I used to love fighting games, nothing used to beat coming home from school (then later the pub with mates) and screaming with delight as one of us got to do that ‘killer’ final move or white washed my best mate. Then came online gaming and fighting games looked prettier but to be honest became impossible to enjoy, people bought those fighting pads and played all the time; I went from being not too bad at all at fighting games to watching myself die almost instantly again and again and again, and now here’s another game for me to get owned at but this time it’s a real blast from the past.
SoulCalibur was my favorite fighting game, it was relatively simplistic with a good mix of characters and with its use of weapons and special moves it added something new to the already saturated market, so does this new and prettier model do anything for me? Well yeah it does a bit.
For one thing it does look very nice, decent backgrounds but nothing too in your face, with a fighting game you want the characters to really stand out and flashing backgrounds are a nightmare for fighting games something which got progressively worse as games got better looking.
The original characters are all here too, Voldo (my personal favorite) Cervantes and all our other heroes are back but we also have a couple of Tekken characters getting involved Yoshimitsu and Heihachi Mishima bringing their swords, gauntlets and funky hair to proceedings, you also, for the first time, get Heihachi and Spawn on both the 360 and the PS3 which is nice, I always hated games that split things depending on which console you bought.
The game has a few different modes, Arcade, Online and Weapon Master which I assume is a training mode but seeing as they’ve put all the wrong prompts in I can only get to the second session before I’m told to hit buttons which don’t exist and I die, which is a shame.
Overall this game is fun to play, with mates or if you’re really good at fighting game and by good I mean you’ve mastered one character and slaughter me in seconds and I’m sure the Weapon Master thing would be fun if they fixed the obvious fault.
My problem with this game is do we need it? Will anyone pay the full price? After reading a few forums and comments sections I suspect not, it’s not offering anything new and there are so many fighting games out there I feel it may struggle to get many buyers, which is a shame because it’s neat.
Now, I don’t give review scores but if I did I’d say this game game would have Heihachi beating Voldo in a tight 3 game decider.
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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