Developer
Arc System Works

Released: September 14, 2004
Genre: Fighting
Players: 2
ESRB: Teen

9
9
8
10
9.3

Supported Features:

Xbox Live Features

Guilty Gear X2 #Reload may not offer all the technical savvy that you’ll find in the latest high-tech 3D fighters, but this game oozes a style all its own. Arc System Works has apparently examined every other fighting game currently available, taken the best parts of those games and combined them to create the ultimate fighting game.

Xbox Features:

• Xbox Live enabled head-to-head play with real-time, global rankings
• Xbox Live Voice and Friend List support
• Nine awesome game modes including:
  • Medal of Millionaire Mode – a brutal one fall competition where medals are earned
  • Versus 2Player Mode– two player battles to settle scores including Xbox Live matches
  • Survival Mode – 1,000 levels of endurance
  • Story Mode – learn the truth of the Gears, with multiple endings
  • Mission Mode – defeat opponents using certain rules and meeting specific conditions
• 20 characters plus hidden characters and EX characters
• Punishing moves and combos including Psych Bursts, Overdrive Attacks and Instant Kill Techniques
• Progressive Scan Video Support for 480p
• Intense metal and rock soundtrack
• Great price! $19.99 MSRP!

Controls are simple with the face buttons being used for your basic commands such as kicking, punching, heavy and normal slashing, with the right trigger for Dust and the left trigger used for Taunts or Respect. The analog stick or D-pad controls your fighter allowing them to jump, crouch, and guard. You can even do an ear-popping double-jump that will launch you to the top of the screen. It’s all very standard issue stuff and is even friendly for those who simply like to mash the buttons and see what happens.

But button mashers beware! You will never get to appreciate the complexity or richness of the fighting system this game has to offer unless you actually learn the moves. Most of the truly insane moves are reserved for those with the patience to learn complicated combos or directional patterns. To pull off I-No’s Ultimate Fortissimo move you are going to have to jump then press seven different directions on the D-pad before pressing the triangle. Good luck executing this or any of the hundreds of other advanced moves by randomly mashing buttons.

One nice control enhancement is the new Dust button (right trigger) that allows you to launch opponents into the air and hopefully initiate a lengthy series of combos or at least juggle them around for a bit. Many of the more complicated moves take some serious finessing of the controller. It’s much more than L-R-R-L+Y. Many of the moves require you to roll your thumb in a circular motion around the D-pad to initiate a powerful strike that can be further combo’d into something even more devastating.

Your fighters all have a Burst gage that slowly fills during combat and can be used to execute some of the most powerful and deadly moves in the game. You can even break out of a combo right in the middle of it if your burst meter suddenly fills and you want to switch into a Burst move. There are so many moves and combos that it was nice to see many of the characters use similar, if not identical, movement patterns with maybe only the final button changing to execute a super move. This allows you to have a good basic knowledge of many of the special moves for all the characters after only learning one or two.

The manual does a great job of giving you enough special moves to get started as well as a few overdrive attacks and the Instant Kill move for each character. Even so, there will be times when you are fighting and your character will spin off into some exotic combo and you’ll be yelling, ‘How in the hell did I do that?”

By keeping everything 2D Guilty Gear is able to create stunning painted backgrounds that look like they were stolen right from an adventure game. I’m not sure if these backgrounds were computer generated or conventionally painted then scanned in, but either way they look simply amazing. To keep things alive there is plenty of ambient background animation and nice little environmental touches that you won’t have time to really appreciate until you are able to sit back and watch somebody else play the game.

The characters are all original and totally insane thanks to the genius of famed character designer, Daisuke Ishiwatari. I’ve never seen such bizarre creations in my life and even more spectacular is how these unique personalities translate into each character’s library of moves and abilities. If you are playing Faust, the surgeon with a sack over his head, your primary weapon is a giant scalpel that you use in a variety of creative ways or can even morph into a baseball bat to hit your opponent “out of the park”. I-No is definitely one of my favorites, sporting a living witches hat (think Harry Potter), and an electric guitar that delivers all sorts of unique and musically themed attacks. Her victory guitar solo is right out of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

The framerate is astonishingly smooth and the entire game comes off like a living comic book or animated TV series. The characters are all animated smoothly and transition into their various super-moves and instant kill attacks with seamless movement. There are all sorts of wild and crazy special effects that surprised me, not only because they were 2D animated sprites, but more so because they are actually flashier than those found in the more modern 3D fighters. And yes, there is blood, gallons of it splashing with every big hit, but it's all done in a comical style that manages to maintain the Teen rating. Words and even screenshots cannot begin to describe this game in motion. You really have to play it to appreciate all the subtle details that are in place.

And finally, I have to offer kudos on one of the best presentations of any fighting game ever. It all starts with a killer opening movie then moves into the clever fighter selection wheel. As you pick your characters you are given a beautiful rendering of that character. The between-fight cutscenes that carry the story are quite clever and keep swapping between a full-color foreground portrait of the person talking with a grayscale image of the listener in the background. As they continue to talk the portraits keep sliding back and forth between the foreground and background and shifting from color to black and white. It’s so simple and yet so very effective.

Sound effects are just as crazy as the visuals with wild sounds that fit perfectly with the onscreen action. It all mixes in nicely with the unique vocalizations and taunts for each of the fighters. The cutscenes are all presented with their original Japanese voice actors so you will have to read the subtitles, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. A lot of the dialog is pretty silly stuff, but it’s easier to forgive when it’s spoken by some high-pitched female or baritone male Japanese actor. I’ve never heard an English dub that did the original presentation justice, so Majesco made a very wise decision to not tamper with perfection.

I hadn't played Guilty Gear since I reviewed the PS2 version nearly a year ago, but the Xbox version has got me hooked once again, especially with the addicting online game modes and flawless online play that never once lagged. I’ve easily logged 30+ hours in both single and multiplayer matches and have yet to complete everyone’s’ story mode or master all of the overdrive or instant kill combos. And even though I lose 80% of my online battles, the game is so much fun I don't mind taking a beating.

With all of the gameplay modes and the robust two-player versus mode and solid online gameplay Guilty Gear is one of the first fighters with a truly infinite lifespan. You should feel guilty (no pun intended) that you're only paying $20. There is simply so much to see and do in #Reload that this game will be stuck in your Xbox for months to come.

There are plenty of other fighting games available for the Xbox and many of them are now supporting Xbox Live, but they are going to have their work cut out for them if they ever hope to compete with this hard rocking, hard hitting, and highly addictive fighter. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest retailer and make Guilty Gear X2 a permanent addition to your videogame library.