Soul Calibur III

[Anya 0]

The May Gamepro has the first pics and info for SC III. Looks like more of the same. The big new feature sounds like some kind of create-a-character mode but it's not really specific about the details.

 

And it's exclusive to PS2....

[Matt Young 0]

Fuck Namco.

 

I've bought more Namco games in the last few years probably than any other developer save Nintendo, so this news disappoints me greatly. I have Soul Calibur for Dreamcast and SCII for the GameCube and they're amongst my favorite fighting games of all time. Needless to say, I have been eagerly anticipating SCIII. Now they are going to reelase it for the one system I don't have.

 

Yes, I'm planning on getting a PS2 anyway once I can afford it. But this decision is stupid for several reasons. There are a lot of Xbox owners (and to a lesser extent, GC owners) who love the SC series but don't own a PS2. Namco's giving up a ton of money here. I have a feeling that they'll be releasing the game for the other systems later on, but it should be simultaneous.

 

Most importantly, they NEED to release the game for Xbox and/or Xbox 2. Soul Calibur III with Live play would be godly, and I could actually compete well in that, unlike Street Fighter AC.

[Scroby 0]

And it's exclusive to PS2....

 

BULLSHIT!

[AndrewTS 0]

This doesn't seem to make much sense, business-wise. It sold truckloads on GC and did rather well on XB I believe.

 

Must be some politics going on with Sony, who Namco has often seemed to be joined at the hip with.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Fuck `em, then. I just won't buy it.

[Lightning Flik 0]

It was probably a business decision made by Namco execs who decided "ok, we need to make some more profits here. Do we A) increase prices, B) slash production, or C) reduce it down to one system so as to conserve the amount of manhours taken to rewrite the code for this game to each other system."

 

BTW, you wanna know which one saves you the most money? The answer really is C. Sadly. Then you have to decide on which system you would rather to leave it on. Sadly, all the major fighters are still with the PS2 as their main target, so it goes to the PS2. Even though I agree that most SC players are Xbox owners.

 

I doubt Sony really had to toss any money Namco's way.

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

Well, at least we know it'll look like crap..

 

(I like my PS2, but Namco's just being stupid about this, if it's true..)

[Anya 0]

I'm happy there's going to be no more Link.

[Vyce 0]

As long as Voldo remains, I will be happy.

[Use Your Illusion 0]

CONVERT TO SONY, INFIDELS

[Rendclaw 0]

This doesn't seem to make much sense, business-wise. It sold truckloads on GC and did rather well on XB I believe.

 

Must be some politics going on with Sony, who Namco has often seemed to be joined at the hip with.

Namco and Sony have been in bed for about 10 years now.

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

good thing I still like II so much then.

 

for the record, far and away the main reason I switched to Xbox was for Live. (especially once I found out that payment is optional)

[Jer 0]

Eh, if it's going to be on one system, I'm glad it's PS2, since all my sticks are for PS2. Otoh, online play, laggy as it would be, would still be fun, and converters aren't very expensive, so X-Box would have been nice too.

 

The one advantage of this is that the focus is going to be on the game this time, instead of on the horrible exclusives. The exclusives and the scrubs that used nothing but the exclusives were the worst part of SC2.

 

GamePro's preview was funny with how much it bashed SC2. 'Can Namco regain its footing in the fighting game arena after the ill-fated SC2?' or something. Then you flip back a few pages to their list of games that got all 5.0s. SC2. Um, derr? Gogo revisionist history!

[AndrewTS 0]

This doesn't seem to make much sense, business-wise.  It sold truckloads on GC and did rather well on XB I believe.

 

Must be some politics going on with Sony, who Namco has often seemed to be joined at the hip with.

Namco and Sony have been in bed for about 10 years now.

No kidding, since they used Sony's hardware for their arcade games, basically. However, SC was the first time they broke away from Sony for a major title. SC2 gave hope of them delivering on other consoles...

 

Now this.

 

Well, at least there's Klonoa Dream Champ Tournament.

 

Jer: Ah yes, Gamepro. Always there to remind you "yeah, Game Informer seems like the drizzling shits, but it could be worse!"

 

SC2 got a 5.0 for Fun Factor too, right?

 

The "create a character" will probably just be an expanded form of the T5 customization. Although it would be funny if they had special movesets you could assign that happened to be Heihachi, Spawn, and Link's.

[Anya 0]

I am thinking the Create-a-character stuff is more along the lines of arcade's Conquest mode. The article makes it sound more like you pick a character and just kinda customize them, like it was hyping "you pick their name and ocupation!!!" WOW!!!

 

 

And on the subject of bad fighting journalism, the GI review for T5 is horrible. Almost entirely references to 10 strings and other scrub favorites. They gave it something like a 8.5 and 8.7. A few pages later MKD got something like 8.7 and 9.5 and was hyped for how great it's gameplay is.

[Jer 0]

Name and occupation?! Will the innovation ever stop?!

 

Yeah, I'd be really surprised if SC3 is more than just a little upgrade with a few new characters, but you never know. At the very least they'll probably fix 2G and step-guard and make it play like SC2 was supposed to. I'm sort of excited, but it's so soon after T5 that I don't care as much as I did when SC2 or T5 were about to come out.

 

Any word on the arcade release? Hopefully they'll do cards again.

[AndrewTS 0]

Actually Anya, I could *swear* that before I gave the issue of GI to a friend, T5 got an 8.75. So you were close.

 

It should have had online play and multi-tiered arenas, damnit!

 

Anyone pick up a Gamepro lately for their T5 review? I wonder if the little cartoon guy thought it was worth bright red, fully-blown and ripped 5.0 cocaine highs across the board.

 

I know a friend who's pretty much sold on it if it lets him makes a Guts (of Berserk fame). He'd be happy just giving him Nightmare's moves if he could pick the Dragon Slayer.

[Anya 0]

The article says nothing about the arcade release. It doesn't even mention that there's going to be one. Cards would be good. So would a T5 style cabinet.

 

It's weird that's it's coming so soon. I am not big into SC in the first place and T5 is still fresh, so I have like no hype. I guess by the time it finally goes through testing and all that it'll be a while from now. I could see them releasing it on console and arcade at the same time at the end of the year. Seems like Namco may finally have got the idea that we're still going to play at the arcade when it's out on PS2. There was never any need for the insane waits.

 

So how bad were the problems in II? Seems like it died really fast, even worse than T4. With T4 everyone was bitching non-stop but there were still tournaments and a scene to follow. SC II just seemed to have fell off the radar.

[Anya 0]

8.7, 8.5...whatever. Same thing. The point is that they rambled on about 10 hit combos while saying how great MKD's gameplay is.

 

 

MKD's online play is what made me turn on that game.

 

Multi-tired arenas? GREAT! Now I can fall into a different looking arena inbetween getting owned by a little kid doing one of Noob's millions of infinites.

[Jer 0]

I didn't think SC2 was that bad, but I'm probably really biased since it was the first fighter I traveled to play, so I've got all these great memories of tournies and gatherings that are gonna make the game seem better than it was. Step-guard did put some annoying limitations on your offense, but it wasn't as bad as some people said, imo. Everyone in Seattle spent all summer telling me how bad it was, but I could never see what was so wrong with it. I even liked watching Mick and Rob play, even though everyone else booed them, heh.

 

I haven't wanted to go back since T5 came out, though. I think that's what killed the scene, more than anything. Almost everyone that played SC2 tried T5, and T5 was so good that none of them wanted to go back.

[Anya 0]

I know like nothing about even mid-level SCII. What is step guard and why is it a problem? I think I remember hearing about something with the sidestep that made certain moves too safe. Is this it?

[Jer 0]

Yeah, that's pretty close, but it's more like it made most moves too unsafe. Step-guard was just step, neutral, guard, and when you did it you'd get a slightly shorter step, but still long enough to step verticals, but then you'd cancel the step into block if you were attacked. It made step almost totally safe. In SC1, you could use step strategically to beat verticals, but you couldn't overuse it since it could be punished by horizontals. In SC2, step could only be punished by low, fast, long-range horizontals, which very few characters had (only X's 3A was really reliable at it, which consequently made her the best character in the game). That basically meant that there was no incentive not to step constantly. That also meant that verticals that weren't extremely fast were just useless, since they'd be stepped every time. The more people played, the more they realized that most problematic moves could just be stepped to one side or the other and punished. This limited all characters, and created a tourney scene that a lot of people found pretty boring, since most characters couldn't get away with using more than about ten different moves if they wanted to win.

[Anya 0]

I don't understand why Namco doesn't release extra versions like Sega does with VF to clear up problems like that. Although I know they did one with SC II early on. Apparently it wasn't enough. It would be easy to send to arcade owners and cost little.

[Jer 0]

Yeah, I'm not sure. They did make a lot of tweaks to the home versions, but they never fixed step-guard. I think partly it's that people didn't realize how strong it was until pretty late. The community as a whole didn't really see how turtly and limited the game could be until Evo 2003, when DTN won with a super safe Nightmare that used like five moves. By then the American version had probably already gone gold and the only people playing in arcades would be conquest scrubs that wouldn't care either way.

 

An SC2 Evo type thing would have been cool, though. Fix the glitches, add in Dante or something stupid to get the scrubs to buy it, and release it for $20. Heh.

[Positively Kanyon 0]

This doesn't seem to make much sense, business-wise. It sold truckloads on GC and did rather well on XB I believe.

I'm pretty sure that SCII sold the most copies on GC... As far as I know...

 

Why does it need to be exclusive to PS2? Does Sony need to sell more PS2s?

[Matt Young 0]

I just have to state for the record that as far as 3D fighters go, Soul Calibur 1 and 2>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Tekken series>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Mortal Kombat: DA and Deception.

 

I thought the current-gen Mortal Kombat games sucked, even the MK:D online play, and while the Tekken series is really good, I believe SC is a full step above.

 

Although, to be fair, I (regrettably) haven't played Tekken 5 due to not owning a PS2 yet.

[AndrewTS 0]

I thought the current-gen Mortal Kombat games sucked, even the MK:D online play,

 

You would be correct.

 

Although, to be fair, I (regrettably) haven't played Tekken 5 due to not owning a PS2 yet.

 

I'm shocked. SC2 and T5 are literally the only recent arcade fighters available for play to me within about a 40 mile radius. It should be easy to find a T5 machine if you aren't totally in the boonies.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

"Yay...let's make a new game and make sure we only release it on the oldest and most technologically limited system!"

[Jer 0]

Meh, for fighting games it really doesn't make that big of a difference that PS2 is a little less powerful than the other systems. System power hasn't improved gameplay in a fighter in a really long time. T5 could have been done on the PS1 and look like T3 and it would have played the same. And anyway, focusing on only PS2 lets Namco optimize the game for PS2. Don't expect another slowdown ridden mess like PS2 SC2. T5 really shows what PS2 is capable of, and imo looks as good as any fighter on X-Box. No reason SC3 wouldn't look that good.

[Guest Vitamin X]

"Yay...let's make a new game and make sure we only release it on the oldest and most technologically limited system!"

...and the largest userbase as well.