PS3 Review – BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is the latest 2D fighter to hit consoles. The game was created by the acclaimed developers of the Guilty Gear series, Arc System Works. BlazBlue is officially known as a spiritual successor to the Guilty Gear series. While Arksys did not stray too far away from the formula, they did add enough to the game to differentiate it from their previous series. Currently the game has only been released in Limited Edition form, which includes a 2-disc soundtrack, a strategy and tip guide in video form on a Blu-Ray disc, and a box to hold all the goodies. A regular edition will be released at a later time.
The game opens up with a beautiful anime cutscene, and while the opening music is in Japanese it is still very upbeat. While the opening scene of the game is a full motion cutscene, sadly 90% of the remaining cutscenes are still images with voice-overs and special effects. The art work in this game is absolutely immaculate and all artwork has been rendered at a native 768p resolution. The game will support 720p and 1080i for HD displays. There are 12 playable characters in the game. Each character has been carefully designed and hand-drawn to perfection. It is refreshing to see a game with so much color compared to the gray and brown games of this generation.
The Story Mode for BlazBlue is done quite well for a fighting game. The back-story is very interesting so I will leave an excerpt for you to read. –In December A.D. 2199, several years after the Ikaruga Civil War, a branch of the Library was utterly destroyed by an SS-class traitor named “Ragna the Bloodedge” also known as “Grim Reaper”, in an attempt to destroy the entire Library. The Novus Orbis Librarium Armagus, hoping to stop him, immediately put the largest bounty ever for anyone who could capture him. Interestingly, Ragna possessed a powerful form of Armagus known as the “Azure Grimoire”, also known as the BlazBlue. This led to the Library, as well as the Ikaruga Union and other fighters, to be after not just his bounty, but also his grimoire.– Although this is much easier to follow in video format, it gives way to where the name of the game originated.
Each character has a unique story for you to follow, and every one of them are done well. Most of the stories have a decision for you to make which will affect the way the story progresses. If at any point the story becomes too tough for you to handle and you needed a few tips, there is a tips section in the Story Mode. In the tips section you will find short hand-drawn sketch scenes that are meant to help you and give some comical relief. These short sketch scenes are displayed in episodic format with the title of “Teach Me, Boobie Lady”. All 12 characters in the game are balanced extremely well. No one character is stronger than another, which really forces you to learn all the combos and special attacks. BlazBlue has to be one of the most accessible fighters as well. The controls are not complicated at all, the combos are not too hard to pull off, and moving the right stick in any certain direction allows you to easily pull off a characters special attacks. I believe that anyone will be able to jump into this game and learn most of the controls within minutes. Hopefully the accessibility will be able to bring this game out of the niche grouping and into the popular fighting game realm with the likes of Street Fighter, Tekken, and Soul Calibur.
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20 Responses to “PS3 Review – BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger”
Great review Matt!
Thats a correct score 5/5…
the game is flawless and everyone i asked had no complaints. Online fights from Japan seam to have no lag which was odd. i also like the fact the characters are always doing something, standing still or in movement like walking, jumping or block stance. I also like the fact you are capable of leveling up fighting your friends.. in my opinion, it forces you to fight and not joke around because points are involved. The Japanese voices have good voice actors, the only time i heard the English voice overs was in a player match and they seam good. Also the animated introductions right before the match when your about to fight a rival and the linking of the stories was very well made. Story mode offered various ways to see the outcome of the story being graded by % seen.
I personally don’t need this because of played guilty gear but the training DVD they gave out i thought was a good way to introduce new players to there game and inform experience players on new techniques. Most game companies should include there own basic DVD tutorial along with there game so everyone has a chance to adapt and understand the game.
The only think i felt was odd is that they added NO surround sound to PS3 version but the 360 had it. it doesn’t ruin the experience but it would have been cool to have surround effects for ambient noise, there are various ways to implement surround sound in 2D games by using your 3 front speakers as the main channels and your back speakers do the effects.
Guilty Gear had its own following so BlazBlue should have its own..Nice review Matt.
Great review.
this is a great review. this game looks wild to me.
Game looks fantastic, can’t wait to play…problem is can’t find it anywhere. Any clue when Amazon will get a restock? I mean as much as I wanna play, I don’t wanna spend $80+ to do it.
@ hissygoose
wait for them to restock.. it tells you under the game in Amazon. Unfortunately if you waited to long your screwed. I put my order in 1 day before it was released and didn’t get mine till the 7th. Most places are selling them at 80$
Good review Matt, you’ve done it justice
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I am more than obsessed with this game….AMAZING!
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Need to get this soon
@sdg657
you should its awesome!
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This game is a beast, just wanna know when you guys are gonna get the trophies up.
so happy I finally got this, Its AWESOME!
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