Almost Perfect.. (Soul Calibur (DC))

Member Name: PsychoApeMan

Product:	Soul Calibur (DC)
Date:	30/11/00 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks great, plays great, smells great..

Disadvantages: irritating flaws, not everlasting by any means..

The thing that probably irritates me the most in games is essential this:
A game is so damn good, that the irritating little problems irritate me so much that I end up virtually hating the game. And that nearly happened with soul calibur. But, thankfully, the good things about the game were so good that I just couldn’t turn against it. For a start, the graphics are truly jaw-dropping, and the 60 hertz option is a great feature, that makes much more difference than you would expect. It runs at a blistering rate, and the intensity of the battles is insane. The characters move smoothly and realistically, the fighting techniques are brilliantly reminiscent of kung-fu movies, and when playing with one of the faster characters, you really feel like no one can beat you.. which brings me nicely onto my first gripe with the game. The game is designed for the arcade, which means it has immediate pick-up-and-play ability, which is in itself a great thing. The problem is that a fairly experienced player has little advantage over a first-timer who mashes the buttons completely at random. True, once you bring blocking into your game you’ll develop a slight edge, but not really enough to make it feel worthwhile having trained for so long, and you probably won’t even win if your opponent is siegfried or nightmare. Which is the second problem. These two players (undoubtedly the best when it comes to killing ability) have a HUGELY unfair advantage over the other players- they have the power of one of the larger characters, and the speed of a smaller one. This said, it’s still a great game, and by no means am I trying to label it as heavily flawed. I’m simply trying to say that the minor problems get to you after a while. And, after all, it is just a beat ‘em up when it comes down to it- which means it’s not gonna last all that long (although the 2 player may well).

Summary: