NEW FIGHTING GAME ALERT

Big Bang Beat. The name makes about as much sense as its premise. But seriously, aren't fighting games all just a ridiculous excuse for people to beat the crap out of each other?

So, anyway, this is one hardcore fighting game.

If any of you have played or seen Melty Blood or Guilty Gear, you know how fast those games are.

BBB makes Guilty Gear look like freakin' molasses. This game is fast. So fast, that you probably won't know what the hell is going on for the first 15 minutes you play. It makes Virtua Fighter look like it's in slow-motion.

The way the game works is as follows: like Melty Blood, the game is extremely combo friendly. (Figures, as a sizable portion of the dev team was responsible for Melty Blood.) There are three main attack buttons, you use quarter and half-circles to execute special attacks, yadda yadda. Nothing you haven't seen before. Here's the deal, though: the game makes extremely heavy use of dash-cancels. In a combo, you can only use one attack from each of the main attack buttons, and then chain it into a special attack. If you dash cancel, however, you can extend combos for as long as your dash cancels last. Dash canceling is so important that it has a separate button assigned to it.

However, dash-canceling uses up an entire super bar. And the way you gain supers isn't by pummeling or getting pummeled. When one player is hit by an attack, they drop gems that can be picked up by either player to fill up their super gauge. So you are forced to juggle using your super bar between extending combos and using actual super attacks. It's ridiculously new and fun.

But wait...there's more. There are two more buttons. I think they might have different effects based on characters, but this is what I've gathered so far. One is a button that charges what I will call the "special gauge". Do not confuse the special gauge with the super bar. When you use special attacks, this gauge drains and gradually slows the speed of your combos. Pressing the "special charge" button as I will call it causes your character to focus and charge this gauge. If your health has been damaged, the special gauge can actually fill up into the health bar. Pressing what I will call the "health charge" button regains a small bit of health while leaving you open to attack. Pretty neat, huh?

And the graphics...oh, man, the graphics. This had some Melty Blood developers on it and it shows. For once, a game that has both detailed sprites and ridiculously fluid animations. This game is like a piece of art in motion. It's so fun to watch.

Go check out the demo.

Big Bang Beat Demo

Seriously, a huge frickin' smile crept over my face as I watched this.

Watch. Now.

That's right - Cave Story PSP.

Full story here.

This is the coolest thing ever. You put in a name and it creates a robot acronym for it. Awesome.

Some winnars:









http://cyborg.namedecoder.com

THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!