Soul Calibur II – Review

If someone heard my buddy Joey and I playing Soul Calibur II, they'd think that it's probably the funniest game ever.

See, the other day I was playing Soul Calibur II with Joey. And regardless of this review's publishing date, that could very well be any other day considering how often I've been playing this game. But anyway, I was fighting as Nightmare, the young, cursed knight with Aryan looks and a sword big enough to make Final Fantasy VII's Cloud blush. Joey favored Talim, the tonfa-wielding teenager who is a new face to the series. During the second round Joey got a call from one of his many girlfriends. I was visibly irked that our game had to be on hold, and he left the room.

While I waited, I fiddled around with my azure knight and practiced my punishing moves. Eventually I stumbled upon a new side step for Nightmare, where he would spin sideways and end up in a stance that has him holding his sword behind his back. The next vertical slash would bring down 200 pounds of sword onto my failed aggressor, who was Joey of course. He returned and reassumed his role as the 15-year-old Talim.

"Look at me, my tonfas are gorgeous," Joey said.

I sometimes wonder if he makes up these faceless girlfriends just so he can regain whatever manhood he loses when he assumes the role of a nubile teenager like Talim.

"Look at Nightmare's right arm, it's so big from jerking off so much," Joey taunted.

"At least I picked someone that I have something in common with" was my clueless retort.

"What?"

"Just shut up and play"

The next time I tried that sidespin move, Talim lunged at a spinning Nightmare, who was already ready to bring down his sword onto her back. Next thing I knew, Talim flipped back out of my counterattack and delivered a final kick into Nightmare's gut. Joey then began yelling to me about maternal copulation. But we laughed and laughed until we were ready for another anything-can-happen match.

Such is the joy that can be found in Namco's third installment of their 3D weapons-based fighting game. The game isn't so much funny as it is fun. No other game has made me laugh so hard, sweat so much from anxiety or make me pound the table in disgust at a match's results. The response may be purely visceral, but the extremes of those reactions are so gripping that I can't help but smile when I think about that other day when I was playing Soul Calibur II.

My fondness for this game grew slowly but steadily. Having played the first Dreamcast game to death, it didn't seem that this sequel had much more to offer. The Sega Dreamcast is technically part of the 128-bit generation, and the first Soul Calibur's graphics are still among the top tier in the fighting genre to this day. Soul Calibur II has the greatness of the first game intact, which makes it seem initially underwhelming. After all, it was hard enough on Namco to follow up on a game that raised the bar dramatically for the fighting genre, a bar that still hasn't been met. This multi-platform sequel is basically a reiteration of the first game's excellence, expounded by a more detailed presentation and bigger lists of moves.

The highlight of the single player mode is the Weapons Master mode. Like the first game, players must fight through a variety of matches under unique circumstances. Sometimes players must be required to beat the enemy before a poison eats them; other times, quicksand threatens to swallow the combatants whole. New to the series are grid maps you must navigate and fight through to get treasure. Through it all you gain cash to buy exhibition theaters of each character, costumes, and most importantly, new weapons. Like the first game in the series, Soul Blade, each character has 11 weapons, each with a unique statistic. Nightmare's Soul Calibur sword gradually gains the player life, while the samurai Mitsurugi can wield the Damascus Sword, which trades blocking ability for sheer, unadulterated power. If anything, Weapons Master is worth completing to be able to see each character's version of the Soul Edge—gnarled and twisted takes on their primary weapons.

It's not very convincing for me to only say the fighting system is deep. What I believe separates this game from other 3D fighters is the spot-on hit detection system, something that isn't recognized often enough. The fighting system follows a similar rock-papers- scissors format of high, middle and low attacks like other 3D fighters. However Soul Calibur II isn't confined to those rules. The only constant in the fighting is if it looks like the hit should logically connect, then it will.

For example, this other day Joey was Xianghua, a real crouching tigress with the Chinese sword and I was the bo-wielding Kilik. Xianghua has a move where her body would bend back towards her opponent in a 90-degree angle as she swings her sword before straightening. As Kilik, I randomly did a jumping split kick that went over her body, which was already parallel to the ground. When we recovered, neither of us had a scratch on us. Xianghua's sword completely missed Kilik's legs, which kicked over her body. In a game like Virtua Fighter 4, Kilik's high-hitting move would cancel out Xianghua's middle hit, or vice versa depending on who did the move first. Regardless of who did it first, we still ended up completely missing each other.

This is why bigger move lists in this game are nothing to sneeze at. Many characters have been given new stances, new moves to segue into those stances, moves from those stances to segue into other stances and on and on. Some moves allow you to "guard impact" (a counterattack that leaves your offender helpless for a moment), while others fake opponents out or mix up high and low attacks. Namco seems determined to continue making fluidly animated martial arts moves that flow together perfectly, and are seemingly designed to counteract with several other moves in the game. It's been one too many times where scenarios like the ones I described above have happened, but I live for moments like that. When a character misses another character because of logic and not because of some control or graphics flaw, it's not a programming mistake but a programming obsession. And the players are the real winners, which brings me to my next point.

Soul Calibur II is for anyone and everyone. About 70 percent of the moves are simple enough to be performed by anyone. The easiest criticism for this is that the game lends to "button mashing." And it's true, button mashing gives access to some of the more beautiful moves in this game, especially to the stance-changing, fluid animations of the nunchaku-twirling Maxi. But it takes more than rolling thumbs to master guard impacts, side steps, throw counters and stance changes, all moves that are essential in beating a hardcore fighter. Tough fights usually end up having six or seven guard impact exchanges in a row, at the very least.

But then again, beginners probably shouldn't be playing at tournaments anyway. Instead, they should be having fun with an incredibly accessible engine that might pique them into learning more of the intricacies of their character. The game's inclusiveness is what elevates it as a videogame of the highest order.

I wish I had all the space in the world to talk about the game's excellent art direction, with elegant costume designs, detailed environments (complete with walls) and Ivy's chain-linked sword, a real piece of videogame magic as it goes from flaccid to sharp. I wish I could talk about how, despite the game's violence, the in-game physics and pyrotechnics that occur when attacks are performed or connected are constant reminders of the fantastical nature of the game. I wish I could talk about how much I love the fencer Raphael, and his evades which I have affectionately dubbed "the Matrix dodges."

About the only thing I can really cram in here is why the game didn't get the site's highest score of 10, which I truly believe belongs to the first sequel, the Dreamcast's Soul Calibur. While this game may be "more perfecter" than its prequel, it's still baby steps compared to the moon jump of the first game. But don't let the slightly lower score fool you. Soul Calibur II gets my highest possible recommendation.

Besides, there's a certain point in gaming where you just stop thinking about semantics of criticism and let a moment take you. It's probably after Nightmare scrapes his hulking sword across a castle wall with sparks nipping at Talim's feet as she runs up the wall ready to slice back at her aggressor. No two-digit number can validate the pure exhilaration of that moment. And any time I begin to think that ratings even matter with a game like this, I can only offer myself the advice I gave Joey the other day (or was that last week?). Just shut up and play. Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Disclaimer: This review is based on the GameCube version of the game.

Soul Calibur II – Second Opinion

Let's talk boxing. Great boxers need great opponents to bring out their greatness. Ali had Frazier and Foreman to challenge him, to make him shine. Sugar Ray Robinson had Jake Lamotta to give him hell, to bring out his best. In contrast, Roy Jones Jr. has no one who can really challenge him, which is why boxing pundits, despite Roy's impressive achievements, continue to question his abilities.

Enough about boxing. Since Soul Calibur was anointed as the consummate fighting game in 1998, a number of notable fighting games have quietly made the scene: Victorious Boxers with its innovative control; Pride: FC with its unique ground-fighting scheme; the limb-damage and real-time bruising in Tao Feng: Fist Of The Lotus; and the compelling Quest mode in Virtua Fighter 4 (and the recent update, Evolution), among others. This was all good news for Soul Calibur II, because it meant that the heavyweight champ of fighting games now had an entire stable's worth of credible opponents to challenge it, to push it to its limits, and to bring out its true greatness.

But that didn't happen. It should have, but it didn't. With its limited single-player experience, typical mode offerings (Arcade, Versus, Time Attack, Survival, Team Battle), a downright lazy Practice mode, and yet another firey appearance by final boss Inferno—whom I've probably defeated hundreds of thousands of times at this point—it's as if Soul Calibur II was created on a desert island in the South Pacific by natives who have never even heard of Virtua Fighter 4 or any of the other fighting games previously mentioned. The hard truth is—and this is going to be tough for most gamers to swallow—Soul Calibur II is essentially the same game I was playing on my Dreamcast in 1998, albeit with sharper graphics, a few new characters, a few new moves, and a handful of new arenas.

If only Soul Calibur II had taken a risk of some kind, any kind. A deeper, richer single-player experience certainly would have helped. The "new" Weapon Master mode isn't really much of a creative departure from the old Mission Battle mode. Sure, buying new weapons for my fighters is indeed a dramatic improvement over unlocking those useless (though beautiful) art cards in the 1998 Soul Calibur. But why am I forced to read through four eye-straining pages of tiny text (imagine! having to read in order to play a fighting game!) just so I can find out that my "challenge" is to fight atop a windblown platform. Or that I'm poisoned. Or that I'm fighting in quicksand. Haven't I done this before? Even those innovative dungeons aren't especially ground-breaking. Honestly, who thought fighting 30 back-to-back single-round matches against Lizardman would be exciting? That's half-assed game design, plain and simple.

Part of the blame has to be attributed to the same-day, cross-platform release of the game. As a concept, I believe cross-platform releases inevitably stifle creativity. Instead of game development being an exploratory process, producers are forced to meet a quota; i.e. Talim must look and play the same exact way on the GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2, etc. Any truly inspired moments—like the programming bug that resulted in the enemy "juggling" in Devil May Cry—are left on the cutting room floor in the name of conformity. Indeed, cross-platform releases force developers to take an "assembly line" approach to the development process, leaving no room whatsoever for self-expression. Each console technically has strengths and weaknesses, and it would have been really interesting, and brave on Namco's part, to develop three distinctly different versions of Soul Calibur II, each tailored specifically to each machine's individual strengths and weaknesses. Instead, what we have are three nearly identical, and somewhat bland, versions of the same exact game.

Here's another misstep (three of them, actually): Spawn, Link, and Heihachi. These intruders simply don't fit very comfortably into the Soul Calibur world. All three look visually awkward and feel shoehorned into the game. Spawn vs. Voldo? Link vs. Astaroth? Heihachi vs. Yoshimitsu? It's all wrong somehow, wrong in the same way that monkeys wearing pants is wrong. (These aren't the first intruders either; fighting game scholars know that Yoshimitsu, like Heihachi, is another refugee from the Tekken world.) The world of Soul Calibur was in dire need of more artistic cohesion and logic—frankly, even after years of playing Soul Calibur games, I've never fully understood what the heck the narrative was all about—and the presence of the three outsiders only serves to make the Soul Calibur world even less artistically cohesive and less logical. Their appearance is a marketing ploy, nothing more, and it's one that in my opinion cheapens the game. And what happens with future installments of the game? Does Soul Calibur IX feature The Tick? Luigi? Maybe Marge Simpson?

All that aside, I did enjoy playing Soul Calibur II...at least for a few nights. Chi, Dale and I even got together for some giddy two-player action on several occasions (let me tell you, those guys can hold their own). Soul Calibur II's control is truly spot-on fantastic, and testing out the new weapons is wonderful fun, but what held my attention and kept me playing for those few nights wasn't the sweet control or the new weapons; it was my nostalgic attachment to the game. Soul Calibur and I have a history together, and I truly enjoyed revisiting my old "friends"—Kilik (my man), Sophitia, Ivy, Xianghua, Astaroth, Nightmare, even old pervy Voldo. But once that nostalgia wore off—and it took a few nights, like I said—an unsettling sense of been-there-done-that deja vu crept in. My attention began to drift, and I found myself hungry—starving, actually—for a new experience. "The sad truth of the matter is that gamers simply do not want original content," Dale concluded in his recent Critical Hit piece. Soul Calibur II, which features probably 85 to 90 percent recycled content, is the quintessential example of this. My guess is gamers new to the series will undoubtedly wring the most enjoyment out of Soul Calibur II, especially if they've got a friend to play against. But seasoned gamers looking for a more avant-garde gaming experience will probably find themselves back at the local game store in a couple of days, craving something fresh and new.

Soul Calibur II simply isn't the revolutionary, innovative, mind-blowing experience I'd hoped it would be. I sat down in front of my TV, fully prepared to be feverishly addicted. And I wasn't. I desperately wanted to re-anoint Soul Calibur II as the consummate fighting game...but I can't. Instead of rising to the challenge and "cleaning out the heavyweight division of every last misfit" as boxer Lennox Lewis has promised to do, Soul Calibur II seems to be resting on its laurels. Instead of going for an aggressive, crowd-pleasing KO, the game seems content to coast to a competent, if a little dull, 12-round decision, the way Oscar De La Hoya did in his famous loss to Felix Trinidad. And in the ever-evolving fighting game genre, that's just not enough anymore. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclaimer: This review is based on the Xbox version of the game.

Soul Calibur II – Consumer Guide

According to ESRB, this game contains: Suggestive Themes, Violence 

Parents don't have too much to worry. While some moves may be brutal, not a single drop of blood is shed, and nobody ever dies. The game stays well within the region of fantasy, with fireworks and explosions replacing blood. There is no questionable language or sexual situations, just sexy fighters.

Fight fans can rejoice, because Soul Calibur II is the equivalent of the Second Coming.

Anyone who missed the first game on the ill-fated Dreamcast can find out what the hype is about since the game is available on all three major systems, each with its own unique character. Zelda's Link is on the GameCube, Todd McFarlane's Spawn character is on the Xbox, while Namco's Tekken veteran Heihachi graces the PlayStation 2. Because of the accessibility of this game, casual gamers would do good to check out the pinnacle of the fighting genre, especially with its top-notch production values, addictive Weapons Master mode and simple controls.

Soul Calibur fans won't lose out here either. Although the core gameplay remains the same, there are enough new moves, characters and nuances (including the addition of walls) to take your fighting to the next level.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing gamers shouldn't have too much trouble. There are no necessary audio clues, which is typical of fighting games.