With eye-candy graphics, comically overstated characters, the perfect tempo for trash-talking and a plot typed by 1,000 monkey copy writers, Soul Calibur II fits seamlessly on the fighting game shelf at the local video game retailer. But, there are plenty of reasons to pull it off the shelf, buy it and slide it into your GameCube, PlayStation 2 or Xbox, and thereupon lay waste to your friends’ dignity for weeks.
Most immediately, Joe Newplayer will notice the game’s enjoyably sharp learning curve. A greenhorn can sit down on an overstuffed couch, maybe glance at the control setup screen, and button-mash his way into combo or two and, more importantly, some keen-looking moves. But, the game’s real appeal is to power players, as mastery of the game is a much (much) taller order.
To compete against a more experienced corpus of players, though, players will have to familiarize themselves with at least one of the game’s many characters’ impressively robust move sets. (Game developer Namco deserves major kudos for doing all this with four basic moves — horizontal attack, vertical attack, kick, and block — while creating a very balanced array of characters). The most difficult part of learning the actual gameplay lies in picking up the nuances of timing — when to block, or more potently, when to throw.
Learning the many characters themselves is something of a cross between watching Mel Brooks’ “History of the World — Part I” and browsing a Dadaist art show: Historical stereotypes from the last 2,500 years abound, but don’t expect much in the way of plot coherence. (Although, a voice-over tongue-in-cheekly assures players that “Transcending history and the world,” the game depicts “a tale of souls and swords eternally retold.”) Still, the weak storyline is forgivable since the game’s strength lies in — and players will spend most of their time in — the superb (and superbly enjoyable) player-versus-player mode.
To give a flavor of the combatants plucked from across pseudo-history: Astaroth, a six-foot-four oaf-servant of the Greek war god Ares, wields an ax with a blade the size of a pizza pan; Cervantes de Leon, a dead Spanish pirate, years ago slaughtered his crew and dined on their souls; and Talim, a 15-year-old priestess who wields twin elbow blades, shows up as one of the game’s boilerplate young Asian girls.
Each of the three home consoles features a character exclusive to its platform. The GameCube version features Link from Nintendo’s ultra-popular Zelda series, the Xbox version includes the classic Todd McFarlane comic book antihero Spawn and gamers who play the PlayStation 2 version will get Heihachi Mishima of Tekken fame.
Even more numerous are the characters’ cheesy sound bites. Beginning-of-the-match threats range from Cervantes’ bizarrely culinary “You shall be my nourishment!” to Cassandra’s junior-high-dance yelp “EEEK! You’re definitely not my type” to Yoshimitsu’s Kevorkian “I shall assist your suicide!” to Nightmare’s downright Schwarzeneggerian “AGHHH! Annihilate!”
While the game’s graphics are largely above-par, the stages themselves leave much to be desired. Most of the arenas have chasms for combatants to cast each other into, and there’s some interesting scenery, but there’s not much more actual variety than the stage’s size and where walls are. (In small stages, ring outs are almost as common as knockouts). While the stages boast nothing like Dead or Alive 3’s near-flawlessly crafted, pupil-dilating environments, this turns out to be an acceptable deficiency, as the backgrounds take a back seat to the intense fighting action anyway.
The enjoyable and recommended cut-your-friends-up-with-more-than-100-weapons Soul Calibur II is available now.