#between just playing the unranked mode of various games and not being ''very good''

[amplexadversary]

As a rule of thumb, I really don’t see any point to a game where you can’t win with your favorites. This is why I don’t play competitive fucking anything because I don’t want to get slapped with the fucking bitch tier rank just for not making the same choices everyone else does.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Kill la Kill The Game: IF Review

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/kill-la-kill-the-game-if-review/

Kill la Kill The Game: IF Review

At first glance, Kill la Kill The Game: IF passes the fighting game smell test. With sharp cel-shaded cutscenes, including loving recreations of critical moments from the beloved Hiroyuki Imaishi anime series and the endorsement of its animation studio Trigger, developer APlus and publisher Arc System Works want you to see and get excited about the prospect of an authentic, official Kill la Kill game. Unfortunately, authenticity isn’t everything. Kill la Kill The Game: IF feels like a stripped-down version of the prototypical 3D anime fighter. Its loose, mashy fighting fails to create the opportunities for strategic depth I’ve come to expect in great fighting games. Meanwhile, its story and single-player modes feel less than substantial.

Kill la Kill The Game: IF is a fairly basic version of what we’ve seen in other 3D anime fighting games like Jump Force or the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm series. Unlike those games, Kill la Kill’s matches are one-on-one duels, and take place on dull, flat arenas. The fighting is very simple, with each character using his or her own versions of the same three attacks: a close-range punch or strike, a chargeable long-distance projectile or dash attack, and a slow-moving heavy hit that breaks your opponent’s guard. Fighters also have flashy, powerful versions of each attack called deathblows, which are limited by a special meter. They do more damage, though not so much that pulling one off feels particularly satisfying, even if they come with a short cutscene intro to make them feel more epic.

Though the controls are simple, the characters attack styles are not completely identical. Certain characters have variations that may push you to approach a fight in specific, sometimes unintuitive ways. For example, Ira Gamagoori, a BDSM-inspired character who whips himself to build up power, takes a very small amount of damage when he blocks to build up his strength, which then makes his attacks more powerful. Other character’s eccentricities are much smaller – Uzu Sanageyama, the oversized, armored fighter with a wooden sword, has a charged version of his heavy attack that teleports directly behind his opponent. Unfortunately, there are no character-specific tutorials to help you learn each of their variations, so you will need to figure out how each character works through trial and error.

Though the attacks and fighting styles distinguish one character from another, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that you’re just mashing your way to victory.

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Though the attacks and fighting styles distinguish one character from another, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that you’re just mashing your way to victory. There’s a system in place where blocks beat attacks, guard breaks beat guards, and dodges beat guard breaks, but with an air dash that can reach your opponent from any distance and a lot of single-button combos, it still feels like just rushing in and mashing an attack button is the optimal strategy. You can spend half your special meter to burst out of combos using the Bloody Valor system, a mid-match minigame-style mechanic, but it doesn’t do a great job of teaching you this. If you don’t know it, or recently used Bloody Valor already, then trading strings of hits doesn’t feel particularly enthralling when dishing it out, and can be exasperating when you have to take it.

Bloody Valor is ostensibly a “comeback” tool, offering some recourse when you’re in a one-sided fight, but it does more harm than good. It’s a rock-paper-scissors-style power-up mechanic, letting you spend half of your special meter to gamble for a battlefield advantage (such as healing your wounds or recharging your super meter) and raise your Ketsui level, which makes you generally more powerful. If you initiate Bloody Valor and win, you do it again to gain an even larger advantage. If you can win multiple challenges in a row, you’ll charge up a match-ending super move called a Lost Fiber Secret Art.

And if you start a Bloody Valor and lose? You lose a little health. There’s little incentive not to try it as often as possible, especially if you’re outmatched, which breaks up the flow of the fight in an unwelcome way. I’m not a fan of injecting random, tide-turning game mechanics into fighting games. Putting stat boosts and a match-winning attack at the end of a minigame separates the prospect of winning from your skill in combat, and undermines the fight as a whole.

The best defense may be Kill la Kill The Game: IF’s incomprehensible camera. Rather than following your character, the camera floats freely around the arena allowing your fighter to move out of focus or even all the way to the background, making it difficult to keep track of what you’re doing. There were times, particularly while playing the story mode, when I lost track of my fighter because the camera didn’t move as anticipated. There’s no auto-center button or way to turn the seemingly randomized camera off. You have to learn to go with the flow, which… I’d rather not. Fighting games are intense enough when you can keep track of the action.

Once upon a time at Honnouji Academy…

Despite being a fighting game, and therefore inherently multiplayer-focused, Kill la Kill The Game: IF puts single-player first. Its primary mode is its story-driven campaigns, a pair of abridged retellings of the original anime series’ final two-thirds -with some key differences that bring the playable fighters to blows in ways the original story wouldn’t allow. You should know right from the get-go: It’s all fan service, and you’re expected to know the whole Kill la Kill saga before you start, which makes sense for a tie-in game but feels limiting.

Though the campaigns are short – each one takes about three hours to complete – both feel like they drag on for far too long. The campaigns follow Satsuki Kiryuin and Ryuko Matoi, respectively, and are only ten fights apiece, including a mix of standard one-on-one matches, three-way duels, and brawler-esque engagements with dozens of generic “cover” opponents. The multi-character fights and brawls add some variety, but all three types are used repeatedly so they don’t feel especially refreshing by the end. Plus, that wayward camera has a tendency to make some of the fights borderline unreadable.

Long cutscenes separate each match, full of expository dialogue that rushes you through the plot.

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The real issue with the campaigns are the wait times between each fight. Long cutscenes separate each match, full of expository dialogue that rushes you through the plot. Though the cutscenes look good and are well shot, it doesn’t feel like much is happening if you know major plot points already, and isn’t effective storytelling if it’s new to you. Instead, the changes sprinkled throughout feel like they exist to facilitate fights, rather than make the story interesting in a new way.

The poor balance of cutscene to combat also seems to be in service of the story. During the campaigns, you’re restricted to the protagonists’ perspectives, to the point where you wind up watching fights take place in cutscenes rather than playing them yourself. In some cases, you watch multiple scenes and progress through entire chapters of the story without fighting at all.

Even if it weren’t mostly recounting events fans already know – key moments from the anime like the Naturals Election and the Great Culture and Sports Festival take up multiple chapters – the perpetual wait to pick up your controller and start playing tested my patience to the point where I wasn’t particularly interested in watching.

While I didn’t love how long and redundant the cutscenes were, I will say there were very well made. Kill la Kill The Game: IF employs an elegant cel-shaded art style both in gameplay and cutscenes. It isn’t as inventive as the multi-faceted art style of the anime, but it’s clean, looks good, and really does feel like watching an anime in its rare, exciting moments. In cutscenes, the art gets an aesthetic boost from strong cinematography, which makes many sequences, especially action scenes, look striking.

But the story fails to give you additional insight into the characters or world of the anime series. Despite the fact that it was “supervised” by the Kill la Kill anime scriptwriter Kazuki Nakashima, giving it an air of canonical importance, IF’s story bends over backwards to make sure you know that what happens is of absolutely no consequence to the story you already know.

The story is clearly the centerpiece of Kill la Kill The Game: IF, so much so that you are required to play at least some of it before doing anything else – the training and local versus modes only unlock after completing the first chapter. Online play isn’t available until after chapter six. I, and I think most fighting game fans would agree, that this is a cardinal sin. There will always be people who just want to jump into fighting with friends or simply don’t care about the campaign. Forcing you to consume even a small part of it feels, quite frankly, out of touch.

A Note On Online Play

Kill la Kill The Game: IF offers sturdy but sparse online support. Players have access to casual unranked play, which relies primarily on lobbies and trading codes to sync up with specific players. There’s also a ranked mode that uses more traditional matchmaking where your wins and losses get recorded on global leaderboards. Separating the different types of matchmaking feels needlessly restrictive and may make it harder for players to find matches one way or the other. On the plus side, in the five matches I was able to play on PlayStation 4 ahead of launch I experienced no serious lag or connection issues.

You’ll also unlock new modes, various collectibles, and other characters as you progress, growing the paltry starting roster of six fighters to a still meager ten, including secondary versions of the two story protagonists. Two more characters are coming as free DLC later “this summer,” but even 12 characters feels light when the anime is jam-packed with weird, wonderful supporting characters who could add variety and personality to the lineup.

In addition to the story mode, Kill la Kill The Game: IF has a few extra single-player modes, including a training room, a single-player Survival Challenge mode where you continue fighting opponents until you die, and Covers Challenge, which is a wave-based brawler mode where you fight groups of generic enemies similar to some of the fights from the story campaigns. Though these modes present options to play solo using any fighter, including the more interesting characters not usable in the main campaigns, they lose their luster quickly with such a small roster.

Source : IGN

[recentanimenews]

Puzzle Combat Brawls Await in Puyo Puyo Champions!

  Puyo Puyo is perhaps one of the longest running puzzle franchises aside from Tetris, but it has never had an easy path to popularity and success outside of Japan. One of the first iterations of the game got renamed to Doctor Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, and releases of the series have been somewhat sporadic ever since, finding its home with maniac puzzle game fans who enjoyed a challenge and battling with their friends. 

In 2014, Puyo Puyo Tetris really helped explode the popularity of the series by bringing together the two storied puzzle franchises for the first time in a battle oriented mash-up, with players switching between their preferred style (or being forced to play both at certain intervals) and gained popularity for the quick, colorful puzzle combat that ensued. This year, Sega has released Puyo Puyo Champions, a purely Puyo Puyo based game that still leans heavily into the multiplayer puzzle battle aspects; but how does it stack up on its own, and should you get it? Well, that might be complicated, but first let’s talk a little about what Puyo Puyo Champions has to offer.

First, the Puyo Puyo Champions package is pretty barebones when you really break it down, giving you access to either Puyo Puyo 2 based rules, or the newer Puyo Puyo Fever version of the game. There’s no story mode like in previous Puyo Puyo titles (which, I’ll admit, kind of bummed me out), with each version of the game offering you either an endless battle rush to see how many CPU opponents you can beat, or letting you choose your opponents—with up to three players in Puyo Puyo 2, and four in Puyo Puyo Fever— for one-off battles. There are multiplayer modes for each as well that focus on couch play combat, and that’s about it for the offline modes of play. Online modes offer you the ability to play in ranked or unranked combat using either rule set, allowing you to pick your character of choice from the roster of returning Puyo Puyo staples, and finally there are some record keeping options, and the replay channel.

    The replay channel is an interesting feature, allowing you to keep replays of your best (or worst!) moments for further study, but it also lets you publish these clips for others to watch, and gives you the ability to watch matches that other players found to be exciting or marvelous to watch. As I was testing it, I personally got to watch a galaxy brain level combat between two Carbunkle players, and aside from my ears going numb at 2 Carbunkle’s screaming “Guu guu guu!” at one another, it was fun to be able to easily watch what other players had done, including the ability to fast forward, pause, and rewind the replay as I watched it. There are a few other options available, such as an 8 player offline tournament option, which makes this a perfect game to run Puyo Puyo tournaments with, and a training mode that can give you some annotations for improving your game.

    Aside from all of this, however, there isn’t really a lot here, and depending on how you feel about that, this may or may not be the game for you. There are some fun customization options for your avatar choices and display colors in Multiplayer, and you can also change the audio from English to Japanese, if you prefer the original voice acting. At the price point of $10, you’re getting quite a lot of bang for your buck, so it's an easy recommend from me if you’re already a huge combat puzzle game fan, especially a fan of Puyo Puyo itself, and you’re looking for new people to test your skills against. However, if you prefer slower, more methodical puzzle games, or don’t enjoy the puzzle battle genre like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Tetris 99, Puzzle League, and Puyo Puyo, I’ll say that there’s really nothing here that’s likely to change your mind in that regard. But if you’re fairly new to puzzle games, or puzzle combat games, is this the right fit for you? Well, I feel it can be, with a little help in learning the ways that Puyo Puyo operates. With all of that said, let’s start a little Puyo Puyo Primer courtesy of Professor Nicole!

If you’ve ever played Tetris in any form, you’ll find some similar elements in Puyo Puyo. Your abilities extend to dropping and rotating pieces, aligning them to your particular desires and shapes. The similarities end there, however, as Tetris focuses on shifting shapes, and Puyo Puyo instead works on building sets of 4 matching Puyos to clear them from the board. The real meat and depth of Puyo Puyo comes from the ability to arrange the Puyos in such a way that clearing them starts a chain reaction, creating bigger and bigger combos as the board clears out. Puyos can be arranged to clear in horizontal, vertical, L-shapes, and 2x2 squares; as long as 4 similarly colored Puyos touch, they’ll clear themselves from the board.

With clever planning, you can make these chains bigger, linking together larger networks of Puyos of a single color, but that strategy is perhaps not as good as it sounds! Puyo Puyo is a game that revolves around combos, not volume; starting a chain reaction of 3 or 4 combos is far better than linking together a big network of singularly colored Puyos before clearing them. This is another aspect that makes Puyo Puyo unique from other puzzle games, like Dr. Mario or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo; where in those clearing huge amounts of the same color can be similarly beneficial to large chain combos, Puyo Puyo really wants you to focus on clearing things in a combo-focused manner.

In that regard, Puyo Puyo is an easy to learn, but difficult to master game. Since your opponent (either AI or human) are also playing at the same time as you, they may occasionally send garbage to your side of the field, messing up your combos… Or, maybe they’ll accidentally help you! See, since garbage Puyos have no color and take up space, they can sometimes offer interesting ways to build your board in order to clear a combo you didn’t have access to before. One of the great things about Puyo Puyo is that you can always potentially come back from defeat if you play smart and plan your moves, and huge comebacks are always exciting and possible!

One of the difficult things to manage in a puzzle battle game is that ability to recover from enemy attacks; one of my older frustrations with games like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo or Tetris 99 is that there are just situations in which, except for extreme, exacting play, you’re just done. In Puyo Puyo, while enemy attacks can be extreme, the game allows for some interesting recovery to take place if you’re savvy. In Puyo Puyo Fever mode, for example, matching the tempo of your enemy’s attacks can actually help you out, even if you’re only clearing small patches of Puyos at a time. Matching and countering the rythm of your opponent builds the Fever gauge, unique to that mode, which when filled sends you to a series of pre-made combo boards; clear those, and you’ll score a huge attack advantage against your opponent once Fever Mode ends!

The differences between the two modes boil down to a few distinct things: Fever mode, and various Puyo drop shapes. Other than that, the games have exactly the same rules, so it really just comes down to whether you like the “classic” appeal of Puyo Puyo 2, or the newer, tempo-based gameplay of Puyo Puyo Fever. Either way you’ll have a great time with it! That said, the game itself doesn’t have much in the way of a tutorial or training mode, but once you play a few matches against the AI, you’ll likely pick up the game quite quickly, and that will allow you to get into the real meat of this game: multiplayer battles.

Battle is easy; if you’re doing offline, just head into the Multiplayer menu. If you’re instead ready for some online play, then you can do that just as easily. I’m happy to say that, in my testing of the Switch version, I was able to pretty easily find a match and play against opponents with no connection issues or downtime while playing, meaning you can enjoy some pretty great Puyo battles on strong WiFi connections, not even considering wired connections on other systems like PS4 or PC. The nice part about online Puyo Puyo Champions is that you can select opponents based on certain criteria, such as level of skill, types of game you want to play, and other selections. I didn’t mess with these too much, but I appreciated their availability, and I think it makes the game quite accessible to players of all skill levels.  

If you’re interested in one of the premiere battle puzzle games, then I can’t recommend getting Puyo Puyo Champions enough. Fans of Puyo Puyo Tetris will find a lot to love here, although the very unique mix-up is gone, and new players or those curious about what Puyo Puyo is all about will really find a lot of bang for their buck in the multiplayer and endless battle modes against AI opponents, who really hold nothing back! If you’ve ever considered dipping your toe into this kind of game, I think you’ll find a lot to love here, and with some playtime under your belt, you’ll soon learn why Puyo Puyo has such a diehard fan base after all these years. Good luck arranging all those Puyos, and go for the best combos! It’s great to see the Puyo Puyo community growing after the success of Puyo Puyo Tetris, so hop on board and find out what all the fuss is about! You won’t regret it.

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Great puzzle battle gameplay that will keep you coming back.

+ Easy to learn, difficult to master gameplay in two very distinct Puyo Puyo modes.

+/- Not a lot of things to do other than play Puyo Puyo, but at the price point it’s a great deal if puzzle battling interests you.

-  Turn your volume down on double Carbuncle fights. Please trust me on this one.

  Are you a Puyo Puyo fan, or are you a newcomer looking to test it out? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments!

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Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com