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.

Legend of the Dragon Review

Legend of the Dragon is a fighting game from Game Factory that's based on a cartoon that currently airs on Toon Disney as part of its Jetix programming block. It's about a pair of 15-year-old twins, Ang and Ling, who are on opposite sides of a martial-arts-themed conflict involving humans that can transform into beastlike creatures. The fighting in this game is uniformly terrible, giving you the feeling that the product was constructed as a licensing tie-in first and a game second, but the ugly graphics and lack of character speech mean that this probably won't do much for fans of the show either, making it a failure from every angle.

The fighting is stripped down, with only one punch and one kick button and very basic combos that string those two attacks together. While you can push in a direction to execute different punches and kicks, you don't have any special moves in your human form. As in most modern fighting games, as you fight, a meter fills up with energy. Once it crosses a certain threshold, you can transform into your character's guardian form. For the main characters, the forms are largely human still, just armored. Others turn into decidedly snakelike, or ratlike, people, and so on down the line. Your basic abilities don't change when you're transformed--you can still attack, and the game still plays like a bad 2D fighter with 3D ring movement buttons. But you can also use your power meter when transformed to execute three different special attacks that make the game feel like it's trying to ape the Dragon Ball Z Budokai series. One attack launches a DBZ-like energy beam at your opponent, and at that point, a button-mashing frenzy breaks out, which either causes more damage or nullifies the attack, depending on which player can mash faster. Another special attack has the player enter six button presses or controller motions at random. If the opposing player can memorize the string and enter part of it, that player will block the incoming attack. The third attack launches a series of fireballs in a rhythmic fashion, and the defending player can dodge these with well-timed button presses or controller waves. Unfortunately, these attacks are identical for every fighter in the game.

In addition to a stock of standard fighting modes, like survival and practice, there's a quest mode, where you move Ang or Ling around a map screen as though it were some kind of board game. There are temples at several spots on the map, and at each temple, there's a challenge for you to complete. The game tries to get clever here and change things up by giving you stipulations for each fight, like in Soul Calibur's quest mode. So some fights have time restrictions, others can be won only with specific attacks, and some fighters are only susceptible to combos. If any part of the fighting were even remotely enjoyable, this might provide an interesting change of pace. But it only manages to frustrate, because it's very easy to knock opponents out of the ring accidentally, which will lose the fight for you if you needed to do something else to your foe.

Graphically, Legend of the Dragon has bland visuals, with a generic cel-shaded look and weak animation that makes all the characters look bad. The backgrounds are also ugly and plain, though the smaller screen of the PSP makes this version look a little cleaner than the PS2 and Wii versions. Because the game is based on an animated series, you'd hope for some form of voice acting. But other than the typical fighting game grunts and a few very short voice clips, it plods on in silence, using text to convey the quest mode's nonstory.

Because of the game's dull fighting system that doesn't play well against the computer-controlled opponents or against a live human being, it seems almost impossible to have fun with Legend of the Dragon. When you factor in the total lack of detail in the attempt to mimic the cartoon's look and feel, you're left with a game that even diehard fans of the relatively obscure cartoon will probably hate. Do yourself a favor and keep your distance.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 Review

Though Atari seemed to have established a pretty comfortable rhythm with the first three Dragon Ball Z: Budokai fighting games, it chose to shake things up with last year's spin-off, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi. It strayed from the conventional fighting game format in favor of a third-person perspective and more-free-roaming action, and the fighting felt a bit more technical, though not necessarily any deeper. Its newly released sequel does little to address the clunky, somewhat limited combat of the original, though a wealth of playable characters all but ensures that this game will get its hooks into fans eager to fight as their favorite Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT characters.

Like its predecessor, Tenkaichi 2 is a fighter that's played from a behind-the-back perspective. You're given the illusion of an open world, and most of the environments make good use of the 3D space with plenty of hills, valleys, bodies of water, and destructible environmental items, such as buildings and massive rock formations, to knock your opponent around. Attempts at exploration, though, are stopped short by massive webbed force fields that surround the battleground, making it apparent just how confined the environment really is. It can take a while for first-timers to adjust to the somewhat unconventional control scheme, but the action is pretty simple. You're given a button for up-close melee attacks, a button for ranged "ki" energy attacks, a charge button for restoring the energy needed for ki attacks, two dash moves for either closing or widening the distance between you and your opponent, and a block button, which, when used in the right context, can also instantly teleport you a small distance. Fighters will regularly get knocked high into the air during combat, and you can move up and down through the air with the press of a button.

To engage your opponents, you'll need to lock onto them, which is either done by a press of a button when they are within sight or will happen automatically when you're close enough. The whole lock-on system is still a source of frustration, since your camera and control perspectives are relative to your enemy's position, which can make for some unintuitive directional controls. Also, the camera still has problems dealing with the full 3D space, and if characters are right below or above you, it's impossible to see them. Fans will recognize some of the signatures of Dragon Ball Z combat in Tenkaichi 2, including quick fits of up-close melee attacks, massive energy wave attacks, and fighters being knocked great distances and through buildings and mountains. There are also plenty of character transformations and tag team battles, but needlessly convoluted controls hinder their usefulness. Though the number of unique special attacks for each character is limited, they're usually the ones you'd want to see. The problem is that you have access to many characters' most powerful abilities right out of the gate, and they're generally not that hard to pull off. Additionally, the controls to pull off these often-protracted, screen-filling assaults are basically the same for every character, and the combined result is some seriously repetitive gameplay.

Since the behind-the-back perspective means multiplayer has to be done via a less-than-ideal split-screen mode, you'll probably spend most of your time in Tenkaichi 2 playing against the computer, which is predictable and has a weakness to midranged combat. It doesn't take long to realize that all you need to do is knock your opponent a short distance, launch an energy attack, recharge while your opponent is immobile, and repeat. It's monotonous, especially since you end up watching the same canned special attack sequences several times over the course of a single fight. One thing that Tenkaichi 2 does address is the stifling difficulty of the original, though the challenge from fight to fight within each difficulty level can be wildly inconsistent. Though the action moves quickly, the controls can feel unwieldy on the PlayStation 2, something that's even more pronounced when the Wii's motion controls add a layer of abstraction. Rather than simply pressing buttons, you'll be shaking the Nunchuk and waving the Wii Remote around to pull off moves. It's not intuitive, and a lot of the controls are context sensitive not only to your opponent's position, but to where you have the Wii Remote pointed. The Wii version handles much more easily with the Classic Controller or with a standard GameCube controller, though the Dual Shock 2 still proves to be the best-suited controller for the action.

Ungainly gameplay will keep Tenkaichi 2 from appealing to those just looking for a good fight, but the sheer volume of fighters and content will likely satiate DBZ fans. There are dozens of playable characters from throughout the run of both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, including Goku look-alikes Bardock and Turles, minor DBZ players like Yajirobe, and powerful DBGT villains like Bebi Vegita, Broly, and Android #13. Most of these fighters must be unlocked in the game's adventure mode before they can be used in the separate tournament and duel modes. The adventure mode is long and chronicles basically the entire run of DBZ and DBGT. It's a surprisingly long-lasting mode, especially for a fighting game, but you have to slog through a lot of stuff that has already been covered in numerous other DBZ fighters before you get to see anything new. Though it's cool to see more obscure content like the stories from The Tree of Might and Lord Slug alongside the more predictable Saiyan, Freeza, Cell, and Buu sagas, the game does a poor job of telling the stories. While the actual fights move fast enough and are brimming with enough crazy energy attacks and hard-hitting melee action to make them fun to watch, little effort was put into the cutscenes used to drive the story. You'll notice a blockiness to the characters that's not apparent during a fight, especially around their hands. Though occasional efforts are made to re-create specific scenes from the anime, the cutscenes usually try to get by with the in-game animations, which look awkward in a dramatic context.

You'll often need to beat an opponent to advance the story, only to see that in the next story sequence, your characters have been thoroughly thrashed, a contradiction that creates a real disconnect between the action and the story. Worst of all, the game will often sum up story arcs with a little bit of text that describes the most exciting parts, rather than showing them. So, instead of getting to see Goku summon an incredible spirit bomb from the Tree of Might to destroy Turles, you get to read about it. The pacing of the story mode is further stifled by nearly constant load times. You'll wait 15 seconds to watch two characters exchange a line of dialogue, then wait another five seconds to load a character select screen, and then another 20 seconds before you get to fight. It could take you a good 20 hours to get through the whole adventure mode in Tenkaichi 2, but you'll likely grow bored with it before then. The voice actors in the game, who are mostly the same actors who voice the Funimation-dubbed US version of the anime, also seem pretty bored at this point, though it's tough to blame them after having to energetically spout lines like "This is the end for you, Freeza!" over and over again for the past 10 years. There's some catchy music thrown in there, but you end up hearing the same two or three upbeat tunes over and over again.

Save for the different control schemes and some marginally improved graphics on the Wii, there's not much difference between the two versions of Tenkaichi 2, and neither is easy to recommend. Those who were able to wade through the problems of the original will find a lot of content to play around with here, but this is a game that is simply not suitable for anyone else.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon Review

The goriest fighting game series around returns for another bout in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which is the first game in the series to let you create your own character as well as your own finishing moves. However, these good-in-theory ideas aren't executed particularly well, and the game's huge assortment of playable characters--including fighters from every previous MK installment--isn't as exciting as it should be. Like the last couple of MK installments, this one throws together a bunch of different, loosely related features. But the sheer volume of different content in this game still can't cover up that the underlying one-on-one combat system hasn't aged all that gracefully.

It's been two years since the last major MK title, which added online play and several goofy gameplay modes to the mix. The new game tosses out MK: Deception's gimmicky "puzzle kombat" and "chess kombat" modes, instead replacing them with an equally gimmicky and initially charming minigame, a kart racer called (what else?) "motor kombat." The previous game's "konquest" mode returns only in name and concept, as this single-player action adventure mode is much, much better than the disappointing version in Deception. The konquest mode in Armageddon features gameplay similar to Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, so it lets you take on groups of bad guys and run past some deadly traps from a third-person perspective, in addition to some standard MK battles, all wrapped up in a convoluted storyline. You'll be unlocking things like alternate outfits for characters and new battle arenas throughout this mode, and you'll also earn a ton of money that can be used to unlock most everything else in the "krypt." Of course, you can still just fight, by competing in a standard, progressively tougher series of one-on-one matches against the computer or playing against someone else locally or online.

Strangely enough, the konquest mode, which was such a low point of MK: Deception, is one of the relative strengths of MK: Armageddon. The story focuses on a character named Taven and winds up being an unfocused mishmash, but it packs in a lot of action and throws so many unlockables at you around every corner that it winds up being fun. It spans a good six hours or so and doesn't bog you down in tutorials like Deception's konquest mode did. Even still, it's hardly a sufficient reason on its own to take the plunge on this latest MK.

With all of these other features available, you might wonder if the actual fighting in MK: Armageddon is an afterthought. Then you take one look at the character-select screen, which is practically bursting at the seams with about five dozen different fighters, and you'll think twice. It's like a huge Mortal Kombat reunion. You've got all the classics like Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Johnny Cage on the list; second-gen favorites like Jax, Kung Lao, and Baraka; some very obscure characters like just about everyone from MK4; the series' bosses like Goro, Shao Kahn, and Motaro; and more.

Unfortunately, a lot of raw excitement at this huge selection of characters goes away as you realize many of these characters have little to distinguish them from the rest. In the last MK game, each fighter had three different fighting styles you could freely switch between in battle, but now most everyone's down to just two--a hand-to-hand style and a weapon-based style. This change isn't necessarily for the worse, as the prospect of having to memorize moves and combos for so many different characters would be daunting for any fighting-game fan. However, the basic moves and tactics don't differ much from one fighter to the next, and special moves include your basic assortment of projectiles and powered-up punches and kicks. But all this has always been true of Mortal Kombat's gameplay. So what is it about the fighters that makes them all seem the same? It's the game's new "kreate-a-fatality" system.

MK characters have never been known for their personalities; it's been their unique finishing moves that really helped set them apart. But now, every fighter gets to string together the same types of fatalities, involving limb ripping, heart pulling, head crushing, and so forth. It's definitely amusing at first, as well as a lot easier to figure out than fatalities were in previous installments. But it gets old, and it can take too long. Some moves let you keep spinning the opponent around and around, dragging the fatality process on for much longer than the shocking-but-brief moves that made the series famous. This fatality system could have been a good alternative to having signature moves for each character, but as a replacement for unique, character-specific fatalities, it's a letdown. At least there are brief, character-specific spoken endings to make it worth bothering to play through as any of the fighters you like.

The fighting engine itself is showing some serious signs of aging, as well. It doesn't nearly offer the same fast-paced, fluid feel that's common to other fighting games these days, and it instead focuses on "dialing in" canned combos to deal damage to an opponent who leaves himself open. There's a new parrying system and air combo system, but they don't help the gameplay's awkward look or its counterintuitive feel. This MK is still recycling a lot of the same graphics and animations from 2002's Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, so even when you're running the game on a wide-screen progressive-scan display, the action doesn't always looks flattering. There are a good number of amusing or painful-looking animations, as well as awkward-looking moves that cause the same old blood to start spraying. The game looks virtually the same and runs just as smoothly on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, though the Xbox version is a little cleaner. As in the last MK, some of the stages add some complexity to the action since they include deathtraps that can instantly end a round, but most of the novelty of this is gone, too. At least the game's audio has held up better than the visuals. There's not much voice work, but the full-contact hits and the gloomy music still sound good.

As for the kreate-a-fighter mode, you get a lot more control over how your character looks than over how he or she plays. You can assign different punches, kicks, and special moves, but ultimately you're still stuck picking and choosing from a list of prefab fighting techniques. Maybe that's to be expected, but without a particularly impressive fighting system to look forward to, the prospect of creating your own fighter isn't all that compelling...especially when there are already so many fighters to choose from.

If you want to take your business online, you can play both the standard one-on-one kombat mode as well as eight-player motor kombat. For the fighting mode, you can choose whether or not to allow custom fighters online, though pitting your created fighter against those of other players will likely help keep things interesting for longer. Besides, the balance among the 60-or-so stock characters in the game is already pretty suspect--konquest mode stars Shujinko and Taven stand out as having fast moves for every situation, for example. During our online testing, we experienced responsive and lag-free gameplay on the Xbox, while performance on the PS2 was a little spottier and the player-matching process isn't as streamlined, but your mileage may vary. Speaking of which, don't expect much lasting value from motor kombat. Aside from the concept's inherent appeal, this is a simplistic kart racing game that isn't as fun or interesting as the average game of the sort, and online performance seemed laggier than the fighting portion.

Despite the smorgasbord of different features, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon falls short of being a highly satisfying new entry in a long-running series that's decidedly had its ups and downs. Some older Mortal Kombat games, like MK Trilogy, have attempted a quantity-over-quality approach that might have seemed exciting to MK fans at first but winded up leaving many of them cold. On the other hand, sequels like MK II, MK3, and MK: Deadly Alliance substantially revised the characters and gameplay and were a lot more satisfying as a result. MK: Armageddon presumably will be the last time we get a Mortal Kombat game on the PS2 and Xbox, but if nothing else, you can tell there are still a lot of good ideas brewing in here. So with any luck, the series is far from finished.