Topic: Is the 3DS Fighter Surge Dead?

Well, That's kinda my point. Super Smash Bros and Dissidia aren't fighting games. They changed the fundamentals to the point where it's something completely different. What you want is something besides a fighting game.

And Memorizing moves is a fundamental of fighting games and has been since Street Fighter 1. Some people actually enjoy them. I know it's the very reason I play fighting games and why I can't get into something like Dissidia. But if you don't like it, or at rather, you can't tolerate it, then you probably are playing the wrong genre. Again, it's like complaining that you have to get to the end goal in a level to progress in a platformer. You're probably not gonna find much within the genre that you enjoy if you can't handle that. Not that there's anything wrong with that, provided you accept it, move on, and play something else instead.

If Smash Bros and Dissidia aren't fighting games, what are they?

Super Smash Bros. is a Party game, with fighting game elements.

Dissidia is more of a Fighting/action-RPG hybrid, with more of an emphasis on the RPG elements than the fighting, as far as I can tell.

Saying games like Street Fighter and Soul Calibur are the same thing is like saying Mario and Sonic are the same thing.

More like saying Zelda and God of War are the same thing, IMO.

They are in the same genre. Apparently Darksiders thought they were similar enough to try combining the two. And it could also be argued that Mario and Sonic are essentially the same thing. I will not argue in favor of that one though, mainly because Mario is much better...

They aren't similar, actually. Darksiders combined the two, yes, but you can mix completely different things, you know. And they aren't in the same genre. Zelda is an action-adventure, while God of War is a straight-up action game, with more akin to 3D Beat 'em ups. Their similarities are superficial at best, honestly. Yes, there's some exploration and puzzles in God of War, but they have different philosophies behind them, with Zelda's Puzzles and exploration being pretty much the entire point of the dungeon, while in God of War, they just there as a breather from the otherwise constant action. They're briefer, less intensive, and usually just for show.

In order to call something the same, you can't take things at face value. You have to examine it. Just because they have something that may look similer doesn't mean it works the same way, too. You don't seem incapable of this - you managed to analyze the Smash Bros. clones just fine - but I've yet to see you apply that to anything else.

Blazblue was fun, but sadly the multiplayer was completely broken. Yes, I tried it, as my friend is a big blazblue fan as well. Kept getting VERY out of sync, and if we did stuff too much, it would crash the entire system.

That's mainly because this thread is about fighting games. Both Zelda and God of War are action-adventure titles with puzzles, but are different because God of War focusses on the action, while Zelda mainly focusses on the Puzzles. Very different games, and I'd love to see as much of a difference between fighting games as between these two titles (not in the same way of course). As it is, Tekken is to Zelda as Super Smash Bros is to God of War, but if you try to compare Tekken and Dead or Alive, it's like Zelda and Metroid, which are almost the same game if not for perspective and setting differences (not a bad thing, I love both and would like to see more like them). I think the fighting genre had grown stagnant and overcrowded over the years, which explains the drop in popularity. I'd just like to see a breath of fresh air to rejuvenate things a bit, like what Halo's recovering health and handicapped aiming did for shooters.

Again, you're not digging deep enough. While I'll admit they're very much within the same genre and still quite comparable, calling them "almost the same thing" is going waaaay too far. I'm not even talking about small stuff, either. There are lots of big differences between them that make them very distinct from eachother. I mean, the two you listed alone would make them different enough for me to have a hard time saying they're similar. Then there's the emphasis on platforming(for Metroid), the way the stories are told, the amount of hand-holding, the way the combat works...I don't mean to insult you, but how does all of this go over your head?!

And back to fighting games, like Mattatron said, there are loads of idiocyncracies between series and even games within those series that make them play very differently for eachother, provided you give them the time of day to see how those changes affect the way you play. Admittedly some of them might take a few hours, but a lot of them become evident within minutes. Moving side to side in 3D games is huge, since now there's more focus on evasion. It completely changes the game and all of a sudden, everything you knew that worked in 2D games don't matter anymore. The way the moves work in 3D games also changes everything, since now those combinations you memorized in, say, Street Fighter, won't work here. (one thing I'll give you is that if you can learn Street Fighter, memorizing moves in other 2D games is 100X less of a pain because most games use the same combinations, just for different characters) Soul Calibur, for instance, is all about defense and evasion - anyone can mash their way to victory once they get a hit on yam so what you should focus on is not getting hit while finding the right times to hit your opponent. Tekken, on the other hand, is very offense oriented - your attacks can do a lot of damage compared to, say, Dead or Alive, and combos are trickier, requiring more practice, not to mention your defensive options are much more limited than in Soul Calibur.

I can keep going with this, by the way. I've played more than 50 fighting games for at east an hour each, if not quite a few hours or even 20+ hours. And I don't even really consider myself a huge fighting game fan, I just love seeing the differences between each game, because I can assure you, most of them are pretty different in their own ways.