Soul Calibur 2..... yes!(my first impressions)
So I leave work the other day, and make my rounds to the other game stores in the mall to see if anyone traded in something precious that I had to have. I was talkig with the cats at EB, about fighting games mostly. He was saying how much he liked Soul Calibur, and that reminded him that someone mentioned that Soul Calibur 2 was at the arcade in the mall. So we decided to go check it out, since he was leaving work in five minutes anyway.
Lo and behold, there the mighty machine stood. Smelling of freshness. No one was playing it to my suprize. So we bellied up to the controls and kicked each pothers asses for an hour. It was damn good fun.
Visuals. The game reminds me of Virtua Fighter 4 in this respect, because the visuals didnt knock my socks off right away. The more I played the, the more I noticed nice little graphical touches. Its a subtle beauty. The areans are esspecially good looking.
Sound. I didnt notice the music, but the voices really sucked. Thats my only complaint though. Everyone seems to have thier own little sayings, and having Talim say, "I see you!" every five seconds got on my goddamn nerves.
Gameplay. I dunno what it is, be everything feels tighter, and more refined. Its faster for sure, and the battles feel more strategy based than before. Its definitly better over all IMO. I only got to play a little bit, so maybe Im not noticing everything, and Im not a fighting game afficinado, so I probably cant tell you each little gameplay quirk. The tracking seemed a helluva lot better, and the physics near the edges of the ring seemed alot more fair. One thing I noticed is that i was having to adopt very diffrent strategies for each person I fought. In SC1, I just did pretty much the same stuff over and over again that qould guarantee victory, but that not gonna happen here. If I wanna win consistantly, Im gonna hafta concentrate alot more. I liked that alot.
Over all, I like it alot. I think its a fantastic game, and is leaps and bounds better than Soul Calibur. I havent put in alot of time with it, so that may change. First impressions thus far though, are very good.
Z-roe
My impressions as well...
Well I just popped into Playland (gaming heaven) here in State College yesterday and played some SC2 and was very impressed.
It has a new look--reminded me more of a PS2 style game graphically this time around...a little bit muddier in the graphics, but very nice.
Sound--yeah I have to agree with Z, some of the voices got old, and I would much prefer Japanese voices to some of the sayings, but I found myself liking some of them--it seemed to help define thier personality..to be honest I hardly noticed the music--don't know if that's good or bad...
Gameplay? Amazing. Nice parry technic which opens up your opponent to a counter--you hit forward and block and then advance. I think you do it differently for low attacks...
Grabs are really cool and seem a little harder to pull off. Edge outs are much less frequent. Characters can still charge up their weapon and also do mini charge strikes by hitting two buttons together or what not...
Now on to combos--you can do some serious juggling in this game--certain moves will bounce a character off the ground and then you can keep comboing them and once they're on the ground you can still beat them, so it's important to learn side-rolling and what not as soon as possible.
The movement is a lot more free and I found it hard to land any attacks on some of my opponents because they kept moving circularly.
Some of the characters have been renamed but are basically the same fight-style wise as before--like Sophitia became Cassandra, etc. (not sure if the originals will be unlockable...), while a bunch from the past returned--Xianghua is quite devastating in this game. I noticed that they made Taki and Ivy even more...um...bouncy than before...looks like they followed DOA's character design mentality...nice improvement in my book...
There are some new characters--Raphael--possibly a replacement for Cervantes?--I think he is using C's sword...and this little chick who I was a lot (I can't remember her name--Talim?)--she uses these little blade weapons and is annoyingly fast, much faster than Xianghua...with nice charge attacks...
I'm sure I missed a ton, but only played it for an hour or so. No characters were unlocked yet. But this game is definitely a fine weapons-based fighter.
