Ok, so recently I’ve been playing a whole load of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger. I’ve always loved Street Fighter, but to be honest recently I’ve been questioning if Blazblue is better than Capcom’s classic. So with that in mind here are a few things other games could learn from this modern masterpiece.

Fighters are better in 2d

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always felt that fighters were better in 2D. Tekken and Virtual Fighter always worked, but never felt as smooth as something like Guilty Gear or Street Fighter. Look at what did happen when Street Fighter went 3D with the EX-Plus series, everything kind of went mental and didn’t really work, the game felt kind of clunky and movement felt limited. successful 3D fighters work because they leave out one important thing 2D fighters have: projectiles. Even the most recent Street Fighter realised this and used 3D graphics on a 2D playing field, the new Mortal Kombat seems to be doing the same, getting rid of the problem of dodging and projectiles. Blazblue sticks to this theory keeping everything strictly in 2D and while I realise this rant may have involved every other fighting game under the sun, it is important that other fighters keep to this rule. Unless someone revolutionizes fighting games, if you have projectiles, stick to 2D.

Handrawn sprites/animation

Nowadays everything has a polygon count, but what happened to good old hand drawn animations? The reason we hardly ever see this anymore is that drawing all characters and animations is painfully long and expensive. Thankfully Arc Systems didn’t care and decided it was the only way to make Blazblue. Don’t get me wrong, games like Street Fighter IV look gorgeous, but there’s something of a nostalgic value when playing games like Blazblue. If anything the game left me yearning for more games to be made in the same way. Just look at the images/footage on this page (in HD if you can) and tell me it doesn’t look beautiful. Blazblue looks like an interactive anime game, especially in the Astral Heats…

Barriers

This is one of my favourite things about Blazblue. While fighting you have two types of blocking, the standard ‘hold back, high or low’ will take your standard chip damage. Block while holding either of the back triggers though and you’ll summon a lil’ blue/green barrier which stops you losing any health and pushes opponents back slightly. This may sound like something small, but it gives you a chance to push back enemies and quickly counter combos. It also means fights are ended far less by low health/blocking scenarios for amazing comebacks. On top of this a system called barrier burst has been implemented. If you’re getting destroyed in the corner or just feel like pushing an enemy back press the back triggers simultaneously to burst your barrier, this will stop any enemy combos and give you time to get your bearings together. The only downside to this is you lose your barrier and take more damage now, even without blocking. This may seem like a small addition, but it creates a much more tactical game when put into use.

Astral Heats

Bear with me here, because you may think I am a madman. Astral Heats are essentially Blazblue’s ultimate finishers, but they can only be performed during the final round of a fight. For example in a fight that needs two rounds for a win, astrals could only take place in the fourth round. Also the opponent needs to have less than 60% health, meaning that these moves will finish opponents off if connected properly. Now you may be thinking: Why the hell have finishers that can only be used so rarely? Well that’s exactly my point, these moves are really special, with whole stages transforming for them, so they should rarely be seen. There are plenty of super combos (known as distortion drives), but for when you really want to boast and annihilate your opponent, pull off an Astral Heat for something really special. Check out the video below if you don’t believe me.

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