Guilty Gear Judgement review

Todays review is Guilty Gear Judgement on the PSP and this one’s special because you actually get two games in one. You get the new side-scrolling Judgement game but also Guilty Gear X2 Reload which is your more traditional 2D one-on-one beat’em up.

Let’s tackle judgement first. If you’ve ever played Final Fight, Double Dragon or Golden Axe you’ll know what to expect. You pick one of five characters from the Guity Gear universe and fight from left to right, with lots of enemies attacking you at once. Clear the screen and you’re told to GO to your right and fight more. Occasionally there’s the odd object to smash for bonuses and health and you get to fight some tricky end of level bosses every other stage.

It’s pretty standard fare but you do get to use nearly all the moves you would use in the previous Guilty Gear games and you’re able to move in just about three dimensions to get round the back of your enemies and beat them into a pulp. You can play this on your own or get a friend with a PSP to team up as you fight through the game. Problem is, whilst it’s very nice to look at, games have moved on since the old arcade beat’ em ups and unless you love this retro feel, you’ll get bored quite soon of mashing buttons and there’s no real reason to play through the game with the other four characters after you’ve beat it once.

So it’s good news we’ve got X3 Reload bundled in there too. This is a classic 2d fighter where you fight one on one and work your way through all your opponents in arcade, survival and versus mode. There are 23 characters to choose from and they’re all very different in the way they look, even if all the special moves are triggered with the usual Street Fighter d-pad rolling.

Again, you can beat the game just by mashing the buttons and it gets tired pretty quickly unless you have a human opponent to play against. If you love your Japanese fighters you’ll like this too. To everyone else, it’s just better than average. It’s good but it won’t hold your interest for too long. 6 out of 10.

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