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the
ultra-hardcore. The result felt fresher and more daring than any
2D fighter we'd played in a very long time.
Now, it's several years later, and the series has gone from scrappy
underdog to alpha male in a few quick strokes, a coup of such magnitude
that many see it as the final, definitive nail in the coffin of
Street Fighter. After all, with Capcom openly phoning it
in nowadays (with the lifeless Capcom Fighting Evolution)
and SNK still in complete disarray (with the disappointingly sloppy
SvC Chaos), it doesn't really come as much of a surprise
that someone new took advantage of the situation to crack the market.
As it stands, the team at Sammy is the only one even trying nowadays;
it looks like Capcom isn't even going to bother to put up a token
fight for its territory.
So, given that they're the only company within the genre who still
seems to have a pulse, the Guilty team could have fairly easily
gotten away with just fine-tuning their series and re-releasing
it every year ad nauseam. It's what the fans are used to, and it's
worked wonders for both Capcom and SNK's bank accounts for many
years. This makes their latest decision even more surprising, and
shows just how daring these guys really are: Guilty Gear Isuka,
technically the fifth game in the series, takes the unprecedented
step of completely reworking how the game is played, and in the
process drag the entire stagnant genre straight into modernity,
apparently whether the hardcore crowd like it or not.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of it, let me say this: If you're
one of the millions out there who likes the idea of a good 2D fighter
but eventually got turned off to it by the incestuous nature of
the recent eight years worth games, then commence rejoicing: Guilty
Gear Isuka has made 2D fighters fun again for everyone, not
just the entrenched fans. If you're firmly of the Old School and
don't want to hear that kind of heresy, well, Street
Fighter Anniversary came out, so my suggestion is to go
for that if you don't already have Street Fighter III: Third
Strike on the Dreamcast. It's the last good game in the series
you're probably going to see on American shelves for a painfully
long time.
So, assuming you've given Guilty Gear X2 a shot or two, let's
start with what hasn't changed in Isuka. First thing you're
likely to notice is that it keeps the same graphical and musical
style from all the previous entries. It's got more visual changes
than the small leap from Guilty Gear X to Guilty Gear
X2 had, but the same character sprites are still in use here.
This is fine with me, and I'd imagine nobody else will really be
bothered by it either since the characters have always looked fantastic
and continue to hold up fine. There are some new animations and
things peppered throughout, but generally these are the same characters
we're used to.
The stage backgrounds, on the other hand, are completely new. Some
look better (China), some look worse (The Walking Gears), but overall
the new stages are on par with what you'd expect, and they're faithful
to the Guilty Gear "feel".
As for the music, I'd go so far as to call this the best Gear
soundtrack yet by just a hair, but that's going to be a matter of
deeply-divided personal taste. With this series, you either love
the over-the-top, vaguely Queen inspired music, or you absolutely
hate it. If you didn't like it before, you're going to really be
bothered by it here, so make some mix CDs if need be.
That's another constant from the series that's held over. Love it
or hate it, the Gear games are all infamous for their truly insane
scifi-anime-meets-80's-area-rock aesthetic, and that's stronger
here then it's ever been. If this is your first Guilty Gear
game, then expect to be astounded by the character selection. There
are no serious-looking guys in karate outfits and headbands here.
Instead, you've got a nine-foot-tall doctor with a bag over his
head wielding a huge scalpel, a sexed-up witch who uses a guitar
as a weapon, a pretty-boy assassin who fights with a pool stick,
a surprisingly fully-clothed blonde bombshell who uses her long
hair as a weapon, a hyper-androgynous (male) bounty hunter wannabe
who looks like a preteen nun and fights with a yo-yo, and even a
guy wearing a full white body suit, complete with a pink heart on
his forehead, with who is possessed by the girl from "The Ring"
and fights by randomly summoning demons while apologizing profusely
to his opponent. And those are some of the more normal characters.
Crazy with a capital 'C'.
Nutty as they are, nobody's ever going to accuse the cast of being
boring, and Isuka thankfully recycles the entire roster from
the previous game, so if you've got a favorite you can jump right
into the fray without having to relearn anything dramatic. We also,
however get two newcomers: A.B.A. (pronounced "Abba"), and Robo
Ky II, as well as a few minor "unofficial" characters that act as
bonus rewards to those tenacious enough to unlock them.
A.B.A., a skinny girl wrapped in bloody bandages who drags around
a huge golden key, is definitely a hardcore-players-only character.
She has two different fighting styles, three separate modes of combat,
and injures herself in the course of performing super moves. She's
also insanely powerful once you get used to her, but expect that
to be an uphill battle unless you're a fighting game veteran. She
takes a lot of effort to master, though there's nothing more satisfying
in the game than wrecking the competition with a huge key. If you
like to use Dhalsim, Geese, or other "difficult" characters, A.B.A.
should be right up your alley.
Robo Ky II, on the other hand, sounds like a cheap clone of the
original Robo Ky (who's also in the game) who was himself a clone
of the series' primary character, Ky Kiske. In reality, Robo Ky
II is a make-your-own fighter, and in his own way is probably the
most unique addition to the character list. Isuka comes with
a surprisingly lengthy and involved bonus game that acts like a
side-scrolling brawler - think Final Fight or Streets
of Rage. By taking Robo Ky II through this mode you can earn
points to unlock the moves of nearly every other character in the
game, which you can then graft them onto him to make your own one-man
dream-team of sorts. Want Millia's "Lust Shaker" and Potemkin's
"Potemkin Crusher" in the same fighter? RKII's your man, and he'll
drive anyone you fight absolutely insane. What makes this even more
fun is that he has his own uniquely animated "interpretations" of
all the moves, and nearly every one of them is a real hoot to watch.
It's nice to see a fighting game that isn't afraid to poke some
fun at itself, and RKII's lampooning of every move in the game is
worth the price of admission alone.
Best of all, you can save your customized robot onto a memory card,
take him to a friend's house, and use him in the regular Vs. matches
to utterly confuse the hell out of your opponent. Can you tune RKII
to be ridiculously overpowered? Oh yeah, quite easily. But, your
opponents can always make their own robot, leading to some pretty
mind-boggling match-up possibilities. You haven't seen anything
quite as batshit as a four-way custom Robo Ky II battle.
Right, speaking of four-way, on to the real big doozy of a change:
Isuka has the option to let four independent players battle
it out at once, in teams of their choosing. You can do a two vs.
two, two vs. one, a one vs. three, or a straight up free-for-all.
The game will scale the power of the characters accordingly, so
a single player versus three opponents gets a huge power and defense
increase to compensate. If you've only got one other person to play
with, you can have the computer control your teammates, or you can
just train yourself by pitting your one character against three
A.I. opponents simultaneously.
This has been done in 3D fighters before (well, sort of: It's been
done in Powerstone) but this is a first for a legitimate
2D game. Keep in mind I'm not talking about Assists or Strikers,
where more characters will run onto the screen for a single attack,
but rather four people, with four controllers, all fighting at the
same time while still using a fairly traditional 2D fighter rule
set. It's as chaotic as it sounds, so it's pretty surprising that
not only does it work, but it works really well once you get used
to it a bit.
It'll require a transition period, to be sure. Several core alterations
were made from the original gameplay model in order to accommodate
four players, and these have a dramatic impact on how the matches
play out.
By far the most controversial addition - or subtraction, depending
on how you want to look at it - is that there is now a button to
turn your fighter around. No longer will characters cross-up by
themselves; you have to manually flip them to face the other way
if your opponent jumps over you - or if you jump over your opponent,
for that matter. At first, this is going to lead to a lot of cursing
because it's extremely counterintuitive to anyone who's played a
2D fighter before. Given enough time, you start to get used to it,
and once you see how chaotic four-player battles are prone to become
you'll eventually wind up appreciating the added control this gives
you, but it's probably going to be a rocky start. Expect to burn
quite a few practice matches where you're getting hit in the back
with projectiles constantly because you're facing the wrong way.
Because of this, all the characters have a few added moves. There's
a canned back attack move mapped to the shoulder buttons by default
(complete with new animations), and many characters have special
moves that will offensively flip them in the direction of their
opponent, letting you be that much more aggressive towards anyone
who tries to use the manual cross-up to their advantage. It's still
in your best interests to try to be facing whoever it is you're
trying to fight, but fighters who get sandwiched between two attackers
stand more of a chance than it seems at first.
Another addition that helps ease things a bit is that there are
now two planes for the characters to fight in. You can step into
and out of the background, much like the original Fatal Fury
games. This is crucial both offensively and defensively, especially
in uneven fights where one character is facing off against two or
three. This is also going to force some players to radically alter
their tactics. Anyone who relies on corner traps (read: Anyone who
uses Venom) is going to have to come up with a new strategy, since
the added z-axis movement completely negates that fighting style
(thank god).
The last really notable change to the matches is that, for obvious
reasons, the battles are no longer broken up into rounds. Rather,
the characters have a set amount of "souls", i.e. lives, per match.
If they loose all their health, they burn a soul and get their health
back. Use up all your souls and you loose the fight.
In a clever move, teams share the same number of souls. Skilled
players take can advantage of this by targeting the weaker enemy
team member to burn through the opposing team's souls faster. This
means you can't just ignore your teammate in a 2 vs. 2 battle, because
you'll wind up with no lives left in doing so. If they're getting
thrashed, it becomes a race to do whatever you can to help them
without disengaging your current opponent.
Other than that, it's Guilty Gear. Characters retain the
same moves from the previous games, albeit with some minor tweaks
here and there, and the advanced maneuvers like the False Roman
Cancel and the Fortress Defense shield are all in there. One thing
that's been cut, and this is probably going to disappoint some people,
are the signature "Instant Kill" moves for each character. That's
pretty understandable though, given that one player wiping out three
others with a single move would get annoying real fast.
For all the chaos onscreen at any given time, it's pretty remarkable
from a technical standpoint how fast the game moves. There are a
few bits of rough graphics here and there, notably in some of the
super move animations, but I can't bring myself to complain about
it. In fact, I'm shocked the game runs as well as it does on a PS2
- it actually looks better than the Xbox version of Guilty Gear
X2 #Reload in places, which I'm not sure how Sammy pulled off.
I'm glad they did, though, because there's an incredible amount
of stuff onscreen at any given time, and slowdown here would have
been a killer. If you thought all the spurting blood, flying fireballs,
and random flashy effects were distracting in the one on one fights,
imagine how it looks when you double it.
And that's more or less it for this game. There are a good number
of unlockables that can be earned by going through the tough single-player
mode, ranging from artwork to "EX" versions of all the characters,
and the side-scrolling minigame is more than enough to keep people
busy when their friends aren't around to play, but the real question
is, for all these changes, is the series really any better for it?
Well, yes and no. Isuka has really grown on me, and the several
hours of four-way matches I've played were, without fail, a lot
of fun, but I can't help but think of this game as sort of a "side-quest"
type thing. In the end, I see myself preferring the more traditional
one-on-one fights to the more chaotic and slightly less strategic
battles this game tends to have.
However, that's not to knock Isuka at all. If anything, I
greatly applaud Sammy for not being content to just cough up another
rehash of their franchise, but rather rework it into something that
has a completely different feel and, if nothing else, adds even
more originality to the franchise. This is an excellent game, and
like I said before, it's one of the few in recent memory where the
casual fans are given just as many toys to play with as the hardcore
aficionados. It's unorthodox, but they pulled it off remarkably
well. Just don't be too surprised if the next Guilty Gear
reverts back to the standard method of fighting. In the long run,
I think that has more lasting appeal.
One final note: In order to play four-way games on the PS2, you
obviously need a multitap, and there is also no internet play in
this version. Sammy has already announced plans to bring Isuka
to the Xbox with Live support. That, in addition to the fact that
the Xbox has four-player capabilities natively, means that if you've
got both consoles, you're probably better off holding out for the
Xbox version. If you're boxless, however, don't hesitate to snap
this game up now.
Overall: 9/10
This one should absolutely be in every fighter fan's library, and even casual gamers should give it a rental at the very least. It's a solid game on its own, but when you've got three friends to throw down with, it's one of the most unique, intense fighters ever crafted, and a hell of a lot of fun.
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It's
official: The Street Fighter era of 2D fighting games is
over. After showing increasing disinterest in recent years in what
was once their primary money-maker, Capcom of Japan finally sold
the rights to Street Fighter to Capcom USA, meaning that
any future installments will be made by Americans. Read between
the lines: Unless some kind of divine miracle occurs on behalf of
Chun-Li and company, the series is now effectively dead. 
