Hold your applause, the show’s not over
Skullgirls is one of my favorite fighting games ever. With an innovative combat engine spearheaded by top tier BlazBlue expert Mike Z, animation direction by Mariel Cartwright, and world and character design by Alex Ahad, the game has rightfully found a large and passionate audience since it was first released a few years ago. In a lot of ways, Skullgirls, Divekick, Yatagarasu, and a few others recent releases are emblematic of distinctly modern approach to fighting game development, as they all have tournament level players of other fighting games on their dev teams.
The kids who grew up playing, and eventually mastering, the fighting games of the 90’s and 00’s are now old enough to make games themselves. That knowledge and passion for the genre can be a double-edged sword. Not every casual player will get all the subtle (or not so subtle) reference in these games. They also may not be able to relate to the intense passion that the devs clearly feel for the under-the-hood, nuts and bolts that make the genre tick.
For those that do, Skullgirls 2nd Encore is as good as fighting games get.
Skullgirls 2nd Encore (PS4 [reviewed], PS Vita)
Developers: Lab Zero Games
Publisher: Autum Games
Released: July 7, 2015
So now that we’ve established that Skullgirls is great, we can get to the question you’re all probably dying for answers about — what the heck is a 2nd Encore? Well in this case, it’s a boost in visual fidelity, tons of newly recorded voice acting, an 882 page virtual art book (with special pin ups by the likes of Chamba, Robaato, and OMOCAT), a few new single player modes, and five and a half new characters that you may have already download for the prior version of the game. If you haven’t been keeping up with the Skullgirls DLC as its been released, then 2nd Encore is undoubtedly a worthy purchase for you. If you have been picking them up as they’ve been periodically put on the market since last year, then the price tag here may not be worth your while. It all depends on how much you care about owning the most complete, clean looking/sounding version of the game,
Visually, Skullgirls 2nd Encore looks heaps better on the PS4 than Skullgirls or Skullgirls Encore did on the PS3. The black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are gone, allowing characters to stretch to their proper proportions, and everything looks brighter and sharper. As for sound, every cutscene now has full voice acting, which does a lot to make the game’s world feel more alive. As Skullgirls fans already know, the game has a deep, fairly complicated story, filled with around 100 characters big and small. That said, fighting games aren’t exactly well known for their vocal performances, but gratefully, the acting here is all top notch, thanks in large part to the direction of Christina Vee.
As for new modes, there’s stuff for both newcomers and veterans alike. The new Survival and Challenge modes are great for old pros who are looking for new ways to tackle the CPU, and the new Trials mode is a great way to learn new combos or brush up on old ones. There’s also a new Quick Match CPU mode that lets you do take on the computer without having to sit through any of the pre-fight delays you might find in Arcade or Story mode.
That’s all well and good, but the real stars of the show here are the new characters. The only true newcomer here is Robo-Fortune. She’s a default part of the 2nd Encore package, but has also been released as a free download for those who already own Skullgirls Encore, so she’s not exactly exclusive. That doesn’t diminish how exciting she is to play though. Robo-Fortune is a great example of what I was saying about how the developers of Skullgirls seem to take the strangeness inherent in fighting games for granted, and as a result, have built upon that strangeness in ways that’s filled with next-level weirdness.
Robo-Fortune was original planned to be a remixed version of Ms. Fortune, one of the original members of the Skullgirls roster and the game’s resident “cat girl with a detachable head that can attack independently from its body.” If that wasn’t thought provoking enough for you, Robo-Fortune takes that concept and adds a few levels of surreal to it. She’s a robot copy of a cat girl with a detachable head, and she can actually fire her head into the air like a rocket, only to grow a new one in its place.
These stack-able, detached robot heads are a major part of her arsenal, along with her Cable-like beam attacks. She’s also extremely chatty, which will likely turn off some players, while others are sure to fall in love with her immediately. Her two big catch phrases are “Beep Boop Meow” and “What am I fighting for!?!” These are questions I ask myself every day, which makes it all the more gratifying to see them finally expressed on the big screen by a robot cat woman thing.
The other four and a half other DLC characters (Beowulf, Big Band, Eliza, Squigly, and
Filia’s semi-clone Fukua) are equally fantastic, so if you missed out on them before, you’d do best to grab them now. It’s also worth mentioning that the game is a Cross-Buy purchase, with a PS Vita port coming later this year.
It all shapes up to the definitive, and maybe final version of one of the most beautiful, detailed, and passionately developed fighting games in recent memory.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
