For those of you that haven’t heard of Skullgirls, it’s a 2D fighting game that looks and feels similar to Marvel Vs. Capcom 1 and 2 minus the infinities, glitches, and Mango Sentinel ROM combos wrecking face. Skullgirls is now Steam and gained a lot of noticeable improvements compared to its console counterpart. One of them being an improved netplay and lobby system for online matchmaking. On the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, matching making was 1 v 1. That really sucked on so many levels when you wanted to play with a group of friends or wanted to drill out a good session.
Systems: PC, via Steam, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Developer: Reverge Labs, Lab Zero
GamesPublisher: Autumn Games Konami Digital Entertainment, Marvelous AQL CyberFront Corporation
Another improvement is Squigly is now a playable character. Squigly is an undead opera singer that using notes and stances to control space and dominate her opponents. She also has the best forward walk frame ever. It is hard to see Skull girls appealing to people outside those two major improvements due to the high execution barrier and lack of a challenge/mission mode. Challenge/Mission mode is a recent thing in most fighting games like Street Fighter 4 or Blazblue, where the player takes on challenges learning characters’ moves and some combos ranging from practical to arguably useless and/or flashy. This gives the player sense of how each character operates will giving them some tools. Skullgirls character introduction under their tutorial gives a text explanation of character special moves and makes the play complete them.
It doesn’t feel as rewarding as in Street Fighter 4, where you learn that Ryu’s crouching forward (MK) cancels into his fireball after learning the fireball motion. If you have the heart to learn this game, you will be spending a lot of time in training mode grinding out combos. While you’re there grinding combos, be sure to check out the detailed story for each character in the story mode. It’s really well written and hits you square in “the feels.”
Should you check out Skullgirls?
Summary
It only took a year for it to hit the PC and while it’s still a bit more technical than most fighters, it’s still enjoyable. Overall Skullgirls on Steam is somewhat superior that it’s console counterpart but not so much. It’s polished game in story, universe, characters, and art wise. It just falls a bit short in the game department due not having a way for players to ease into learning the game.
Pros
- Music composed by Michiru Yamane.
- The universe and each character story is well written
- Online lobbies are great
- Anti Infinite system prevents infinite combos
- Can have custom assists (Suck on that Marvel 3)
Cons
- No Challenge/Mission mode that other fighters such has Street Fighter 4 and Persona 4 Arena have where you learn character specific combos
- Execution Barrier is very high. Meaning you’ll probably be sitting in training mode A LOT just learning combos if you’re into that.
- The current roster is small compared to other fighters. Only nine playable characters currently.
- The tutorial teaches the basics of all fighting games not so much what you can do in Skull girls. (Outside of Anti-Infinite prevention and custom assists)
- Beowulf’s not in the game yet.
- Mike’s Z soviet voice is not one of the announcer’s voice.
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Overall Score
