its kind of funny, when it comes to games like fighting games and racing games and such, they seem to get judged and talked about purely as multiplayer experiences, but I play games almost exclusively in singleplayer, so I feel like I end up liking games based on wildly different criteria than most people. like when I say I liked a fighting game, it's cause I had a good singleplayer experience with the game, so often when I hear other people talk about liking it, they'll talk about stuff where I have no idea what they're talking about at all lol

like I often hear people talk about how it's easy to bounce off of a lot of fighting games because they're complex and fast paced and if you don't know what you're doing people will just massively kick your ass... but I just play them in singleplayer and have a nice time, you'd be surprised how many have a story mode or such that's tuned well for someone learning to play for the first time

@fluttergirly I thought wusstune's Can Sonic the Fighters Beat Sonic the Fighters? video was really interesting because it sort of showed off how even an arcade-only game like Sonic the Fighters has a single-player mode tuned for someone learning how to play for the first time. It starts off with a fight against an opponent that basically just lets you do whatever you want to it and then the CPU starts using more of the mechanics as you progress through the game.
Although, it is an authentic Sega arcade game so it does eventually decide that you've had enough and it's time to beat your arse, but still. It's built so you'll get there eventually. With enough money.

@fluttergirly i get this often!! like for example i’ve got one friend who really shares my love of the classic doom games, except their introduction to them was through online-focused fan ports, so that’s just the way their understanding and enjoyment of the game is framed. it’s kinda weird talking to them abt things sometimes lol

my very favorite fighting game of all time is ARMS, which I love because it has extremely intuitive and immersive motion controls, so it's the only fighting game I feel like I really understand the moves and mechanics in fully, and if I talk to anyone into it more competitively they're like "you use motion controls??"

also I've been enjoying soul calibur II on switch online, and I'm absolutely sure I'm playing that game in some esoteric way compared to a competitive player lol

I also have an entire youtube channel dedicated to talking about racing games, which is all entirely from a singleplayer perspective, which I think leads me to some against-the-grain opinions, such as finding TrackMania Turbo my favorite game in the TrackMania series

https://www.youtube.com/@FlutterBugAuto/featured