Played on:
Xbox
Few could deny that Soul Calibur was one of the greatest fighting games of all time - the biggest problem with it was probably one of exposure, as it only was ever released in the arcades and on Sega's ill-fated Dreamcast console. Namco has known for quite a while that they had a goldmine on their hands with the Soul Calibur name, and they've finally delivered a sequel to US soil for all 3 major consoles. But what room is there for improvement in a sequel to a game that was already considered near-perfect?
I'll focus on the Xbox version for this review, but Namco has actually done a great job with all 3 versions of SC2. Some consider the PS2 controller to be the best for playing SC2 with, but I think it's pretty close between them all, and everyone will get used to whatever they have. Since many players with multiple consoles are picking up the version of SC2 with their favorite unique character (more on that later) as well as the one with the controls they like, it's not always as easy as buying the version whose gamepad fits you best.
Namco has gone through some efforts to bring the SC2 arcade experience home. Soon, controller company Nuby will be releasing a SC2 fighting stick that mimics the arcade controls and will work on any of the three consoles. On top of this, the suggested price for the stick is under $40, which isn't bad in the market of arcade- style sticks. Either way you look at it, controls won't be a major issue for you with SC2.
All this said, how are the Xbox controls? They're just fine. The four face buttons (A, X, Y, B) all correspond to the standard SC2 attack buttons (Guard, Horizontal Slash, Vertical Slash, Kick), and you can configure the other buttons to do any combination of those four - just like SC1 on the Dreamcast. The controls are slick and crisp in action, and they have to be for a reflex-based fighting game.
Again, we come to the question of how one can really improve on such a great game as before. Namco has come up with a bunch of all-new stages for SC2, although I find that many of these aren't as artistically impressive as the first game's levels. It's a personal preference, though; at least these stages have different shapes and aspects which result in tactical differences.
The characters themselves are a mix of familiar ones, new ones designed by Namco, one made by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane called Necrid, and for each of the three consoles, one unique fighter. The Xbox version gets McFarlane's Spawn, while the PS2 gets Tekken veteran Heihachi and the GameCube gets Nintendo favorite Link from the Zelda games. The problem with these platform-specific characters, as well as Necrid, is that they just don't really fit into the Soul Calibu universe very well at all. I'm all for crossovers, but these are just a bit weird.
SC2 employs both 480p and 720p progressive scan modes for plasma & HDTVs, and full Dolby Digital 5.1 support is included in the Xbox version. I hear that the problem with the 720p mode is that it does it in a full-screen, not wide-screen, format - those with HDTV's that can do 720p will most defnitely want wide screen action, but won't get it. The 480p mode does work in a wide screen, but it's disappointing that the support for some of the newest HDTV technology available isn't fully implemented.
Many of SC2's special effects are the same as what we saw in SC1, and that's pretty much fine; this is a weapon fighting game with very few projectile attacks, so the main thing we get to see is flashes when weapons collide.
The character costumes this time around are more elaborate than ever, although I do have a beef with one specific costume. My favorite character, Taki, now has massive bouncing breasts with visible nipples both in-game and in the drawn art, and they look terrible compared to the rest of the game. This is the worst it gets, people; I've never seen another game with them this bad.
The thing is, Taki has had this costume in previous games without the mammaries - Namco specifically enlarged her boobs, Weird-Science-style (anyone remember that scene?), to a silly level for SC2. A couple of the other characters have large breasts anyway, but they're at least somewhat in check compared to these. At least Taki's second costume isn't remotely near this bad.
Soul Calibur was a very fun fighting game mainly because it offered an extremely smooth learning curve. It was great at low levels where players did slightly controlled button mashing, and allowed you to slowly start figuring out the game's higher-level strategies and combos. This made it accessible even to non-fighting fans, and it's an aspect that probably every developer of these games aspires to do. Namco decided not to mess with success for SC2, so you won't find a huge number of drastic changes in each character's moves. The very high-level players will of course notice a huge difference, but the average gamer probably won't.
Many of the old characters are back, either as their old selves or as a new character with many of the old moves. Some of the new characters (like Spawn or Raphael) have a fully new set of moves - Necrid seems to have a mishmash of other fighters' moves. Inferno and Charade take on any of the fighters' styles and it changes every round, just like SC1.
