Guilty Gear has always been one of my favorite series of fighter games because it greatly impairs our oh-so-beloved button mashers from pwning ass. Take Soul Calibur II for instance: when playing as Rafael, by repeatedly pushing one button, Rafael will rapidly flail his sabre, often leaving the other player no chance to retaliate. The control structure in Guilty Gear is so brilliant because rapidly pushing the punch or kick button won’t get you very far: special combos are based mainly on the combination of buttons and quarter or half turns with the joystick or directional pad. It has so far proven to be a very difficult game to master – but isn’t that what one looks for? A decent challenge? Guilty Gear fans will soon be put to the ultimate test – accepting Overture as a worthy addition to Guilty Gear and its many spinoffs. Overture not only changes the graphical appearance by performing in 3D, but also changes the classic battle system. Players now control not only one main character but a small army of minor drones (Masterghosts) with the goal of taking over many control points located across the map. Combos and special attacks from the original GG will also be available. As if figuring out how to control one character wasn’t hard enough, now you have to worry about controlling your army at the same time. With only SIX selectable characters, one can choose from five different modes of gameplay: Campaign, Exhibition, Free Mission, Training, and Online. Campaign is the typical story mode, with set missions each following a story specific to the character. You can set paramaters for battles against the CPU in Exhibition mode. If you’ve never played GG before, and even if you have, try out the Training mode to get a feel for the game’s new, and seemingly complicated, command system. Or you can play with three other people on Xbox Live. The whole concept of turning a 2D one on one fighter game into a tacitcal action game doens’t really seem like the logical way to go, but we may not know enough about the game to really judge it. I think the game will either be a really big success, or a really big failure – no middle area involved. Any feedback or theories from original GG fans on the supposed outcome of Overture would be greatly appreciated.
Look out for Guilty Gear 2: Overture for the Xbox 360 sometime in September 2008
