Dragon Ball FighterZ (PS4): It's FighterZ, Not Fighter-Zee. Also, Holy SHIT.

If I can get all anime hipster for a second? Dragon Ball Z fans can go SCREW. I had to wake up at 5am on a sunday mornings so I could watch the original Dragon Ball series and Dragon Ball Z. I WAS COMMITTED YOU LAZY PRICKS. Unfortunately for me I started to lose steam on the series not long after it got its big push on Toonami in the late 90's when the series really started to build a head of steam. Sorry, when the Namek saga ran like 400 episodes, I decided that was enough time I could devote to it. I pretty much lived devoid of Dragon Ball since.

But you know what I love? Fighting games created by Arc Systems. Specifically the Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and the Persona Arena series. I know people live and die by Street Fighter but the speed and intensity of Arc Systems just always feel so much better to me. So when one E3 showed off an over the top Arc Systems variant to Marvel vs Capcom I literally started salivating at the pairing with this anime series. It was a natural fit, and so started months upon months of chomping at the bit for.....

DRAGON BALL FIGTHERZ (PS4)

So I am super out of date on my Dragon Ball timeline so I'll explain the story as best I can. Sometime after/during the events of Dragon Ball Super the world has basically become overrun with with clones of the Z warriors and some of their notable villains. The problem is most of the Z warriors have gone missing, so Bulma goes to find Goku to try to take the fight to the clones and stop this invasion.

The problem is, Goku isn't actually Goku. Oh sure, he's still him but he has been severely depowered. There are a series of waves being pulsed out that are weakening everyone, and the only way to counteract it is link with a separate soul. A separate soul that happens to be currently controlling Goku. The soul is actually you as the player, so the characters are talking directly to you. While its not ideal, it does allow Goku to fight back against the clones. So first things first: Go find the other Z warriors, then once assembled go find the source of the waves and put a stop to this attack.

This story glosses over a lot, because they actually do something pretty interesting with the story. There are essentially 3 story mode arcs for you to play through: A heroes arc, a villains arc, and an Androids arc. The story basically functions the same way among all three modes: you get placed on a map with set enemies to fight. As you play through, you unlock story events depending on the team you are using. You also have set story events based on the boss of that set map, or characters you rescue. On top of this the more you use characters, the more they will interact with you to give them more of their inner monologue about the situation.

Although they use the term Arc, that isn't actually accurate because each Arc doesn't continue off of the last one. The levels you've earned remain, but instead of the story continuing you actually are playing an alternate timeline situation. Basically how things would have happened if you controlled the different set of characters and how that might have changed things.

It's only after you complete all three Arcs you receive the final true ending of the game and unlock FighterZ only original character: Android 21. She is basically a combination of one of the android characters and a Buu style character. And SHE, IS, DELIGHTFUL. Something about her voice and the almost innocent evil she exudes when threatening characters. She's tricky to use but an absolute joy and god do I hope she becomes canon to the series.

I. LOVE. HER.

God I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. So as I mentioned before, FighterZ comes from the minds over at Arc Systems. When I saw the initial trailer of the game, it really looked like Arc was trying to doing their own take on the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3-vs-3 series using Dragon Ball as the setting, and I will be damned if that's pretty much exactly what I got. But what they really wanted to emphasize was a much less complicated barrier to entry, which has been a long standing complaint to those new to the Guilty Gear or BlazBlue franchise.

It operates on a pretty standard fighting game control scheme with light, medium, heavy attack, and a ki blast mapped to the 4 buttons. Your right shoulder buttons allow for two forms of rush called your Hyper dash (which allows you to fly across the screen to start or pursue a combo) and your Meteor rush (which is essentially a guard breaking combo launcher). Lastly your left shoulder buttons are mapped to your tag partners for quick assists to extend combos, or tagging them to take your current fighters place.

Whole lotta Goku Black in high level FighterZ play.

There are lots of little mechanics that blend these various games together as well. Like Marvel vs Capcom, characters that are tagged out will slowly recover some of their lost health. They appeared to fuse the Guilty Gear Burst effect with MVC's X-factor called the Sparking Blast, which will knock back your enemies and give you a temporary increase to power and health recovery for one last ditch effort to keep fighting,which increases the fewer teammates you have left. You are able to use your meteor rush to break a guard and force opponents to tag out and so forth.

There are also a lot of little mechanics in this game to make it easier to play. For example, in using just the light attack button you can automatically string together a short combo that will launch, follow, and complete with a slam back down. Persona 4 Arena (another Arc fighter) did something similar to this. If using the medium attack button you will string a stronger combo that ends with a flashy special move. Every character has a universal anti-air by hitting down and heavy. And generally, all of the special moves are pretty simplified as well as the majority of every character's move set can be done with the standard Hadoken motion (quarter circle, 2-3-6/2-1-4, d-dr-r or whatever scheme you subscribe to).

Then you have a bunch of little mechanics unique to the game. On top of the Sparking Blast, you can tap two buttons to instantly teleport behind an enemy for a heavy kick to close the gap quickly, or use to keep a combo airborne. When completing auto-combos or combos over 10 hits, you basically earn dragon balls. If you collect all 7, the player that hits an autocombo with a fully charged gauge can be granted a wish such as revive teammate, recover health, more power, etc.

In the story mode, there is also an additional stat boosting mechanic where you can give your characters various attribute changes to accommodate for the increasing difficulty of the enemies, but it won't be until your second playthrough or so where the enemy levels will force you to be very strategic about what attributes you need to give yourself. I basically would ride with increased experience and post match recovery to hang with teams I wanted to level longer.

Now, despite what the fighting game community and game developers would have me to believe, having just an online VS mode does not push me to buy a game. Street Fighter V tried to get away with this garbage, and that's why that game eats shit. So I will be holding it up on its single player experience because other people suck and I am not good enough to have an enjoyable match with the frothing, quick twitch, rage quitting jerks who pollute online fighters.

In crazier moments, it really does just become an episode of DBZ

So as I stated before the game has a Story mode, which is fine but after you complete it there is little reason to keep playing it other than increasing difficulty and stat customization. It has an arcade mode which has an interesting scaling mechanic for the difficulty, so if you are blowing the the first matches too easily you will be scaled upwards to increasingly more difficult matches. If you lose or have a hard time, you keep level or move back down. It makes getting an S-rank run in arcade a bit more tougher than it appears. There is also an 2nd tier of difficulty which increases all of the matches.  This is the mode I most frequently play.

There is a pretty comprehensive tutorial on how to play the game, and the first run of the story mode is going to basically be vomiting tutorial at you for a significant portion of the story. It got to the point where I realized like some 4 hours into the game I was still getting tutorial, but the story was actually really good so it wasn't bothering me like it normally would have. The training mode also has a combo trainer, which was not actually as difficult to go through as some of these combo trainers usually are in these games. Usually with like Street Fighter or Tekken I would get about halfway through and be like "fuck it, I can't get this frame perfect timing."

FighterZ also as a recording replay feature that I have never used, mainly because I am not impressive with this game. This is mainly used to supplement the multitude of online modes the game features. Once you are placed in a lobby for multiplayer, you can open a ring to fight other people present in the lobby (up to 8 people), or wait in line for your turn to go at someone. You have have two matches going at a time but for some strange reason, people waiting don't get to spectate the match. I have no idea why they would do this since being able to watch would keep people in the ring.

There is also an Arena battle mode, which also features the lobby you play in but I don't think there is a player restriction on this one. I actually haven't played an arena battle. There is also the World Stage mode, which is where you can queue up to Ranked and Unranked matches worldwide. Whats nice about this is your queue can hold if you are playing the arcade, training, or story modes. There is an offline vs mode as well for local play.

This is seriously some GO1 (go-ichi) level defense.

Everything about this game is pretty fuckin' great because its basically aping off of the incredibly solid Guilty Gear Xrd iterations in the unreal engine: using 3d models shaped in a way to give it a 2d look which allows for interesting camera tricks and dramatic angles. Animations are high intensity, fast, and fluid as every good fighting game should be. It translates well to the story mode cut-scenes as well and is simply gorgeous.

Surprisingly to me, Guilty Gear luminary Daisuke Ishiwatari outside of a little casual advice thrown in, had practically nothing to do with the production of the game despite it using a similar engine. And like many of the other Arc System fighting games, I would have thought he did the soundtrack because it has that same high energy rock his games are known for. Hell the FighterZ is basically a copy of what they did in Guilty Gear Xrd.

It even shows a lot of appreciation to the source material, as every characters moves and specials are faithfully recreated in the game so they look like they fight the same way they did in your favorite episodes. Even more so, if you use the right characters in the right stage settings, you can trigger cinematics that re-create some of the more famous moments of the show (such as beating Frieza with Goku on Destroyed Namek).

Yamcha is one of the few who got an original Dramatic Finish. Finishing
his fight with Nappa LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

But if I did have to criticize some things, I would say the online play is a chore to set up and there is not a lot of punishment for rage quitters. I feel the game has some serious balancing issues because the casual players basically spam the hyperdash relentlessly because there is little way to punish it after it connects. Usually everyone universal anti-air will counter it but you still have to time it right and that's not exactly easy to do. So unless you get that trick down, expect to have that dash in your face a lot.

And since this is in that MvC kinda vein, combos can get long and stretched out. This game rewards offense more than defense (despite the best in the world right now being a primarily defensive player). So once you are tagged with a combo you are basically relegated to stay in it until the opponent drops it or finishes it. I don't know why the Sparking Blast in this game couldn't count as one free combo break like Guilty Gear's Burst does. That'd be a small concession to give a player one free fighting chance. So any time you think are you are ready to tackle some online play, please be warned that you are probably not.

One of the easiest jokes in the series.

Lastly my ongoing crusade against the DLC. I've clearly lost this battle. There is a 35 dollar "Fighter Pass" that was released with the game with a schedule of no less than 8 DLC characters to come out by the end of the summer. And at this point I just said "Fuck it, fine. Here." and paid for the thing when the first 2 additional characters came out. I've lost. Retail games aren't 60 dollars anymore. They are 90 going on infinity because we as gamers needed to say as a whole "We aren't going to let you nickle and dime every aspect of the game." and we didn't. We let the EA, Biowares, and Capcoms of the world win and get away with this, and now its just something that is accepted. This blows. Fuck DLC.

But complaints not withstanding, Dragon Ball: FighterZ after a somewhat rocky beta basically fucking nailed it on this one.  I don't know if this has supplanted Guilty Gear as my favorite fighting game series but I really feel it is making a hell of a case for it. I play this game constantly and have been practicing to play it in my first EVO championship trip. It's hands down one of the best fighting games in the market right now and its easy to see why its already so immensely popular. It's fast paced and frenetic, easy to pick up but skillful. And if that's what you look for in a fighter you can't go wrong with Dragon Ball: FighterZ.

The first nerfs came out, too
Arc dared to disappoint Vegeta.

Ragey's 2016: The Rage Quitter Year End Wrap Up.

This years Ragey's will be a tad more bared boned this year because with the X+Y thing I didn't get as many written as I would have liked to. Still though, this year had its series of ups and downs and while all of the games I've played might not have gotten site reviews, I still played an awful lot of games. Hopefully I'll have a slew of games to review in January and those that don't I'll make a new omniderp video to cover, but until then please enjoy.....

The 2016 Ragey's
Seriously, Who does a nobody have to blow to get a sponsorship for their blog???

10: The "Empty Best Friends Photo Frame" award for "Game I wish I got to play" goes to....

Attack On Titan (PS4)

Originally, this was Persona 5 because it keeps getting delayed. But it's coming soon so I just need to hang on. Instead, I found myself rather infatuated with the Attack on Titan game that came out earlier this year. I enjoy the show so all I really wanted to see out of this game was flying around in the 3d gear and killing big naked titans. And I'll be damned if that's not exactly what this looked like. It looked like it really maintained a lot of the fun swinging around in the old Spiderman 2 on PS2 had, so I look forward to actually sitting down with this one.

9: The "Jesus Christ, People actually voted for Trump" garbage award for "Biggest Disappointment" goes to.....

Nights of Azure

I'm a huge fan of Gust games, and the trailer made this seem so damn cool with fast moving action and combos. It was Gusts first attempt at a more action based game so I was willing to be kind with it, but I have to call a spade a spade here. At best, this game was decidedly average. The music is good and the action is ok, but the combat all feels very mashy and loose. There's no real weight, the side quests seem trite, it doesn't have a lot of clear direction in what it wants to do, the story tries to be tragic and heartwarming but it never seems to do a good enough job explaining the stakes, and if I'm being honest it was incredibly easy. 

I beat the game expecting there to be more to it but apparently I had little struggle with any boss in the game. It wasn't a terrible game, it was just incredibly underwhelming. That said, If they revisit this and change some things, it has potential to actually be something I think.

8. The "Holy Shit, Cleveland Actually Won a Championship" award for "Biggest Surprise" goes to.....

Doom 2016

Sometimes, people just get it right. And that is exactly what happened here. As guy who is lukewarm to shooters I came into this wanting just to shoot iconic baddies with iconic weapons on mars while moving really fast. Not only did Doom deliver on all of those fronts, but it also handed me one of the most bad ass soundtracks I've heard in a game in a long time. Honestly it might been the best soundtrack this year (but only because another item on this list came out at the end of last year.) I enjoyed my time with Doom so much that I considered it a must own. I haven't even bothered with the multiplayer and I still want to go back and play it.


7. The "Esports Tourney Grand Finals Match" award for "Most Hyped game" this year goes to.....

 Overwatch

I don't like putting this one here because I consider "overhyped" be a negative connotation, and despite what I thought, Overwatch is really a great game. But if there is any game that had a hype train building around it, it definitely was Overwatch. So this year, I'm removing the "over" in this years award. A lot of people were very excited for this game, and when they started putting out all the nifty trailers to promote the game, it even got me to take notice of it.

Blizzard didn't reinvent the wheel here, nor did they make something truly original I feel. But I would be an idiot to deny what a cultural force Overwatch has become. Comics, cosplays, fan dominated alternate character story lines, hilarious misrepresentations, I Hanjo, and even an dedicated pornography fanbase and bdsm community (this actually isn't surprising, but the fact that major sources highlighted it is). Overwatch was an exceptional game and earned the hype it generated. Credit where its due on this one, Overwatch generated a hype machine and deserves all of it. It got a guy who doesn't like shooters to play it all the time.



6. The "Another Marvel Movie" award for "Flash in the Pan" game of the year.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's end

Uncharted is a very good series of games. But when you start rehashing the same game over and over, all you can really change are the maps and story. I don't feel Uncharted was wearing out its welcome but it was getting to the point where they weren't exciting me anymore and when you do the over the top blow up action movie as your base model, that's a problem. Uncharted 4 was not a perfect game because a lot of the things that annoyed me in the other games still hold true here.

But what this game does very very right? Is that it closes the book on the Nathan Drake story, and does it satisfyingly so. When this game ended and I did the epilogue sequence, I was left feeling very happy with how things shook out. I was able to put this series to bed and be happy to do so. I hope naughty dog sticks it too. Uncharted 4 doesn't break the mold but it does what it does, and does it well. Just another solid entry in the action adventure genre. 

5. The "2016 Cleveland Browns Season Ticket Package" award for "Worst Value" goes to....

Street Fighter V/Guilty Gear Revelator

Street Fighter V and Revelator get to share the worst value award because despite being technically sound fighting games that are very good, they both went the bullshit cash grab route. SF started off promising by telling people that anything was in the game you could unlock by playing it. I was happy to hear that. I was immediately unhappy by learning that the ways to do this were so arduous and time consuming that I lost interest in the game before I actually unlocked a character. This is Capcom though, so this is to be expected.

Guilty Gear however should know better. It was almost 10 years before we finally got a new iteration of the game and I was pretty stoked about it, even with the 2 extra paid DLC characters. But what seemed like not even a year later, they put out a new full priced version of the game with a few more characters, but no English dialog even though the last one had it. Sorry, the stuff that got put in could have just been a DLC update. That's a cash grab. Bad year for fighting games.



4. The "15 Dollar asking price for this game" award for "Best Value" goes to....

Stardew Valley (pc)

The Internet actually went insane when this game came out in February. People who pirated the game loved it so much they went back and paid for it honestly. People who loved the game actually paid for copies of it for pirates to have when they couldn't afford it. I never got to play Harvest Moon growing up but always wanted to. Then I saw Kotaku posting about this game very frequently so I decided to check it out.

And what followed was close to 200 incredibly chill hours taking care of my hilariously immature named farms, fighting monsters down in the mine, courting the many singles of Pelican Town, marrying the lovely Abigail (the of course fictional perfect woman for me who doesn't fucking exist.), and harvesting dem blueberries. I still sink hours a day playing Stardew Valley and am ready to buy it again when the multiplayer mode gets released so I can infect my sisters with it too.

3. The "Because I don't hate myself enough" Honorable mention goes to....

Darkest Dungeon (PC)

Similarly, another steam game that ate and is still eating a significant chunk of my life goes to this mother fucker. A game that quickly teaches you that progress is not linear, and that everything you knew about RPG grinding is wrong. The game is relentless, merciless, and in a lot of ways fucking hopeless. This game deals a lot with the occult, which is fitting because it has no soul. And by the end of it neither will you.

I struggled so much to progress. Caught in chains of trying to keep dead weight characters alive because I didn't want to start over, Trying to hang on for one more room to finish a dungeon instead of getting out when I should have and losing 2 or 3 people. Preparing teams for near hours for a high level dungeon only to get completely fucked inside the first fight. Or most recently, having the perfect set of circumstances break your way in a dungeon before an approaching boss fight only to have mean nothing and STILL get your shit ruined at the end.

Darkest Dungeon changes a lot of the rules on how RPGs are played, and not everyone is going to get through this game. The only reason I still play it, is I've hit an ironclad state of "Fuck you game, you will not best me."....... But I've been wrong before.

2. The "Pretty Much ALL Of 2016" award for "Worst Game of the Year" goes to.....

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness (PS4)

Ugh, Someone at Tri-ace really dropped the ball on this one. I don't think I've ever played a Star Ocean where I was so underwhelmed and bored at the onset that it killed any desire I had to play it. Shakey camera, poor acting, awkward controls, unlikable characters, droning unskippable cutscenes, and this is the flipping opening of the game! How did it all get messed up so badly? Why does square insist on trying to reinvent something that worked and worked well. Even Star Ocean: The Last Hope for all its hokey acting and flaws still was fun to play all the way to the finish. I couldn't even get this one started.

I might go back to it to see if it gets better later, but literally any other game I had available to play took precedent over this. If you want to play a Star Ocean, play literally any of the other ones. I'm pissed I paid 60 bucks for this.

1. The "Game that surprisingly isn't Dark Souls 3" Award for "Best game of the year" goes to...

Undertale (PC)

Of course its Undertale.

I was a little late to the party with Undertale. Something I wholeheartedly regret. If I had played it around when I actually bought it, it had an honest shot of being my game of the year last year. It's time to make up for that. Undertale as it stands alone is a JRPG/Bullet Hell hybrid with some very quirky characters and exceptional music. But that's not what makes it great. The game pitches itself as the game where nobody has to die.

And that, my friends, was the whole fucking point. The game's creator, Toby Fox, took great care in crafting the opening tutorial area of the game. It's entire point was to put you in the mindset that sympathetically designed monsters are just making the best with what they have and may attack you, but don't really want to fight. Adhering to this lesson treated you to one of the most emotionally satisfying games I've ever played in my life. To the point where I actually shed tears at its true ending (and still do every time I see it). If you ignored Toriel's advice and resorted to violence, you are treated to an unfulfilling neutral ending. If you took the effort to do a genocide run, You were treated as you should have been: the only real monster in the game. It was fucking brilliant.

So many people I tried to get to play this game, and almost all of them killed monsters and ignored the story and never saw what I did. Missed out on so many of the emotional punches. And its a damn shame (although some did eventually see the light, so credit to those few.). That's really my only complaint about the game: All the bullshit reasons people tell me why they won't. "I don't like the graphics", "It's too quirky", "I don't use steam", "It sounds stupid", "I don't like the fandom". Conglaturation, you missed out on something truly special for very stupid reasons.

THIS game could have won most overhyped, but I feel it deserves every single bit of hype it gets and then some. Almost everything about this game is perfect: The music, the story, the characters, the play time, the fan created AU's, the merch. I love Undertale. It might be one of my favorites of all time. Easily, EASILY my game of the year. Fuck, I'd give it game of the year for the next 10 years. It's that good. If you want any more proof, its the game that got me to stop talking about Persona 4. A copy of it was given to the Pope for fucks sake.

Can't believe I'm still writing on this thing considering how little traction it gets. Here's to the next year of it. Thanks for reading.  -- CannonMan ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐

Guilty Gear Xrd (PS3/4) : A Glimpse of Things to Come.

Almost every single gamer has that one genre of games that they love, but try as they might they will never truly be great at them. Some folks love Call of Duty multiplayer but never really crack the top of the leader boards through all their effort. Some people love a good puzzle game, but struggle to really reach the later stages when the speed picks up.

For me, its fighting games. I can certainly learn enough to be competent, but never enough to be competitive. There is one series though that has always stood tall for me, and for whatever reason, one I seem to excel in more than say Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat. A series that at first, I didn't even like. It just didn't grab me. But two co-workers at the ole DerpStop started playing it, and I'll be damned if they are going to be better than me in a fighting game... Thus began my harrowing addiction to series, which after years finally continues in....

GUILTY GEAR XRD -SIGN-

Guilty Gear as a series actually tends to have an incredibly long and complicated story line spanning over the course of the games. In this edition, it takes place after the events of Guilty Gear 2: Overture (a game I have heard that is 2 scoops of terrible). Descending from seemingly the heavens, a tan skinned girl by the name of Ramlethal Valentine declares war against the entirety of the world.

Since she appears to be telling the truth and does appear to be a Valentine, the world takes notice and makes their movements against her. Enter long time series protagonist Sol Badguy. He is currently traveling with Sin Kiske when is contacted by Sin's father, Ky Kiske. Sol is asked to investigate the situation, but a mercenary he obviously demands a pretty penny for it around the range of a million "world dollars."

Meanwhile, as is with most Guilty Gear games, all of the characters also have their own substories loosely connected to the main plot. Characters like Millia, Venom, and Slayer are still dealing with the doings of the assassin's guild, May still fauns over the Jellyfish Pirate captain Johnny and her struggles with being one of the few surviving Japanese, and Potemkin still on his never ending journey to suck butts. (like, all of the butts).

Ramlethal Valentine.

Guilty Gear Xrd this time around did something very, very different regarding their story. Typically, in their story mode you play as you would sort of like arcade mode, but with more dialog, but depending on how you completed the fights, it would send you down various story paths which would allow your character get multiple endings. Naturally, not every single one of these would end up being canon to the story.

This time around the arcade mode functions as the main story sort of, at least in the context of the character you've chosen. You get a cutscene explaining what they are doing when Ramlethal makes her declaration of war and then it follows the classic Tekken or Street fighter Alpha style of storytelling. You fight till about midway till you are treated with a cutscene, you fight till the final boss where you get one more cutscene, and then an ending when you win. Most of them end open-endedly.

The reason for this is because then you are to go to the actual story mode. This needs a different name. Because while yes, it does continue the story from the arcade mode, there is no game play to it. None, at all. It is akin to getting to watch a Guilty Gear animated film of the events that take place after arcade mode for about 2-4 hours depending on how fast you read. Its well animated and fully voice acted, so it is a lot like watching a movie. It very much succeeds at fleshing out the story more. It was an interesting way to do things especially with such a tangled mess like the Guilty Gear is. But in the context of a game, its somewhat limiting. It's basically what Persona 4 Arena did only animated and with no fights.

The only other playable game mode outside of Arcade and Vs mode is the Medal of Millionaire mode. In M.o.M mode, it essentially used to be a survival mode, but now you sort of half this grid system where you pick and unlock your fights, and you have a bit of an RPG element which allows you to level your strengths and buy equipment or attacks for your character. I am not sure what the eventual end game of this mode is aside from an increasing difficulty and loot gathering of sorts. Its a different way to play the game, but having breaks in the action slows the pace down. Honestly more games need to do survival modes like Dead or Alive does them. Just a nonstop rush.

So lets get to the game, shall we? Guilty Gear Xrd is a 2d fighter. Two people stand on each side of each other, and you wail on the other one till their life bar drops to zero. In that regard its a lot like every other fighter. Not a great sell or ground breakingly original I know, but its all the little nuances and differences that make me really fall of this game. For example, almost every fighter has combo chains you can do, but Guilty Gear tends to be a little loose on those and gives you a pretty rapid attack speed. So that means idiotic troglodytes like me can dash in for a few light strikes, followed by a medium, heavy, and end on a special.

As I mentioned just a line ago, there is dashing. I fucking love dashing. Sure, lots of fighting games have a dash but none of them feel so fluid to me like Guilty Gear does. You can dash front and back, you can do it in the air front and back, and the speeds vary depending on the character. So if I use a mainstay like my girl Millia Rage, she moves in and out like a lightning bolt for quick stick and move combos, and is incredibly difficult to pin against a wall. Meanwhile, someone who's a heavy hitter like May or Dumptemkin has a slower more lumbering movement, and it is similarly reflected in their dash move.

Naturally, at the bottom of the screen you have a tension meter. Which builds up as you fight, pursue, or really just stay active during the battle, once it fills up to half or full, you can use one of your really heavy damaging special moves. Each character usually has at least 2, but sometimes 3 of these moves. They tend to vary in type well and they can quickly turn the tide of battle. The tension meter can also be used for various defensive barriers which will allow you defend some of the heavier attacks.

The marriage obsessed Elphelt is a wonderful addition to the roster.
She is absolutely insane, she wants to marry any male she fights.

But the other big purpose of it is the Instant Kills. As you can imagine, they do exactly what you expect them to. They instantly kill your opponent, regardless of when you did it or how much health they have when it happens. You are treated to sharp looking cinematic of the kill before you get "DESTROYED" in huge letters on the screen. Every character including the final boss is susceptible to them. But they are a gamble, by activating the mode that allows you to make and instant kill your tension gauge will slowly deplete. Once empty, it will start to deplete your health next. You can turn it off, but if you take a swing with it and miss, you lose your tension meter for the remainder of the round.

There is also a Burst Gauge by your life bar as well. This is the savior for me in this fighting game, and probably the only thing that keeps me competitive. With the simple press of a few buttons, your character will jump and flash. If the flash connects with an opponent, it completely fills up your tension meter. But more importantly, if you are stuck in the middle of a combo getting wailed on, it will counter it and blast your enemy back.  I cannot tell you how many times this move has saved my ass from constantly getting air juggled or what not, but all these things together basically assemble everything I need and want to make a game exciting.

Some of the instant kills are very, very eff'n cool. 

One of the biggest selling points for me is that Guilty Gear as a series is FAST. And I'm not talking about the Street Fighter 2 Turbo Edition breakneck speed ramped up to unplayable levels. Because of these game mechanics, the naturally flow of the game is incredibly fast pace. Even with some of the slower characters, the right set of moves allows you to keep some heavy pressure up. My aforementioned easy combo that I like to do is a good example of this because it doesn't require me to use specific moves to form a chain. Its a lot more free form, and I honestly like that better.

Something new to me personally though, is while I play this game, I can't get over how visually stunning the game looks. If you look at it at a glance, it will probably look like any other Guilty Gear game that came before it.  It might appear to just be a pretty looking anime fighter with traditional 2d sprites. But that's where you would be wrong.

This game was developed from the ground up on the Unreal Engine. So while everything appears to be 2d anime sprites, the entirety of the game and its cutscenes are done with 3D models carefully designed to give the image of 2d. When you make kills or hit certain moves, the camera will shift around and spin to show you the full 3d image. It looks fantastic and I constantly find myself watching the game and reminding myself that everything is fully rendered. All of the colors and lines are bright and bold, and it just has a fantastic visual style to it.

And then, there is the music. Daisuke Fucking Ishiwatari. He's the main developer behind the game, but he's also the game's composer. If you haven't listened to some of the older Guilty Gear soundtracks then you are missing out. Daisuke is one of the few devs I've seen realize that if you make a game about kicking ass, your music should equally kick ass. And that's what his soundtracks do. They rock, and they rock fucking hard.

The soundtrack Guilty Gear Xrd isn't just a rip or rehash of the old Guilty Gear music although some of it is available. Each character has had new themes written for them in the vein of their previous theme. So when each level starts, you might her a notable scale of notes but then the song will change. This is most noted for characters like Chip and May. Even the main theme "Heavy Day" as goofy as it is in English, as just the right riff to make even the most anti-rock person put on a happy frown and bob their head a little. I could listen to that and "Lily of Steel" all day.

Lily of Steel: Fucking. Rock.

Alright, let me stop gushing like a fangirl for a second here. Despite my salivation over this review, there are some negatives and some of them are pretty big. As mentioned before, Guilty Gear is a pretty long series, and as games that last over time do there is a pretty wide case of characters. So I have to say that I was a little more than disappointing when I saw that Xrd's roster was trimmed down to a scant 17 characters. This is more than the arcade version had, but considering how beefy the series is as a whole for characters, this is a surprisingly low number.

This is also marred by the fact that not all of them are available from go. That's not always uncommon in fighting games, but when you fire the game up, console exclusive Sin Kiske isn't available until you build of 200K of game money. You get 100 of it by just watching the story so i suppose it could be worse but that was disappointing. But what really aggravated me, as you might expect, were the fucking DLC characters. Elphet is a great character, she's funny, and fun to use. But the fact that I had to use a DLC code to unlock her bothers me. She was given away for free for first week, but anyone who didn't get it immediately gets to eat shit on that one.

It's become common practice between me and a friend to scream at each other
about eating cake when we play Elphelt against each other. 

And then after several weeks, the unlocked the final character Leo Whitefang for DLC. Naturally, as much as I hate it I wanted a complete roster so I went to download him, and he was fucking 8 dollars. EIGHT. That means to get the full roster of the game today, you need to at least pay 16 additional dollars on top of the price you paid at the store to complete the roster. I don't care how developers try to spin it, that is absolute bullshit. I hated it in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax with Margaret, and I hate it now.

The other big disaster of Guilty Gear Xrd is the game's network mode. Anyone who plays fighters knows that online mode is the bread and butter of any fighter these days. Xrd had problems with their network right out of the gate. Impossible to connect to matches, matches would drop after you got into them, lag would be game breakingly prevalent. But to make matters worse, the network mode is so clunky and obstructive, I couldn't even get into a single game to start. Make your profile, pick your character, pick your region, pick your continent, pick your state, pick a room, pick a door, pick an arcade machine, pick your favorite color, pick your favorite spice girl, pick your favorite quadrilateral equation.

Too many menus basically chased me out of playing online for a long time. To make matters worse, there doesn't appear to be any real option for inviting a friend to play in the server you are in. It's stupid. It should be: make you profile, pick your region, then ranked or unranked. That's it. Anything more than that is making your system far too complicated and only adds steps to the process that prevent me from playing the game. And newsflash on this one: if people can't play your fighting game online, people aren't going to play your game for long.

Supposedly they have been addressing the issue, because when I finally realized I need to go where there are servers with people on it, I was able to get into a room, then into a group of 8, and got to play a series of matches with relative ease. It had a nifty feature where it keeps a running count of the frame lag, but honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell how that many lost frames would affect the fight. Supposedly 8 frames is huge, and I was around 3 or 4. I managed to play a few rounds with some random and broke even so I guess that's not bad.

I guess MOM mode adds some RPG element to it, but I don't really know
what the end game of it really is. Perhaps a challenge, I dunno. 

And seriously, going back to it? 17 Characters? How do you cut some of the series most popular characters, not to mention characters I love to play?! No Jam, no Dizzy, no Bridget, No Baiken, No Order-Sol, No Testament. I mean sure, new characters are nice but fighters are really made or broken on their diverse roster, and Guilty Gear has always done great with those. This is probably an angle where they will release more on DLC, or come up with a new ridiculously named version which I will buy, because I am a stupid.

Complaints aside though, the bottom line is that I think Guilty Gear is one of the top of the line fighters, and I think given the right audience could make a serious case to dethrone some of the most popular games. It's a technical fighter that does well at not being overly daunting to the new player, its got an amazing new visual style that manages to look clean and new while retaining the charm of the ones that came before it, it's got a soundtrack that rips a new asshole as you rip one into your opponent, and so on. It doesn't go out of the way to break a lot of the molds they've set, but what they do, they do well (for the most part).

Shame so many got cut from the roster. Hopefully we see more soon.

What we have here is what I think will be the ground work for what will be a much better future version of this game. I am a huge fan of Arc System fighting games, and Guilty Gear is naturally their crown jewel. When the XBone announced they were getting Killer Instinct I got very jealous. Guilty Gear Xrd has completely washed that feeling away. It's just a damn good fighter and I've you never played it I strongly suggest you give it a try. I've already seen flash sales knock this game down to 20$ so there is no reason not to.

Honestly, it stuns me that this series isn't more popular. I've heard it referred to as the game StreetFighter players wish Streetfighter would be. I'm hard pressed to disagree with that.

Seriously, You have Dizzy in the story. Put her in the game.
And if Bridget is coming back, remove the gender sway.
That'll piss fans off.

Persona 4 Arena (PS3): Guilty Gear's sexy but slightly dumber cousin.

The Persona franchise has always somewhat intrigued me to a degree. I remember back when I worked at Derpbuster Video I found a copy of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and flipped through the instructions. What immediately grabbed my attention is that one of the characters persona's wrists were bound and was in spider tie bondage with a high heel grinding into her mask (which probably says all kinda weird things about my tastes). Sadly, the game was broken so I couldn't investigate the game further. But it kinda stuck with me.

I ended up trying Persona 3 later on the PS2. I liked the game a lot but the difficulty spike was retarded so I never finished it. When Persona 4 came out, I barely had a reason to hook up my PS2 so I never purchased it. The reason for this trip down memory lane is Persona 4 has a come up with a sequel called.....

PERSONA 4: ARENA (PS3)

What grabbed my attention to this game is even though it is a direct sequel to Persona 4, it's a completely different style of game. The Persona series generally is a cross between a JRPG and a Japanese school simulation. But this game is neither of those, its actually just a regular old one on one fighter. Interesting change but not exactly revolutionary. Final Fantasy has tried this twice, and it wouldn't be the first time one genre of game changed formats. Disgaea gave us Prinny: Can I really be the Hero? and that game was fucking awesome.

But then I noticed it was not only published by Atlus but also that it was produced by Arc Systems, the creators of the Guilty Gear series. Now, I may have been a bit late to the party, but I fucking love Guilty Gear. It's quickly become one of my favorite fighters, but I've been eagerly awaiting a new one of them. Looking over the images and videos of this game, it looks like it borrows a lot of mechanics used in Guilty Gear in the same ways BlazBlue did. With that alone, that was enough for me to take a leap of faith on this one....

The story takes place about year after the events of Persona 4. The heroes are proceeding with their scholastic career, and going about their lives as normal students. But they begin to hear rumors that the Midnight Channel, the mysterious program that would indicate someones forthcoming grizzly murder, was back on the air. Only this time the show is different, like its advertising some combat show. Naturally the heroes are concerned about this and then watch to see if the program comes back.

Not only does it come back, the shows announcers boast that the heroes are the combatants who will be fighting on the program. All of them shaken by this, they meet up to plan out their course of action and decide to dive into the television to combat this head on. Much like when they are battling their own shadows of themselves, they are constantly challenged by each other and digging at their own weaknesses of their personality. Each person fights to solve the mystery of this ordeal and of themselves.

The Investigation Team

That make sense to anyone? No? Me either. You have a number options on how to play the game, I first took a crack at Arcade mode. I shouldn't have to explain what this is but its about 8 fights with other characters before you fight the final boss. The game actually has a number of cut scenes and conversations as you go through arcade mode which comes off as sort of an abridged version of the story. Simple enough and probably the mode you will get the most enjoyment out of.

But there is also a story mode as well where the game goes to its RPG roots and you can learn more about the character and what they did and or are doing after the events of Persona 4. You follow along with the characters and the events are all explained in greater detail. Many of the cut scenes are fully voice acted and are actually pretty well done. I was expecting some pretty hokey voice work but actually they are pretty well delivered and a lot of the exchanges are pretty funny. Even the new character, Labrys, has this very out of place Bostonian (Kansai) accent. But after one or two cut scenes, she had a charm about her that made me really enjoy the character. 

The problem with the story mode is the there is too much text. WAY too much text.  I know its supposed to be story mode but lets be realistic here: this is a one on one fighter, and people want to get to the fucking action. The first chapter of the character I played easily took almost 10 minutes to get through the many screens of text it contained and I didn't even get to friggen fight in that chapter. A lot of it repeats in some stories too and could be severely cut down some. I ended up skipping a lot of text as I did other characters because I've read similar stuff already.

I'm going to make my girlfriend (who doesn't exist) talk in a bostonian
accent just because of how Labrys talks. I'm so in love with her.

When I finally waded through enough bullshit to actually get to a fight, it ended in a single round. BIG mistake as far as I am concerned. If there is concern that the story mode might get boring, then taking away some of the length of time I get to play it is not going to help. Luckily, you can open an options setting in story mode to skip unseen text, although that kind of defeats the purpose. My only other complaint with story mode is the music, as it restarts from cut scene to cut scene. It wasn't bad at first but after 2 or 3 characters in story mode, a lot of it was starting to get very grating on me. In actual game play you don't notice it though. 

After that the game modes are the pretty traditional fighting game fan fare. The regular mainstays like score attack mode, training mode, challenge mode, and verses mode are all there. There is a gallery to view the artwork or hear the songs you've unlocked, but there doesn't appear to be much more in the way of innovation there. 

Small side note: Where the hell has survival mode gone? With the exception of the Dead or Alive series, survival modes seem to have disappeared from the fighting game scene. Which I feel is a damn shame because that's where I think you can best train your skill, with an ever depleting life bar and a nonstop onslaught of enemies. Please game devs, start bringing survival modes back.

So enough about that shit, How about the actual game play? Well, The similarities to the Arc Fighting System games are clearly there. Much like Guilty Gear's punch, kick, slash, hard slash button layout, P4A has a similar light, heavy, Persona light, Persona heavy set up that feels right at home. It features a burst gauge that acts just like it did in GG to break you out of a combo and to fill up your attack gauge.

Each character has a handful of special moves and one or two flashier specials, some of them which change or give you another if you are below 35% health. The one hit finishers are back but they can only be done in a match point round, and if your gauge is full to 100 or better, so you can't just spam kill it at the start of a match.

P4A boasts a combo feature to where if you keep hitting the light attack it will chain a few hits together that will lead into a special or two, finishing with a big persona finisher if your gauge is high enough. This can be seen two ways. On one hand its a great feature to pick up and play because it allows you to button mash your way in and allow you to pull off a stylish combo, but on the other it severely dumbs down the game somewhat.

I often found myself when using a character I was not familiar with to just charge in and keep smashing that button until the gauge filled up then again to end it with the persona move. There are more detailed combos to learn, but I think the game would have been suited to have more specials for each character and more intricacy to performing combos.

Sigh, and then there is verses mode. Seems simple enough, you make a quick profile for yourself, pick a character and off you go. But as you will see in the video below, you are ranked by performance and if you are so much as a letter off the opponent, chances are they will leave the room. God forbid you just started the game because then you are lumped in with the rabble and if people see that F sticking next to your name because you'll sooner be punted from the room than tarnish their immaculate records. It pisses me off because how else are new players supposed to improve their rank if more seasoned players refuse to let them play?

My guess is the penalties for losing to someone with a lower rank than you are more severe than if you were to lose to someone with an equal or better rank. Still, it's fuck'n annoying because I have people rage quitting on me before we even get to start the match. That being said, what I did get to play seems to be pretty well balanced. I never seem to be get crushed as bad as I did in Streetfighter X Tekken. And using that burst gauge to smash your way out of combo's is something every new player should learn to do immediately.

I do feel for a game that has such a big universe, there could be a lot more characters to choose from. It boasts a modest number of 13 (one of which is the same character, with a different persona), but since this game is based off 4 different RPGs I felt like it could have a much bigger cast. They are probably withholding characters for if they get to produce a sequel.

The other problem is unlike games such as Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter the characters while they play very different from one another, their overall design is kind of boring. Most of them are school kids, so their outfits are just bland and kinda meh. Teddie stands out greatly as a non human creature and the characters from Persona 3 have interesting and different looks about them, but on the whole the cast could be more diverse.

Not a bad amount of characters for a first game, but could definitely use more.

All in all, for a first foray into the fighting game genre, I would say that Persona 4 Arena comes in rather competently. Its made an older franchise new by switching formats, yet still feels familiar which allows it to work as a strength as it caters to both the seasoned fighter and the new player. It takes a bit of risk with the story mode to incorporate some of the RPG aspect its known for, but while not perfectly executed it does enough to make me love the cast and want to go back and play the original Persona 4 title.

If this isn't going to be the only title in the Persona Arena series then it's laid down a solid foundation for future releases. Its a fast and frantic fighter that provides another new option to the hadoken spammed playing field we are all used to. I am having fun with this game and if you enjoy fighting games, I think you will too.

Now if we can just bring back Killer Instinct, I'll be all set.

Streetfighter X Tekken (PS3/XB360): Frustratingly Satisfying.

There was a bowling alley called Vine Lanes that used to be by my house when I was real little. My dad and I would go bowl and have a good time, but in between turns I would run up to the arcade machines to watch people play what would be my introduction to the Fighting Game genre in a game called Street Fighter 2. I just fell in love with the game. I thought the characters were great and it had a green monster who got covered in lightning, why wouldnt I love it? The game was awesome, and it would be a long time till I got an SNES to actually play it myself at home. Flash forward to high school and I come into the lunch room to see that they set up a Tekken 3 machine. I have dabbled with the Tekken franchise a little bit, but a group of 5 of us would fiercely do battle on that machine. Forced me to run out and buy the game and start practicing up. Between these two games I often wondered what a game would be like if these franchises squared off.  For more than 15 years that never seemed to happen, the Street Fighter franchise only ever wanted to tango with other 2d fighters. But on fateful comic-con teased a tag battle with Ryu and Chun-Li vs. Kazyua and Nina. I checked every day to reserve my copy and finally after this long wait, I get to sit down with.....

STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN:(PS3)

A meteorite made big headlines in the news as it became one of the first interstellar debris to hit the planet earth within last 400 years. It was estimated to burn up in the atmosphere in the planet fall and to do no damage to the environment. But when it struck in Antarctica, all the government found was a peculiar looking box in its place. They couldn't figure out how to open it or what its purpose was, all they knew is that it reacted to conflict around it, releasing a liquid of some type that caused a massive increase of power. Because this box seemed to cause conflict and fighting among the scientists there, they named the box Pandora. The two major entities, Shadowloo and the Mishima Zaibatsu, both realized the potential for such power and both decide that they want Pandora for themselves. In addition to these two groups, both universes characters all have individual motivations for acquiring Pandora for themselves as well.

Right, because Kazuya needed to be more of a bad ass.

Street Fighter x Tekken is the merged brain child of the Capcom's and Namco's major franchises. While the game has a strong resemblance to Street Fighter 4 most notably in its design, SFxT does a wonderful job meshing aspects of the two games together into one.  The rules in its actual game play rule structure is closer to Tekken Tag Tournament: each player makes a team of two characters and the first player to lose one of them loses the round. There are buttons and combos to allow you to tag out mid combo or at a cold stance, and the character who is currently resting will recover a portion of their health back, much like how it works in the Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Matches like most fighting games can be best of 1, 3 or 5 rounds. It also features a scramble mode where all 4 players are on the screen at the same time for just sheer mayhem.  SFxT controls will definietly feel more at home to the avid Street Fighter player, as it uses the same three strength punch and kick system they are used to.

Heavy Punch: Because sometimes a bitch doesn't get the message with a Light one.

Because of this the controls definitely have a more Street Fighter feel to it and team SF moves are generally unchanged and familiar (except you can't mash Chun-li's lightning kick anymore), team Tekken's move sets have been pretty overhauled. Some of the motions still feel familiar but there definitely has been a SF transition to them. I was alright at Tekken but jumping into this game with characters I was very familiar with like Lili, Julia, and Xiaoyu I would find myself getting whipped around until I actually studied the move sets. Many of the Tekken characters incorporate some kind of sidestep/dash move that allows them to pass through fireballs, but I still end up getting whacked when I try to use them. The game also borrows some of Tekken's recoveries when you hit the ground, giving you a chance for temporary invulnerability to get up quick or roll out of a corner after you hit the ground. There are some new mechanics too, like using the Pandora. Basically what this does is if your partner's life drops to less than 25% you can activate Pandora and bring out a pretty bitch'n looking evil version of your partner. You get a full super gauge and a massive boost to power, but you only have a small amount of time to finish off your opponent because if you don't your character loses. It looks cool as hell but it's never saved me from a fight. There is also a gem system that you can customize for each character. Adding gems will allow power, speed, defense or gauge boosts that trigger under certain conditions to help win fights. I haven't played with them much myself because I'm more concerned with learning the moves.

There are a few things about this game that piss me off though. Again to make things more comfortable for Tekken players, you are able to wall and ground bounce your opponents to string together your combos. This infuriates me to death, because if you ever have to play one of "Those Guys" like Ive talked about before, you are going to get combo'd up and then your character will never hit the ground. Its happened to me dozens of times already and it makes me so fucking mad I have to walk away from the game before I'd smash my tv. This of course brings me to my other problem. Combo's have incredibly tight window, and the average gamer like myself will probably find themselves able to get through about half of the combo trials. Often I've found myself losing my shit because I can't chain together a LP + LP + Roll forward MP combo because it doesn't think I've timed my LPs right. And there is no option to see the combo performed so I can't even figure the timing out. Perhaps this is done to discourage the button masher, but I do feel it makes the game very difficult for those who don't play a lot of fighters. I've played a lot of Tekken and Street Fighter 4 and my very first play through the game on medium, My team of Lili and Asuka was getting relentlessly destroyed by the computer in the last 4 match ups of arcade mode. It wasn't till I started spamming a sweep combo Asuka has that I was able to muscle my way to the finish. On a side note: When playing the computer? Balrog is the worst match-up ever. He will fucking predict any move you make. It automatically goes to hardest difficulty.

I am really happy with the character selection for the most part. Both sides took a group of the games most popular and notable faces. The Tekken side specifically has a very good mix of very different styled characters and a lot of my favorites made the cut (Lili, Xiaoyu, Kazuya, Julia, Hworwang) and the Street Fighter side thankfully didn't over load on the shotoken fighters. I was kinda bummed to not see Sakura in the game or the return of Karin, but I suppose that's a small price to pay to not have to deal with prick's who like spam kick with Eddy Gordo or Christie. Or any of the doofus characters like Dan (Dan is the fucking worst, get over it). The SF side is basically filled with the mainstays you know and love, with some new and returning faces such as Poison or Rolento. There may be some minor balance issues (everyone online plays Rolento and Ken)  but otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the characters turned out.

Poison has a very interesting background. Definitely a great addition to the franchise.

I do have some issues with the characters through. First off? Why the fuck does Cole McGrath not get a storyline? You guys went and got the voice actor who played him in the game, why the hell not give him a story line so he's not just grunting? I felt cheated. But not as cheated as I felt when eagerly took the game home to find out that Fat Dopey Mega Man / Pac-Man were locked out? Why the hell were they locked out? You guys promoted that they would be in the game and even caused a bit of controversy because of it. why did I have to arbitrarily wait two weeks for the stupid unlock code? They were already "exclusives" that were free for me. I cant think of any reason for it. And lastly, the DLC controversy.. I don't want to get too in deep with this rant because I've already done it before, but the fact that Capcom got caught with their pants down with fully playable DLC on the disc and cut a bullshit excuse about it saving space and not being an obvious cash grab is just infuriating. They refuse to show loyalty to their rabid fan base, and that's pretty insulting. Everyone knows the characters are in there and their gonna have the nerve to charge more for them. It would have been a nice act of goodwill to just own up to it and say, "OK,  you got us. Were sorry about that. Here, we are giving out the unlock codes for free." Pffft. Fat chance.

Seriously, Why didn't Cole get a storyline? You suck, Crapcom.

Through all my complaining though, this game is everything that I wanted it to be. Just a wonderful mix of two cast of characters that I've been fantasizing a cross over for well over 15 years at this point. They actually implemented a story so its fun to play single player and the multiplayer is everything that it should be. The controls seem to be very natural to the average player but also seems right at home for the hardcore "that guy" gamers as well.  It makes me very excited to see how the upcoming Tekken X Street Fighter will play out with the SF characters on a 3D plane and possible the removal of their projectile attacks. If you are fan of the 2D fighters I see absolutely no reason why this game shouldn't part of your collection.