Two headed-creatures are better than one when you've got tag teams!Lots of average nerds have ideas for games, but the fighting fans at Reverge Labs took those crucial next steps: assembling a team of like-minded folks and obtaining funding and publishing deals so they could make their dream game. The result is truly a labor of love.
The first thing you’ll notice about Skullgirls is its distinct visual style. The (currently) all-female cast are delightfully subversive in their designs, from self-dismembering catgirl Ms. Fortune to mutated cartoon creation Peacock to eldritch-horror-disguised-as-nun Double. Every element in the game has been drawn and animated by hand in HD — a Herculean task, given how smooth the character animation is. In all regards, the game looks terrific.
Fortunately, the gameplay is just as impressive as the visuals. Skullgirls’ engine takes inspiration from other popular fighting games but assembles the pieces in a distinct way. Players can choose to run as a super-powerful single character, a tag-team, or a three-character ensemble, with appropriate life/damage adjustments for each. Playing as teams allows assists and the ability to tag out and regain life, but also makes each character significantly weaker. Though the robust combo system is forgiving with inputs (meaning no maddeningly short timing of links à la Street Fighter IV), it’s also specifically designed to prevent exploits. Skullgirls is a more accessible game to newcomers than most current fighters, but it doesn’t patronize them: someone who puts in the effort to improve will always come out on top. Battling other players online is great, too — Skullgirls has licensed the much-beloved GGPO netcode, which helps eliminate the appearance of lag and allows players to make manual adjustments for less-than-optimal connections.
Nurse ninja Valentine keeps plenty of spare scalpels for super moves.As fantastic as Skullgirls looks and plays, its content can’t quite compare to that of other recent fighting games. The developers spent months animating and fine-tuning each character’s skills, but the tradeoff is a tiny default roster of only eight fighters. More are promised via upcoming DLC, but for now, players can expect to see a lot of repeated faces in versus fights. Story Mode also falls a bit flat: each character has a unique story, but it consists of just a few still cinematics and text-only dialogue exchanges scattered between one-on-one bouts.
Still, when you consider what you do get for your $15 — a beautiful, darkly humorous game with one of the most well-made, finely tested fighting engines around, plus great online play — fighting-game aficionados have plenty of reasons to hang out with these dysfunctional damsels.
Story Mode features lavishly drawn intros and endings for each character.PUBLISHER: Autumn Games/Konami • DEVELOPER: Reverge Labs • ESRB: Teen • MULTIPLAYER: 2 players locally or on Xbox Live • ACHIEVEMENTS: Ridonkulous • COST: 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15)
+ Unique character designs and stories; phenomenal HD hand-drawn animation and music.
+ A robust fighting engine that’s inviting to new players but has tournament-level depth.
– At only eight characters, the default roster seems very limited.
? Did Peacock just puff cigar smoke out of her eye…? Creepy!
