Soul Calibur II Sparks Subdued Joy

Thanks to GameSpy for their (similar, and in descending score order) Xbox, Gamecube, and PlayStation 2 reviews of the newly-released Soul Calibur II, plus a detailed Soul Calibur II: Pile-On! article, where-in "...a battle royale of GameSpy's biggest SCII fans pick apart a hit." Opinions? One editor suggests: "It's a fabulous game, but the original Soul Calibur wasn't just an excellent game: it started a new age for fighters. On the other hand, SCII - no matter how good it is - is just an incremental upgrade, a fairly routine fighter sequel."

Comments

Someday...

[Bagels]

Methinks it would be interesting if someday they made a variety of Soul Calibur II allowing you to pit the three "exclusive" characters against each other - it might make for a most interesting competition at a big gaming show, like E3.

PC? PC? PC?

[shaka999]

So where are the fighting games for a PC? If you port to the xbox why not take the next step?

Personally I don't own a console. I can't really justify it but I would be willing to purchase a figting game for the PC now and then.

The old excuse was lack of a controller but there are plenty of good ones on the market these days.

Re:PC? PC? PC?

[Zathrus]

So where are the fighting games for a PC? If you port to the xbox why not take the next step?

The PC just isn't designed for multiplayer in the same way consoles are. PC's still have the edge in graphics, networking, and configurability, but they're very much oriented toward one person per unit -- single keyboard, single mouse, single screen, single seat.

Consoles, on the other hand, are oriented toward multiple people sitting down and playing on the same unit. They've made some advancements toward network gaming, but they're still nowhere close to PCs. And their graphics are still way behind (yes, they are... remember that most games are still interlaced, so you have an effective resolution of ~250 lines, versus 768 (1024x768) - 1200 (1600x1200) lines on a PC. The consoles often can't drive progressive games because of insufficient CPU power; even SC2 on the most powerful platform has a max resolution of 1920x540 (1080i, 16:9) or 960x720 (720p, 4:3)).

Yeah, porting to the Xbox is a step, but it's a pretty far leap from porting to the PC. It's probably a good bit easier to write for the PC and port to the Xbox -- you're going from a wildly uncontrolled environment (3-5 variations of OS, a couple dozen graphics cards, and god knows how many peripherals/motherboards) to a very controlled one. Reversing that port is doable, but it can take a lot of time and code rewriting to avoid special cases. And while you know that they should play with a controller, you'd better support other inputs as well. Fun.

I just bought a PS2 a week ago... it's pretty fun. Most of the games have no overlap with the PC, and I'll probably not buy games (in the future) that do overlap. And while I still love playing BF1942 on my PC, and am looking forward to HL2 and D3, being able to pop in Tekken4, Crash Bandicoot, GTA (came with the PS2), or a few other games and just play them is refreshingly simple.

Re:PC? PC? PC?

[bigman2003]

I used to be a huge PC gamer. I thought it kicked butt over all of the consoles. 1200X1600! How can a console compare?!

Then I got an Xbox, and I haven't even considered playing games on the PC since then.

It is a totally different way to play, and on many game genres, it is hugely better. Fighting games fall into that category.

As someone else mentioned, playing against your friends is 10* easier on a console. Plus, the controllers are much better on the console (for this type of game). Yes, you can get gamepads on the PC (I have one) but they are not nearly as good as a console controller. Also, how many people actually own decent gamepads for the PC?

It would be a nightmare to sell the game on a PC, and you have thousands of kids bummed out because they don't have a gamepad, and controlling a fighting game on the keyboard is nearly impossible.

On the other hand, most RTS games would not work on a console. I can't imagine how a game like 'Rise of Nations' would work. Or, if you would even want it to.

The difference in games can be correlated to your seating style while playing. I play my console while sitting on the couch, leaned back (usually..unless the Covenant is coming on really strong, and I'm nearly out of ammo- then I have to lean forward) while PC games are played in an upright, or forward leaning position. More thinking can be done that way. Fighting games aren't usually 'thinking' games.

Re:EDGE score and controllers

[Moonshadow]

I actually have to agree with the controller thing. I've played the demo on all three consoles (fanboy? Me? Naaaah...) and I've found I like the Gamecube controller best, despite my rather oversized hands. The PS2's 4-button layout is similar to the DC's, which makes the transition easy, but I was having serious problems with the 8-way run on the PS2 - the analog stick seemed to always be "walk", despite double-tapping, and the plus pad seemed to be "run". Perhaps it's just that I'm not used to it, but that departure made it fairly difficult to adjust to. The XBox controller was just a little unwieldy for a fighter - it didn't seem quite right. The GC controller, while layed out differently than the DC, was actually easy to get used to. The A, Y and Y buttons function as horizontal and vertical attack, respectively, with the X as kick, and B and R as block. The addition of R as block was very welcome, as it makes it possible to do both types of throws relatively easy, as opposed to the block/vertical awkwardness of the DC version.

I do expect, though, that if you are comfortable with a given controller, you won't have a problem with the controls. The Soul Calibur games are hardly known for their clunky controls. :)

I'm picking my order up today.