Soul Calibur Reviews
First off, I am a Virtua Fighter fan. I do not enjoy Tekken in any of its forms. I do love Soul Calibur.
I think that the game play, while not as complex and enduring as the Virtua Fighter engine, is superbly fun. I've never been a fan of the bottom tapping combination system that has made up recent fighting games like Tekken, Killer Instinct, and that Square Soft junk with the Final Fantasy characters etc... There's nothing really wrong with those fighting engines, but it just doesn't do it for me. Soul Calibur does lean towards this sort of play, but it has enough complex motions and combos to keep it from falling prey to the Eddy Gordo syndrome. Admittedly, it is possible to play Soul Calibur this way with characters like Maxi (the nunchuker whose moves don't seem to stop even when you stop pressing buttons) and Hwang (the Wu Shu swordsman that is unlocked the first time you play the game), but I have found that with diligent Impact Guarding, Blocking, and use of the innovative 8-Way run feature it is possible to conquer the annoying repetition of moves and button mashing that plagues the most popular modern fighting engines when in the hands of the uncreative virtual brawler.
The game runs smoothly at 60fps in full 3D. I have yet to see a real game running in my house that equals Soul Calibur graphically. This home port surpasses the Arcade which is a dream come true for any 20 something who has played Vids since the days of Pong, Atari, and Coleco when the one constant dream was Arcade duplication. I did see the demo of Dead or Alive 2 at E3 and I think that when that is released Soul Calibur might start to get a bit dusty, but since Namco busted this out for the first generation of Dreamcast software I'm not going to complain.
Every aspect of the graphics that you see are some of the most splendid ever played period. There is detail upon detail upon detail in everything from the characters to movement, to clothing, to the floor of the arenas, to the moving eyeball in Nightmare's sword.
I do wish that there were more animation in the backgrounds of Soul Calibur. I also think that uneven playing fields could have been created to enhance the stages and add some additional strategy to the game play. I was a little disappointed when I unlocked the Autumn and Winter stages and there was little more than a color swap of the (superbly painted) sky and a few small leaves and snow flakes floating about.
Sound... the music is very well done and dramatic, but in the heat of a "best of 20" set the music ceases to be important as long as it's not overwhelming. I never want to turn off the music in Soul Calibur so I guess that's a good sign. The sound effects had a much larger impact on my ears and I found that the effects play an integral part in the gameplay.
For my dollar there is not another game for the Dreamcast right now that will provide more value for the average gamer. I think that the CPU is fairly easy on any setting save for Ultra Hard (note: I am not great Tekken player and I NEVER played the arcade version of Soul Calibur), but I think that this just attests to the intuitive nature of the game play not to some flaw in the AI programming.
The mission battle mode is entertaining and some of the scenarios are real neat. I particularly enjoyed the poison battles with the Metal characters through five fights ending with Inferno. The best part of mission battle is the unlocking of the little extras that enhance the other modes of the game i.e. the extra stages and costumes and weapon select along with the final hidden character Inferno.
For the really serious there are over 300 pieces of "Art" to be unlocked and can be ogled to your heart's content.
The real value of the game for me is in its versus mode and team battle mode. Soul Calibur needs to be shared with your friends.
While I don't think that Soul Calibur's game play will be enduring vs the CPU for as long as a game like VF3, I do feel that the ease of game play coupled with fantastic graphics make it so entrancing that it is hard imagine not having it as staple of gaming sessions for a long time to come.
Soul Calibur is the bomb. If you have an import system and don't care about reading the endings or the character profiles then buy Soul Calibur now! Otherwise buy this game on 09.09.99.
-By Noah Musler[source:videogames.com]
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