To some it may well be a bit wrong to get excited about 2D fighters anymore. Not to me it isn’t. I was a teenager when the whole Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat argument started and the quality from both games stays with you as you get older (something the kids of today may well feel about Halo 3 in about 20 years). BlazBlue is certainly an unexpected addition to the European market, mainly because there wasn’t a great deal of fanfare about its release. Ask anyone in Japan and the surrounding areas though and you will hear a different story.
This brawler has been in American and Japanese arcades now for over a year and has a huge following. Arc System Works aren’t strangers to the anime styled fighting game anyway. If you can remember as far back as the Playstation and Guilty Gear you will come across their last well remembered work. Now that they have the power of the PS3 and Xbox 360 to play with, what can we expect?
The visuals were never really in question. Instead of transferring itself into a fully 3D vector fest, BlazBlue has decided to follow the Marvel Vs Capcom route and opt for modern backgrounds mixed with a terrifically colourful two dimensional anime style for the main characters. There are some more hand crafted background people mixed in with the scenery, but the package as a whole is mesmerising. The 1080p potential mixed with some very solid animation work and some rich, vibrant designs make for something which is extremely pleasing on the eye.
There is no mistaking that this is a product of the Guilty Gear developers. As I’ve already mentioned the graphics are well presented and smooth. The music and audio is also similar to stuff they’ve done before, with a mix of thrashing guitars and wispy strings you would normally see on an episode of a generic anime TV show, and I have seen a fair few of those over my life (everyone has an anime phase, don’t they?), and there’s no worry about it fitting in with the action.
The 12 characters are a very bold mix of samurai wannabes and strange monstrosities. I never thought I’d be selecting a pile of puss with a mask or a cat girl who has an obsession with boobies (trust me; I’m NOT making this up). This is certainly something you would not see in the more mainstream fighters, although some have been close (Voldo from Soul Calibur, anyone?) and whilst it is an eye opener, there is never a point where you feel that they shouldn’t be on the roster.
In order to add some length to the game, Arc have included a story mode, which on paper sounded very promising. It said there were 100,000 lines of dialogue and offered a big enough story to keep everyone happy. What I didn’t realise was that as you go through the tales of each person; it is literally just lines of dialogue at the start of each game. I had to press the A button as if I was playing Track and Field to escape not only the endless lines of cheese, but the kind of voice acting that should really stay on Saturday morning cartoons. I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t cut it for me. If you want to chuck more things into a beat ‘em up, look at Namco, who nearly throw everything but the kitchen sink into most brawlers nowadays. We do see some nice anime moments and we do get the occasional laugh, but these come few and far between to keep it a constant smile. It really is for people who are into their Japanese animation culture, rather than the pugilistic purists.
The thing is, we could talk about all this cosmetic stuff until we’re blue in the face, but the key element in ANY fighting game is it’s control system, in particular the attacking elements and move layout. Street Fighter has 3 differing powers of kick and punch at its disposal. This isn’t the case here, as there are 4 buttons with different attack styles; and BlazBlue gets its system from a variant of these and stick movements. Some are much like the fireball and kick stuff we’ve grown up with, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel as fluid. Now, before people start complaining about this, I know it will be because I’m too set in my ways with the more retro styling of Capcom’s series. As an experiment, I decided to learn the moves of 1 character specifically to see how I would fare as I went about the task of running through the Arcade mode.
The character I chose was U-13, a cyborg girl who merges with a huge sword and becomes some sort of fighting machine. It took me about 10 minutes and 2 moves to get through the game, which to me is a little worrying. There will be fighters who will be difficult to master moves with, as well as some who are much easier to learn, but for those who are new to this type of game, the developers have put the major special moves onto the right analogue stick, so that if you find things a bit too hard to get into you can just push it in one direction and voila, instant power move.
Now, I can see the potential that this can bring; and why it has the universal following it does, but on a personal level it just doesn’t feel like it has that same element of depth and precision that Street Fighter, Tekken and Vitua Fighter have in abundance. Blazblue can be great fun to play and on a presentation level is up there with the best, but like most punches thrown in a fight, it is a bit too hit and miss to be a constant high.
The online servers perform nicely and allow for some friendly scuffles and to have a near lag free fight in this genre is always a blessing, so well done on that.
You can’t knock it for most things, but that slight lack of complete control could have some waiting for Super Street Fighter IV instead, but if you love anime and you need a change from the yearly barrage of Dragonball efforts then I can safely say that this will fill the void quite nicely.
VideogameUK verdict: 7.5/10
