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 BlazBlue:
Calamity Trigger (Playstation 3)
The latest release from Arc Systems, the creators of Guilty Gear offers
gameplay that is both familiar and different. It's another 2D fighter in a
similar style, but has unique elements such as distortion attacks and
moves, that make it feel unique. Its characters are somewhat less balanced
and the gameplay moves at a slower pace. To compensate, BlazBlue includes
multiple modes including versus fighting, an extensive story mode and
extensive online support. Blaze Blu's beautifully designed HD visuals
explode from the screen with lush 2D anime-style character animation,
excellent 3D backgrounds and extensive voice-overs. Its intricate fighting
system makes BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger an unapologetically hardcore
fighter, but its excellent mechanics and challenging gameplay make for a
challenging and excting 2D fighting title. |
As soon as you load BlazBlue: Calamity
Trigger, you'll see the lineage and influence of Guilty Gear in BlazBlue's
stylish character designs, elaborate menus and heavy metal/goth
soundtrack. These elements should be immediately familiar to fans of GG,
but BlazBlue goes in several divergent directions that give it a unique
personality. A roster of 12 unique characters gives you a varied selection
of fighters to choose from. As in most fighting games, each character
brings a unique fighting style to the arena, but they share a number of
basic attacks and moves that allows you to jump right into the action and
build your skills from there. Most standard attacks can be performed using
the standard face buttons. In addition, there's a variety of weak and
strong punch and kick attacks, dash, roll, counters and throws to use.
These attacks are fairly straightforward and give you plenty of options.
However, BlazBlue's fighting system is more complicated than that. When
your attacks connect and you damage opponents, the character's special
gauge increases. Once the special is full, Distortion Drive attacks are
enabled. These are devastating, multi-hit combos that cause massive
damage. The trade-off is that Distortion Drives use half your heat guage.
In addition, the game uses several blocking moves, cancels, counters and
more. Most of the moves are fairly easy to perform, but you the challenge
comes in finding the right moment to use them. One of the more interesting
aspects of the system is called the Guard Libra system which has a
significant effect on battles. When you block an opponent's attacks, your
character's Libra gauge will increase. When it's full, you can unleash an
attack on the opponent that will leave them stunned for a few moments,
giving you the opportunity to inflict additional damage with little risk.
One of its most unique features in
BlazBlue is its extensive Barrier system. This cool gameplay mechanic is
essential in that it allows you to deflect attacks effectively. In order
to throw up one of these, you need to have enough energy in your barrier
gauge and when you do this, your enemy cannot attack you. The effect only
lasts for a few seconds. You can also use this defensively in other ways,
such as performing a Barrier Burst that unleashes a wave that throws your
opponent to the other side of the screen. The drawback here is that
Barrier Bursts can only be used once per round and completely drain your
barrier energy and leave you vulnerable for the rest of the match. Another
cool idea that BlazBlue implements are Astral Heat moves. These special
attacks are unique to each character and inflict an almost unstoppable
amount of damage that nearly guarantees your victory. These moves are
difficult to perform, but obviously worth the effort. Obviously, some
characters are easier to use than others but the harder characters deliver
more damage once you get the hang of them. Players will also have to
contend with drive attacks. Drives are slightly more powerful than
standard attacks, and are fairly easy to perform. However, they can be
easily blocked by opponents. Working together to create combos, these
basic and super moves can be quite powerful when chained with other moves.
This just scratches the surface of the tactics, special moves and attacks
available to the player, but shows that BlazBlue has plenty of depth in
terms of strategy and patterns. BlazBlue's characters share similar sets
of basic commands but each one implements different fighting styles.
Mastering them requires a lot of skill and effort and each one offers a
distinct approach that require you to adjust your strategy. Players will
need to figure out when certain moves and strategies are more effective
and when they're just button mashing.
 While
the game's fighting system is deep, it's also quite intuitive as well.
Most players should have little trouble learning the basics and mastering
all the special moves. Once you get beyond these factors, you'll find an
engaging fighter. One of the elements that sets the game apart from the
pack are its numerous game modes. You can choose to play through a
standard arcade round, battling through a series of opponents until you
reach the end level boss. There's also an extensive Training mode that
lets you select which moves and tactics you want to practice. You can
choose which character you'll use, their opponent and which moves you want
to learn. This mode also allows you to record and playback your
achievements. Another cool idea is the Score Attack mode, where you face
off against a series of foes. In order to make things easier for newbies
and even more manic for experienced players, special moves are assigned to
the right analog stick and pressing in one direction allows you to unleash
them effortlessly. In addition to single player battles, BlazBlue allows
players to go online and fight against opponents in either ranked or
friendly matches. The online modes are effectively implemented overall,
though there was some noticeable lag here and there. It wasn't a major
bug, but the online experience didn't feel as smooth as the disc based
game did. However, this is to be expected, since very few console fighters
translate perfectly online. One of the most innovative aspects of the game
is BlazBlue's story mode. This is interesting on a number of levels,
mostly because its far more elaborate than you'd expect. Story takes you
through a character's journey and their backstory unfolds in a series of
extended cut-scenes between rounds. Each battle takes a single round
approach, but it helps to move the story along quicker. Players can see
the individual characters and learn their motivations and struggles. This
gives BlazBlue much more depth than you'd find in most fighters. Once
viewed, you can see many of these cinematic sequences, as well as other
elements such as CGI artwork, in the game's Gallery mode. This helps to
show off BlazBlue's impressive character designs and style, and gives you
motivation to keep playing.
There can be little dispute that one of
the most appealing aspects of BlazBlue is its visuals. The game's overall
design merges steam-punk and neo-gothic anime styles to create a
beautifully rendered world. Its character designs consist of cool stylish
players rendered in traditional 2D sprites, but the huge number of frames
used gives their animation a great deal of fluidity and style that makes
them immediately pop off the screen. Their elaborate attack animations and
special attack effects add to the vibrant presentation and make each
battle a feast of sumptuous eye candy throughout. These compliment the
nicely designed 3D backgrounds to create a very nice looking game that
effectively uses HD visuals to create a title that looks traditional and
modern at the same time. BlazBlue's scrolling and scaling techniques lets
you take the action slightly beyond the ring's parameters making for an
impressive visual appearance overall. The game's elaborate menus and
loading screens have also been beautifully designed, and give the game a
consistently elaborate appearance throughout. Its music and soundtrack is
nicely done as well and its mix of metal and neo-classical fits the genre
and style of BlazBlue's fantastic neo-gothic world flawlessly. Its
extensive use of voice-overs is most noticeable in the story mode, which
helps to give each character a unique and satisfying storyline. These
outstanding production values help to give the game it's modern, HD feel
but it's the traditional play mechanics, with a deep fighting system,
varied characters, challenging opponent AI and multiple modes of play
helping to keep you coming back for more. It might not have famous Guilty
Gear name, but BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger offers the intense, deep
gameplay that players have come to expect from the series. Its nicely
balanced character roster, extensive fighting system and challenging play
make this one for an exciting and satisfying fighter title that delivers
an outstanding gaming experience.
- Michael Palisano
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