While fans of the historically 2D fighting series may have some adjusting to do, the latest arcade game will be making its way to PlayStation consoles on December 16th.
The Guilty Gear series is one of those fighting game franchises that every hardcore fan of the genre knows, but typically flies under the radar of casual players. The series is known for its superb 2D artwork and is generally considered to be one of the smoothest playing fighters around, but much like the Fatal Fury or Darkstalkers series never picked up nearly as much popularity in the west as it received in its home of Japan.
With Guilty Gear Xrd, ARC SYSTEM WORKS is changing up the formula by utilizing cell shading and 3D models in place of the series’ typical 2D artwork. That’s right, those visuals above aren’t 2D hand-drawn sprites and backgrounds: everything is rendered in 3D using the Unreal Engine. This opens up a lot of possibilities for the designers that the series has not had access to in the past, such as more cinematic camera angles for special or finishing moves.
Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- has been available in arcades (yes, those still exist,) since early February of this year, but come December it will finally be seeing home ports brought to both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. Japanese players will receive these on December 4th 2014, but for western audiences the wait is a little longer, with the game’s release being December 16th 2014.
Like many games nowadays, Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- will come in both vanilla and special editions, with the special edition including a limited-edition case, art book, soundtrack, and even a keychain. As an additional bonus for early adopters, the DLC character Elphelt will be available for free on the PlayStation network as well for a limited time: picking the character up after that time expires will run purchasers $7.99, so grab it while you can.