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"IGN Review Soul Calibur 2..."

... and I'm going to buy it as soon as it's released. Here's IGN's summing up of the game:

Closing Comments
The simple fact of the matter is, Soul Calibur II is best weapons-based fighter out there, period. It's also one of the best games in the fighting genre itself. There's a diverse selection of characters, a deep fighting system, a decent single-player mode, and the multiplayer is as fun as it ever was.

The problem (if that's what you want to call it) is that Soul Calibur on Dreamcast was, at the time of its release, an almost monumental achievement and breakthrough in fighting games. Soul Calibur II is essentially more of the same great stuff that made its predecessor the genre-defining game that it was, but in the context of the present day and the corresponding competition, the impact of such a game has been greatly reduced. Does that mean Soul Calibur II is old, outdated, and even obsolete? Absolutely not. What it does mean is that Soul Calibur did a lot things right the first time and ironically, that works against the sequel to a degree.

And so, while evolution is not always mandatory, sometimes pushing the boundaries can lead to bigger and better things. In the case of Soul Calibur II, contentment will do just fine.

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And they gave it 9.2 out of 10. I'm off to pre-order, as I loved the original...

Actually I found Soul Caliber more fluid than Tekken and also I think it has a faster pace.

As for Tekken 4, I thought that was crap. felt like I was controlling a figure made of boulders with no joints rather than fighters.
Tekken is ok, but its not all that great. Tekken was the starting pad then I think the series reached its peak at around Tekken 2/Tekken 3. Then Tekken Tag was rushed out for the PS2's release and even though it played pretty much at the same pace, it was easy to see it was a rush job. Then when I played Tekken 4 I was pretty disappointed - I found the characters suddenly almost uncontrollable and I lost interest pretty quickly with it.

With Soul Caliber, I found the fighting pretty fluid and I was able to switch between high and low attacks really well, even with the bigger characters such as Nightmare. With Tekken, of course you can link moves together, but it tends to be more about timing every button press to its precise millisecond.
With Soul caliber, I found that I was creating combos and moving around based on watching the fighters movements cause the animation was that good, rather than quickly hammering buttons in quick succession as you do in Tekken.

For me, Soul Caliber is a lot better than Tekken and is still one of the best beat em ups I've ever played.

I enjoyed the odler Tekken 3 much more. Its a good game but highly over rated. Probably playing it after playing Dead or Alive 3 was a bad idea as I class Dead or Alive 3 as the future of fighting games.

But soul Caliber was out in what? 1999? Look at how good the fighting animations were, how fluid it was and the balance of fighters. It did have it all.

I have the original Soul Calibur and its unbelievably over rated. At its bare bones its a Tekken game with weapons. It plays and feels like an old Tekken game. Not a bad thing but certainly not as good as people raved on. Tekken 4 and Dead or Alive 3 are more well rounded games yet they aren't hailed as the greatest fighting games ever. That makes me laugh when I read back over IGN's review.

Nah Alaister I think you're well off the mark about judging this one. Soul Caliber 2 looks great and plays so well. At least the first one did anyway. Try the demo of it next month in OXM if you want.

Its like any beat em up- the more you put into it the more you'll get out at the end.

What a fan of fighting games tends to look for is a good fighting system. There may be similar characters around over various games, but Tekken plays differently to DOA and something like Streetfighter 2 plays differently to Soul Caliber, etc.

Fighting games realy have that same limitation as sports games do - afterall, a lot of fighting methods are even thought of as sports. To improve the fighting genre, you really need to create a system that allows fluid movement rather than moves with fixed recovery times.

Now it looks average at best and it plays a lot less than satisfying. Mos over rated game ever.

Soul Caliber was so far ahead of its time in the console market. Nothing looked as good as it untill GT3 arrived with its stunning replays.

I would say the same thing about racing games - another genre drowning in a glut of samey gameplay and mediocrity.

I would say that sports games are progressing [albeit slowly] - all they can do is become more and more realistic, there's nowhere else they can go really.

But if you're a fan of a genre then that's fine, but surely even fans of a genre want the genre to evolve, and I can't see where beat-em-ups can go from where they are at now.

But then the same can be said about most genres such as racing, platform, sports, etc...

If you like a genre then you tend to still really enjoy the games, even if a lot of them are similar in some form or another.

I can play Tekken, but I prefer DOA and Soul Caliber - those 2 are my favourite fighting games. I also still enjoy 2D beat em ups that contain SNK fighters - but its getting hard to control them now because none of the joypads seem suitable for those types of games anymore.