Assuming for now that you are already familiar with Soul Calibur and its ilk I’ll get on to talking about the different versions this sequel has.
The three console versions (from what I have seen) are pretty much identical to one another in regards to game play, graphics and sounds. The three different versions have one major difference between them though and that is the special guest character. Corny as it may sound the character you want to play as out of the three “special guests” will probably swing you to buy it on one console over another and this is the main reason I chose to do a review on the Game Cube version of SC2.
You see on the Playstation 2 version you can play as classic Namco character Heihachi Mashima (out of Tekken) complete with all his token moves that made him popular with PS2 players across the land, nice! On the X-box we have what at first seems a rather bizarre choice of special guest, and that is the Todd McFarlane comic book character Spawn. Why you may ask? Well Todd McFarlane makes the Soul Calibur action figures and Todd also designed one of the games main characters called Necrid. So that’s why!
What made me review the GC version in particular is that for the special guest they decided to roll out the red carpet for the classic Nintendo hero (FANFARE needed here) Link! In my view Link fits in perfectly with his Master Sword and Hylian Shield at the ready as well as the fact that Game Cube owners can play with a Nintendo character (Link), another McFarlane character (Necrid) AND a Tekken character (Yoshimitsu)! So GC owners get the best of all three worlds then. Link has all his signature moves such as the Spin Attack, Bombs, Boomerangs, plus he can fire a flaming Arrow at the opponent facing him. Link is simply awesome and a very well rounded character for the game that hasn’t just been adapted from any of the existing characters as you might expect from lazier games designers. You know what I mean? Where they would take an existing character and give it a different skin and say “There you go, a new character!” No instead it would seem Namco have built these special characters from scratch and Kudos to them for doing do.
Oh yes, “The stage of history”
Well enough about the secret characters, time to get on to the game proper. Now for those unfamiliar with Soul Calibur, then you can describe it as a 3D Fighting game, like Tekken or (ahem) Virtua Fighter. The boys at Namco must have seen dollar signs (or rather Yen signs) flashing before their eyes when they were at the meeting to create the first Soul Edge game. I would imagine the meeting to have gone something like:
Person A: “So what do the kids like at the arcades these days?”
Person B: “They like our Tekken quite a lot, Fighting is cool!”
Person C: “What about we gave Tekken swords?”
Person A: “Excellent thinking! And let’s make them able to knock opponents off the edge of the platform like that Virtua Fighter game!”
Person B: “YES! AWESOME! PROMOTION FOR EVERYONE!”
And err… that’s what it would have probably have been like. So Tekken with swords and ring outs.
Many people may not have ever played the Dreamcast or Playstation version as they weren’t very high profile releases to be brutally honest. There was another contender to the Playstation fighting throne in the form of Toshinden and its hundred or so sequels and anime series. For this reason I will make the bold statement that Toshinden was a piece of garbage. Forget Toshinden, forget it ever existed and focus on the amazing Soul Calibur. You will thank me for it!
