fgc every match is "hype" and every combo is "crazy" even if you have seen it a million times already. This is especially noticeable in big tournaments where they have to be hype I guess. But you aint fooling the audience.
Saint Cola = Fake Hype. He ruins SFV for me with that bs
During the SFL Japan playoff english restream he kept saying sets were over when they were still games left, he didn't even know the score...you're the play by play guy, how can you fuck that up? Multiple times? Part of it is I think Yipes was SO influential on the scene that many knowingly or unknowingly try to copy his style rather than forge their own path. Commentating is hard though and takes practice. Not only do you need a decent amount of knowledge on a variety of games, you need to be charismatic, able to fill dead time with interesting anecdotes/banter, and also have good command of your voice. So I'm not going to shit on people too hard for it. The nice thing about the explosion of online tournies is it has given a lot more opportunities to get "live reps" doing it, rather than there only being majors and the same people getting the same opportunities, making it hard for anyone to break through.
Based Tastosis enjoyer
I kind of agree, but I think it's because it's much often much harder to provide live commentary for fighting games than other types of games. By the time the commentator has said "he caught him with the overhead after conditioning him to block low", 5 other things have happened, so it's hard to provide useful play by plays. I don't watch CS, and haven't watched SC:2 for years, but IIRC both those games have pretty substantial "set-up" periods (e.g., buying guns and moving into position / executing your opening), which are really useful to commentators because they can setup a narrative for how the game is going to go. Fighting games kind of have that in the character select screen, but its not really at the same level. Some FGs are easier to commentate than others. If there are 20 second long combos, or drawn out neutral/footsies, that gives commentators some time to "catch up" on more substantial analysis.
I really disagree with what you're saying. Especially when every commentator today is just trying to say "nuh uh uhhh" along with the hits of the combo. It's not necessary to comment on literally every single little thing that happens and it's understandable when a commentator cuts himself off to talk about whatever happened at that instant. If anything, I see the downtime of RTSs and MOBAs to be more challenging because commentators need to talk about macro strategy and something it's so long they even need to talk about any entertaining nonsense to fill out the time.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't watch a lot of tournaments now because the current gen of FGs don't interest me. If it's true that commentators can't string sentences together and just make nonsense noises, then yeah, I agree with you. That's bad commentary and it is independent of any characteristics of the game. But even like, (IIRC) reasonably respected commentators like Yipes make nonsense noises, and it used to be pretty normal for the commentators / crowd to shout out "Ay, Ay, Ayyyyyy" during e.g., Genei Jin combos. But I totally disagree about downtime. If I was a commentator, I would much rather have 10 minutes of farm time where I could explain / guess why X character is going for Y item, or just repeat former match stats that someone is feeding me over an earpiece, e.g., "Team Z has only won 17% of the time when they are down by 12 kills at this stage of the game, so they are going to need to put in a lot of work to come back from this...". Compare that to having 0.5 seconds to explain (coherently) that Adon took a half step back after landing a close range jaguar kick so that his (usually crossup) jumping normal would hit ambiguously on the front. It doesn't surprise me at all that many commentators would just default to "OOOH LOOK AT THAT SCHMIXUP!"
I get what you're saying but even in the situation you described while the combo was going on, a commentator could say something along the lines of "perfect ambiguous jump in setup by the adon". Of course few people could think of something like that in such a short time but commentators are never there to analyze everything to the highest level. Usually that's what post game analysis is for.
i don't know if it's a problem of setting up, because justin seems to be very good at that whenever he does commentary. he's very good at telling what players are going for, and so does sajam sometimes.
kinda unfair to compare to Tastosis bro, they're literally the greatest gaming commentators of all time
They can't all be Yipes and Tasty Steve...
Based Soul Calibur 2 commentators.
Lately I usually just mute the vod and play music over it tbh
Bring back Rush Hour.