The BlazBlue Limited Edition (same $60 price tag) has a DVD / BluRay (depending on which system you get it for) that has tutorials and comments on it for each of the characters, as well as for the game in general. I’ve watched it, and it’s not terrible. It covers the very basic single button attacks as well as combos that will definitely take awhile to master.

BlazBlue also has an “easy specials” feature and is designed to work very well with a pad. You press a direction on the right analog stick and you do a special. This includes Distortion finishers and Astral Heat finishers. Of course, the person who creates the lobby can disallow easy specials.

That’s another thing. BlazBlue has real lobbies. Up to six players, if I recall correctly off of the top of my head, can be in a single lobby. When you create a lobby you can set it so that the winner keeps playing or that the loser keeps playing, or I think random? I’m not entirely sure what the third option is. Anyway, it’s pretty cool.

In addition to the above, anyone can save their game to their consoles hard drive. It dumbfounds me that CapCom didn’t do this, and in fact put limitations on the playback feature for each console. In BlazBlue you can save any fight that you have, and you can even allow other people to download your fights. So, in SFIV you’re limited to the top 5,000 players, but you’re free to share your fights as much as you want in BB.

There’s also a spectator feature in BB. You will be booted if your connection can’t keep up. That’s happened to me once. Generally, though, it’s pretty easy and painless to watch other people’s matches. This is a feature that can be disabled when the room is created, so it’s not always available.

The single player has a pretty decent story, as far as fighters go. There’s both a story mode and an arcade mode. Oh, and you don’t have to unlock basic characters lol, but you do have to beat arcade mode with most characters to unlock their Astral Heat finisher.

BlazBlue’s features are far superior to Street Fighter IV. In fact, it blows SFIV out of the water and really shines a light on IV’s confusing, dare I say archaic limitations. When reviewers say that BB is the new standard that fight games will be set against, that’s true.

The game play, of course, is significantly different. Just watch any video and you’ll see that it’s more chaotic. I had no idea what to expect before I got it; I never heard of Guilty Gear before people began talking about BB. I thought the game was going to be some crazy and confusing stuff, and it is because I’m new, but it’s not as bad as you may think.

The game play in each is just too different to compare though. I can’t say that one is better than the other. They’re both good games and both require a unique approach. BlazBlue will be friendlier to new players though, I think.

While it sounds like I’m a gushing BlazBlue fan boy, the facts are simply the facts. SFIV’s features simply doesn’t hold a candle to BlazBlue. The game play, though, is so different that I don’t think it’s right to say that one is better than the other.

Still, I can’t recommend Street Fighter IV to a new player. BlazBlue’s feature simply puts IV to shame.

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