The top fighters of this generation, Part 4
Fighters Megamix.
Missed An earlier part? Start here.
The fighting game is not dead. It might seem like it sometimes, given the relatively small lineup of fighters available for current-gen systems, but quality stands for far more than quantity in a fighting game. True, the halcyon days of the 2D and 3D fighters on the PSone and Saturn are long behind us, but do we really miss the Toh Shin Dens, the Bloody Roars, The Psychic Forces and World Heroes that permeated the lineup of fighters? Not really, because whilst the herd has thinned, the strongest have survived. And so we present our list of the best fighters of this generation; the best of an increasingly breed, perhaps, but still the best.
2. BlazBlue
BlazBlue truly is the last of its kind. In the modern world of 3D visuals, there doesn’t seem to be as much room for a game so unashamedly 2D as BlazBlue. But Arc System Works’ exemplary fighter proves that hypothesis to be very wrong.
As the spiritual successor to Guilty Gear, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that BlazBlue features gloriously high resolution anime-style characters for its protagonists. Nor should it come as a surprise that they animate beautifully, with loving attention to detail on the imaginative designs. That attention stretches to the backgrounds as well, which are rendered in full-3D though have a delightfully hand-drawn look about them making for some highly artistic scenes. But all that is just visual fluff. BlazBlue’s great looks – and they are, truly, great – aren’t even half the story here. And story is, unusually, something BlazBlue takes seriously- the sheer concept is more than most games can manage to string together at all. It’s barely covered in the brief story snippets of the arcade mode, but in the Story mode, it gets properly explored. Diverging paths for each character follow their own unique plotlines, told through gorgeous artwork and fully-voiced dialogue sequences between characters that only reveal the finer details of the time-bending plot after some effort.
But the real winning part of BlazBlue’s formula is, of course, its fighting mechanics. There might only be twelve characters on offer, but each is radically different, brave enough to stray from the stereotypical fighter formulae in favour of imaginative designs and mechanics. With light, medium, and heavy attacks you get what you’d expect, and special moves run the gamut from throws and up-close combos to the weird and wonderful ranged weapons, and attacks chain together remarkably easily, allowing for a wide range of experimentation in combos and fighting style. But it’s the addition of the Drive button that gives the game its real edge, which has a different function for each character. For Ragna, it absorbs a small portion of health with a successful attack. For Litchi, it allows her to plant her staff in the ground or recall it. For Rachel, it summons a gust of wind to push away other characters or projectiles.
What sets BlazBlue apart from the crowd (besides its glorious HD hand-drawn visuals and stellar storyline) is the fact that its fresh, new, and packed full of content. And sequel / expansion Continuum Shift, due out in the UK this October, will further expand on these with a deeper story mode as well as new characters and modes.
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