Instead of indulging your ambition to be a fighting game trainspotter, you ought to be paying attention the art and animation itself because it’s extremely good. The anime boat sailed away a long time ago for me, but it’s impossible to not be impressed by the unique, colorful character designs and stunning attack animations. Given the high quality 2D art, which is sometimes delightfully bizarre, it’s pretty clear that these are the guys that did Guilty Gear although the rock n’ roll edge of those games hasn’t been carried forward. The overheated visual drama and baroque styling of the interface design adds to the over-the-top tone. It’s a fun game to watch, let alone play.

In the end, the biggest strike against Continuum Shift is that it remains in the shadow of Super Street Fighter IV, much as its predecessor did last year in relation to that game’s initial release. It is, of course, open to interpretation as to which game is better but for my part it’s going to be very difficult for any fighting game to top Capcom’s masterpiece.

The problem is that a game like SSFIV can be played indefinitely for years to come, and as with any quality fighting game the more time you spend in one game and playing a small range of characters, the more you get out of it. For SSFIV fans, therefore, Blazblue risks remaining more of a distraction than an institution in itself despite the fact that it more than holds its own in the field as a unique, attractive fighter approachable by complete newbies and with sufficient depth to satisfy veterans. In truth, there’s nothing wrong with owning both.

Michael Barnes is a regular contributor to GameShark , as a reviewer and with a weekly boardgame column, Cracked LCD , and is one of the co-founders of FortressAT.com .