Remembering that yesterday was S-Day (the day Calibites celebrate the release of a new Soul Calibur title), I headed down to the store to pick up a copy. While I'm not a full-on Calibite, I don't own action figures or costumes or anything like that, I'm enough of a Soul Calibur fan that I'm generally happy to see a new game in the series coming out.
I was especially excited about this Soul Calibur, though, since I'd heard that it was going to be featuring playable characters from Star Wars. Usually my policy of not reading previews or seeing ads serves me well, as I'm able to go into games with few preconceptions and engage them on their own terms.
Sadly, my habit has failed me this time around, since, had I read previews, I would have discovered that the game I was interested in playing, pictured here:
Was not the game that I had arrived to purchase. No, because I'm currently in a different city than my Playstation 3, the game I'd arrived to purchase looked more like this:
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's Yoda, leaping into the air like a jackass, swinging a lightsaber. Oy.
Look, it's been a couple of years since George Lucas destroyed Star Wars, and I understand the natural human desire to go back and try to eke out the tiny portions of good left in that franchise. One of those little bits of good is the character of Darth Vader, who has such a great look and persona that it makes perfect sense to continue leveraging him for every bit of awesomness he offers.
By comparison, swordfighting Yoda was perhaps the stupidest single sequence from a movie that was little more than an abomination on the face of film history. It was a fairly large mistake to think that the audience wanted to see Yoda swordfight at all (he's a powerful enough Jedi that, like the Emperor, he's past the whole need to fight people with lightsabers - the Emporer's fight from Sith was nearly as stupid), but a far more ridiculous mistake was to render his fighting style as a blurry little green ball bouncing randomly around the screen.
So this explains my frustration at discovering that Darth Vader was an exclusive character featured only on the PS3, while we Xbox 360 users would be stuck with the hopping emerald monstrosity.
As a reward for my loyalty to Microsoft, I've been given the chance to be depressed. Thanks, MS - Soul Calibur 4 just went from a purchase to a rental.
Oh, and there's another bonus character, the main character from Force Unleashed. I can't imagine which I'm supposed to be more excited about - the worst idea for a fighting game character in recent memory, or a character from a game that hasn't come out yet, and that, therefore, no one can possibly have a positive emotional connection to.
Ouch... this is definitely
Ouch... this is definitely one time when reading previews would have paid off.
don't completely give up hope, though... i've heard talk that the character not included in each version may be available as an add-on (for a fee, of course) a little later down the road.
I'm not as much of an SC fan as i used to be so i planned on waiting... if the rumor proves true, i'll get the 360 version (for Live and Achievements) and then download Vader.
if the rumor is just wishful thinking, then i'll go with the PS3 version for basically the exact same reasons outlined in your post.