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Guilty Gear X

These days, a 2D fighter made by anyone except Capcom and SNK is very rare. And being that Capcom has stated that they plan on focusing less on 2D fighters, and the SNK of old is gone, there has been a noticeable shortage of games in this genre lately.

It came to a pleasant surprise then, when a few years back a pretty good 2D fighter was released by Sammy in the form of Guilty Gear X. The title was released in the arcades, the Dreamcast (In Japan only) and the Playstation 2, and had some of the most fluid animation to be found in a 2D fighting game, boasted inventive and unusual character designs, and had gameplay similar to Capcom’s over-the-top VS. series.

Zoom ahead one year later, and fighting games on the Game Boy Advance are perhaps just as rare. The system has a few in the form of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival, Tekken Advance and the craptacular Mortal Kombat Advance. But given the popularity of the Game Boy Advance, the almost complete lack of fighting games is somewhat perplexing.

Once again, Sammy is riding into the scene, bringing the new King of Fighters EX – Neo Blood, as well as a handheld port of last year’s Guilty Gear X, appropriately named Guilty Gear X Advance Edition. Sammy has more or less packed all the gameplay of the original into the Game Boy Advance version, although the title does take a hit in the sound and visuals department.

Surprisingly, Guilty Gear X Advance Edition retains most of the spectacular animation of its console and arcade counterparts had. Characters all move fluidly with impressive animation, although the characters being shrunk down to fit the GBA made it impossible to retain a lot of the detail the characters had before. And unfortunately, the backgrounds mostly look horrendous, with many consisting almost entirely of a three-color palette that the Game Boy Color would have been ashamed of.

The sound fares much worse. Although one could understand the Game Boy Advance game not keeping the rock soundtrack of the original, it’s not even good by Game Boy Advance standards, seeming like something that would also be more at home on the Game Boy Color. And while ARC System Works did a good job reproducing the sound effects of the original, the characters have all gone mute, with the only voice being the garbled and hushed “Heaven or Hell” (Don’t ask me) at the beginning of each battle. This is made even more confusing by the fact that the game’s sound test mode has numerous voice clips for the characters. Were they not used? Are they just inaudible under the loud music and sound effects? It doesn’t really matter either way because they cannot be heard during the game.

Aside from these oversights, the game still has all the personality as before, with interesting and fluid menu transitions, and of course the wacky translation and unusual assortment of characters. Aside from Capcom’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure series, I can’t think of a single fighting game with character designs as eccentric as this. Among the cast of characters is an acrobatic waitress, a female assassin who fights with her extremely long hair, and another assassin that attacks with his shadow (If that’s really what that black blob is supposed to be, at least).

Gameplay follows in suit with the far-out characters. As I said earlier, the games it can perhaps be closest compared to are Capcom’s VS series, featuring gigantic combos, tag-team switch-offs and over-the-top special moves. As such, the game eschews the deeper, more strategic combat of the Street Fighter and King of Fighter games in favor of something more focused on quick reflexes and the capability of stringing together lengthy chains of attacks.

In addition to the standard fare VS. fans will be familiar with, Guilty Gear X Advance Edition also has a variety of other types of attacks for the player to master, including a counter-attack called a dead-angle attack, a guard break called a dust attack, and the instant kill. The instant kill is actually far less menacing than it sounds, as by the time the player is able to use it, their opponent will be nearly defeated already anyway. Thus, it ends up being more like a finishing move.

Unfortunately, the game’s AI is deeply flawed, and computer-controlled opponents are far too easy to beat. Even on the highest difficulty setting, players will have little trouble beating the game, or even getting a perfect victory on every battle, as even the most difficult of opponents will often just stand there while you beat the crap out of them.

So while I have no doubt that this would make a fantastic two-player game, its one-player modes are essentially worthless. And even though the multiplayer mode is usually the meat of a fighting game, if the one-player mode can’t hold its own, the game loses a great deal of the appeal it would have otherwise had. It’s a pity too, because with a more challenging one-player mode, this could have been one of the best fighting games on the Game Boy Advance. As it stands, if you want this game to have any longevity to speak of, you’ll need to find someone else that has it too.

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Tags: Guilty Gear X

Posted by Jake McNeill on Aug 6th, 2003 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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