It seems that every few years, the fighting game genre is revitalized with the latest updates to the most popular franchises, be it Street Fighter, Tekken, or Mortal Kombat. Well, that time is here again, and among the flood of sequels coming out in the next few months is Guilty Gear X2: The Midnight Carnival #Reload, a port of the cult favorite PS2 fighter. The port is almost exactly the same, only with online multiplayer through Live and tweaks to better balance the gameplay, much like what was done to Virtua Fighter 4 with VF4: Evolution. The result is a fun to play fighter that's easy on the wallet.

The Guilty Gear games have a very distinct style that newcomers will immediately notice, so let's begin with that. I don't often start off my reviews by commenting on the graphics, but cases like this deserve an exception. If you know anybody that firmly believes 2D games are dead and pixilated relics of the past (face it, we all know someone like this), show them Guilty Gear X2 to shut them up. This is a gorgeously drawn game, with extremely fluid animation and crisp, high-res artwork that looks even better on a high definition TV. Special moves have awesome, flashy effects and all the fighting arenas are nicely animated. It's so spectacular, it looks like a high production anime!

The totally off-the-wall characters are just as integral to Guilty Gear's charm. Where else can you find fighters like Faust, a nine foot tall guy with a bag over his head, or Venom, who wears tights and fights with a pool cue? And you thought Voldo from Soul Calibur was weird! The background music in Guilty Gear X2 is also very distinctive, with rock/heavy metal tunes that accompany the action nicely. It's quite evident that some of the character designs were influenced by this genre of music.

Luckily, the actual fighting game behind the pretty graphics is very solid, with lots of high level techniques to master if you expect to be any good at the game. Guilty Gear X2 is very fast paced, and you'll constantly be dashing around the screen, both on the ground and in the air. If there's one thing that the game emphasizes, it's aggression, and several elements are built into the game to make sure you're constantly attacking.

First, there's the Tension Gauge that gradually fills up as you move towards the enemy, attack, or get hit. Basically, any time you're actually participating in a battle and not constantly crouching in a corner blocking (which is commonly frowned upon in the fighting game community and is known as turtling), the meter fills, which allows you to pull off a variety of advanced special attacks like Instant Kills, Roman Cancels, and Overdrive attacks. In fact, if you're playing ultra conservatively, you'll be hit with a penalty and your Tension Gauge will be reduced to nothing.

The Guard Gauge also encourages constant fighting. It starts off half-filled, and as you block, the gauge increases, and when you are attacked, the gauge decreases. The catch is that enemy hits do less damage when the meter is low, which means that if you're constantly blocking and your opponent manages to sneak in an attack, you'll be dealt a heavy blow. With these systems built to highly discourage against playing defensively, fights become extremely frantic with scarcely a second to relax until one person is lying face down on the floor.

Though the main appeal of fighting games comes from multiplayer bouts, Guilty Gear X2 #Reload offers a few single player modes if you want to play by yourself and get familiar with the fighting engine. There are the self-explanatory modes in every fighter like Story Mode, Arcade Mode, and Practice, but also a few unique ones.

M.O.M. mode (also known as Medal of Millionaire) rewards players with medals and higher points for performing combos. Mission Mode includes 100 fights with pre-chosen characters that last less than a minute each, every one of them with various parameters. For example, you may have to defeat your opponent in 40 seconds with Overdrive attacks while not having the ability to jump, or you may have to fight while poisoned and can only do damage with 4+ hit combos. It's a fun mode and you can use it to unlock artwork, but it's also challenging and will force you to adopt different tactics.

Survival mode is a traditional mode found in every fighting game, but instead of fighting an endless number of enemies and keeping score by how many you defeat, this mode levels you up each time you pull off a great move, whether it be a counter attack, an Overdrive attack, cancels, etc. There are a total of 1000 levels, and you can unlock bonus versions of each character through Survival as well as Story mode. All the characters have EX and Gold/Shadow versions of themselves, which makes them more powerful as well as gives them new move sets.

Of course, no one buys a fighting game to play with the AI. The game supports standard two-player offline multiplayer with all the usual fixings. However, the highlight is most definitely the Live play with international rankings that track how well you stack up against the competition. Some slight button lag was present in every match I played online, and while it's definitely noticeable and can get slightly annoying at times, fighting online is still very enjoyable. Yes, it's fun to taunt unknown opponents as you pummel them into the ground, but more than that, online play allows gamers to connect to a much larger fighting game community than the local neighborhood kids and see how great they really are.

I do have problems with the lack of online modes. Unlike the upcoming Dead or Alive: Ultimate with observation modes so that people take turns fighting and can watch the action while in line, GGX2 has none of that. All you can do is join a two-player game, toggle some basic options like rounds per match, and whether to allow instant kills and EX versions of the characters. Unfortunately, you never get the sense of being a part of an actual online community.

Bottom line; for $20, you can get a top notch fighting game that looks and sounds fantastic and has enjoyable online play. If you've never played Guilty Gear X2 on the PS2, this game is a must-buy. PS2 owners can decide for themselves whether online play and more balanced gameplay are worth the cash, but overall, Guilty Gear X2: Reload comes highly recommended.