So, the new HD twins are around the corner. I see no reason to talk about them yet as they have no games to talk about. That’s pretty much every console launch ever. The only different launch was the NES, where it had few years of Famicom games to back it up. Japanese PS4 release was pushed to Q1 of 2014, and that’s an advantage for them. In the meantime more games are coming out and SONY most likely will sort out bunch of problems and hopefully pre-patch the machines.
I really should write a review of the machines’ appearance one of these days.
But Guilty Gear Xrd saw some added characters to its roster, and we’ll take a look at them. Sadly, no new characters have been revealed as of yet, but I hope the roster will see at least one or two new characters. I’m sure it wouldn’t be surprising to see that the devs decided against any new characters, and only limited characters from past games. If I may so, I hope ABA won’t be included until the second version of Xrd. There’s also possibility that Jam won’t be included due to her not really being a core character, like all the ones revealed thus far, but I really do hope she’ll appear with heavily altered movelist.
Speaking of the movelists, there seems to be little to no changes thus far. This is a little bit disappointing, as the difference between Guilty Gear, Guilty Gear XX and finally Accent Core was rather hefty, especially in the case of the two first mentioned. It would seem that ArcSys is playing safe and mainly just importing existing lists rather than revamping them. Too bad, I would’ve loved to see total revamps with few of the characters just for the sake of change.
Since our last check up, I-No, Dr. Baldhe– Faust, Axl Low and Slayer were added in. Much like Chipp and May, their design is not really wildly different. Or are they? Let’s take a look.
Axl’s design got a total overhaul. Thus far I haven’t seen one completely negative comment on his redesign, and there’s a good reason for it; his new look is spiffy. Well, sort of.
The new look is a mix of Axl’s Guilty Gear and X/XX look. The most prominent element from his previous fashion is the shorts and the flag flaps hanging off his belt. While the GG Axl didn’t have Union Jack as a prominent element in his clothes, it now seems to define Axl’s look the most. A flag shirt wasn’t good enough for him, I suppose. It should also be noted that he wears St. George’s or St. Patrick’s Cross scarf in his head, but with opposite colours. The red cross should be red while the background should be white. Overall, the balance between blue and red has inverted as well, mainly due to the his shirt being white now. It more resembles his old GG look than X/XX look.
Axl also learned to be more like a British gentlemen as well, as he is now wearing a leather tie with trinkets punctured on it. He also has two buckles on his belt and few belt straps in his jacket’s sleeves to boot.
Axl’s new look works with him. It uses the same elements that existed before, but toys with them and add the Guilty Gear flavour in there as a final touch.
The rest of the bunch really don’t have any changes with their attire. Slayer keeps his double belt buckles, I-No’s still a red-cladden sex bomb, thou her hat is less crumbled and its brass details have seen a slight redesign. Her boots also have new brass plaque at their tip, but these are nothing major. These details are just adjusted detailing rather than redesigning. The guitar also got more detailed, but it’s essentially the same one.
Faust too shared the same with I-no. that is he got adjusted details. The straps on his arms have now red crosses to further sign his (ex-)profession and his green pants are now striped. His tie is also yellow rather than black. It would have been an interesting twist if the devs had decided that Faust was redeemed himself at some point and had returned to be his old self. That, or taken him a step further than before.
There’s one empty slot in Xrd’s webpage to be filled. [As of 16th of Feb 2015 the site has been revamped and this does not apply]. I hope this doesn’t mean that we’ll get one more character, as twelve characters seems a bit poor seeing how the series has a rich pool of characters. The site does have the disclaimer And more… which would promise at least small handful of characters. Hopefully some new ones too.
It took CAPCOM a little while to realize that they should include character across the Street Fighter history in SF IV, whereas SNK was doing its best to pull every character they ever had into the King of Fighters. It would be a good thing for CAPCOM to pull off a dream match like game and just shove all the Street Fighter, Rival School and other fighting game characters into one, massive ’bout. That will never happen, because they’re in deep shit and if they won’t make anything insanely successful, they’re most likely going down. Anyway, in a perfect world, Street Fighter X All CAPCOM would have been a massive fighting game with almost hundred characters to choose from. Ah, the things we can only imagine about.
It’s a bit underwhelming to see that ArcSys has decided against redesigning most of their characters. While I’m always all in updating character’s look properly, it looks like they thought the negative comments they were getting from Sol, Ky and Potemkin has made them to steer to a more traditional path. Of course, it might’ve been that they only decided to redesign few selected characters, which is half-assed attitude and only serves the purpose to fulfil the designers own desires, and we all know what I would say about that.
Aaltomies 