.png "Upstate Fighting on Youtube!")
Zero the Shadow | 
Thursday, January 28, 2010| 
Since Tekken hit we haven’t focused much on other fighting games, so I thought we should take a closer look at the mid-December update to the BlazBlue series, Continueum Shift.
What’s different about Continueum Shift? Well a lot of things. First of all the guard system has changed drastically. “The guard system” you may ask, “what do you mean?” Well I wouldn’t blame you for asking, it wasn’t really much of a factor in the original. You see there was this little red and blue bar in the original BlazBlue that worked as the guard bar.
It worked kind of like a seasaw. When you would apply pressure to your opponent, forcing them to block; their color bar would deplete and be replaced by yours. When your color completely filled the bar their guard would break. You could barrier guard by pressing A+B to not take any guard damage or instant block to reduce the loss of guard meter. The thing was, this never really became a problem. Unless you were fighting Ragna or Arakune you never had to worry about characters breaking your guard much. That entire system has been removed now replaced with the new Guard Primer System.
It works like this. Each character has a certain number of guard primers, when they have no guard primers their guard breaks. Simple right? However, losing a guard primer is move specific. Cetain moves will remove certain amounts of guard primers. They also don’t regenerate very fast making it viable strategy to slowly weakin your opponent’s guard over the course of a match and then go in for the kill.
Another major change that people are going to like is the change to how burst works. In the original BlazBlue you got one burst per round but once you used that one burst you would lose the ability to barrier guard AND you would receive a negative penalty taking 2 times the amount of damage you normally would. You could also use your barrier burst to break your opponent guard instantly if you so chose BUT you were unable to kill them with whatever combo you chose to use.
Now the barrier system works completely different. You and your opponent get two burst which you can save to use at any time. You start off with one in the first match and gain the other when you lose your first round. So you can stock pile two and use them twice in a row or twice in the same round if you so choose. There is NO MORE NEGATIVE PENALTY WHEN YOU BURST so you can use it without worry and now if you use and it hits on counter your opponent will fly into the air and you can kill them. You will no longer lose the ability to use barrier when you burst BUT you will sacrifice half of your guard primers when you do.
Every character has been changed to some degree, there a new stages, and of course the new characters Hazama and Tsubaki have very unique play styles. The bottom line is this is BlazBlue is back and better than before. The game balance seems much better and the changes to the system should make the game a lot more fun.
If you want to play BlazBlue: Continuum Shift you’ve got one of two choices. You can go to Toronto to play it or head down to China Town Fair in NYC. Eitherway it’s about a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive. If you are interested in planning a trip to play the new BlazBlue post up in the forums and let us know.
Lovegety Station
505 Highway 7 E
Thornhill, ON L3T 7T1
(905) 709-7910
China Town Fair
8 Mott Street
(between Canal Street and Mosco St)
New York, NY 10013
(212) 964-1542
Also just recently BlazBlue:Continuum Shift became available via other means as well. While we don’t recommend you obtain BlazBlue: Continuum Shift this way if you woud like information on it I suggest you talk to some Upstate Fighting members in person.
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Intro
