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> Results: Guilty Gear Isuka
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Visual chaosOne of the strongest (only) new fighting game series in the last few years is Arc System Works' and Sammy Corporation's Guilty Gear. It's a two-dimensional fighting game (that means the characters are flat pictures animated in frames a lot like traditional animated films) that features high resolution graphics. All the characters are much sharper and filled with far more detail than the Capcom-style Street Fighter games or SNK's famous King of Fighters series. The high resolution allows the artists to draw more pixels on the screen resulting in some gorgeous fighting action. With Guilty Gear Isuka, the standard one on one fighting formula morphs into something new and different. Unfortunately, it doesn't pan out nearly as well as you might think.  Isuka's biggest change from previous Guilty Gear installments is the four player action. The game allows for one on one, two on one, three on one or four player free for all and team battles. It uses the same character art as the earlier games but shrunken down a bit in size. Not only can you fight with four players, you fight on two different lines on the screen. Characters can jump into and out of the screen, moving to a different plane. Attacks on one plane don't affect the other but you can attack into and out of each line as you change. This isn't really a new thing as SNK fighters (Fatal Fury series) and some side scrolling beat 'em ups (Guardian Heroes) have used a similar mechanism to separate combat. The problem comes when you mix the high resolution characters and backgrounds with this style of fighting. You can't see Guilty Gear Isuka is a blaze of color, animation and action. It also has maybe the best soundtrack in the series. It's one you might even want to own if you like its hard rock styling. There are often projectiles flying around, characters going every which way and lots of fancy effects. In previous games, with two characters, it wasn't too bad keeping track of on screen fighting because you only had one guy to worry about. Now, with as many as three others attempting to kick your rear along with the two planes for fighting, it's sometimes impossible to tell who's hitting who and with what. To top it off, the game has moved to a life bar that's continuous. It drains out, then goes back to full until you've "lost" twice. That's one more thing that's super difficult to keep track of and it's just one of three bars you need to watch. There's your Burst gauge and Tension gauge too. Both of which are carried over from the series one on one roots. Finally, players now have to use a button to switch directions. You can only attack in the direction you're facing so it gets downright onerous figuring out which way you're facing in the midst of a massive fight. The button to change directions adds an unintuitive button push to what should be a simple thing to do, attack the guy standing next to you. Fortunately, not all fights are four player chaos. When you play a one on one fight, the game is similar to what came before. There's even a new character as well as a fully fleshed out Robo-Ky to tool around with. The animation is superb as always and the action is non-stop and very strategic when you can actually see what's happening. That button for facing still irritates though as you need to use it even if there's only one other character onscreen. It eventually becomes tolerable but never becomes second nature. That's just a big red flag in a genre that relies on intuitive controls. Arc System Works also added a couple new modes of play that make the game into a Final Fight-style side scroller. GG Boost and RKII Factory play similarly but RKII Factory actually lets you customize your Robo-Ky with moves from all the various in-game characters. These are both pretty cool modes and feature some entertaining side-scrolling fighting. The side scrolling is not contained to different planes like the fighting gameplay so it really does have a Final Fight feel to it, only with all the special moves you get normally.  This is one of those games that attempts something new and only sort of delivers. It's nice to see a fighting game that's trying to be a little more than just a standard toe to toe brawl. But since 2D fighters aren't as ubiquitous as they used to be and the Guilty Gear games really hadn't played themselves out as standard fighters either, Isuka ends up a little disappointing. To add even more problems with four player mode, you'll need to buy a multitap since the game is available on the only console that doesn't support four players natively. Two more controllers too since you probably don't own four for the PS2 given its dearth of four player games due to the added expense of the tap. That's something like $140 to play Guilty Gear Isuka with four guys and given how chaotic four player mode is and how quickly you'll tire of getting lost in characters and backgrounds, you're better off staying with Guilty Gear X2 on PS2 or its Xbox cousin, Guilty Gear X2 #Reload. Guilty Gear Isuka is fun for awhile but the main feature of the game isn't worth the price of entry. Kid Factor: I've played this game in front of my boys age 6, 4 and 3. It's got a teen rating but the violence is very cartoon-like and no worse than shows like Yu Yu Hakusho. So depending on your children's contact with anime on Cartoon Network, Guilty Gear Isuka might be ok for them to watch and/or play. The button to change facing is very hard for even adults to grasp even after repeated play so don't expect younger kids to handle it terribly well either. Still, the side-scrolling mode is a lot of fun and one on one fighting can be a blast. Even a two on one brawl is good when you've got a skilled player against two novices. I-No is suggestive with her open front jacket and big assets, but given what's in a lot of E-rated games these days, the content in Guilty Gear Isuka isn't bad at all. Reviewer Recommended Ages: 10+ Genre: Fighting ESRB Rating: T-Teen Publisher: Sammy Developer: Arc System Works 
I've played this game in front of my boys age 6, 4 and 3. It's got a teen rating but the violence is very cartoon-like and no worse than shows like Yu Yu Hakusho. So depending on your children's contact with anime on Cartoon Network, Guilty Gear Isuka might be ok for them to watch and/or play. The button to change facing is very hard for even adults to grasp even after repeated play so don't expect younger kids to handle it terribly well either. Still, the side-scrolling mode is a lot of fun and one on one fighting can be a blast. Even a two on one brawl is good when you've got a skilled player against two novices. I-No is suggestive with her open front jacket and big assets, but given what's in a lot of E-rated games these days, the content in Guilty Gear Isuka isn't bad at all.
Kid Factor by Dave Long
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