Guilty Gear X2 Review

I like to kick ass. I frequently enjoy the art of unadulterated pugilism, the steam of combat, and the collective beat downs I dish out are legendary. And yet, I'm also totally against physical violence. Even from here in the snow covered state of Maryland I can hear the collective "Huh?" So, let me explain. I enjoy fighting games. To me, the "versus fighter" is the real meat and potatoes of the gaming world. Moreover, in the new millennium, the "versus fighter" genre has spectacular new dimension. Of course when I say new dimension, I am actually talking about dimensions plural, as in three, three dimensions. However, that isn't where the fighter began, oh no, back in the late 90's the mainstay of the gaming world was the 2-D fighter. Now in the modern era, where 3-D fighters are a dime a dozen, a well made 2D fighter can stand out and make it's mark. Therefore, to answer the call, our pals over at Sammy Studios have ushered forth Guilty Gear X-2. Like its predecessor, Guilty Gear, GGX-2 is a 2-D sprite based fighter. Using the graphical power of the PS2 and the ability to use older technology to better ends, GGX-2 is intended to be the true pinnacle of 2-D fighters. But it isn't. This isn't to say the game isn't cool and fun - quite the contrary - but the best of the best it isn't.

Be gone spiteful behemoth!

Let me give you a nice hair-cut there, big boy!

First the Pros.

This game looks amazing. Not just good, but great. The backgrounds are varied and in some cases interactive and the reality level is truly superior. The rendered backgrounds of GGX-2, are very stylized, some are more abstract while others are photo realistic. The character sprites are well done. They are obviously hand-drawn and, although fully pre-rendered, they have a huge variety of movements and styles - not every kick and punch looks the same. The music is a bit annoying, being almost completely heavy metal and hard rock, but the songs aren't too bad. Another good thing is that most of the music has been scored to last the full amount of time in a match, so repetition is rare. The game makes full use of the PS2's immense color palette; all characters have at least four different colored outfits, all of which are fully selectable in the game.

The gameplay is also very nice, the action can be very frenetic and the fighting can be intense. Especially nice is the redesign of the powerup in the game, there are multiple ways to increase power during a match and learning to master these methods is the most fun I've had in a 2-D fighter in a while. The fighting is naturally the best part of this game, and all modes are fun, whether playing a friend or the computer in either story or arcade mode the action remains fun the entire time. The voice acting (the game retains the entire original Japanese) is very well done, many of the characters look and act exactly as you would expect them to. The interludes during the fighting (you'll see what I mean) are some of the better things I have seen in fighters in a long time and add a lot to the enjoyment of the game. The special effects and hit effects are among the nicest I've seen outside an RPG, another major plus for the game.

The style of the fighting is heavily dependant on combo moves, instant kills and specials, and you will need how to do all of these in order to perfect your game. Why? Well, in order to complete the game and unlock the hidden characters, you will need to complete the story mode for every character. However, many of these require that that you get certain endings in the story modes of other characters. For example, you can get all three endings of character A, but only one and two of character B, until you unlock ending 2 for character C, and so forth. Don't be ashamed to check a walkthrough on this game, since the way that this system works and the ways to get other endings can be confusing, you still have to do the fighting so leave the searching to others.

I said no! Thy shall wed thy intended!

Meet the Slayer!

However, while this game sounds nearly perfect for a 2-D fighter it still has some significant drawbacks that need to be reported. Now don't get me wrong, I really liked the game, but it suffers some problems that many of the older games were able to work out in previous generations. If you are a fan of versus fighters, you know that before you think of character designs, backgrounds, and storyline you must focus on the game engine and most importantly on the character balancing. But what exactly is character balancing? Well, the theory of the versus fighter is that for every strength you give a character you must balance it out with a weakness that evens every character at a zero sum. Here is a demonstration - if you allow Fighter A superiority in speed, you must counteract it by making her attacks weak, and vice versa, if Fighter B has great range attacks, then his close attacks must suffer for it.

You see where I'm going with this right? If one character is super-fast, super-strong, has great specials and an awesome ranged attack then the game loses a lot, because everyone will gravitate towards that character and the game is ruined. So, in the end, every player should be able to beat any other player depending solely on the skill of the player. At least that's the theory, but GGX-2 suffers from an aggravating case of bad balancing. I find that some characters, such as Eddie, are almost too powerful and cheesers (console slang for people who use characters with easy to pull off moves repeatedly, also see n00bs) can whoop down using him. That's not to say he is unbeatable but his combos and power moves are absurdly easy to do, leaving even the most experienced player frustrated. That is, until you can master a character with something capable of cutting his ass down to size.

Another downfall of this otherwise great game is an acute lack of an interesting storyline. Most characters are attempting to accomplish something, naturally. But since the only place we have ever seen these characters before was the original Guilty Gear I found myself truly not giving a crap and skipping over story parts, which in some cases, held info you needed to have in order to correctly defeat the character.

Anyway, this game was basically pretty good, and aside from some balancing issues, a not-so-great story and a somewhat annoying heavy metal soundtrack I found it was a great play and definitely worth a buy, especially if you pine for the days of the 2-D fighter.