White Man

Isuka easily has the most underrated OST in the series, I'll give it that much. I have to agree with qwerty regarding AC+R. Revelator is a great game and one of the better current-gen fighters out there, but AC just feels so polished and has an attention to detail that only comes from years of development. +R especially really does feel like the culmination of the entire GG series up to that point. And if I'm being honest with myself, then yeah, nostalgia also probably plays a part in my fondness for the game—though I'm aware of its flaws to the extent that I'd say the tint to my rose-colored glasses is fairly mild.

The concept alone deserves an A+. I look forward to seeing how this develops.

People often reference the difficulty of Guilty Gear as a reason for its smaller playerbase, but I'm not convinced. GG has a more complex gameplay system than some of its competition, but it's nowhere near as absurdly difficult to get a handle on as the chatter would lead one to believe. At a casual level, GG is actually pretty friendly to button mashing. You won't get very far unless you do your homework, but at least it isn't like most SF and KOF games where the AI will pound you into the dirt on the easiest difficulty setting if you don't instantly figure out how to counter all the shit getting thrown at you. Regardless of how demanding high-level play may be, the learning curve in GG is far from unmanageably steep. In any case, a game being difficult doesn't automatically doom it to low sales figures. The Dark Souls franchise had sold almost nine million copies as of last July, and that number has since increased by another three million (give or take) if you include Bloodborne and DS3.

I have to wonder if being associated with anime even has anything to do with Guilty Gear's lack of mainstream popularity. BlazBlue has been very warmly embraced by the anime fandom, and the popularity of that series in the US seems to have caught up with GG, if not surpassed it. Enough mainstream titles being released these days have a distinctly Japanese aesthetic that a game being "too anime" is no longer a reasonable excuse for it failing to find a sizable audience. (I swear Squenix is intentionally trolling their fanbase with every new Kingdom Hearts game they put out, yet each one still sells a bajillion copies over here.) Any number of reasons could be the cause of GG gettin' disrespected at big events, but I'd probably point to how badly ASW has the dropped the ball. This isn't me hating on the company, mind you — in my view, they're easily one of the top ten developers in the industry when it comes to pretty much everything except marketing. In Japan, their ability to actually sell their games seems to be slightly lacking compared to most of their competitors; outside Japan, their marketing is inexcusably dismal. They have virtually no presence in the US (and even less in other countries by the looks of it), and that's obviously going to affect the popularity of their titles at tournaments. Capcom keeps disappointing their fans time after time, but thanks to marketing they continue to be a household name among every demographic that plays games. How many people living outside of Japan who aren't a part of the fighting game scene have even heard of Arc System Works? I can forgive ASW to a certain extent because they are a smaller company with more limited resources, but sometimes it looks like they just aren't trying that hard. The US release of Sign was such an unmitigated disaster that I'm surprised they sold as many first-run copies as they did. I know the shipping strikes that delayed the LE weren't their fault, but good lord, we're talking ZERO advertising. No promotion, no hype, no anything. Put part of the blame for that on Aksys, I guess, but ultimately this is ASW's show and they have to put in the effort to make sure people see it. Better marketing won't make GG the new Street Fighter overnight, but any increase in visibility would help it immensely. They appear to be stepping up their efforts across the Pacific with Revelator, and now they need to do the same in other territories. I frankly don't see GG ever breaking out of its niche if they don't.

Even if the KOF series is done for the time being, at least it isn't like the franchise died young. We have no fewer than four titles (XI, XIII, 98, and 2002:UM) that are all considered genre staples, offer a unique experience, and are viable in tournament play. Very few 2D fighting game franchises can boast those numbers. If we have to keep playing those games while SNK rides the Pachinko train for a few more years, I'm personally fine with that. Wasn't exactly hyped about the new game being 3D anyway, if I'm being totally honest.

Right on. Worst case scenario, at least we'll finally have a definitive version of the game that everyone (or almost everyone, at least) can play. I think the reason the online scene never took off with the console ports is as much due to the different systems dividing the playerbase as it was due to the subpar netcode.

Weirdly, I'd be fine with this.

That girl... Ugh. I'm glad to see more women on the roster, but ever since the fans started salivating over Lili, at least half of the new females added to the Tekken games look like they were originally from DOA. Give us a few gals with some muscle tone for a change, jeez. I'll take a wild guess and predict the big red guy is a secret alternate boss similar to NANCY in Tekken 6.

Oh snap, S-Ko went solo! I like her design for what it is, though I'm not sure how well she meshes with the rest of the KI roster aesthetically. I guess it's good that they're making an effort to diversify the cast a bit...

Ha. Well, if they're going to emphasize comedy and mindless fun with this, then my interest is piqued. There are enough serious fighters on the market as it is. Never been a Clay Fighter fan, but if this game can make me laugh then I'll at least check it out.

Something I've always been curious about but never bothered to investigate: What about EX Gold characters? Do they get an entire set of unique properties, or are they just regular Gold characters with EX moves swapped out where applicable? For example, does EX Gold Order Sol have different properties due to the lack of a charge meter, or...?

That's pretty much my current plan, yeah.

People were annoyed by the timing of the release and the fact that it only contained one "real" new character (provided you'd gone in on the DLC for vanilla CS), so there were some complaints over that. However, the first Extend had the benefit of adding new content players really wanted (more substantial single-player modes, online enhancements, a character fans had actually asked for, etc.) and the fact that it rescued the gameplay from the baffling disaster of a patch that was CS2. Whether or not the improvements were worth the $40 MSRP was the topic of much debate, but most players acknowledged that it was a desirable package on the whole and begrudgingly handed over the money. For my own part, I publicly stated I wouldn't buy CSEX unless I was able to acquire it for what I thought it was worth: Anything under $30. I stuck to that and waited for a sale. Similarly, I'll add an addendum to my previous post and say I'll buy CPEX if I'm somehow able to find a new copy for $10 or less. I don't mean to sound petty, that's simply all the game looks like it's going to be worth to me.

I haven't played CP2 myself, but based on the footage I've watched and the comments players have made here and elsewhere, I believe the biggest issue with the game involves the loss of adaptability among individual characters coupled with the loss of diversity among the entire cast. This is something I believe has been a growing problem since the inception of the series. While CT was kind of a mess in terms of balance, one of the best things about that game — and one of its most universally praised aspects — was the fact that every character felt wholly unique and had a ton of options to accommodate different playstyles. Almost every character could be played at least two appreciably different ways, and everybody's Drive attack significantly impacted their gameplay. In subsequent iterations, that aspect of the game became increasingly downplayed. Characters became more homogenized in terms of damage and defense, and their individual "gimmicks" became less useful (Ragna's life-stealing mechanic being virtually removed and Rachel's Silpheed becoming more situational are just a pair of examples that spring to mind). It seems as though the CP2 update exacerbated this problem more so than any other installment. Too many characters lost too much of what made them interesting/unique. Jin's freezing attacks are only useful mid-combo, Tsubaki's charge mechanic is useless, Terumi lost damn near everything that made him fun, etc. Most characters essentially became one-combo wonders that have to be played a very specific way and punish any attempt at using unorthodox tactics. Simply put, CP2 is a game that discourages creativity on the part of its players. (There's also the fact that the balance is incredibly lopsided and the game is too dependent on long, muscle-memory combos that hurt the pacing, but I don't know if either of those things impact the game's fun factor as substantially.) I could be totally off the mark here, but that's my interpretation of what most people are talking about when they refer to CP2 being "less fun" than some other versions of BB.

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that, although the update was not particularly well received by many, there's no guarantee that was the actual reason BB was dropped from the lineup. The EVO organizers have realized their fantasy of creating a fighting tournament every bit as shadowy and deceitful as the ones featured in the plotlines of the games they play — except that, instead of gathering power to help a madman achieve world domination or resurrect an ancient demon, their nefarious ulterior motive is to score as many sponsorships and make as much money as possible. Which games are being played and which ones aren't has more to do with industry politics than the quality of said games or the health of their competitive scenes. I personally won't be investing in CP Extend for several reasons I suspect no one cares about. To those of you who are planning to buy the game, I sincerely hope you enjoy it. I said before that people should vote with their wallets and boycott Extend if they dislike these DLC-to-full-priced-re-release tactics, but upon giving it more thought, my current feelings are that it's not worth the effort. You're talking about a drop in the lake either way, and denying yourself the pleasure of something you believe you'd enjoy to try and prove a point to a company adrift in the tide of marketing trends beyond its control is silly. Play what you enjoy, avoid what you don't.

After I had this happen the first few times, I started sending messages to people who pulled that saying, "Get your ass back in here." One dude actually came back! I figured as much. While I can respect Aksys making an effort to avoid killing the hype for English UNIEL, this is starting to get a little silly. Just announce you're publishing the damn game already.

I'm starting to wonder if we're going to get the game at all.

At least that was creative. I think a better comparison would be post-90s SNK bringing back dead characters for the most absurd reasons imaginable. In any case, Capcom stopped giving a shit about continuity in SF after SF3. Unless they turn around and retcon SF4, that game screwed up the series' timeline beyond repair.

Japanese Darth Vader is cool, but having a little girl screeching shit at you through the arcade speakers... Yeah, that's the way BlazBlue is meant to be played. I'd almost be willing to buy that just for the mug.

I feel like I need to take a very long, very hot shower.

Different people pay attention to different things. It always blows my mind when folks walk into an arcade during a loketest for a new version of a game, play it for two rounds, and come away with a full mental catalog of dozens of minor changes that were made to their character down to hitbox placement and damage totals on specific combos. Unless it involves an obvious changes to a character's move set, that kind of technical stuff usually escapes me. I suppose I'm more interested in the aesthetic aspects of game design, as that sort of thing tends to stick out for me more. I noticed the color change for the HUD in BBCP 2.0 immediately, but I had to point it out to a friend of mine (who's played the original game more than I have) twice before he realized what I was talking about. Granted, a small visual change doesn't affect the way the game is played and is therefore technically unimportant. It's simply a bit of an oddity from a graphic design perspective — one that warrants discussion among people who are interested in that subject.

Ah. Never mind, then.

It's worth noting that the screenshots in the Destructoid review show the classic HUD with the text stylized in all caps. The shots could have been taken from the Japanese version of the game, but there's one image of a story mode scene translated into English, so I'm inclined to think they're from the localized version. It's possible that changing the HUD was an idea Aksys was playing around with in an earlier build and eventually reverted it. I guess we'll find out in a few days.

If SNKP was the parent of a young child, they'd give them a birthday present that was like a $10 gift card wrapped in dozens of progressively larger boxes and laugh hysterically every time the kid got down to a new layer.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Extreme Butouden is a 2D fighting game coming out for the 3DS in Japan this summer. The game will feature over 100 characters, some of which look to be support characters. More information plus a scanlation of the V-Jump reveal can be found here. I know DBZ fighters are a dime a dozen these days, and the fact that this one has only been announced for a handheld is a bit disappointing. There is, however, one very cool piece of info that greatly piqued my interest in the game: It's being developed by Arc System Works. EDIT: Ah shit. Sorry, I forgot that section even existed. Delete this, I guess?