White Man

Let's not forget that SNK also changed Kyo's appearance midway through the series and gave his moveset a complete overhaul multiple times. Compare that to Ryu, who looks and plays the same way in every. Single. Game.

I recall Capcom saying they weren't doing any more next-gen ports for their classic fighters after Third Strike Online and Darkstalkers Resurrection failed to meet their totally absurd sales projections. To be fair, the market is pretty oversaturated with 2D fighters as it is. New game announcements that would have given me a hype attack five years ago are now with the usual response of "Oh, that's neat. I probably won't buy it, but still..."

The goal then becomes avoiding being placed in a situation where you're able to be grabbed. Nothing random or unfair about that. I don't see why it's a bad thing that you would have to adjust your approach to fight an opponent with a different skill set from the rest of the cast (unless the character is broken, which as others have noted, usually isn't the case with grapplers). And how is employing a keep-away strategy equal to panicking? If you're panicking, that means you've probably already made a mistake. I read Skye's post as an argument why grapplers shouldn't be in 2D fighters because they're "not fun" to fight against, which I think is silly. If that's not the point he was attempting to make, then I misinterpreted something somewhere. My bad.

I've only ever had one bad experience with mics. Some guy called me retarded for dropping a couple combos, so I expressed my condolences that his mother had reduced herself to having sex with retarded guys. Then I left the room, blocked him, and found a different room full of people who were cool. Playful ribbing is one thing, but if people start getting nasty or lobbing insults, don't play with them. You seriously do a disservice to the community when you tolerate people behaving like that.

Ugh. Sorry if this is off-topic, but does anybody know why ASW stopped using Aksys for localization? I thought handling that stuff was sort of the point of Aksys being formed in the first place.

I fail to see how being forced to adjust your play style against certain opponents is a bad thing, frankly. Playing your character the same way every single match and getting freaked out in the rare instance you have to do something different... That seems like a more legit example of a scrub mentality from where I sit. 99% of the time, more play variety = better game. Waldstein looks really interesting because he does introduce some variety into a game where it looks like you can get await with using the same tactics against the majority of the cast. I don't normally play grapplers, but I could see myself picking up Wald as a second or third to keep things fresh.

He reminds me a little of Sojiro from Rurouni Kenshin as well. Looks interesting. Have those Astral Heat-esque finishing moves always been in the game, or are those new for the console version? EDIT: Looking more closely at the screencaps, I guess they're not finishing moves... More like some kind of super desperation moves? Either way, I don't recall seeing them before.

Gameplay impressions from Maximilian Dood. I don't really follow Max so I don't know how hardcore he is into fighters, but he has almost nothing but good things to say about the game, for whatever that's worth to you. The only bit of info I hadn't heard before is that the 60+ person lobbies from BBCP are apparently out. Can't say I'll miss those too much, personally. Huge lobbies are a neat idea in theory, but I just don't think the technology is there yet. I'd rather have more smooth matches than be able to wander around a virtual arcade full of one-bar connections.

That was so, so great.

Well, as depressing as Mike Z's posts were to read, I'm inclined to respect his opinion since he sorta, you know, makes these kinds of games for a living. That having been said, nothing anyone has posted (Mike Z included) thus far has bucked the trend of people critiquing Xrd based on its differences to previous GG titles, primarily AC+R. I understand this is inevitable for a sequel, but I'd still prefer more emphasis placed on how well Xrd performs as a stand-alone game. In other words, if game wasn't called Guilty Gear and had no connection to other games in the series, would you want to play it? Because whether you're giving a bad game a free pass because you're a fan of the series or you're condemning a good game because you think it's too different from its predecessors, I can't trust any kind of review that's been run through a nostalgia filter. If Xrd doesn't fulfill the role of a replacement for AC+R, GOOD. Plus R is an incredibly fun game that doesn't need to be replaced. Our generation has been trained by the corporate machine to reject whatever we have the instant a more recent version is released, and I absolutely despise that mentality. Just because something has the holy symbol of "NEW" printed on it doesn't mean whatever came before it should be tossed in the garbage. I'd like to believe the people making these games felt the same way and that's why Xrd was designed to be a unique experience with new mechanics and a different feel instead of just being Plus R: 3D Graphics Edition. Now maybe I'm just deluding myself and trying to pull a sheet over the evidence in front of me that Xrd is a disappointment because I have nothing else in my life to look forward to right now and goddamn it I need this video game to be good please god just give me this one little thing oh please. I don't know! Having not yet played the game myself, I'm not going to close my mind off to any possibilities. But if the main complaint from the GG vets continues to follow this pattern of comparing the game pixel-to-pixel to anything from the XX series, that's not going to put the smallest dent in my hype because I honestly don't see minor differences in the engine as a detriment. If anything, I want Xrd to take the series in new directions because I have no intention of shelving Plus R anytime in the foreseeable future. Sorry if this post has been sort of rambling. I guess all I really wanted to say is that regardless of how you feel about the gameplay in Xrd at this point, I think we can at least all agree that Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a piece of crap.

I predict they'll do something similar to what they did with CP and rebalance the arcade version when they rerelease it with the console exclusive stuff included, then release a patch for the home versions so both play the same. I have zero evidence they'll do this, of course, but it does seem to be a reoccurring pattern with FG developers.

I was veering more in the direction of cheeky social commentary, but sure. We can go with that. I am honestly looking forward to the game's online capabilities, though. I generally place a greater importance on that because A) more than half the people I play with don't live in the same time zone as me and B) it's pretty hard for developers to screw up local multiplayer in this day and age.

I still want to high-five the hell out of whoever came up with Accent Calories. With the exception of new character announcements (fingers crossed!), I'm more excited than anything to learn more about Xrd's online infrastructure. The console ports of Plus R really left me hungry for a Guilty Gear fighter with a proper online feature set. If they can take everything they've learned from the online modes for BB and further refine their already stellar netcode, they might just make having people over obsolete.

Isn't that what usernames are for?

That's pretty damn cool. If the CP arena is any indication, I expect I'll get sick of seeing that stage in time. But for now... Cool stuff.

Their reasoning goes that they have X number of frames to escape the throw, and because X is greater than 0 they think they should logically never, ever get thrown. (This is why David Sirlin infamously complained that BlazBlue was a "no throw" fighter when CT came out.) The problem with this logic is that it assumes people are AI instead of humans who get stressed or distracted or incorrectly guess what their opponent is going to do. Regardless, armchair strategists decide they aren't going to fall prey to a certain tactic because their math says it's avoidable. When you turn around and successfully use said tactic against them, they reason it only worked because lag messed with their calculations, and everyone knows that only a filthy scrub would ever use lag to their advantage (unless the other player somehow exploits lag, in which case it was all part of their brilliant master plan). TL;DR: Getting purple thrown pisses all over the parade of people who like to play theory fighter more than they play the actual game.

The data on Amazon actually says the game features "over 27 heavy rock tracks", as in a minimum of 27. Besides that, trying to estimate the number of characters based on what we think might be in the soundtrack is no better than guessing. The two additional tracks could be menu themes for all we know.

The original trailer music was cool, man. I know this might seem ironic given my username, but you guys are too white.

Word. I know the trend in fighting game reboots is to mainly include old characters with maybe one or two newcomers thrown in (MK9, KOF13, etc), but I'd like to think of Xrd as more of a sequel than a reboot. And for a sequel, 2 new characters out of 14 is kind of weak.

Cross-console play would be amazing, not to mention a pretty smart business move for ASW (there's no benefit to dividing the fanbase if you can prevent it). It gives people less incentive to pick up a PS4 if they don't already have one, but Sony probably considers this a small enough title that it wasn't worth "incentivizing" ASW to keep the online modes separate. This also confirms identical content and performance for both versions, which is really good news.

Doesn't look as hype as Death Cargo, but I might still check it out.

Can't do better than nstalkie's post for a comprehensive comparison, so I'll do my best to provide a "nutshell" answer: Guilty Gear is a long-running franchise that takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting heavily inspired by rock/metal iconography. The gameplay is most easily described as an oldschool "airdash" fighter: fast movement, moderate-length combos, and a heavy emphasis on pressure and knockdown. BlazBlue is a more recent series that takes place in a magicpunk setting (one that infuses traditional sci-fi with elements of fantasy magic). The gameplay is very similar to a number of modern doujin fighters — moderate game speed, low gravity, noticeably buffered inputs, very combo-centric — mixed with a few unique conventions borrowed from GG, such as the existence of a burst gauge and the ability to cancel attack animations at the cost of some meter. Players almost universally agree that GG has a slightly steeper learning curve than BB, though which game is "harder" to play at a high level is extremely debatable and more or less comes down to a matter of personal opinion and preferred play style.

Yeah, some of the colors got shuffled around for +R. Most notably, all character's AC D colors are now homages to BlazBlue characters. No matter which version of the game you're playing, however, Slash D will always be a character's gold color and #R D will always be their shadow color. And yes, both have to be unlocked. You can unlock both colors for a character either by beating their Gold version in survival mode OR by completing all of their story paths in story mode. As for a +R color chart, that's something I'd like to know about as well. I heard the characters' updated color charts were in the Gainful Material mook, but I've yet to see scans of that anywhere.

Shhhhh! Dude, their lawyers are going to throw you in jail for the CRIME of defamation! Just because the game "sucks" and "doesn't work properly" and "isn't worth the money" doesn't mean you can go around DEFAMING an honorable company like a criminal. Quick, APOLOGIZE.

Haha, true that. I think an English dub for Xrd is a strong possibility because it's become an established trend that's expected for these games. Personally, I'd rather they didn't dub it. It just seems like such an unnecessary expense. I feel pretty confident saying there is not one English-speaking person on the planet who bought any BlazBlue title who would have foregone the purchase if they hadn't included an English voice track. And if there is anybody out there who's that stupid, I'd rather not play with them anyway.