The Friday Review: Skullgirls (XBLA, PSN)

Skullgirls
review by Cyndi

The characters are what first drew me to this 2D fighting game. I was tired of the typical sword and staff-wielders that come from most fighting games, and this one came with a zombie cat that used her head to fight, and another girl who used her parasitic hair to attack. I was immediately intrigued.

The artwork of this game is beautiful. The characters are incredibly fun to play with, and you have never seen these kinds of fighting characters before. The premise of this game is to try and obtain a magic skull that is supposed to grant wishes. Players fight through a variety of characters in order to reach their goal including girls wielding parasols, or, my favorite, a girl who attacks with her hair. Every character in this game is a scantily clad female, so if you're looking for a nice clean game with little blood and minor skin showage, this is not that game.

My only disappointment with this game is the balance. I started on the lowest difficulty and jumped immediately into a story mode. Unfortunately this was quite a mistake as the "Easy" mode on this game is the "Hell" mode on any other fighting game. I'm not the most intense gamer out there, but I consider myself a pretty decent video game player. I was stuck on the first battle for hours on "Easy" mode.

Eventually I just had to give up and go spend some quality time in the tutorial room, which, unfortunately, wasn't really very helpful and was in no way interesting. Maybe it's just me, but I don't find a lot of joy in getting check-marks on a never-ending list of menial tasks such as jumping or blocking over and over and over again. Despite how dull the tutorials, it was still necessary to spend a lot of time in here just to get through one single fight in story mode. And that's just the first battle; it gets progressively harder as the story continues.

So, if you are interested in purchasing this game be prepared to put in many, many hours at the tutorial room, and also be prepared to get really frustrated in "Easy" mode.

Pros:

• The characters are incredibly unique and fun to play with. The attacks are in no way typical and it’s fun to see what each character can do.
• The artwork. The artwork of this game is simple, yet stunning with a playful comic feel about it.

Cons:

• The difficulty level. The difficulty level seriously needed to be dropped a notch. If you are a hard-core fight-style gamer, don’t be shocked if you get your butt kicked in easy mode. If you are a newcomer to the fighting genre, you may want to start with a different game.