vue - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up -- Wi-Fi Matchmaking

So actually I had an interesting question come up shortly after I posted the first Smash-Up video... "You can actually FIND opponents?!" I had to respond, that I was indeed able to find some, and I've been able to find them quite readily every time I've tried out the online play for this game. I'll admit that this also surprised me, but now I've grown accustomed to it, and just to illustrate how smoothly this all goes, I'm going to give you a small tour of the anatomy of a random Wi-Fi match. This video was made with absolutely no cuts and is completely uninterrupted. What you see is what you get, and I'm actually more than slightly pleased to be able to say that. In case you were wondering, opponent aura colors are always based on yours, or rather they're the three other colors evenly-spaced from your own so as to avoid any color-based crises of identity. So if I change my aura color away from the majestic "Joou Purple," I believe the opponent colors will change accordingly. After selecting a character, each player gets to vote for a stage and then proceed to the waiting room while the game tries to find an available group of opponents for you...why does that sound so much like a certain other online "Smash" type game, I wonder? I'll say this much, even I was surprised by how quickly I went from zero to three players found. --- Match #1: Shredder vs. Fugitoid vs. Raphael vs. Michelangelo Okay, so for the completely uninitiated, I'm going to take a brief moment to talk about our esteemed participants here. The Shredder is the designated evil nemesis of the titular ninja turtles and the leader of the Foot Clan, an illustrious ninja troupe that draws its roots back to feudal Japan. He's something of a crime lord with good publicity and a cadre of secret ninja disciples. There's more to it, and it gets weirder, but I figure I'll leave it at that, or I won't have time to talk about anybody else. Next we have "The Fugitoid"...which is a weird name to continue calling him, since he is presumably not a fugitive at present and actually DOES have a real name all his own, but is referred to as "Fugitoid" in all appearances in this game. He is in actuality one Professor Honeycutt, the inventor of a powerful teleporter device that caused him to be sought out so as to build these for two warring factions so that the technology could be used to top the scales of the conflict in either side's favor. He is a robot now, because a malfunction in his initial attempt to escape capture caused his brain to be transferred into a nearby robot...and no, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but he's a pretty cool guy all the same. Hes a highly educated and cultivated hydraulic bruiser. Raphael and Michelangelo are much easier to understand, two of the titular brotherly mutant ninja turtles. Raphael is the lone wolf rebellious one and Michelangelo just likes to have fun...and have pizza. --- It seems one of our associates dropped out, so we'll be waiting for another to join us. The exception to this is when the designated Player 1 of the room chooses to "Begin Match" instead of letting the countdown exhaust itself. Since it's always possible that TMNT1 from the previous match was the one who dropped out and perhaps I had become the new "TMNT1," I decided to check the pause menu in the waiting room just to see if I couldn't demonstrate this. --- Match #2: Casey vs. Karai vs. Leonardo Casey Jones is...well, he's very uncomplicated. He's a bit of a punk with a righteous streak, which leads him to choose to don a hockey mask and put on a golf bag full of sporting equipment (like baseball bats, cricket bats, golf clubs, and of course his signature hockey stick) to go on a vigilante crime-fighting spree every now and again. Mostly just gangs and street punks, that sort of thing. He's one of the turtles' few human allies and is Raph's best friend as well as April O'Neil's romantic interest. Karai is the adopted daughter of the Shredder and when daddy's not around, the de facto leader of the Foot. She actually has a weird relationship with him, because most of the time she's his most loyal follower...but then at various critical junctures, she's capable of deciding that he's gone too far and will double-cross him at the most devastating possible moment. She and Leonardo have a sort of love-hate rivalry thing going on. Leonardo is the oldest and most level-headed of the four turtles and generally serves as the team's leader. Generally, Leo will follow a more defensive and thoughtful approach to problem-solving, although this tends to create some tension when he should disagree with Raphael, who usually favors a more aggressive and direct approach. --- Truth be told, I'd love to offer some deeper insight into the fighting styles and strategies for the characters in this game, but I'm still getting a feel for them myself.