Guilty Gear Isuka

"A step backwards for Guilty Gear"

Introduction
Guilty Gear is a fighting game that originated on the PSOne and made by Sammy. It spread over to arcades, handhelds, xbox and PS2 with its various and awesome sequels. this sequel to it however, is just awful and strives to be different but in essence becomes a letdown.

Gameplay
The most important factor in fighting games, Isuka doesn't live up to the standard of fighting games. Rather than have a single 2D plane, you have two that you can move back and forth from by pressing two buttons out of the 5 given you. You have a weak punch, weak kick, slash, heavy slash, and a turn button. Unlike the other Guilty Gears, the turn button is a new feature. With it you can turn around and run in the opposite direction. This happens to be a problem as it's hard to get a attack to the other side and you sometimes cannot tell what direction you are in fast enough. And with having two fighting planes, it becomes hard to know which plane you are on, not to mention that this can cause people to runaway causing frustrating fights. On the plus side with the turn button and the two planes this leaves room for up to four people to duke it out in fights. But not enough space is given still and confusion can occur as to where you are. It would have been better to have smaller sprites and more background to give more fighting space.

Regardless of the 4 player chaos, annoying two 2D/semi3D planes, and abrupt manual turn system, the fighting engine is pretty good. You can many of the fighting standards including running, dashes, air dashes, launchers, air combos,special moves, and super moves. Guilty Gear also offers its own unique battle abilities such as faultless defense-a shield that prevents you from taking any damage whatsoever and burst-a non damaging blast that pushes opponents away.

Characters
A variety of characters with their own unique attributes and styles are available for you to select. there's about 20 characters in all with three bonus ones that have no specials and attributes. You can also have EX versions of characters which give them different moves. With this many already offered and none being clones, you have the ability to experiment with all of them and see what you favor. What's more, if you can't stand any of them, you can make a Robo-Ky II! Robo-ky II is a character that has a mode which lets you give it abilities that you choose and you can customize it as you see fit!

Graphics
Guilty Gear has high resolution sprites with great animation. The backgrounds are detailed and animated as well and complement the character sprites. the game sort of looks like an anime. My only gripes are that it's hard to see which plane of the playing field your character is in sometimes. Regardless, the graphics can definitely wow a gamer in.

Content
Isuka has plenty of content. An arcade mode that forces you to level up to 99 to face the final boss (which an be a gruesome task), a versus mode that supports up to 4 people, a training mode, a factory mode that allows you to customize your own character (Robo-Ky II) with abilities that you choose. And best of all a mode called Boost. Ever play Final Fight or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time? Boost is similar to that with you advancing through levels beating up repetitive enemies for mindless fun and interesting bonus bosses.

Sound
Metal Rock music is played for every part of the game. It's pleasing to hear and has you pumping during you fights. This is one of my favorite parts about this game. The music is one of the best in video games. the characters speak in Japanese and the announcer has a booming voice announcing the selection of characters. My favorite part is when he yells out "Let's Rock!" which starts the fight.

Overall
Buying the game is recommended. Isuka gives mindless fun with friends and for co-op in Boost mode. It also offers a lot of content with its many characters, beautiful music, and vivid graphics. The gameplay could use a lot of work and fixes and some modes like Boost or Arcade could also have been improved (More enemies/make missions blander/make arcade mode less tedious). Overall Isuka gets a 7. Average and is a little distant cousin to the other Guilty Gears.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/06