Guilty Gear Isuka
Not the same guilty pleasure it used to be
Tags: Guilty Gear Isuka Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Mar 9th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Guilty Gear Isuka (title page) | 4 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Fans of good old-fashioned 2D fighting games have in recent years found an unlikely champion in Arc System Works’ incredible Guilty Gear series, keeping with the traditions of the classics of old, while fusing it with a high-speed gameplay, slick well-animated graphics and a unique presentation. In an era when Capcom and SNK seem content with rehashing old content, the Guilty Gear series has been like a breath of fresh air in a genre largely growing stale. However, in their ambitious attempts to take the genre forward while others while others stand still, it seems inevitable that one of their experiments would eventually go awry.
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While Xbox owners (and in Japan, PS2 and PC owners) got an online version of Guilty Gear X2 called Guilty Gear X2 # Reload (or XX Reload in Japan), PS2 owners got an entirely different spin on the formula in Guilty Gear Isuka. Also largely based on Guilty Gear X2, Guilty Gear Isuka abandons the series’ leap online and tries to be something a bit more unorthodox: a 4-player fighting game. And by that, I don’t mean “tag team” as that generally implies, but 4-player simultaneous, with four players on-screen at the same time.
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While this has technically been done in a very limited fashion in other games before, Isuka runs with the idea full-speed, giving players the option for anything from one-on-one fights to all-out four-player brawls and everything inbetween, with even or uneven teams (with or without the appropriate habdicaps), and even the option of tossing CPU players into the mix. To accommodate multiple players, the very fundamentals of the game have been altered, adding new layers to the gameplay, both in a figurative and literal sense.
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Characters now no longer automatically turn to face their opponents, an impossibility when one has two or three enemies to face. Now, players must press a button to change the direction they’re facing (a gameplay device that’s necessary even in one-on-one matches). Furthermore, to make room for so many fighters at once, the gameplay has been expanded to include both background and foreground planes that players can jump back and forth between (a la Fatal Fury). Unfortunately, while these changes may have been necessary to make the four-player formula work, their implementation is sloppy to the point where it makes everything else that was great about the Guilty Gear series fall apart.
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Guilty Gear’s frantic, fast-paced gameplay was already a lot to take in before, but with so many new factors to account for, it’s now virtually impossible to keep track of everything going on. And even regardless of this fact, the controls to change direction and switch gameplay planes are at times seemingly unresponsive, a major problem in a game that requires even faster reflexes than the lightning-fast response the series normally demands.
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It should be mentioned that the game touts some other nice new features. A “boost” mode that takes the Guilty Gear characters and places them in gameplay reminiscent of beat-‘em-ups like Final Fight and Double Dragon would have been fantastic fun if it, too, didn’t incorporate the main game’s broken turning mechanic. A “factory” mode that lets you essentially create your own custom character would have been an awesome feature if it didn’t rely on the broken boost mode to acquire points to purchase the special moves needed to alter your character. And the new character A.B.A. would have been an wonderful addition to an already incredible cast of characters, if she didn’t find herself in such a broken game.
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It doesn’t help that some of the core of what’s good here is identical to what’s good in Guilty Gear X2 and X2 # Reload. The graphics, music and presentation is all either directly pulled from X2, or similar to the point where it may as well be. And while it’s still as good as ever, and isn’t showing too many signs of aging just yet, it’s also not getting any younger.
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So what we have here is a spin on Guilty Gear X2 that just doesn’t work, a fact made even more conspicuous by the fact that X2 # Reload, another spin on Guilty Gear X2, actually does work. And even if you don’t have an Xbox or live in Japan, you can still go back and get the original Guilty Gear X2, which is more enjoyable than this. Guilty Gear Isuka is an interesting experiment that I’d be delighted to see bloom into a working game. But this isn’t a working game. So… better luck next time, guys.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ The stuff left over from Guilty Gear X2 is as great as it was then + The 4-player premise is a great idea with a lot of promise + The boost and factory modes have a lot of potential and I hope to see them again in future installments |
6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The controls to turn and jump into and out of the background aren't responsive enough - Way too hectic, to the point where it becomes impossible to keep track of what's going on. - Unresponsive controls + too much going on = kinda' unplayable |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| "Kinda' unplayable" seems a bit harsh, but ultimately if I can't turn around to defend myself from an assault from behind, it's fitting. And while there are a lot of good ideas here that I'd love to see done justice in a later game, this time around it just doesn't work. | |
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Tags: Guilty Gear Isuka
Posted by Jake McNeill on Mar 9th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 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.
