Saturday 9 February, 2008

GAMEPLAY:
My second time though I tried the arcade mode and then later played some more with Alex. I chose a character that I liked from playing with my brother before. The matches started out fairly easy and progressively increased in difficulty. Unfortunately for me, the difficulty surpassed my skill before I was even close to the end. After some frustration, I started arcade mode again on easy. This setting proved quite accurate until the last fight which took me many tries to win. This brings me to one of the most annoying aspects of the game, the AI. Its not particularly humanlike. To make the game harder, the AI becomes amazingly adept at combos and special moves. It then lapses into stupidity to allow some possibility of winning. The frequency at which the AI is stupid instead of a pro is the difficulty. This can be very frustrating as sometimes there is a disproportionate amount of time when the AI is amazing which often leads to it winning nearly flawlessly. I still like this game though. I just don’t plan to play the 1 player modes again.

So I quickly beckoned Alex to come play. This time I used some of the characters I had before and started getting used to them. Once I was somewhat familiar with a few of them, it became clear that each has a particular strategy. For instance, there is one character that is very defensive and has traps and long range attacks. Another character does a lot of her moves right after blocking and has a complementary move which allows her to run forward while blocking. Another character still can charge up and relies on hitting with a few very powerful attacks. This allows players to choose a character that suits them best. When I was playing with Alex he had characters he liked and I had mine. I liked having a character that was “my” character and fighting one that was “Alex’s”.

There is also a colorful array of places to choose from. You can fight in a fancy lobby, or a magical forest with gnomes and giant bettles, or perhaps you’d like to fight in Hell ankle deep in a river of blood, why not? Though the background you choose has no effect on the game, they’re all very well drawn and add some variety.

DESIGN:
The style of the game takes a lot from anime. The art itself is anime but also the design of the characters is reminiscent of anime. Their appearance and moves are often way over-the-top like anime is a lot of the time. The personalities of the characters are similar to those you see in anime too. For example, there is a cute spunky petite girl probably around 16 who fights with a giant anchor. The kind of gung-ho attitude she has is something anime uses frequently. The fact that many character fight with huge and/or strange weapons, an anchor, giant swords, a giant key, a giant scalpel, fans, a yo-yo, a pool cue and billiard balls, a guitar,…hair, is another kind of thing I expect in anime.

The over-the-top feel of the game is emphasized in this game, more than most fighters. Giant blasts are a part of most characters’ arsenal. Every character had a instant kill move and these are especially wild. Whether they’re blowing the opponent up with an atomic bomb or sucking them into another dimension, the instant kill moves are the pinnacle of this game’s active imagination. This adds to the excitement and energy of the battles.

Also, as I said before, the changing of the commands for special moves in this iteration of Guilty Gear is important design choice. The designers decided it was more important that players be able to use the moves effectively than to make them harder to do. I believe it is more satisfying to do a move that requires more than just a button press, but there is a point where this causes more frustration than fun. I’d say they got the balance just right.

This is perfectly acceptable, with a good gameplay section. The design section, thought, feels rather short and perfunctory. It might've been good to talk about different characters (and name them, it's a bit easier to keep track of that way) and how their fighting styles work within the overall gameplay and the different stratagies you need to use them effectively. Still, it's an all right Gamelog.

Amy Leek (grader)