First Impressions: A guilty pleasure comes to the Xbox!
The Xbox is a great game system, but I don’t hold back that I own and play games from other systems, especially when the system is lacking certain trends. I love 2D fighting games for example, and there is just not too many them on the system at the moment. One of my favourite fighting games on the Playstation2 was Guilty Gear X2: a very slick looking 2D fighter with furious arcade action. The game was so popular that there was even an upgrade to the game in Japan called Guilty Gear X2 #Reload. It has been a few years now since the original Guilty Gear X2 first appeared on the PS2. It finally looks like we will be getting more of this awesome fighting series when GGX2 Reload comes to North America. In a strange and rather shocking move though, the game is not coming to the PS2 this time; it’s coming to the Xbox at the discounted price of 19.99 US.
The story of the Guilty Gear saga is a pretty deep one. In a few hundred years from now, humans have finally discovered how to utilize magic. Although it seems that mankind could really benefit from this amazing new resource, many countries have constructed specially made robots instead for war. These perfect fighting machines were called Gears but the new machines were made a bit too good. The Gears developed independent thought, and with the leadership of a super robot called Justice, they came to the conclusion that humans were inferior and a new war ripped the world apart. The humans managed to win the war, but some of these robots are still quite active and there is a lot of social unrest regarding the issue of whether Gears are safe or not. With a price on their head, over 20 human fighters are now fighting among themselves to see who can find these Gears first and collect that bounty. Just imagine Street Fighter with an edge and you’ve got Guilty Gear.
The story remains the same has Guilty Gear X2 and this game will still have all the cool modes like Story, Medal of Millionaire, and many more to keep anyone busy. What has changed is now there are new moves, touch ups to the animations, and most importantly: there is an option to play this over Xbox Live – another first for the series.
What I liked most about this series is that it has some of the weirdest cast of fighters I’ve ever seen. For example: one scary character is just your average teenager who happens to be possessed by evil spirits, and then there is Bridget; an innocent young man who acts like a girl. “I told ya it was weird, eh?” There are also the traditional heroes and cute girls trying to save the world, but this adventure is also filled several bad-asses looking for some cheap thrills.
All these characters are well animated, and wait ‘til you see these highly detailed backgrounds! The Guilty Gear franchise may be 2D, but that doesn’t mean the game looks bad. This debate of whether 3D graphics are better than 2D graphics is nothing but BS, I feel if a game has great artwork like this series has had this nonsense of which dimension it’s in is irrelevant. On a side note - I still think CastleVania: Symphony of the Night is the best looking game on the Psone, even though it is strictly in 2D.
