A Word about the Katana.

You can't teach fencing without it coming up, so I will allow my esteemed colleague to fill us in.

Unified Weapons Master is Crap.

I am tired of seeing this Unified Weapons Master crap everywhere. This thing is crap and I will tell you why.

It seems the designers know little about combat. As far as I can tell, they know a little escrima and some kobudo. They seem to have no experience with actual melee combat or swords. The armor is only useful against blunt clubbing weapons and will be useless to simulate sword or knife combat.

The armor is supposed to have sensors embedded in it so that the simulated damage of blows can be recorded and displayed. It fails on this.

The armor is supposed to keep you safe during the bout;it also fails on this.

Look at this image:

The first thing that jumps out is the open finger design on the gloves. Anyone who has spent five minutes sparring with weapons knows that hands are the most likely thing hit, yet they leave the fingers unprotected. There also would be no sensors on the unprotected fingers, so I would break my opponent’s fingers and not have the score tallied by the non-present sensors.

The second thing is the huge gap at the shoulder joint and the enormous gap at the hip. This suggests the designers are not familiar with thrusting weapons. Thrusts will be dangerous and often not earn a score.

The third thing is that, as far as I know, there is no way to record a slice or pull/push cut. Imagine cutting a steak. You do not chop; you press the blade against the target and push or pull to cut. This is a common use of both knives and swords in combat. However, slices will not be scored.

So we have a system where you cannot safely swing a weapon, for fear of breaking fingers, nor can you safely thrust for fear of tearing a hip or shoulder muscle, and thrusts will be inconsistently scored anyway, and slices not scored at all.

Imagine a bout that is supposed to be between two people with knife simulators.  They cannot score from a swinging attack because a knife doesn’t have much mass and will seem no different than punches to the sensors and the slicing action of the blade will be ignored. Thrusts might be dangerous to the participants and will possibly not be scored at all, even if they land solidly. How is this fight supposed to be anything like the MMA of weapons combat when most of the techniques can’t work or be scored? The most effective tactic will be to ignore the opponent’s weapon and grapple and punch, which is the forte of unarmed combat, not armed combat. There is plenty of punching and grappling in unarmed combat, but it not the same due to the threat from the weapon, but if the weapon scoring is inconsistent at best, why bother?

It’s crap.