[Playing…] Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus

In this section I have talked more than once about fighting games (Pocket Fighters, Killer Instinct, Capcom VS SNK 2, King of Fighters XIII, King of Fighters XIV, Dragon Ball Z 2, Smash Bros Brawl) since it is a genre that I like a lot.

Most of those games were developed by Capcom or SNK, the two large companies that for many years controlled the genre systematically and undoubtedly. Such was his dominance, that at one point It seemed impossible that another company could rise up and make a 2-dimensional fighting game that could stand up to them., but fortunately that was the case.

Arc System Works surprised many with Guilty Gear and drove the rest crazy with Guilty Gear, (XX, Slash, Reload, Accent Core) in which the game was rebalanced and new characters and more attacks were added to the old ones.

The final version was going to be Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, which was released for Playstation 2, Wii, Xbox 360, PSP and PlayStation 3, but in 2012 a patch was released to convert the PS3 version into Accent Core Plus R and a version was also made for PSVita. Because I am not familiar with the “R” version, I am going to talk about Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus.

the saga Guilty Gear It is known for its frenetic combats (much more agile and faster than in Capcom or SNK games), its incredible artistic style (with anime-style characters and settings full of details) and its unbeatable soundtrack, which stands out above average with compositions that are incredible and will delight rock and metal fans.

The rock influence in this game is so great that most characters have attacks or names taken from songs or albums (Ride the Lighting, Iron Maiden, Emerald Sword) or their name comes from music bands (Testament, Venom, Faust, Zappa, Slayer). The entire game is imbued with a rock and heavy essence to the point that some of the letters that appear in the game are based on the font used by Iron Maiden in their logo and some settings are reminiscent of heavy metal album covers.

After so many versions of Guilty Gear XX, This game benefits from inheriting great content in terms of characters, game modes and extras, since practically everything that has existed in previous games is found in this one.

The game consists of 25 characters, all of them different from each other (don't expect to find fighters who share their attacks as happens with Ryu-Ken-Akuma) and each with a number of special attacks above the average in these games. As if this were not enough, we can unlock the EX versions of the characters, which change many of the blows, special attacks and super attacks (here called Overdrive) and even some of them also vary the Destroyers (attacks that eliminate the opponent with a single hit).

The game modes are quite varied. In addition to including the classic Arcade (defeat a few enemies and then the final boss) there is the MOM (like the Arcade but when we hit the enemies medals appear and if we lose we cannot continue); Survival (defeat the maximum number of enemies with one life bar); 3 VS 3 team fight (style king of fighters); Training (to practice combos and learn to control the characters); Mission (pass tests under certain conditions such as not being able to jump, only combos that hurt rivals, etc.); and story mode (where we can learn about the history of each character between combats) and a mode to see all the illustrations, videos and unlocked endings (there are more than one per character).

As I mentioned, the game is fast and spectacular, full of visual effects that make it unique. But none of that would be worth it if it weren't for the devilishly deep gameplay it has. The characters can move agilely around the stage thanks to the fact that they can make jumps, super jumps, quick movements forward and backward (even jumping) and when it comes to attacking it is quite easy to learn to do combos (which can be broken in the Combo Breaker style of Killer Instinct, if we have the Burst bar full).

La barra de colores que hay en la parte inferior de la pantalla es la barra de Tensión y se va llenando mientras peleamos. Hacer algunos ataques especiales consume un poco de barra de Tensión y hacer un súper ataque (Overdrive) consume un trozo más grande. Algunos ataques pueden hacer que perdamos demasiada vida si nos los cubrimos, pero si presionamos puñetazo y patada a la vez mientras nos protegemos, y en lugar de perder vida perderemos barra de Tensión (el efecto de una bola verde aparecerá sobre nuestro personaje si lo hacemos correctamente) salvándonos de una muerte segura.

También podemos presionar los 4 botones de ataque principales para que la barra se empiece a vaciar lentamente y durante ese tiempo podemos tratar de hacer el ataque definitivo (Destroyer) a nuestro rival, que nos dará una victoria automática de ese round. Si al elegir nuestro personaje elegimos la opción Guilty Gear, el Destroyer se efectuara de manera diferente (presionaremos los 4 botones y nuestro personaje dará un golpe, en caso de darle al rival tendremos que tocar los botones que aparezcan en pantalla para ejecutarlo correctamente).

Cada personaje tiene sus particularidades (Faust tiene ataques aleatorios, Zappa invoca diferentes fantasmas durante el combate y según el que tenga activo podrá hacer una cosa u otra, Robo-Ky se sobrecalienta y puede explotar si no liberamos el vapor cada x tiempo con un ataque concreto…) lo cual enriquece mucho al juego, aunque también puede hacer que los más perezosos ni siquiera le den una oportunidad, perdiéndose así a uno de los mejores juegos de lucha de la generación de 128 bits y uno de los pocos que se ha podido medir de tu a tu (e incluso superar en algunos aspectos) a los mejores juegos de Capcom y SNK en sus buenos años.

En resumen, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus es un juego excelente, una autentica maravilla de los juegos de lucha en 2D. Si os gusta el género y tenéis cualquiera de las consolas para las que se ha lanzado, compradlo sin ninguna duda (aunque en caso de querer jugar a la versión de Wii os recomiendo que uséis un mando clásico o uno de Gamecube porque jugar con el Wiimote y nunchuck es asqueroso e impreciso).