Fighting Game Camps: Skullgirls, Part 2

Continued from part 1.

Music

Skullgirls keeps its music simple, but catchy.  One of the key composers is Michiru Yamane, who’s best known for her work on the long-running Castlevania series, so the catchiness is to be expected.

To fit with the 40s motif of the game, the music is largely comprised of jazz-like scores and softer melodies, with lots of saxophones, pianos, and soft drum beats.  Skullgirls uses stage themes instead of character themes, and many of them feel like something you’d hear in a game while exploring a world in an adventure game instead of all the guitar-rocking of Guilty Gear and King of Fighters.  This works nicely and makes the different, well-imagined locations around the Canopy Kingdom more memorable.

Fighting Game Camps: Skullgirls, Part 1

I don’t pay much mind to a lot of indie games.  It’s true that creative ideas can come of them, but too often they end up being 8-bit, pixilated, platformers lacking in sufficient polish or all three, unlike the big-budget super games I usually play.

I want my tax dollars to go into that thing!

That’s not to say I just brush indies off entirely.  Indie games have allowed for some great titles reminiscent of an earlier age without going as far back as the archaic age of 8-bit graphics.  I had a lot of fun with Shank 2 and Castle Crashers, and even with its pixilated presentation Retro City Rampage’s clever humor and gameplay flow kept me in the experience.  However, as fun as indie games have been, none of them have absolutely wowed me.  They’ve always been at least good, but not great.  7s out of 10, but not 8s.  Recommended, but not must-buys.

I got this for Christmas.  That Phil always knows what to get.

I say this because there may be points in this article that come off as complaints or condescension by comparing it to the other much bigger-budget games.

Part of the reason for this may be because Skullgirls is not exactly a big franchise yet.  Not counting its update, Skullgirls Encore, there has only been one game.  With the other franchises, all the many games that have come out have had their ups and downs that can be glanced over in the grand scheme of things, but with Skullgirls, we have only one game to go over, so in a manner of speaking, what I say about it applies to every Skullgirls game there is.