January 29, 2015 | 22:04 | Written by: snake911
Polygon’s Matt Leone recently posted his latest cover story, Life in Japan - “An 18-part look inside Japan's game industry: Night Cry, Scalebound, Final Fantasy 15, Street Fighter 5, Summer Lesson and more.” To say the least: it’s an article worth your time in checking out.
This is a beefy read that is full of interesting interviews from developers throughout the Japanese game industry. It’s like a collection of mini features connected with the same theme, so if you want, you can read it in bite sized chucks over a period of time like I did. It took me a period of over three days to read the whole thing, but was good from start to finish. My personal favorites include the interview with Yu Suzuki – who’s been quiet recently, but still busy with big ideas in mind; the Ninja Gaiden reunion that brought together three of the main dudes behind the game (love that jacket Hideo Yoshizawa was sporting); and the inside look of Japan’s popular gaming magazine, Famitsu.
In addition there are a number of illustrations, pictures, and music tracks to pore over from within the feature. If you were a fan of the 1UP.com cover stories from years ago, then this will be a welcoming treat.
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January 20, 2015 | 20:24 | Written by: snake911
Been playing Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- for a few weeks now, and I have to say I am very impressed with it. After years without a proper game for the series, and it taking a back seat for an additional number of years because of the BlazBlue franchise, it seemed like 2014 was the right time for GG to make a comeback.
In fact, I personally feel Guilty Gear X2 was the last proper game before it spun out of control with a number of odd ball games like Isuka -- where they introduced a two fighting plane to the gameplay -- and Guilty Gear 2: Overture -- where it moved away as a fighting game and more towards a Dynasty Warriors styled RTS. This means I haven’t cared for the GG series since 2003!
Sure, I was into BlazBlue when it first debuted in 2009, and it perfectly scratched the itch I had for a new GG styled game, but it too quickly fell into the same feature creep trappings as its predecessor franchise. But like the Street Fighter franchise, taking a long hiatus is sometimes a benefit, and Guilty Gear surely gained from its time off based on what I’ve seen in Xrd.
To get it out of the way: this game is absolutely gorgeous. Believe it when I say both the background and the characters are polygonal 3D models and not just hand drawn 2D. They show off that it’s a 3D engine during certain events like character intros or when you perform certain moves. The camera would begin to spin around that characters, showing how there is more to see from the default angle when you are playing. It’s truly the “wow” factor of the game and is a neat thing to show to people who are unaware of it not being a polygonal game.
If you’re familiar with the Guilty Gear series, then you’ll feel right at home. I jumped straight into arcade mode and was able to beat the game with my go to character, Ky Kiske. If you are new to the series, then there are an excellent number of modes to try out to get familiar with. The tutorial mode is the place to learn the absolute basics fundamentals of, not only Guilty Gear and its crazy systems, but for fighting games in general. Tutorial mode is very hand holding and will walk you through each lesson with audio discussions, on screen text, and some helpful tips after you’ve succeeded the lesson. I’m glad I checked it out as there was some new stuff like understanding the different types of roman cancels.
When you have a grasp on the basics, then you could improve on learning a character’s combos and special attacks with challenge mode and then go into mission mode to learn how to deal with certain situations like breaking defenses with overheads. Of course there is good ol’ training mode if you just want to pick a character and have a training dummy take your abuse.
The meat of the game is found in modes like arcade, multiplayer, and something called M.O.M. Arcade is your default pick-a-character-and-fight-8-dudes-till-you-see-credits. Multiplayer can be the versus mode for local matches or to go online with Network mode. Network has everything you’d want for an online fighting game. Ranked matches? You got it! Spectator mode? Yup. Additional features like searches and messaging? Uh-huh. There’s a lot more to network mode, but just know it basically has everything most people are looking for in regards to online fighting games.
M.O.M. mode is a fighting game RPG of sorts that allows you to collect and earn items and weapons, and to level up your character’s attributes like strength, magic, technique, etc. Currently I’ve been mostly playing the arcade and M.O.M. modes. I haven’t tried out story mode yet, but it I believe it’s basically a movie that progresses on the story from arcade mode. In all, every mode is fully fleshed out and each can give hours upon hours of play time. Every one of them is worth trying out at least once for fun or for a learning experience.
As one would expect from a Guilty Gear game, metal covers the soundtrack and does it well. You get more whimsical music with a happy-go-lucky character like May, but in contrast have heavy guitar tracks with a big, hulking character like Potemkin. Remixes of certain stages can be heard and are welcoming to old fans of the series like myself. There are also a few tracks that include vocals. While the lyrics aren’t necessarily important, they are a nice touch to an already awesome soundtrack. The PS3 version does get a point deducted as the music is extremely compressed. I play games with headphones on and it’s horrible to hear such fantastic music get treated as garbage through means of highly compressed music files. Hopefully this is not the case with the PS4 version; which I plan to play again whenever I get around to purchasing that console.
The presentation in Xrd is highly polished and really gives you your money’s worth. Mechanical gears are a reoccurring theme and you’ll see them throughout the game. The menus are fully animated and give cool little effects when you scroll through them. Everything is organized and categorized so well that all modes are easy to find and to where you can quickly jump from one to another. I know these are minute details to note, but they are what I notice when playing games.
There’s an in-game currency called World Dollar (W$) that you earn when you play the modes. This can be used in the gallery option to unlock things like character vocal tracks, character portraits, and classic GGX music that can be used during battles. As a carrot and stick tactic, the game is keeping me jumping through each mode to earn enough money to unlock the character, Sin Kiske. Sure, I can buy him from the store with real money, but that’s the easy way out (plus I’m cheap). My only complaint is that there isn’t a gallery for the soundtrack. I would definitely earn some serious W$ to unlock those prizes.
It’s been a while since I played a Guilty Gear game and have played many other fighting games since then. 2009 really buried the franchise when games like Street Fighter IV, The King of Fighters XII, and BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger came out. On top of that, I’ve been getting into other Capcom fighters like Darkstalkers, 3rd Strike, and the Marvel series of games. Add on the DOA and Virtua Fighter games, and now Guilty Gear is buried so deep that it can be drilled and harvested as an energy source. 2014 was the perfect time for a new Guilty Gear game and could not have done any better to live up to my expectations for the series.
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