GAME REVIEW: SOUL CALIBUR

As one of the Dreamcast's launch games, Soul Calibur blasted onto the system with a bang showing off a taste of what the Dreamcast can do and what Next-Generation gaming is all about. Can Playstation 2 ever be better than this? Time will tell, but for right now this is the king of fighters. Soul Calibur is by far, head and shoulders over any other fighting game I have ever played. It is a masterpiece unparallelled by any other at this time. This game kicks major ass! If you buy any launch game, go out and buy this one NOW! It deserves a perfect score because it is very very close to the notion of a perfect fighting genre game.

Graphically this game is without a doubt beautiful. When I first booted this Disc up and watched the opening sequences and the game in progress I just stood there in awe of this graphical banquet stretching before me. I saw no polygons anywhere! I saw breath coming from the noses and mouths of characters on cold stages. I saw flower petals drifting down and tumbling across the ground affected by the presence of a fighter's feet. There were even teeth inside the mouths of the fighters and the textures were very crisp and immaculate. Shadows upon the ground were accurately translated to the position of the light source. Wind and rain pelted the fighters. And the characters... let me just say that there is currently no comparison point with this game at this time. Their detail and diversification is uncanny. Character's like Sophita are dare I say it... beautiful. Lizardman is just wicked, and I laughed out loud when I saw his "victory poses," and that gutteral growling he makes. Character mouths move appropriately to the Japanese that is being spoken. The chothing they wear acts so realistically, and the the motion capture is immaculate. It's that damn good. The quality in rendering is second to none. The battle arena environments are stunning to say the least, all rendered beautifully, with so much detail. I thought the rats running around on Voldo's stage were just a kick ass touch. I have never seen a fighting game this good. I saw this game in an arcade once, but it wasn't even as good as the Dreamcast. WOW! I say it again, WOW! This game makes me proud to be a Dreamcast owner.

The music in Soul Calibur is definitely where it should be in terms of that "epic battle" feel with strong symphonic driving epic background music that matches tonally the blow by blow of a war, a battle of all battles. No stage has the same music. The music is just in your face throughout this game. This beats the pants off of the alleged musical quality RPG's these days, and any fighter I've ever played before now. Way to go Namco! Video Gamer X gives this game a golden statue for best game of the year in 1999 (The music is what seals it for me considering few games go that EXTRA mile in this category, and they did it here), I mean, somebody actually figured out that if you combine bad ass music with awesome graphics, and unparalleled gameplay you have a game that falls into that category of legendary, completely legendary. Why didn't someone do this before in this genre? Never before have I seen a game with spoken voices like this so well implimented with mouth movement, and so well carried. Hell few games on Playstation or N64 even have spoken voices, let alone anything of this magnatude. It's all spoken in Japanese, which makes it just seem cooler. Really, this isn't just me saying this to make you think it makes the game better because nothing is spoken in English, rather when these guys say, "I will see you in Hell" in Japanese, it just sounds more hardass than it does in English, almost like Klingon on Star Trek. You know these guys and badgirls mean business. Some other sounds include the clangs of metal against metal,

You know, when it comes to a fighting game, I've never found one that plays so well that it's like it fits like a glove, there is so much you can do, so many moves. I do believe that there are dozens and dozens of moves each character has. Everything is fluid and the dynamic. A move can be tweaked many different ways, and you can even use the 8 way run feature to get out of the way of a novice player that doesn't think in 3 dimensions. After I played this for a few weeks straight I was unstoppable, racking up consecutive victories on people who challenged me on this. (however there's always that one kid, that plays it even more than I do and would probably be a challenge, but I don't know him yet) Each character impliments a different weapon like stalves, swords, axes, and nun-chukas. Execution is flawless, without hesitation, unlike games that I became frustrated with like Tekken for Playstation. When I press a button, I expect that fist to be coming out the milisecond I press it, not 3/4 of a second later and I get plastered. The combos are limitless in Soul Calibur, and the better you are, the more deadly you are. "This Victory Strenthens the Soul of Video Gamer X!" ha!

This is the kind of game that you just can't put down. I can replay it, and replay it, and love it still, yeah, it does get a little comfortable and familiar like an old favorite shirt and a little worn around the edges after the 300 time in a row that you beat Inferno, but playing single player Arcade mode is just the very fringes of what Namco has done with this. If you didn't notice there is survival mode, and mission battle where you are required to complete certain tasks to earn points which you can use to reveal tons of secrets and bonus especially in the Soul Calibur museum. You know I'm writing this review months after I got the game on the same day the Dreamcast released, and I STILL PLAY IT. Maybe not everyday but at least a few times a week. The challenge is always there, there is always something else I can do, another envelope I can pass. This is one of the "those games" that live beyond their shelf life, and will still be fun when you dust it off years from now. It's like the glory NES and SNES days, games were great, and they became embedded into the memories of gamers who played them.

The only chink in the armor of this game is the endings for the fighters. It would have been kind of cool if they had rendered polygonal endings involving some story, instead there are monocromatic drawings and some text about the fighter's victory and attainment of the soul edge. Maybe it's the RPG fan in me that wants something like this, but this is a fighter genre game, and my expectations in the storyline department don't really apply much here.

If you don't go get this game you are a fool. You don't have a right to call yourself a gamer if you don't even make an effort to play and view this game for yourself. It's just beyond the scope of what has come before in the fighting game genre. Even if you don't like fighting games as a rule, try it and you will become a believer. This game shows that SEGA Dreamcast can become a big player in the console wars, and Namco delivers a complete package here. You have all the bells and whistles, and when I play a game on N64, then Dreamcast, this seems light years better, truly. When I got this game the first day with my Dreamcast, and Sonic Adventure, I was stoked. I was just in bliss seeing this. This is what gaming's all about. This is what I used to lie in bed thinking about when I was 10, hoping for the day when it would be like this. It's a great time to be a gamer.