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So I am super out of date on my Dragon Ball timeline so I'll explain the story as best I can.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.

River City Ransom: Underground (PC) - A Throwback to the Future

It took a very long time for me to get my first Nintendo. I actually had to wait until my first communion where I started receiving envelopes upon envelopes of money. And young Cannonman counted, and counted, and counted until he hit that magic number to which I went to my mom and asked if I can leave the party to go buy my Nintendo. She made me wait a day.

I made some missteps as I purchased games, but there was no greater achievement than was getting one side scrolling brawler I especially loved. Problem was, the only place that seemed to have a copy of it was our local Blockbuster (if you even remember those). My mom took a shot, asked if it checked out often and if we could buy it from them. Staggeringly, they actually said yes and what would follow would be almost a daily playing of this game for near the remainder of the NES life cycle, and honestly multiple times after the NES became irrelevant.

28 years later, Conatus Creative kickstarted a 4 year development of a true sequel to the Americanized version of said game. And while I didn't kickstart it, I did anxiously follow and watch through its torturous development. It took its time, and there was a lot of delays along the way. But now? It's finally here... 

RIVER CITY RANSOM: UNDERGROUND(PC)

RCR:U starts off with you replaying a condensed version of the final moments of the original River City Ransom: In 19XX Alex and Ryan approach the gates of River City High on a mission to take back Ryan's girlfriend Cyndi and break Slick's control over the gangs of River City. This functions as a tutorial to teach you the new controls of the game and catch you up to speed on the story of the first game if you didn't play it.

The game flashes forward 28 years to the year 19XX where Cross Town High as now be converted to the new River City High, and members of a local gang the Flock are running late for class. But when they reach their lecture, the TV turns on with an announcement from Mr. Merv, the millionaire behind Merv's burger joint (where the smiles are still free). He is irate that someone kidnapped his precious angel, and has security footage implicating the Flock's leader Chris as the culprit.

Merv offers to make the ones who bring vigilante justice to the Flock very very rich, and so begins a wave of attacks against the Flocks remaining members: Glen the Shoutaken fighter, Provie the Breakdancer, Bruno the Luchador, and Paul the Boxer. The gang scrambles to escape by chance come across a much older Alex and Ryan. They suspect Slick is behind this, and join the gang to take the streets to figure out what the hell is actually going on.

From the moment I hit start, I was right back where I left off almost 30 years ago.

First off, I have to appreciate the nod to the original series and how they found a clever way to work in the lore from the previous game. It was a cool way start the game and gave my nostalgia a kick right from the onset. And even if you never played it prior to this one, it essentially gives you all the story from the original in one little bite sized tidbit. The story of this game isn't anything really revolutionary, its basically just a simple framing device of motivation for you to start wandering the city and start wailing on baddies.

But there is one big story line error that I have to address right at the gate: Cyndi is/was RYAN'S girlfriend. It says so in the original game, and is confirmed on the wikipedia page. But this new installment of the game follows along the plot under the impression that Cyndi and Alex were an item. Now, maybe things changed over the 28 years, maybe we are supposed to believe that certain things happened. But left my own thoughts, certain things don't add up. I won't press this further though not to spoil anything.

That being said, it would be a disservice to say that this game has no story. The folks at Conatus Creative did a pretty exceptional job with what little the previous game left us with, and weaved together a handful of stories to flesh out a pretty lengthy campaign. Considering I can beat the original River City Ransom in under 12 minutes, giving me enough story to keep me playing for several nights was excellent. Even hit me with a few surprises along the way.

The biggest difference to the game though is in the fighting engine. Now it keeps somewhat true to its roots that you start off with punches and kicks and you need to learn techniques along the way to give you more moves to trash baddies. But in the old RCR this was basically all done with 2 buttons. RCR:U operates under an 8 button system so no classic controllers for those hoping. It now is a punch, kick, dedicated jump button, grab, manual block, special button, Item Use, item switch, and taunt (on the analog).

It adds a pretty big degree of the complexity to the game because now you just aren't mashing one or two buttons the entire time. You could, but you would be under-utilizing your abilities by late game. Like the previous game it will involve a bit of grinding of enemies to raise money to get new techniques. Before you just needed to be able to afford a book and then use it. RCR:U now has a leveling system in place where you need to reach a certain threshold to be able to purchase the abilities from dojos scattered across the map.

The problem with this is the stores are all limited to just the item and price. It would have been nice if there was some indication of what level I needed to be in order to actually purchase the technique. Or if this attack is later part of a combo that requires me to have another technique in order to actually use. I know this is something they are working on in a patch, but the game really does have a explanation issue.

This is kind of an issue for really all of the items in the game. Flavor text is fine and all but you really don't get it until after you've made the purchase and used the item, so you can effectively be wasting a lot of money learning just what stuff does and even then I forget what things are useful. You could argue that this is keeping in spirit what the original RCR set before it, but just because its how it was before doesn't necessarily mean its good for now. Some of these are constraints of the system limitations back then. There is no reason these items couldn't have explanations as you roll over them.

That being said, once you get your techniques actually unlocked and have the controls down a bit, using your special moves to combo and air juggle is an absolute dream. My first play through I went with Glen the shoutoken fighter and I managed to produce together a quick striking combo that lead into a hurricane kick air juggle that ended with dragon punch that would absolutely mow down anything in my path, regular enemies and bosses alike. It takes time to get there, but when you do it feels fucking awesome.

Once you get combo-ing down, you feel like a skillful badass.

RCR:U tends to follow a somewhat similar progression to its predecessor: Fight a boss, tells you where to go next, fight next boss. How it differs compared to the previous though is that the map of River City is significantly larger and a lot less linear. The objectives are on the map are sometimes unclear as well so it took a little effort to move along in the game, sometimes to the point of frustration.

I'll give you some examples, in the early goings there is a mission where it tells you where to fight the next boss. It tells you to go to the factory but you face appears on the same spot on the map for 3 very different areas. He doesn't appear immediately though, you have to get his attention. What this means is you have to continue to beat baddies for a somewhat nondescript amount of time before the boss actually makes an appearance. There is little to tell you that you are actually doing this properly, so you might find yourself running in circles.

There is another section where you have to find an old boss from the previous game, and the story tells you to go to another specific location. But if you aren't paying close enough attention, you might never see that you can actually climb up a fence along the wall that opens you up into a brand new area that is easily missed even though the map shows you are technically in the right area. If you are like me and flew past it multiple times, you will find your progress completely halted. None of them are game-breakingly annoying but a little more direction would have been appreciated.

As you can see from the character design this love letter to the original RCR as everything is painstakingly designed to look like the original game, but its so much more detailed than that. On top of having 8 playable characters, each character unique fighting style that makes them all play differently and meticulously animated to be fast, fluid and detailed. There are very few characters that share animations for any real reason.

You get a more tangible list of where you stats actually are at in this one.
So when you eat food, you know what you can stop buying when you max out.

On top of that, all of the baddies in the game over various gangs, on top of also being uniquely designed, also feature their own unique fighting styles specific to their respective gangs. It certainly explains why the development cycle took so long, because the amount of original moves in this game are mind bending. But I feel the game is much better off for it because everything about them feels original. No palate swap of T-shirts here.

The music... eh.. I'm not sure how to rate this one. Conatus brought in the talents of Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpiece) who has some established credit as a game composer for such games as Fez, BitTrip Runner, and Hyper Light Drifter. As I played through the game the music was fine, I guess. But I wouldn't say any of it was notable. Wasn't even any callbacks to original game. I dunno, it just didn't feel as memorable as it could have been.  For a composer who has some pretty notable soundtracks under his belt, that is a little disappointing.

In addition to being a good single player game, the campaign mode of the game supports up to four player co-op. It doesn't appear to add any more enemies for you to fight along the way, so it might be easier to team up with friends. There is also a battle mode which up to 4 people can duke it out in a smaller area for kind of a Smash Bros mode if you will. And whats really cool about this is almost all the enemies characters and bosses are available for use in this mode so you actually get to try out some of their niftier move sets.

The problem is unfortunately the abilities are not unlocked for this mode and its scales with how you've played. So for example if we jumped into a round of that game, My Glen who I've used most and have all the moves unlocked for, would have a significant advantage over Ryan who I didn't play at all and the majority of his moves are unavailable. Battle mode should just have everything unlocked with all stats maxed out to balance the playing field.

Apparently, the game contains a significant number of secrets buried in the game as well, with one of the developers tweeting out that some of the secrets haven't been found yet. That actually impresses me. When I completed the game on my first run I ended around 85% complete, so there is reason for me to keep coming back to play it so that's always a plus.

Ether gives out a "Notice Me, Senpai" Joke. I Lol'd.

The difficulty curve can be mixed. I would say that this game is significantly harder in the beginning of the game because not having your abilities unlocked will set you back more than actual game difficulty. And the reason for this is because literally on any given map you have 6 enemies coming after you at any given time. And they aren't dumb enemies lining up for punches. Almost always they will be trying to pincer you on two sides and will cheaply knock the shit out of you. It can be incredibly frustrating. But then you will start to unlock your moves, and the game will lull you into thinking it has become too easy as you trash baddies. Until the last few levels are thrown at you which are long arduous slogs where if you die you have to start them all over again. Some consistency would be nice.

This is amplified on a level that has already been patched to be made easier. There is a mission where you have a carry a milk bottle from one end of the map to the other end of the map without it breaking. Taking a hit of any kind would cause you to drop the bottle. It was MERCILESS. Some enemies would dive punch you at the moment of screen transition and cause you to drop the bottle. meaning you have to walk all the way back to pick it up and try again. I couldn't believe I actually managed to do it and it took inside of a few days for the devs to tone that mission down a little.

The last few missions will really put your skills to the test.

There are a lot of little annoyances to game too that pad out the length for unnecessary reasons. For one, there is a pretty useless Day/Night mechanic in the game that doesn't really seem to affect anything other than making bosses appear or not appear if you clear out the right area at various times. Additionally, it also affects certain stores as well as some are open all night, some are only open in the day, and some only open after nightfall. There really is no reason for it.

Fast travel in this game is almost next to impossible. There is a subway system where you have to survive a small 30 second gauntlet to jump to other places on the map, but its not really an efficient system and there really aren't enough drop off points to make it a very expedient option. Near the end of the game they just get locked off completely, which is super annoying.

There are some platforming issues that are a massive pain the ass, Thankfully when you fall off a ledge that can kill you, it will re-spawn you back in the stage but not without taking away a massive chunk of health. But then there are sections with moving platforms where you will keep getting re-spawned over another pit, this can happen 2 or 3 times and if it goes that much, it will probably kill you. the game is not precise enough for that kind of platforming.

Pedestrians still wander around the mall areas, but now you can accidentally hit them or the surrounding area such as parking meters or arcade machines. This runs the risk of giving you a wanted level to deal with. When you have a wanted level, the game will continue to throw police officers to beat you down. There is no reward for beating them, and they only go away if you get back to a hideout or clear an area long enough to hide in a trash can.

I can't think of how many times I accidentally popped a pedestrian who
walked in front of me during mid-combo. Pricks.

And probably worst of all, is there are a decent number of items in the game that don't really have a functional use. Many of the items are expensive to get, so most of the time you buy them hoping for some big buff or payoff. But sometimes, they are just posters or nods to other popular games (there are a lot nods to other game character) that are meant only to decorate your hideout. If you save up like 40 or 50 bucks in the game to basically have it go to waste, that can be real fucking annoying.

There are obviously a handful of glitches and a lot of little problems still throughout the game, but Conatus Creative was really pushed up against the wall because they have already pushed this title back multiple times past their estimated release date. Even right up to the release date they were having issues to work out and just getting it going on steam for the release date seemed to be a chore. It really is an example of how difficult game development can be.

Like I said, all the individual movesets can get really insane.

But for all its flaws and faults, River City Ransom: Underground delivered on almost everything I wanted it to be. The combat is fun and engaging, they managed to prolong a bare bones story and make it interesting, the sprite-work is beautifully designed and animated, it boasts a reasonably long playtime, has some good replay value with the character variants, and the dev team appears to be be still working on more content for the game and hammering out bug fixes as they find them.

It currently goes for 19.99 on steam currently (it launched at a discount of 14.99) and I've pay a significant amount more for games I was finished with a lot sooner. If you the type of person who is nostalgic for the classic sidescrolling beat em up or actually played the original, Underground delivers. It is an incredibly solid play and was well worth the wait.

And yes, everyone still uses the Sauna together.

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.