Guilty Gear

Click here for post mood music.

You may recognize this name from a previous post. Guilty Gear is a fighting game series designed by Daisuke Ishiwatari, who not only created the game itself, but designs the characters, storylines, and composes the music. The game itself features numerous references to musical culture (example: Axl Low is thought to be based on Axl Rose for their strikingly similar appearance and he even wears a union jack flag shirt), but most commonly features subtle allusions to Daisuke's favorite band: Queen. Not unlike most fighting games, much of Guilty Gear is based around the player's ability to execute a number of combos, often involving ways to knock opponents skyward to continue, and also feature devastatingly powerful techniques that require you to build up "Tension" to execute. The most powerful moves (each character has one) are called "Destroy," as they are one-hit KOs; however, the offside is that each character's techniques, including Destroys, are performed differently. Some are ridiculously easy to dodge, some are nigh impossible, some can be blocked and some can't. One of the most impressive things about the series is that Daisuke learns from each game and applies new ideas and maneuvers for players. For instance, Guilty Gear XX introduced False Roman Cancels, air throws, and Aerial Dust: I still don't know what most of the terms mean.

However, you might ask yourself: why should I care about another fighting game? It's true the market is saturated with button mashing, rage inducing, controller hurling hybrid fighters, but the thing that sets Guilty Gear apart from the pack is what makes it so unique. Let me just say this, I've played...a lot of fighting games, I've played a lot of games in general, but I've played basically every mainstream fighting game: Tekkan, Soul Caliber, Marvel vs. Capcom, Naruto (the whole series), Dragonball (all of them), Clay Fighter, etc. etc. I'm not a fan of fighters, I feel like I'm horrible at them and I never put the dedication in to learn how to play effectively. Guilty Gear (and Dragonball Z: Budokai) are the only fighting game series I've ever really found myself enjoying.

Why You Should Play Guilty Gear
1) It's easy to pick up. You have four attacks: low punch, low kick, high punch, and high kick. You push one a few times, press another one: you've mastered combos in Guilty Gear. It doesn't take a highschool diploma to do damage in this game. The real difficulty lies in the execution of said combos, effective blocking techniques, air dodging, jump timing, etc. (a lot of the characters move at different speeds, so it gets really tricky depending on who you fight). And by the way, the game is legitimately difficult. You will have a hard time on Normal.

2) The characters are interesting, unique and have really cool designs. You might know Guilty Gear best because of this little fellow.

3) The music is above and beyond what you could expect to hear in a fighting game. Seriously, what is better to beat the crap out of somebody than blazing guitar riffs?

But in all seriousness. The best part of Guilty Gear is that it is fun. Plain and simple. So I'll leave you with a video of my favorite character (Chipp), demonstrating his combos: