guilty gear

This Week’s Releases (Aug 24-28, 2006)

  • Reading time:8 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week thirty-seven of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Game of the Week:

Guild Wars Factions
ArenaNet/NCsoft
PC
Friday

This is sort of an expansion, though it’s being sold as a standalone entity. Think of it as Phantasy Star Online version 2, for the Dreamcast. With Factions installed, you can access either the normal Guild Wars campaign or a new second campaign exclusive to this release. This second bit, which ArenaNet likes to describe as a completely separate game, has your new regions, skills, professions, and whatnot and a whole new feature set for guilds and multiplayer play.

Touchy Touchy

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Although the Guilty Gear series has long fascinated me, today is the first day that I have opportuned to spend some time exploring, and attuning myself to, one of its games — in this case, X2.

My first clear observation is that, although this is a PS2 game, I can actually pull off any move with no trouble. I assume this is due to the effort Sammy put into adapting this game to the PS2. Just as the game comes with an optional anti-alias filter, it comes with controls that recognize how dearly Sony’s idea of a functionable controller is in need of re-examination. The game remains tight enough that I never pull off a move by accident, yet it has been untied enough that the stupid pad never gets in my way. I think perhaps Noise Factory might have studied this game (or perhaps its predecessor, if it is similarly forgiving), during the development of KOF: Maximum Impact.

This is such a relief after the likes of Capcom vs SNK 2 and The King of Fighters 2000 & 2001 — otherwise-decent ports which seem to forget which system they’re on.

Something to think about.

Another observation is that the most interesting characters tend to be the most recent. Without the new guys, the cast would be kind of dull.

Curious.