GameTech: Soul survivor still has capacity to thrill

After a break of six years, we’ve finally seen another entry in the world’s best weapon-based fighting game. Soul Calibur 6 has hit the shelves (probably with a giant axe) and is thankfully a big improvement on the previous entry.

Some old favourites are back, including the wonderful create-a-freak custom character mode, and there’s even a guest appearance by none other than Geralt of Rivia.

For the unaware, or unconscious-by-sledgehammer, Soul Calibur is a 3D fighting game that revolves around the usage of weapons, with characters bearing more than just grimaces and grudges. The weapons range from spears to samurai swords to nunchuks and giant hammers, with each one requiring a very different playstyle. If you want gaming’s best exhibition of martial arts, try watching the Soul Calibur ‘title screen’ demoes, which have shown some of the most beautiful kung fu dancing this side of those crouching tigers.

The key to success involves learning the weapon combinations, or alternatively button-mashing until the bad man is dead. Skilled players will be able to parry and dodge with perfect timing, which leads to a fighting game that is much more about strategy and picking your moment than all-out attack, just as weapon-based battles should be.

In Soul Calibur 6, there’s a new addition to the parry system that involves a rock-paper-scissors like situation and can lead to big counter-attacks. We can’t say that we understand it fully, but that might be because we had the paper and the other guy had the giant hell-scissors. It does, however, add another layer of strategy to an already brilliant system.

In other developments, the truly perfect custom character mode allows you to create even more hideous abominations than ever before, with lizardmen and other base skins now available along with the human kind.

Some of this writer’s best gaming memories come from the randomly-generated monstrosities given up by this mode over the years. You’ve never known fear until a tutu-wearing clown starts hissing at you from behind a pair of knives.

There’s also a new RPG-style mode that provides an overhead map and collectibles and side-quests and the works, along with the standard story mode that keeps the Soul Calibur mythos trundling along. (But really, when a lizardman is fighting a zombie pirate, what explanation do we need?).

Tying the whole experience together is probably the best soundtrack of the year, a feature that Soul Calibur has always completely over-delivered upon. So yes, the soul still burns with Soul Calibur 6, if that’s a good thing. Who cares — it’s a lizardman fighting a zombie!

CHANGE OF DIRECTION

Speaking of zombies, let’s talk about virtual reality. Ok, so VR isn’t exactly dead-tech-walking, but the obstacles that faced the bright new hope of gaming certainly haven’t lessened much in the last year. We count ourselves among the converted — VR is truly spellbinding when first experienced and done properly — but Facebook are aiming for slightly different markets.

Having bought Oculus for billions, one of the company’s founders has now left Facebook due to rumoured ‘differences in opinion’ over the direction of VR. Brendan Iribe left Facebook’s VR division stating: “Although we’re still far from delivering the magical smart glasses we all dream about, now they are nearly within our reach.” Iribe was Facebook’s head of PC VR development, leading many to believe Facebook is now fully focusing on their portable, mass market Oculus Go headsets instead of full-blown high-end gaming.

RADIO RECOGNITION

Finally, you know that something has been accepted into the mainstream when it hits BBC radio. This Saturday at 3pm, Matthew Sweet will present a programme on BBC Radio 3 dedicated to the current ‘Video Games: Design/Play/Disrupt’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Sweet will be joined by Stephen Baysted, who wrote music for Project CARs and a few other vehicular games. They will discuss the nature of writing music for games and play examples.