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Soul Calibur 2 Preview
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
Find out what is new in the quest to find the Soul Edge.
Soul Calibur was one of the most impressive games, probably the most impressive, when the Dreamcast launched in the west. A combination of absolutely stunning graphics and great gameplay wrapped up with some fine presentation and a variety of gameplay modes made a great game. Sadly being on the Dreamcast itās audience was somewhat limited, so Soul Calibur II looks to improve on every aspect of the original with an eye on becoming a more popular mainstream game.
The first thing to strike you about this game are the visuals, despite being some way from release the detail and animation in the characters already looks amazing. The animation engine is key to the gameplay, and weāll look at it in more depth later, but initially it just makes the characters look very impressive. Featuring a range of special effects such as self-shadowing and dynamic lighting, and hopefully if weāre lucky some good use of bump mapping on some already lovely looking textures.
The impact of the characters and the levels is not as great as the Dreamcast version, but this is purely because the proverbial goalposts have moved somewhat, the closer you look the more you notice the little details which are subtle yet add immeasurably to the overall effect. Part of the visual impact is down to the actual artistic style applied by Namco. The striking look of the characters with stunningly designed outfits and levels that are rather seemingly derived from various historical sources give an impressive and consistent feel to the graphics.
Because Soul Calibur II uses weapons in a fully three-dimensional fighting arena the animation system has to be a little more complex than it may first appear. Because you may be trying to strike your opponent whilst moving in any number of ways Namco have given the engine the flexibility to animate parts of the characters separately. This means that whether running towards, away, or around your opponent when you strike with your weapon the movement of the character will adapt to the situation.
By employing an animation system that allows a combination of motion capture and context based animation the game will look very smooth and natural whatever you do. This isnāt just a simple case of making the game look better, by giving you the freedom to execute moves in any number of situations fights become a lot faster and fast reactions are very important. Tactically it will allow you to try interesting things given the system factors in momentum. If you deflect an opponents attack they may well become unstable on their feet depending on the momentum they carry through their move, which you have deflected from you. Thus you can quickly and effectively turn defence into attack in a smooth and impressive movement.
The enhancements to the animation system and changes to the way in which you can run around the arena are all to make the fights faster paced and more impressive. With the two main types of attack, vertical and horizontal, cancelling each other out via parrying, you can produce a sword fight that is hugely dramatic. It will no doubt take time to master the subtleties of the fighting engine, but naturally, it should be worth it.
There is still some time until the game is finished and we donāt know too much about what gameplay modes there will be when Soul Calibur II ships. However it seems safe to assume that there will be an enhanced version of the one player mode that sees you embark on a quest for the Soul Edge sword. There will also be many extras and bonuses for you to unlock as you progress through the game. It doesnāt seem like there will be any major changes, rather this will be a refined experience with a finely balanced fighting engine that gets better the more you play it wrapped up with some good extras.
Given the lack of Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive on the GameCube it seems that Soul Calibur II could easily be the premier fighting game on Nintendoās machine. However given that the game is multi-format it doesnāt seem like there will be anything that takes direct advantage of the GameCube hardware. We may well see the controls being tailored to suite the GameCubeās pad, which could prove rather suited to the game. As for specific enhancements over any other version it seems unlikely that there will be any real difference between the formats.
