Gamer--freakz

Gamespot score:8.0(Great)

my score:8.9


(+)Pros:-All characters are still ridiculously fun to play and are incredibly different from each other,-competitive online play,-new beginner mode lets newcomers pitch in for easier learning,- beautiful visuals and sprites,- has very in-depth story for a fighting game,-challenge mode helps players find thier footing in learning combos

(-)Cons:-Character count is still low (even if you count DLC characters),-score attack can be frustratingly difficult


Gameplay time:100 hours+(very long lasting)







2010 is coming to a close, and to finish off the year here's a great game to end it. 2010 saw a pathetic year for fighting games, most if not all the gaming websites didnt even HAVE any fighting game awards for thier genre awards for game of the year. The only 2 quality fighting game titles this year were super street fighter 4 and blazblue:Continuum shift. Naruto ultimate ninja storm 2 doesnt even COMPARE to these 2. Well, blazblue is obviously the next street fighter, sequels are popping up one after another, with calamity trigger being released less than a year before continuum shift, and with continuum shift 2 already out....its really quite a hassle for the Aksys people. Plus, word is that a new blazblue, crisis revered is already coming out. Impressive.



Blazblue:continuum shift acts as a sequel and its evens take place after that of calamity trigger. Once again though each character has his/her own individual story routes the game mainly focuses on the main character, Ragna the bloodedge. Still an "S" rank villian at large in kagutsuchi, life isnt easy for Ragna, he gets into more trouble here and there, but this time the game has a single antagonist that everyone, including ragna, must face. And that is none other than Hazama, aka Terumi, one of the 6 heroes. Wanting to smoulder the cauldron to create the ultimate god slayer sword, he is basically the big bad guy who everyone has to team up and fight later on. Despite the main story, the individual character's stories are great and entertaining, so its a win-win situation.


As with calamity trigger, continuum shift's character cast is extremely varied, and it doesnt fail to keep players wanting more. Though the choices were rather limited before, the increase in characters in continuum sift really isnt that much. We get 3 new in-disc characters and 3 new DLC characters(one of which hasn't been released yet). Once again, the new characters have great design and interesting playstyles, as do the rest of the cast. While the game's characters did receive nerfs thier play style each remains mostly unchanged, same goes to the game's mechanics, but there are a few small tweaks here and there,still nothing a little practice cant solve.

Lets first talk about gameplay modes. Since BB is a game with complicated mechanics afterall, the developers decided to throw in tutorial and challenge mode, which if you ask me, is a fantastic ideas. Tutorial(though boring), covers all BB basics and in no time you can pick up and play quite well. Challenge mode gives players a set command input of combos and lets them learn it. This is a good way for players who dont especially know much about the game learn abit more complicated combos. Then theres the classic arcade and practice mode.... along with story mode,score attack and legion. Story mode is obvious, score attacks puts players against all the game's characters in extreme difficulty, while legion is just a small minigame of conquest of fighting groups of ai characters. Oh and lets not forget versus and online, for competitive gameplay. Overall, all gameplay modes focus on its combat, which revolves around the interesting haracters. The old characters play the same, while new ones provide just as interesting playstyles. Hazama focusing on zipping in and out of opponent's range with his ouroborous, dealing devastating combos, tsubaki focuses on charge attacks to dish out painful charged attacks, Mu-12 plays a more mind-game based style, placing turrets here and there. With the new characters blazblue becomes more uniique and competitive than ever.

Now the game is amazing and all, but you have to agree, even with the 3 new characters and DLC characters, the total count for characters is only 18, WHICH IS STILL PATHETIC. The playstyles for the characters are very fun and varied, but seriously, until it exceeds at least 20 the character count sure is....lacking. Also, the score attack is ridiculously hard, hard enough to induce stress problems. Online is competitive and challlenging enough, score attacks takes it further. While starting characters like bang and taokaka arent TOO bad, later fights such as unlimited ragna (a totally broken fella),unlimited hakumen( a total bitch), and the incredibly broken ass unlimited hazama( oh the rage) , have you die countless times and you have to fight through the whole score attack again......its that annoying.

Blazblue:continuum shift is awesome, and its about to get even more awesome, since platina has yet to come. I havent played valkenhyne, but makoto is fun, and i can tell that both the old butler and platina will be fun too. Though I am pissed that they nerfed my rachel to hell( shes pathetic in this game), the game is still incredibly fun to play nonetheless.

Happy gaming!

Time for more retarded boss fights, with today's contestant really being one of THE biggest assholes of all time. Blazblue:Continuum shift is a great game (review coming soon), but it has one of the most overpowered guys in all of fighting game history. Meet hazama, main antagonist of blazblue:Continuum shift, also the last boss in the arcade mode for most characters and one of the final battles for score attack mode. He also makes an appearance for a final battle in most characters' story ending.

With the execption of story mode's unlimited hazama( come on, its story mode, its supposed to be easy), the arcade mode and score attack mode's unlimited hazama are total dicks, especially the score attack one. As much as I love hazama as a character( both personality and gameplay wise), he is really too damn overpowered as an unlimited character.

Heres the catch, unlimited hazama...is just a jerk. The game makes it so that everytime you fight him, he's on an advantage, especially in score attack, where you can't use unlimited characters. If you fight him with normal characters and you are not of extreme gameplay level, unlimited hazama will probably screw you a few times over before you can even win. Call me whatever you want, but I find him harder than unlimited ragna( which already, is as powerful as hell with cheap ass high damage).

Boss health

Old hero
HP:4410
Skills:Random attack, Counter attack, Sword wave*, Explosion

Difficulty:1/5
Times died on 1st playthrough:1

After the long journey of killing all the first bosses of the respective worlds, I patted myself on the back and decided which 2nd boss to tackle. Shrine of storms was a great place to farm souls, with all the pesky reapers around, so I just played this stage over and over( and dieing alot of course), till I met the old hero. I must say I'm not particularly amused at this guy, he doesn't even look at all intimidating. Ah well, what can I say since he's one of the easiest bosses in the game. Old hero is the boss for 4-2, adjudicator archstone.

Thats quite the HP jump, but if you should die even once against the old hero, you are either extremely unprepared, or just plain careless. With the right items (thief's ring), old hero is one of the simplest bosses in the game. The key here is to take the battle slow, rushing him will only result in instant death.

gamespot score:7.5(good)

my score:7.9


(+)Pros:-Roster size is quite big,- great control shceme despite being on the PSP,- visuals aren't half bad,- character customization is a ton of fun,- roster is very well balanced with the exepction of one character.

(-)Cons:-Gaunlet mode is absolutely retarded,-lack of single player content,-Kratos is stupidly overpowered


gameplay time:10-20 hours(Below average)






Played soul calibur? You should have, soul calibur has always been one of namco's most successful titles. The soul calibur franchise has seen no shortage of titles in its series, broken destiny is indeed the 5th soul calibur game, though its just a remake of 4 for the PSP. And like most soul caliburs which included guest characters, broken destiny also introduces Kratos, the infamous god of war, as a playable character. This is enough to draw crowds to play this great game, but as many would have guessed, broken destiny on the PSP is a mite lower in terms of standard compared to all the previous soul caliburs to date.




Broken destiny's story is the same as soul calibur 4, or in fact, same as almost every other soul calibur. It features the battle over the soul edge, and the eternal conflict between the wielder of the soul calibur siegfried, and the wieler of the soul edge, nightmare. Except that this time there is a third party wielding both soul edge and the soul calibur, going by the name of algol. Its incredibly unfortunate that the game doesn't really focus on its epic story background, thanks to the ridiculous gaunlet mode, which does incredibly poor story telling, and rather focuses on other cmedic and stupid stuff. More on that later.

Namco is amazing in roster size when it comes to thier fighters. Tekken 6 had an amazing 40 character roster size. Soul calibur isn't too far behind, with a headcount of 28 characters plus 16 of your own self created characters, the roster can go to as large as 44 characters. Not too shabby indeed. Plus with the insane character creation options, you can go nuts and have a ton of fun when creating your characters. Your female character can dress as sexy as you wish for her to be, and your male character can be made as cool or as knightly as you make him to be. Even better, you can select thier fight styles from the initial available 26 (minus kratos and algol), and choose thier, voice, speech, hair and many more. Its really impressive to see female zassamalel,siegfried,mitsurugi and many more. Though its kinda funny to see a male using a female character's fighting style, since it absolutely doesn't fit. Still, as you unlock better looking armor and equipment as you fight more, your options keep increasing, the character customization just keeps giving. Though as for the initial characters, it wouldnt hurt to save some characters as unlockables, as a self opinion I don't like to have every character in the game unlocked from the get go.

The battle system in broken destiny works as with every other soul calibur game, applying its effective yet enjoyable control scheme to the PSP. Like with all of its previous games, holding back doens really let you block, you have to press X or your specifically set block button to do so. This may prove to be rather uncomfortable at the beginning, but as you play you get used to it and will see that soul calibur is not your average fighting game. Unlike games like street fighter, each of the 28 characters each have distinctly different fight styles and varrying command lists, so playing and experimenting with each and every character is still fun since they are all different. Nightmare and siegfried hit hard and have long range, rapheal and amy do quick but weak strikes, ivy has long range but weak damage, playing with different characters and mastering them will provide you with satisfaction as you finally fight through god knows how many levels in the endless trial.

Now soul calibur looks like it has many things going on in its story, but broken destiny does a bad bad way telling the story. Gaunlet mode is just ridiculous, it spends stupidly long paragraphs of text telling the ridiculous tale of random characters without focusing on any point. Plus its such a pain to actually move on in the gaunlet mode anyway, since the proceeding fights and tasks are such a bore and pain. Not counting gaunlet mode, theres actually not much to do in broken destiny. Sure the trials are good fun, especially endless trial, but quick battle doesnt really satisfy, and training should always be in a fighting game. Other than that theres no proper arcade mode, or perhaps a proper story mode as well (gaunlet mode is.....wtf). Lastly, I know kratos is a guest character and all, but did they have to make him so godamn overpowered? I mean, range,power,mobility,attack variety....he has it all. Everyone using him can pawn the crap out of the AI, its not really fun, and when the AI uses him, he will most likley murder you.

For a first on the PSP, soul calibur is looking good, with combat being as slick as ever and having solid character customization, its a good attempt toward the PSP. Now if only they were to make a soul calibur 5......

Happy gaming.