BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Review

Last year, the deep and wild 2D fighting of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger made the game a favorite among those who like their characters crazy and their action complex. BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is more of a refinement of the original game than a full-fledged sequel. It introduces some great new modes that make the action more accessible to newcomers, and the new characters and balancing refinements ensure that this is the version of BlazBlue you should own.

As with Calamity Trigger, the greatest asset to Continuum Shift is its tremendously diverse roster of fighters. With 12 returning characters, two new ones available from the start, and a third who can be unlocked or purchased, BlazBlue doesn't have the largest stable of fighters to choose from. But what it lacks in number it more than makes up for in variety. Each fighter feels significantly different from the others, and they run the gamut from accessible characters with movesets that will feel quickly familiar to anyone who has spent time with fighting games, to characters with truly strange abilities that make them considerably more difficult to master. Among these are three new characters who fit right in. Tsubaki is a swordswoman with a shape-changing blade who has some effective combos that are easier to pull off than those of other characters, and whose special ability temporarily increases the power of her special moves. Hazama is a snappy dresser and one of the tougher characters to play effectively. He can unleash a snake-like tentacle called Ouroboros which lets him close the distance between himself and his opponents very quickly. Mu, the unlockable character, is an outlandishly armored fighter whose special ability is placing turrets that blast her opponents. If placed strategically, these can make for some very effective traps, and make her a force to be reckoned with in the hands of those who can use this tricky mechanic well.

Each character has weak, medium, and strong attacks, and a drive, which is a special ability. Those unique abilities are the most dramatic thing that sets BlazBlue apart from other fighting games. On top of that, there are a large number of other mechanics in BlazBlue that can be daunting for newcomers. Heat gauges, barrier gauges, guard primers, and more are on the screen at all times, and making sense of all this is not easy. Making things more difficult is that BlazBlue's fighting system is technical, placing a heavy emphasis on cancels, juggles, and long combos that cannot be escaped. Those who spent a lot of time with Calamity Trigger may notice Continuum Shift's adjustments, but one the whole the refinements are quite subtle. There are new moves for each character, as well as changes to the way the game handles some of the more advanced techniques, yet Continuum Shift's core mechanics feel very much like those of its predecessor, which is no bad thing. It does mean that BlazBlue remains one of the more inaccessible fighters out there, though, and it can be intimidating, even for those who have spent lots of time with other fighting games. Thankfully, Continuum Shift introduces a few modes that make learning the ropes somewhat easier.

The Tutorial mode goes over everything, from the most fundamental basics of character movement, to detailed information about each character's specific movesets and combos, letting you select only those lessons you think might be of use to you. The lectures about all of the various game mechanics are a bit dry and long-winded, but the Tutorial mode is nonetheless a welcome addition. It's also nicely complemented by another new addition, the Challenge mode, which which makes you perform a series of increasingly difficult combos with your selected character. You can display the command inputs on the screen and watch a demonstration of the moves if you're having difficulty nailing the timing. Together, these two modes make an effective and full-featured training tool.

In the end, though, the only way to really learn how all the pieces fit together is to get down to the business of fighting, and BlazBlue gives you a number of ways to jump into the fray. There's a standard Arcade mode that lets you fight it out against a series of opponents with a hint of a story for each character. There's also a much more elaborate Story mode, in which you play as all 14 of the initially available characters. The tale is nearly impenetrable, and it's told in such a bland, uninvolving way via conversations between character portraits that it's impossible to care about it, which seems strange given how much anime-influenced over-the-top intensity is present in the fighting. A good story isn't a necessity in a good fighting game, but BlazBlue puts so much emphasis on its own story that the game definitely would have benefited from some more dramatic flair in the telling.

There's also a pure Versus option for battling the computer or your friends, a Score Attack mode, and a mode called Legion, which is essentially a survival game type in which you move from space to space on a map, recruiting new fighters to your army from the ranks of the armies you defeat. It's a neat idea, but it feels underdeveloped, and since it can be played only against the computer and it never changes, there's little reason to come back to it time and again. Like just about any fighting game worth its salt, this game is at its best when played against human opponents, and like its predecessor, Continuum Shift boasts excellent online play. You can jump into player matches or ranked matches or create your own lobbies for up to six players. Matches can be configured with a variety of options, and while lag can be an issue in some matches, the game lets you filter searches by connection speed, which proved in our experience to be a useful way of seeking out opponents we could battle without any noticeable lag.

BlazBlue's distinctive and beautiful visuals make it almost as interesting to watch as it is to play. The two-dimensional characters are gorgeous, with intense colors and a level of detail that makes them practically pop off the screen. The backgrounds, which combine two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements, fuse the old-fashioned and the futuristic to fascinating effect and provide a lovely and memorable backdrop for the action. The action may actually be overstimulating at times, with so many dramatic effects accompanying so many of the attacks, but all that visual craziness lends BlazBlue its own unique flavor of intensity among fighting games. The sounds are similarly bold and energetic, with the announcer frequently shouting "Counter!" and the combatants exchanging compliments and insults throughout each fight, while the stirring score matches the exuberance of the visuals.

With Super Street Fighter IV and now BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, $40 seems to be the going rate for fighting game follow-ups that add enhancements and refinements rather than provide the amount of new content that would justify full price. With only three new characters, this is a tougher sell than Super Street Fighter IV, and given its unabashedly technical mechanics, some players will still find it too arcane for their tastes. But if you are looking for a fighter that's distinctly different from the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats of the world, Continuum Shift makes it easier to get into BlazBlue than it was before. And if you're already a BlazBlue fan, the new characters and balance tweaks make this the better version of the game.

A fighting game on a cell phone might not sound like the most enjoyable thing in the world to most fighting purists out there, but there are certainly plenty of people who would enjoy the chance to kick the crap out of some 2D sprites while on the go. Last year's Shado Fighter by In-Fusio proved that fighting games could work on mobile. Obviously, some of the intricacies of major 2D fighters had to be eliminated for the sake of making the game playable on a phone, but it worked pretty well, as the strategy was simplified just enough to make the experience fun. Gameloft's Medieval Combat continues in this tradition, this time focusing more on the sword-based fighting of a Samurai Shodown than a typical brawler. The gameplay isn't altogether remarkable, and in some respects, it's a little too easily exploited. However, the game has a fantastic look, and the fun fighting mechanics make up for some of its primary faults.

At the outset, five fighters are available for you to play with, though you'll eventually have seven in all once you've played through the arcade mode a couple of times and unlocked both the bosses. The character designs feel largely inspired from the Soul Calibur universe, with knights, executioners, and even a spindly freak with hand-mounted blades, a la Voldo. The two boss characters are basically clones of the same fighter with different skins. Apart from this mild disappointment, the rest of the characters look and feel pretty different from one another. Graphically, this is one of the nicer looking mobile games out there, and it's easily the best-looking fighting game available. On the LG VX8100, the 2D sprites are extremely detailed, and all of them animate smoothly and uniquely. Likewise, the audio is of high quality, with some decent tunes that play over the opening menu and in between fights, as well as some solid sound effects that occur during battle.

The basic fighting mechanics revolve around two main attack buttons and a magic button. The 5 and 8 keys perform weak and strong attacks, respectively, and the 0 key, when held down for different amounts of time, unleashes weak and strong magic attacks. Your fighter's magic meter fills up as you do more damage during a fight, and once your meter is full, holding down the magic button for an extended period of time will let you do a super attack. Once one of these moves is enacted, a combination of directional buttons will appear onscreen. Hit the four directional buttons with the right timing, and you'll pull off an unblockable attack.

The flow of the action in Medieval Combat is good. There are a few special combo attacks you can pull off, not to mention a rushing grab attack that results in multiple hits. The character movement is pretty responsive, and everything moves at a good pace. If there's one fatal flaw with the gameplay, however, it's that it's just too easy to win. Even on the hardest difficulty, all you really need to is just hammer on the attack buttons, even while your opponent is blocking. Though all the fighters start off with some kind of shield, once you knock that out of their hands, they'll start taking small bits of damage. You can basically back them into a corner once you're on a roll, and at any point you can simply jump back and do your unblockable attack to just finish them off. Periodically they'll use the game's one counter move to hit you back, but most times, they'll just sit there blocking. This issue is most prevalent when the auto-blocking feature is turned on, as this feature is a little bit broken. If the CPU happens to be the one to get the first attack on, your fighter will start hopelessly trying to block, and most attempts to jump away or otherwise get out of this detrimental loop are for naught. Essentially, you have to turn off auto-blocking to have any kind of a decent challenge in the game, and even then, you're not guaranteed one.

The game's arcade mode can be beaten in about 20 minutes on any difficulty level. There's no real story to speak of, so there isn't an awful lot of incentive to play it over and over again. There's also an instant play mode, as well as a survival mode, which is probably the most appealing mode in the game, since it at least gives you some sort of goal to work toward.

Medieval Combat is a fairly short experience, albeit a mostly fun one. With the auto-blocking turned off, and minus any expectation of an overly challenging gameplay experience, Medieval Combat does mobile fighting well. There's a nice roster of available moves, excellent-looking characters, and solid mechanics here for anyone looking to brawl on their phones. The addition of multiplayer--as in Gameloft's new multiplayer versions of Asphalt: Urban GT and Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm--or a more in-depth arcade mode would have been greatly beneficial to the overall package, but as it is, Medieval Combat is good fun.

Ultimate Fighting Championship Review

The no-holds-barred martial arts tournament known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship has finally spawned a PlayStation interpretation of the sport, which comes with real fighters, tons of moves, and 32 different styles of fighting. The game, however, fails to deliver responsive controls or decent graphics, and this makes the UFC a disappointing game to play for even the most dedicated fan of the sport.

On the surface, Ultimate Fighting Championship looks as though it may be a not-so-pretty version of its Dreamcast counterpart. The game has more than 22 different fighters, 32 different styles, and various modes of play such as exhibition and tournament. The game's main mode of play is a career mode of sorts that's called championship road. In this mode you face opponent after opponent, increasing your fighter's ability along the way. The game even has a fairly in-depth create-a-fighter mode that lets you mix and match moves and skills as well as different appearances to make a custom fighter. But once you get past the menus, options, and basic premise of knocking out your opponent or making him or her submit, the similarities between the two versions of the game end.

The most debilitating problem the game has is its gameplay and control. Controlling your fighter is a hard and frustrating task due to unresponsive and sloppy controls that result in delayed and undesired onscreen action. The game gives you tons of moves to perform, ranging from standard strikes to complicated chokeholds and joint locks. Many of the moves require precise timing and multiple button presses to execute correctly, which is something that's hard to accomplish due to the game's controls. The AI of the computer opponents in the game are extremely single minded in their attack, if you're facing a grappler he or she is always going to try to take you down and make you submit. If you face a striker he's almost always going for a knockout. Knowing this makes fighting your opponents less difficult than fighting the game's poor control.

Visually, the game suffers from an array of problems including a low frame rate, sloppy character models, and poor animations. The fighters in the game just look plain bad, the punches they throw and the way they interact with one another is way too stiff, making them look and move more like rock-'em-sock-'em robots. The textures used for their faces and clothes are very blocky and pixilated looking. Even the game's menus and character portraits look terribly blocky and pixelated. In the audio department, "Big" John McCarthy's voice adds a bit of authenticity to the game. The game's sound effects and music are fairly decent as well.

In the end, Ultimate Fighting Championship for the PlayStation doesn't have anything to offer beyond the good name of its Dreamcast counterpart. No matter how big of a fan of the UFC you may be, the game's poor control and graphics just simply ruin the game and make it totally unenjoyable.

Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi Review

No ordinary human could ever perform the kinds of tremendously devastating and destructive attacks that the characters of the Dragon Ball Z universe regularly pull off. But even for Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and the rest of the gang, such abilities take dedication, training, and a great deal of energy and effort. In Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi, however, sending opponents flying through the air with a kick is as easy as pushing a button, and firing off a kamehameha takes only a press of the right thumbstick. In fact, combat requires so little effort on your part that, despite the explosive display of power and fighting skill happening onscreen, it's hard to feel invested in what's taking place. Ultimate Tenkaichi is all spectacle and no substance.

Battles in this fighting game pit characters against each other in three-dimensional environments. When close to your opponent, you can dish out a flurry of melee attacks by tapping a button repeatedly, or press another button for a slower, more powerful attack. If you land a string of attacks, the action stops for what is called an attack clash. At this point, you and your opponent select one of two options; if you each choose different options, you win the clash, dealing damage and potentially sending your foe soaring through the air, giving you the opportunity to keep a chain of attacks going. If the defender chooses the same option that you do, he or she breaks your combo and performs a counterattack. There's no sense of timing or skill involved in unleashing the chain of attacks that triggers the clash; the stops the clashes bring about interrupt the flow of battle; and the continued success or failure of your attacks comes down to a 50-50 chance rather than to any actual prowess or technique on your part. It's a shallow and uninvolving melee combat system, and one in which the sight and sound of combatants being knocked hundreds of feet through the air is so commonplace, it quickly becomes tiresome.

If you have sufficient ki (energy that you can charge up by pressing down on the D-pad), you can perform a breakaway attack, which again presents you with two options that result in either dealing damage or taking damage. After the breakaway, you're at a greater distance from your foe. From here, you can fly in all directions and can fire ki blasts, but combat at this range plays out almost identically to melee combat. Landing a string of ki blasts triggers an attack clash, and once again, both you and the recipient of your blows choose from two options that determine how things play out.

Performing the dramatic signature moves of these characters is even less exciting than everything else about the combat. When one combatant's health is running low, the fighters gain access to their spirit gauges. At this point, firing off a galick gun, a spirit bomb, or any other super attack is done with a press of the right thumbstick. The visuals that accompany these attacks are appropriately intense--waves of energy tear up the earth, and massive explosions are viewed from orbit--but the simplicity with which they're performed makes them unsatisfying and anticlimactic. If you're on the receiving end of such an attack and you have enough ki stored up, you have a few options. You can guard, which automatically reduces the amount of damage you take. You can evade, which requires that you pull off a sequence of timed button presses; if you succeed, the attack does no damage, but if you fail, it does more than it would otherwise. Finally, you can intercept the attack. This leads to a button-mashing contest, and if you win, your attacker takes damage from his or her own super attack. These options balance risk and reward nicely, which makes being the target of a super attack one of the few mildly engaging situations you might find yourself in while playing.

There are a number of ways to experience the shallow combat of Ultimate Tenkaichi. Story mode has you playing through a series of battles based on events from the anime. Sometimes the story is advanced by cutscenes, but far more often, all you get is a wall of text summarizing events. In addition to the standard one-on-one battles, Story mode has chase battles, which are boring sequences in which you just move your character around to either shake off a pursuer or catch up with someone you're pursuing. But the worst aspect of Story mode is the boss battles with massive enemies. These towering opponents repeat the same simple attacks over and over again, as you dodge their assaults and chip away at their health. Eventually, you must complete a quick-time event to win. A delay between the moment you press the button and the moment your press registers makes some of these needlessly tricky, and the amount of damage you sustain if you fail is so huge that one or two mistakes are enough to finish you off and force you to repeat the entire tedious process from the beginning.

Such boss battles also appear in Ultimate Tenkaichi's Hero mode. Here, you create a character from a very limited number of options and make a name for yourself in a parallel version of the DBZ universe. The idea of creating your own character whose skills increase as you progress is an interesting one, but because the underlying combat mechanics are so shallow, there's no rewarding sense of growth to be had. That shallowness also saps the fun out of online combat. Human opponents are more unpredictable and more fun to fight than AI combatants, but Ultimate Tenkaichi's focus on mashing buttons and winning games of chance over skill and technique makes it a dull fighting game regardless of whether your opponent is human or artificial. There are also tournament options and the ability to create battles between teams of up to five characters (though only one character per team is fighting at any one time), but there's nothing you can do to infuse the action with the energy it appears to have.

The combat certainly captures the intense look of the anime it's based on. Attacks appear to possess incredible power, and stylish camera angles strive to create a sense of impact as characters collide in midair or hit the ground with enough force to shatter the earth around them. But this appearance of excitement rings hollow; the characters grunt and sweat and fire massive beams of destructive energy, but the dull gameplay leaves you feeling disconnected from their struggles. If you're looking for an engaging Dragon Ball Z experience, you're much better off watching the anime than playing this game.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit Review

If you've managed to steer clear of the popular Dragon Ball Z anime for this long, you can be forgiven for thinking that Burst Limit is a game best ignored. Nevertheless, you'd be wrong. Though this 3D fighter is full of references for the fans, it's a good game in its own right and can serve as an easy point of entry into the DBZ universe.

Burst Limit goes out of its way to be accessible to newcomers with a thorough tutorial that walks you through all of the controls while introducing you to a handful of the characters that make up the game's roster. The fact that all of the PlayStation 3 controller's face and shoulder buttons have multiple uses can be daunting initially, but there are no complex combos or character-specific special attacks to memorize, and even the craziest-looking moves aren't much more difficult to perform than a straightforward punch to the face. You'll need some semblance of skill to time your attacks and to block those of your opponents, but after spending half an hour with the tutorial, you should have little trouble holding your own in a fight, regardless of which character you choose.

Only three combatants are available at the outset, but as you progress through the lengthy Z-Chronicles story mode, you'll unlock the rest of the roster for a total of 21. In Z-Chronicles mode, you get to play through three of the five Japanese Dragon Ball Z sagas, and you experience some of their most memorable battles from the perspectives of both good and evil characters. The Saiyan, Frieza, and Cell sagas as they're told here represent only a tiny fraction of the anime material, but there's generally enough dialog between characters to at least let you know why they're fighting, and that's all you need.

As you play through the 50-plus battles of Z-Chronicles mode for the first time, you'll inevitably unlock most of what Burst Limit has to offer, including a good number of the game's "drama pieces." These brief cutscenes are triggered by events during a fight and invariably benefit the character to which they're relevant in some way. For example, drama pieces can increase one or more of your attributes for a short time, restore some health, or call upon a partner to get you out of trouble. Drama pieces also go a long way toward making Burst Limit feel more like the anime that it's based on by employing quick camera cuts and dramatic close-ups that wouldn't be practical during normal gameplay. By unlocking and subsequently equipping up to three different drama pieces, you can customize a character to suit your play style, and to unlock all of them you need to play through the Z-Chronicles several times. New partners, attacks, and character transformations can also be unlocked in this mode, so you'll probably want to beat it at least once before venturing online to really put your skills to the test.

Like any fighting game, Burst Limit is best when played against unpredictable human opponents, largely because they're less likely to fall for some of the cheap tricks that you can get away with against the AI on easier difficulty settings. In Versus mode, you can do battle either with a friend who is sitting next to you or with other players from all over the world. Battles against players from other continents often suffer from noticeable lag, but if you successfully search for an opponent nearby, then silky smooth matchups are certainly possible. Incidentally, online leaderboards track and grade your performances anytime you choose to fight in a ranked match, and you can use that information to search for opponents of a similar skill level.

In addition to the Z-Chronicles and Versus modes, Burst Limit features a training mode in which you can hone your skills against programmable opponents, and three different Trial modes designed to test different aspects of your fighting prowess. For example, Survival mode tasks you with defeating 100 opponents one after another, which forces you to block or evade incoming attacks whenever possible because only a portion of your health is restored between fights. Time Attack mode challenges you to beat a series of 10 opponents as quickly as possible, and in Battle Point mode, you're awarded a score based on the different moves that you use to win a series of fights.

Regardless of which mode you're playing, Burst Limit is a game that makes an impact with its fast-paced action and a sense of style that's lifted straight from the anime. The colorful visuals and occasionally frantic animation will feel familiar if you're an existing fan of the series, and will impress even if you're not. The environments you fight in are bland, and the edges of the characters aren't always as crisp as they should be, but the overall look of Burst Limit is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, the upbeat soundtrack is something of an acquired taste, and the English voice acting isn't nearly as convincing as that of the Japanese, which is available with subtitles and was clearly the only language used for lip-synching.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit is a fighting game that can be enjoyed not only by DBZ fans but also by those of you who don't know the difference between an aura spark and a Super Saiyan. You'll undoubtedly get more from the game if you're familiar with your favorite character's storyline, but understanding the complex relationships between some of the key characters simply isn't necessary to derive pleasure from taking control of one and beating up another.

Street Fighter X Tekken Reviews

Capcom loves crossovers. Its world warriors have faced down the X-Men, the Avengers, the King of Fighters, and many others. With Street Fighter X Tekken, the stylish cast of Tekken fighters is next in line to go blow for blow with Ryu and company. It's an interesting transition for the Tekken members, who are leaving their native 3D arena for a 2D battlefield. But their adaptation is just one of the many surprises waiting in this complex fighter. With a host of new mechanics and modes, Street Fighter X Tekken has a lot to offer fighting fans of all skill levels.

Street Fighter X Tekken is a 2D fighter with two-on-two combat. Each side is in control of two fighters and can swap between them on the fly. Players can even team up cooperatively and fight on the same team, just like in last year's Mortal Kombat. This means up to four players can take part in a fight. However, when one fighter on a team is knocked out, that team loses the round--regardless of how much health the remaining fighter has. Therefore, you must treat your two fighters as one unit. There are numerous ways to switch between your fighters, and mastering good synergy between them is the key to building devastating combos and winning matches.

The game includes many of the fighting mechanics seen in Super Street Fighter IV, with several new additions. It has a six-button layout, with three punches and three kicks, and a three-section energy meter with numerous functions. This meter is earned quickly and spent quickly on devastating super arts, EX special moves, and more. But one of its most important functions is cross-canceling. For one block of meter you can tag in your partner mid-combo to continue the assault. At first this "two-as-one" style can be difficult to put into practice. It's much easier to fight with one character until his or her health gets low, switch characters, and repeat. However, in doing so, you lose a lot of what makes this game unique, as well as sacrifice an edge in combat.

Early on you play the system, rather than the characters. This is because several types of moves are performed the same way no matter whom you're controlling. Every character can perform a simple combo of light-medium-heavy-heavy, and execute the two-in-one cross-arts attack the same way. This standardization across the cast lowers the initial barrier to entry by providing a simple, effective foundation, no matter which character you choose. There is still plenty of individual character complexity, but you don't need to know it all to feel competent. By leaning on the fundamentals, you are free to discover character-specific techniques at your own pace.

Additional design choices let you simplify the game and shrink the skill gap between more- and less-experienced players. Certain combos can be automatically executed by pressing two buttons. Attack inputs can be reduced from a 360-degree motion to a tap of the up button. But these shortcuts come at a cost. They may cost meter or lower your fighter's attack power. For those in the intermediate skill range, these options promote an even playing field by offering some extra assistance to those who need it.

One of the best ways to adjust your experience is with gems. Gems make your character stronger and can be tailored to suit any fighting style. If you're offense-oriented, then the attack-boosting Immense Power gems are for you. Conversely, if you plan on getting hit a lot, the Iron Wall gems, which grant damage reduction, would be best. Each character can hold three gems maximum, and while several gems offer the same benefits, what distinguishes them are their activation conditions. You do not acquire gem bonuses for free; they must be earned. But for all the good they do, gems cannot be solely relied upon. They are a subtle complement that can enhance an already lethal player, or shield someone less experienced from a beating.

In addition to its numerous combat mechanics, Street Fighter X Tekken has a robust game mode selection. Arcade mode is up first and opens with an introductory short for each official tag team. As matches are won, there is some post-bout banter that adds color to the adventure. A bout between each team and its rival team occurs near the end and includes its own introductory cinematic, followed by an ending cinematic showing what the winning team did with Pandora's Box. Together these story bits dress up arcade mode, and their funny, lighthearted delivery is fitting for an already outrageous game.

Next is challenge mode, which includes the tutorial, trial, and mission modes. Tutorial mode is where new players should start. Hosted by the jocular Dan Hibiki, this mode talks you through the game's numerous mechanics. It's a definite improvement over the complete lack of an introductory mode seen in most fighting games. Trial mode includes 20 character-specific trials for the entire roster. These trials range from performing basic special moves to pulling off advanced combos. Mission mode rounds out the set. In this mode you pick any character you like and battle against the AI with various battle conditions.

Two of the game's best teaching tools are not found in the challenge section. These are replays and practice mode. Replay mode lets you filter reaplys by character, player skill, and other factors. Studying the tactics of superior players is a great way to improve your own abilities. Training with a friend online also helps. With a partner in tow, you can hit up the briefing room and spar with, or against, him in practice mode.

Unfortunately, online stability is inconsistent. Even against players in the same region, and with the maximum connection rating, it was still a toss-up whether we'd experience lag or not. Against players below those conditions the match would often slow to a heavy crawl. Hopefully this lag will be reduced over time, but for now it's an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise pristine game.

Street Fighter X Tekken provides complex combat in an inviting package. The fighting genre needs to become accessible to a wider range of players, and this game takes an important step in the right direction. Accessibility that doesn't come at the expense of variety is a smart move and sets this fun and flashy fighter apart from the pack.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Review

2D fighting games may not be as popular as they used to be, but Arc System Works' Guilty Gear series has continued to chug along over the years. The newest edition in the series is Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, and just in case the title didn't make it obvious, this is the latest edition in a long-running series with a lot of different features that have evolved over time. Even so, casual fighting-game fans should be able to get into the game rather easily. It isn't hard to get started dishing out big, long combination attacks by hammering away on various buttons. But hardcore Guilty Gear fans will get the most out of the new game because it has a few new features that make higher-level play a bit more interesting.

Like with many other games of this sort, this 2D fighting game offers one-on-one matchups between characters inspired by Japanese anime cartoon designs who heroically shout out the names of their mighty fighting techniques in battle. In the Guilty Gear series, you can attack your opponent with a combination of punches, kicks, and two different types of "slashing" attacks (most characters carry a weapon or some equivalent) by stringing together punches, kicks, and slashes with other types of attacks on the ground, and also in the air as part of extended "juggle" attacks. But the game's character designs are clearly intended to be as bizarre as possible. Among the roster, you'll find a masked man who wields a pool cue as a weapon; a young girl whose weapon is a gigantic talking key that's bigger than she is; and a hunched-over zombie who won't stop talking to himself. Technically, none of the game's default characters is all-new, but several characters have been updated and fine-tuned slightly for balance purposes. Pretty much all the game's characters seem strong enough to compete against each other.

As any fighting game sequel should, Accent Core tweaks some of the characters' moves and the overall game balance. It also adds some higher-level features that advanced players will probably appreciate most. The game now includes "force break" attacks, which are powered-up versions of most characters' special techniques that can be used to enhance your offense and your combination attacks. It also adds new defensive options, such as the ability to escape from standard throw grapples. You can also use a new type of defense, the "slash back," which, when properly timed, will let your character come out of his or her defending animation much more quickly and give you more of an opportunity to counterattack. For the most part, the series has always been pretty fast-paced and has emphasized offense over defense. This is still the case in Accent Core, which offers numerous ways to squash cowardly opponents who sit and hide in the corner. The game also includes a running penalty system that actually makes cowering players less powerful over the course of a fighting round. The way to victory in Guilty Gear is still usually through relentlessly aggressive play, but Accent Core's new gameplay additions seem to add a bit more give-and-take to matches, assuming your fingers are fast enough to make use of them.

Otherwise, the game has a handful of other extras that Guilty Gear fans will appreciate, such as the ability to unlock original versions of the game's characters (with their original abilities and attacks) from the previous Guilty Gear and Guilty Gear XX games. It also includes an art gallery, a single-player arcade mode, a training mode, and two different single-player survival modes, standard and "Medal of Millionaire," the latter of which occasionally rewards successful attacks with bonus items and health-replenishing pickups. Medal of Millionaire is perhaps a bit easier to go through because of the pickups, but all this stuff is pretty straightforward single-player content you'd expect from a modern console fighting game. As with pretty much any fighting game, Accent Core is at its best when played competitively against real people.

Accent Core also offers a new coat of paint with new backgrounds to fight on and new voice-overs for its characters. The backgrounds themselves look just fine; they're colorful and interesting, but they aren't so cluttered or busy that they distract you from the action. The new sound samples and backgrounds add some welcome new window dressing, though Accent Core, like the other games in the series, is still all about keeping an eye on your character and your opponent during the fight. Accent Core reuses the same 2D sprites for its characters, as well as many of the special effects, that have appeared in other games. The characters are still very colorful and still very distinctively weird, and though some are better-animated than others, Accent Core looks pretty good.

These days, you really don't have many choices when it comes to new 2D fighting games for your home consoles, but Guilty Gear XX Accent Core should offer enough action and variety for most fans of this sort of game. If you're new to the series, you may be taken aback by just how strange its characters are, as well as by the twitchy, fast-paced gameplay dominated by long strings of combination attacks. Nevertheless, you'll get used to it quickly enough. If you're a Guilty Gear veteran, you'll probably find enough to like about Accent Core to make it worth your while, too.