Game Review #7: Skullgirls

While I won't go into much detail about my experience with six button fighters, I will tell you that Ancient Greek mathematicians can comprehend it. Ya see that's a reference to how Greeks had no concept of zero, but that's not for you. That's for the scholars who discover these reviews in a thousand years and wonder why this guy wasn't appreciated sooner. But back to the topic at hand, my only real fighting game experience is with the various renditions of Smash Bros. which are similar to six button fighting games the same way Abraham Lincoln is similar to Colonel Sanders. So I didn't go into Skull Girls expecting to be good. Instead I went in thinking "I spent $10.01 to get this game and six others off Humble Bundle, so I'm gonna get my (ridiculously small amount of) money's worth!" And I did.Skull Girls is an indie fighting game that uses mechanics similar to Marvel vs. Capcom with its own changes here and there. The controls are easy to get used to, unless you intend on using the special attack commands in which case you'll end up dying while figuring out how to do a quarter circle on a keyboard. You could of course use a controller, but then you have to deal with the unnatural control scheme of six button fighters on four button controllers. But hey there's always those bulky, expensive, and insufferably difficult to set up six button fight sticks that the pros use. Ya know what, why am I even complaining? It's totally worth it to get one of those things when I got this game from Steam's version of Goodwill. But enough about stupid generalizations. Let's get on to what this game does well. The actual fighting is intensely satisfying and feels like you're actually beating the crap out of your opponent when you are, unlike some games where you basically just have to know that you're winning. That type of game is something I like to call a "Numeric Showdown" wherein the only way you're able to tell that anything is happening is by seeing numbers go up and down, or sometimes hidden from view by the sight of people poking each other. The antagonist to this is the type of game where you can feel the game reacting to you doing well of tending by ramping up the action or making it easier for you to keep on kicking people's shit in. Skull Girls does both of these well, giving you easy access to huge combo strings without making inescapable combos. The characters each have unique ideas behind them each with their own back story that you can already tell a lot of from just their appearance, but gets revealed in further depth in the various renditions of the story mode. They also each have an outside the box moveset that usually involves several ideas that you'd never see in any other fighting game. Even the DLC characters (which I got for free #humblebundledealhunting) have a ton of thought put into them to the point where they're nearly indistinguishable from characters available at launch. To demonstrate this, let's take my main, Beowulf, and look at him from a bunch of perspectives. His character design is interesting along with his moveset design (I mean, he hits people with a folding chair in so many different ways); he has an awesome backstory in his story mode; his voice acting is exceptional; he has noticeable work put into his animation; and his personality is a high point of the game. Just look at his lines:"I'm 287 pounds of folded steel, and sex appeal!""Step on board the AROO train!""The line for autographs starts here!""Say your vitamins and eat your prayers!""Everything I say is a catchphrase!"This, ladies and gentlemen, is DLC done right.As I'm writing this, Skull Girls with all its DLC is still on Humble Bundle for a few more days, so I'd check it out if I were you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have like 5 other games to play. All in the name of charity of course.