Picture the scene, its 1am and a once peaceful and serene night is shattered by my voice as I scream profanities at my television and the mystery person I’m playing online because he or she, just beat me in less than 10 seconds with a 65 hit combo. Welcome to the world of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger.
Pull The Trigger.
For many gamers this title will simply pass them by but for those looking for a beat ‘em up that differs from Super Street Fight 4 this might be worth a look. Blazblue’s style is unique for its developers Arc System Works, a company who have been making gamers rage since the days of the Playstation with their Guilty Gear franchise. The learning curve within Blazblue ranges from average to steep, depending on skill and mostly luck, and once you get online its like running head long into a brick wall at 900mph.
Although Blazblue still bares a startling resemblance to Guilty Gear in a majority of ways, the most prominent of which is in the moves list. Once a company or game has laid claim to the button sequences they wish to use, those sequences will often appear in every game that company makes until they make something else in another genre. This may alienate newcomers but to hardcore Guilty Gear fans they will simply be able to pick up a controller, pick any character, and within seconds be able to pull off the special “Distortion” moves.
However, in an effort to bring new players onto the same playing field as the old Guilty Gear veterans, Blazblue introduces the ‘easy specials’ system which is controllable through the right analogue stick The right analogue stick is often unused within the beat ‘em up genre, until now that is. Special moves can now be pulled off by simple flicking it in the correct direction. with this new way of pulling off special moves even my girlfriend can hand my ass to me. There are four special moves that are bound to the right analogue stick, and a quick flick left, right, up or down will send a dagger of ice or spinning shadow axe towards your opponent.
If you fancy playing the story mode you had best leave your realism boots at the door as the story of Blazblue is as complex and unbelievable as any Japanese anime series. There are eight characters to choose from in total, and their story arcs will take you on a variety of paths to an important decision which will dictate your next opponent and which story elements will be revealed. While the actual story leaves little to be desired it’s presented in a beautiful and artistic way. As the text scrolls and the voice actors read it aloud you are presented with a sublime selection of backdrops and character artwork which makes you want to continue the story if just to see more of that artwork.
This also comes across in the fights as well. We are back in sprite territory here but even with the highest HD settings you simply won’t find any pixelisation issues, every image is clean and crisp and wonderfully painted.
Blazblue also features techniques and abilities that would put other fighting games to shame, with its long list of technical abilities such as Rapid Cancel, Astral Heat, Drive, Guard Libra, Counter Assaults, Instant Block’s and Barrier Blocks on top of the basic Block, Parry and Counter. Add to that list a bunch of special moves and you are ready for world dominance, or so you would think.
The online mode is unforgiving, after a few button presses you are thrust into a game which occasionally matches you up with similarly skilled players but more often will leave you at the mercy of someone vastly higher . When you connect and choose your character you begin synchronising and for a brief few moments it’ll jolt and lag but once the action starts you’ll have no lag. Instead you’ll notice that the majority will be better than you and will pound you into the ground without leaving you any room to even catch your breath, and this is a problem with the games desired audience outside of Japan. Beat ‘em up games that are heavily influenced by Japanese animation tend to draw in those who like Japanese anime and those in the originating country As a result, due to Blazblue’s release so late in regions outside of Japan, few stand a chance venturing online, making the experience completely broken.
Blazblue: Calamity Trigger is sadly not a flawless gem, it suffers from most of the problems new beat ‘em up games do in that the characters aren’t perfectly balanced and the online community will simply abuse that. Offline the story may not be fantastic but it’s presented in such a way that you could let that slide But overall this instalment of Blazblue feels like a pretence to the, already confirmed, next instalment, which will hopefully fix the balance issues and improve on an already strong roster and sadly, like Guilty Gear, Blazblue will only truly be a great fighting game in its very last instalment.
6/10
