Guilty Gear Isuka (JPN)
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Another major addition is GG Boost mode, a classic style beat-em up that lets you to unleash your pent up frustrations on hordes of nameless enemies, with all the moves of your favorite GG characters. Though this necessitated moving jumping to a button, and like turning, it's easy to get used to after a little practice. It's practice you'll need to clear all five areas of GG Boost, each with multiple stages and bonus challenges, since you get just three spare lives and no continues before the big game over. If you do somehow manage to defeat the overpowered final boss duo, stick around for the credits, whose humorous scenes make this effort worthwhile.

Technically, A.B.A. isn't the only new character added to the console version, though the stock model of Robo Ky Mk2 is no different that the original. That's where the RK MK2 Factory comes in. Here you can earn points in Boost mode to spend on improving MK2's stats, or swap out his current specials for unique variants of moves from virtually every character in the game. Though Testament's web attack becomes a wad of bubblegum and Eddie's winged form transforms into a flying bicycle contraption, they're still just as effective and fun.

Ever since GGX, this series has always offered a rainbow of character color variants to choose from, though for the first time you can make your own. Not only do you get all colors from Isuka and #Reload to use as a base, but you can copy and paste and adjust whole rows of colors with ease. If you don't have your own personal color selections for most of the cast by the time you're through, then you have far more self-control than I do.

The options feel like the only thing that not much thought went into. Five difficulty levels is good, but not when the easiest will be boring to even the fighting game neophyte, and the hardest doesn't feel any more difficult than normal, which will be too easy on a Guilty Gear veteran. This is made worse by Leopaldon acting two levels above the current difficulty, making you chose between boring matches leading up to him or a frustrating boss encounter at the end. The control setup lets you only change some of the button assignments, so if you want dust to be a single button as it was in GGX2, I'm afraid you're out of luck. The option for auto-save is mysteriously absent, so if you don't remember to save manually after every session, all of your progress will be lost.

Back before SNK died, only to come back to life like a pixilated Jesus, and Capcom still occasionally made a new sprite, Arc Systems Works decided they wouldn't play the recycle game that had become the accepted practice among "new" 2D fighters. They gave Guilty Gear a high resolution facelift for its sequel, and have since put as much care and attention into the gameplay of the series as they have in the visuals. Guilty Gear Isuka could have just been a warm up for GGX3, but with all they've added to this already fantastic game for the console port, it feels far more complete than the true sequels of other 2D fighters.

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