As we broach the next generation of consoles, it's interesting to see how far we've come with the current generation. To be fair, the first batch of PS2 games were pretty crappy looking, and there's been an awful of games in between that have also looked ropey. Tekken Tag was the first fighter available on the PS2, which looked pretty decent when you put it up against Tekken 3, but fast forward to Soulcalibur (when did it become one word?) 3 and you really have to wonder if these games are run on the same hardware. This game is really pretty - the animation is startlingly good, the characters themselves look good, and the backgrounds are magnificent in places. But as we all know, beauty can be only skin deep.
Soulcalibur 3 has a total of 29 characters available, although as usual most are unavailable at the start of the game. The others must be unlocked through the various modes the game offers – there's the usual versus modes, as well as a story mode (where you take a character through a short story arc), a tournament mode (with both knockout and league formats) and a sort of strategy/story hybrid mode (more on that later). You can also create your own character with the preset parts that the game has – it's initially a small pool of items you can choose from but as you play the various modes you'll unlock hundreds more – faces, clothes, weapons, bags, armour – it's an impressive array of items that can let you make thousands of different characters.
The fighting engine has definitely had some tweaks done to it since Soulcalibur 2 – it's difficult to quantify exactly what, considering that I've not been a hardcore fighter fan for a little while now, but the general feel for me is that the fights flow more smoothly and combos are a little easier to get going. The difficulty is as hard as you want it to go – although I can't test the upper reaches of the AI, those that can tell me that it's as satisfying as AI can be. At the end of the day, you can set the challenge level wherever you want it and you'll get a good fight. Overall, as a one-on-one fighting game, Soulcalibur 3 is pretty much the dog’s bollocks.
The problem with most fighting games on a console is justifying the £35-45 RRP for anyone other than the hardcore fighters that want some home practice away from the arcade machine battle grounds as there is usually little outside of the arcade versus modes. Soulcalibur 3 gives it a good shot here with a story mode and a strategy mode. In the story mode each character has a story arc with various cut scenes that tell their latest story. Each story also has variable paths that are affected by decisions you make after some of the fights, giving you different cut scenes each time you play. It's really nice, and something not really seen elsewhere, but the story arcs are a bit shallow, very short, and each character's contradicts other character's arcs. I do hope that they extend this further in the future.
The strategy mode is also executed poorly, although it's the only place where you can really flex the muscles of and evolve your own characters. In this mode you lead your newly created characters into battle on an overhead map. You move the characters around the battlefield via preset routes on the map, and when they meet an enemy soldier or building they'll start fighting. In some cases this will then automatically change things to the usual Soulcalibur one on one fight, in others you will have to choose to fight in the usual way otherwise the two characters will just hit each other until one of them falls down. As they fight in battles your characters will slowly increase in ability, as well as earning you new items to adorn them with or fight with. If it sounds dull it's probably because it is dull – for an otherwise well thought out and produced game, the strategy element is absolute rubbish, and there are annoyingly long loading times for the single round fights. It has the feel that they simply created this mode to justify the 'create a fighter' part of the game. Kudos to Namco for trying it, and I hope they take the fighter creation and evolution side of things further in the future.
Which all leaves me in a bit of a sticky situation. This is a great fighting game, but can I mark it down for being pretty poor at doing something that other games in the genre don't even try to do (apart from Tekken 5's awful 'Devil Within' mode)? No, I don't think so - Soulcalibur 3 is an excellent fighter.
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