Anatomy of Skullgirls, Page 2
Michael Liesch
Considering there’s still a heavily implied plot connecting the characters, we can all hope to savor it at a later date.
The Little Things (extra credit applied directly to total grade)
+2: Button Mapping
Everyone loves customization, and to really make your play style yours they’ve not only allowed you to choose what each button on the controller does, but also given you both the left triggers (or trigger and bumper for you Xbox360 folks) to use as a shortcut in place of pressing any two attack buttons, of your choosing, at the same time. This is especially helpful for throws, tag-ins (incase you like to use multiple characters) and certain combos where you’re required to press two specific attack buttons at the same time. BRILLIANT!
-1: Maybe it’s just me…
It’s silly, but upon completing a tutorial, it gives you a “Choose Lesson” option, returning you to the menu, and a “Give Up” option (which is self explanatory) but nothing let’s you move quickly to the next tutorial if you’re trying to complete them in succession. I’m nit-picky, so this is on my list whether you like it or not!
+1: One-liners, aplenty
Minor details can make all the difference and, throughout the game’s entirety, I was caught off guard whenever I heard the characters open each battle with a snarky comment specifically catered to their current opponent. Mortal Kombat’s characters all had their opening lines, but they became stale and meaningless over time. The characters of “Skullgirls” will joke about their particular enemy’s appearance, attitude, or relationship with each other before a battle. It gets a laugh here and there and just furthers the notion that so much care was put into every element of the game.
+0: Sweet Nothings…
Yes I’m aware 0 points doesn’t constitute much as “extra credit” however, I feel there’s one more thing worth mentioning that isn’t quite worth 1% of a grade, but it shows the thoughtfulness of the developers. During gameplay, you must hold the pause button for 2 seconds to stop the match. This prevents your button-mashing opponent from stopping the match by accident when the poor, innocent, little Start button gets caught in their frantic fingers’ line of fire, when you’re beating the shit out of them, and they’ve thrown all training to the wind. So thanks, Reverge Labs, for taking away my one advantage.
GAME SCORE: 93.3%
EXTRA CREDIT: +2
OVERALL GRADE: 95.3% —–> A
Teacher’s Notes:
With a little more content, slightly improved user interface, and more detail in the story’s linear progression this could have been an A+!!! The game is already worth the price tag and, as long as future characters come at a reasonable cost, I feel this game will really make a name for itself! How do you decide a reasonable price for future characters you ask?
You start with two of the best-known games in the fighting genre…
Marvel vs. Capcom (MvC) and Mortal Kombat (MK)
Both of which were released at $60. MvC has 50 characters, which is quite a lot. Mortal Kombat, after the 4 DLC characters ($5 a pop or $15 for the bunch), has 29 assuming you’ve gotten Kratos free on the PS3. Let’s get the average…
(MvC roster + MK roster)/2= 39.5
Okay and the average price, after the DLC, is…
(60 + 75)/2= 67.5
Let’s see what each character is worth!!
67.5/39.5= 1.708
So it costs about $1.71 per character in the most popular fighting games (yet most games charge $4.99???? For shame…)
Now, I’m not a fan of getting financially screwed, so unless one of those fighters jumps out of the game and serves me a medium rare end-cut of steak every time I buy one, I’d be willing to pay $3.00 (since it is paying peoples’ bills and whatnot) for every downloadable character. That being said, no one should ever rate a game for what it WILL be, they should rate a game for what it is. No one deemed it necessary to buy the game’s upcoming additions, so long as the game is still enjoyable as is. Because of that, downloadable content has made it into the footnotes and not my actual report card, so take it as you will, and play “Skullgirls!” I may eventually challenge you all by putting my username out on the Internet, but let’s wait until I make it to at least Tier 2.
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Thank you for reading my review!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael is a student in pursuit of a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Creative Writing for Entertainment from Full Sail University. When not fostering his writing techniques, Michael enjoys traveling (having been to 14 countries), rock climbing (indoors), and talking in third-person for his biography’s sake.
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