Guilty Gear Location Test: Nagoya

Until the other day, I hadn't been to Kanayama, properly that is, in a number of years. It was quite the nostalgia trip since after a quick stop with a snakey gaijin handler at a Freebell mansion for green gaijin and then a very spartan move in to my own tissue box sized apartment in Iwakura it was one of the first places I visited when I arrived in late March, 2002.

It was with great anticipation that I visited that hub of transport, art and debauchery for  the second round of location tests for Arc System Works' Guilty Gear Xrd (to be released  April 2014). The first thing I noticed on leaving Kanayama station was that although some  hardcore gentrification had occurred around the creation of the Asunal shopping precinct  (imagine one of those airport town shopping/outlet malls transplanted into the middle of an  actual metropolis), the grit, squalor and sleaze, though somewhat anemic compared to its  glory days, remained.

As I exited the station I was greeted with cold clouds, a very worn out homeless man and a  chilling October morning breeze. Further up the road I noticed the queue was already forming.  Sure, I made a few wrong turns in the station (it has been several years and many renovations) but I was still scheduled to arrive at 9:45. Within moments of taking my place  in the line the number of people had doubled. Inside Kanayama Sega, lights, machines, recorded voices  kicked into life and the snaking stream of previously murmuring otaku started to shuffle.



The doors opened at exactly two minutes after ten which suggests one of two things: either the tencho's watch is running late or he just wanted to create a sense of building tension in  a distinctly understated yet polite Japanese fashion.

We poured inside in a mostly orderly fashion, game nerds such as myself split off and headed  up to the 4th floor where the unveiling was to take place. The rest of the crowd (public  holiday, lots of middle and high school kids) flooded into the rhythm games, purikura and UFO catcher prize machines.

Let me take you aside for a moment. Location tests in themselves are special events. They are  a demonstration of a work in progress, usually by top or close-to-top-tier companies. They are exclusive previews of up and coming products a means to a marketing and bug-testing end.  What made this event particularly special to me was that it was being held in Nagoya. These  events usually pass over my humble city, after all, though not small and certainly a  prosperous, rather large city, Nagoya has never had the executive prestige of Tokyo nor the  rough and ready eccentricity of Osaka. Nagoya is a town built on textiles and automobiles,  that's right this is the playground of Toyota.

Nevertheless, a loke-test in my town. Better believe I'd be there (family commitments, work  notwithstanding).

As we snaked up the staircase we soon (this "we" is the crowd I was in) arrived at... well  almost the entrance to where the test was happening. Three or four dudes deep, by stretching  and straining (as in hurting) my neck it was possible to get a glimpse of the screen. Little  by little, I got closer and then was instructed (along with the thirty or so people behind  me) by the tencho to line up "over there". Sigh, right next to an explosively loud  demo/commercial for online Virtua Fighter customisation...

The line moved far more quickly than I thought it would. It seemed that protocol had been  decided. You lose, you go to the end of the line. Winner stays on, head-to-head action only. Talk about doki doki. Let's be honest here. Street Fighter has always been my main game. And I suck at it. The next closest title I am almost proficient at is Persona 4 Arena. Guilty  Gear itself? It's just embarrassing. Nevertheless, I managed to learn a lot during my one  win, one loss and long waiting period.

Let's get it right from the start, in this day of HD remakes (from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure  to Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter III Third Strike), imperfection and "that'll do"  seem to be the overriding sentiments. So-called HD remixes can only do so much with existing  code. Sprites and frames of animation can be re-drawn, semi-funcitonal netcode bolted on and  menus redesigned but a proper fully functioning contemporary remake of an existing FG has yet  to be fully realised. One look at Xrd and you will feel the same as I did: "Wow, someone  finally did this right!"

At first glimpse this is clearly the new standard for anime/air dash fighters. It combines  the (controversial to some players) prestige system of Guilty Gear with (not quite) the  latest technology to produce a highly refined, immersive fighting game experience.



While these days anime/air dash (and similarly inspired) fighters are perhaps exceedingly  common (from Aquapazza to Chaos Code, melty blood etc), none of them is as fully realised as  Xrd.

The newest iteration of Guilty Gear will be a standard to which all others will have to equal  or better as next generation technological standards developed for the new age. Using the Unreal 3D environment engine as its core, it features richly detailed anime style mapping in  a style consistent with the series. The first thing you notice, whether playing or watching  is the just how crisply, fluidly and prettily it runs.

What seals the deal though is actually playing the game. You are in control of protagonists  in a game in which the barrier between anime as a genre of television and its execution  within a playable environment has been removed. Character introduction, winning animations,  special moves and over the top actions extend out of the action on screen and explode into  Japanese anime fluidity, then return seamlessly to the action. The integration between media elements is superb. But this is not the whole story.

While P4U and Blazblue (especially the most recent version of the latter, Chronophantasma)  have moved toward increased visual fluidity as it relates to control inputs, Xrd is clearly  the result they have been aiming for over the last decade or more. When looking back at some  of the earlier 60 fps games such as Third Strike or the older versions it is easy to see  moments of jerkiness when the animated frames and system engine collide, causing cancellation  in visual information in order to accurately execute player inputs. In the past aesthetics  have almost always lost to pragmatics.

In order to have a certain move fully "active" by a certain time and the frames of animation  required to accurately represent this action to the player, concessions must be made. This  results in jerkiness and choppiness. While merely visual it does have the effect of  distancing the player from the visual heart of the game.

But now, with the GG franchise license back in their hands and considerably more processing  power under their belts, ArcSys are working hard on matching, balancing visual information  with play information in ways previously impossible. The results are stunning.

Cannot wait for the next loke test in my backyard.

Zeitgeistin'

It has been too long. It is entirely logical to presume that the three and a half of you out there reading this blog have long since moved on. I have not forgotten you but neglect however ineptly executed, remains neglect. Consistent with my most recent post, I am going to flow with the zeitgeist and simply report on now.

Monster Magnet - "Mindless Ones"

I dropped in at Dopes to Infinity and subsequently dropped out of reality. The throwback, silver age, B-movie, comic book flavour sucked me in from the first flanging guitar drone. From out-there space dudes to sleazy garage rockers to post-overdose, re-deconstructed, tightly composed psyche-rock, it has been a long and enjoyable road. Good news is that we have yet to reach the end. Monster Magnet have made their new tune, "Mindless Ones" available for streaming. And what a lovely slice of cleverly dumb, non-literal rocking-out it is.

Sepultura – "The Age of the Atheist"

Say what you will about the band more than a decade after the big split. You might even correctly assert that while they have written a number of great songs in recent years, albums as a whole have lacked some x-factor required to make them into coherent, moving wholes. The upcoming single, from the new album produced by Ross Robinson, sounds exactly like post-Roots Sepultura.

Huge, meaty sound, reverberating bass, rumbling percussion, hard core via thrash, tuned way down. Then suddenly, in the second act, the groovy syncopated percussion kicks in, Greene gets melodic and suspended chords ring out atop the maelstrom and then you realize: “wait a minute, this sounds like a rough and ready, muscular take on Killing Joke”. Holy smoke! Then again, it should hardly come as a surprise, Sepultura have always had melodic mojo, check out their covers EP that came out with Roorback for proof.

Godflesh

First new recording in twelve years. Yeah,it’s a cover. But also, yeah, it sounds like Godflesh. I am not sure that I have ever had such satisfying wake up in the morning stream experience ever. Like the newly rebooted Carcass, Broadrick is smart enough and talented enough to create new and interesting music within the specified limits of a certain musical project. Turns out we should have a new LP in May, 2014. What is it with these ex-Napalm Death boys from Birmingham, who gave them such staying power?

Brothers from other mothers and Irish Twins

 The Black Dahlia Murder and Killswitch Engage have a lot in common. They have a keen sense of identity and possess deep knowledge of metal history. They love what they do and have a sense of humour. Strnad's thick glasses scream "real life, actual nerd" and Adam D.'s sideburns, receding hairline and tutus on stage have even caused the already fully furrowed foreheads of serious metal heads to furrow even further. Although their chosen genres are somewhat far apart both bands prove that a sense of humour and heavy fucking metal with heart need not be mutually exclusive. They also happen to both have new albums out as I write.



KSE's Disarm the Descent is a splendid, lean platter of post-metal-core explosion, metal... Once posterboys for all that was evil in modern (relatively) mainstream metal KSE have exceeded their image and sound. Heavy verses still give way to smooth melodic choruses but there is is an organic vibe to proceedings. The biggest breakthrough is solos - where once there would have been a breakdown now there are hell for leather solos tearing through the middle eights all over this album. Only problem is that they are often not long enough (for me). Suspending knowledge of 'core and simply opening your ears to this album yields an exquisite galloping, post-Iron Maiden, post-Swedish melodeath theme throughout.

Meanwhile, Everblack is nothing short of a masterpiece. When Cannibal Corpse decided to stop treading blood and properly embrace technicality from Kill onward, they proved to all up-and-comers and veterans alike that while strictly limited, death metal could be done better. They upped the anti and have dropped three slabs of pure, brutal, tech death without compromise over the last 5 years. With Everblack, TBDM have essentially reached the same point as Cannibal did on Kill. Featuring an astounding awareness of death metal conventions and history as well as the gall to experiment and traverse different genres (from the slime of Morbid Angel to the claustrophobia of Suffocation to the soaring heights of the Swedish glory days) Dahlia simply murder (the competition). The production is astounding, polished enough to hear everything that's going on but primal enough so that it sounds like a band playing rather than a Pro Tools' quantisation and sound replacement textbook exercise.

Skinny Puppy - Weapon

After a string of post Goettel overdose, post-The Process niche but mostly mediocre albums

(The Greater Wrong of the Right, Mythmaker, Handover) Cevin and crew return with what is

arguably the most Skinny Puppy sounding album since Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate. Also it

just happens to be excellent.


Skinny Puppy's complexity always sounded best as a kind of Canadian, white boy, junkie

answer to early Public Enemy. Heavy with samples, noise, dissonance and odd loops, their

best work overwhelmed the listener with stimulation but also soothed with cold, distant

melancholia (VIVIsectVI). But when in the late 90s the band went hi-fi a lot of the charm

of the noise was lost. Everything sounded a bit too simple, normal, pedestrian. Where once

they were pioneers, now thanks to better computers, cheaper synths and greater access to

knowledge everyone has access to the same tools. Chances are there are Skinny Puppy

presets available somewhere for download.


With Weapon, however, Key, Ogre and Walk have intentionally stripped back the timbre

pallet and focused instead on melody and word play. And it simply works. There is sense of

self-reflexivity in the deliberately restrained strength. Skinny Puppy finally sound

relevant again, that is to say, unique and in an uncompromised, unemulated state of their

own. Eighties industrial has never sounded better nor more modern.

Church of Misery - Thy Kingdom Scum

Yeah, Swang it baby.

No, really, just do it. This album falls into a special category: Albums by contemporary doom bands that undermine Black Sabbath's relevance in 2013.

This is how you doom. No compromises, giant riffs, time changes, gutsy solos all in the mode of minor pentatonic.

Sounds like it should be boring. Sounds like it has been done.

Well it's not. And it hasn't, not like this.

Production is splendid the album sounding like it was smashed out by dudes in a room. Fidelity goes far but crashes before it sounds too clean, too processed. This is some seriously heroic Twenty-First Century doom - go away pretenders, Church of Misery have released the best album of their career.

Dandelions, Jasmine and Wisteria

Away from my own. I borrow. Soil. Wisteria disappears too quickly at summer's strange start and the dandelions seem too few. Portent? Pattern? Jasmine stands with gentle clouds and warm grass, sweet reminder of different dirt.