Tag Archives: Bandai Namco

Soulcalibur VI — Issue 48

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A new stage of history
Soul­cal­ibur returns to its roots

It’s been a long time since Soul­cal­ibur was good. And I mean, real­ly good, where it’s about the fight­ing and the locales and the sick char­ac­ter designs. Because make no mis­take, Soul­cal­ibur hit a brick wall right about the time of the fourth entry. Seri­ous­ly, no one asked for Star Wars draped all over Soul­cal­ibur, yet there we were with Yoda and the gang mak­ing them­selves at home in the series known for its sword and sor­cery. But then some­thing hap­pened: Some­one on Project Soul said, “you know what would be great? Return­ing back to the thing that made us suc­cess­ful in the first place: Soul­cal­ibur.” And here we are with the sixth entry and it’s a return to form.

Soul­cal­ibur VI is essen­tial­ly a retelling of the sec­ond game in the series, Soul­cal­ibur. The evil sword Soul Edge has fall­en into the wrong hands through­out his­to­ry, and it has now found its way into the embrace of one Siegfried. Sigfried, hav­ing lost his ten­u­ous grasp on san­i­ty and real­i­ty in gen­er­al, has trans­formed into the Azure Knight, bet­ter known as Night­mare, and begun wreak­ing hav­oc on the world in this demon­ic pos­sessed guise. There are those who seek the sword for right­eous rea­sons and those who seek it for greed and glo­ry, but the sword must be stopped. Because it’s a retread of Soul­cal­ibur, not too much has changed sto­ry-wise. The entire cast of the game has returned with some new folks sprin­kled in for good mea­sure. This is fine because that cast was leg­endary and set the stan­dard for future entries.


But what if you want­ed to do a lit­tle some­thing dif­fer­ent this time around? The excel­lent char­ac­ter cre­ator has every­thing cov­ered. This mode is so well done and such a time sink. I spent at least two hours mak­ing a rea­son­able fac­sim­i­le of the Cap­com’s Ruby Heart — my favorite pirate — and it was pain­less and easy to do, even with the default offer­ings. This cre­ator mode has been around a long time in Soul­cal­ibur — since the third game — but here it’s refined and pol­ished. I spent more time here than any­where else, and what I want­ed to make was only lim­it­ed by my lack of ideas.

Despite lack­ing in skill with Soul­cal­ibur over the years, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the ease of jump­ing into fight­ing. I have had an extend­ed absence from the series, but I could still pull off moves and com­bos with old favorites like Mit­su­ru­gi, Cer­vantes, Ivy and Vol­do. The fight­ing felt pol­ished and clean, much like old­er entries, which is crit­i­cal in draw­ing in some­one like me that has­n’t real­ly played much since Soul­cal­ibur II.

Anoth­er good nos­tal­gic draw was the pre­sen­ta­tion. Soul­cal­ibur as a series has nev­er lacked in the aes­thet­ics depart­ment, and this game is no dif­fer­ent. It looks nice, with good char­ac­ter mod­els and entic­ing back­grounds. Because it’s basi­cal­ly a remake, the back­grounds are ref­er­ences to pre­vi­ous stages but with a more mod­ern cleanup job applied. I absolute­ly loved the orig­i­nal Soul­cal­ibur’s look and still do, and this ver­sion does good in remind­ing me of why that is. While not quite as ground­break­ing in its graph­ics as the arcade and Dream­cast port were 25 years ago, they’re still quite breath­tak­ing and beautiful.

And, there isn’t too much to dis­like about Soul­cal­ibur VI. I’m not fond of the AI dif­fi­cul­ty, which seems a lit­tle too spot­ty. A few match­es felt like rub­ber band­ing in the sec­ond round if I won the first round, but then if there was a third round, the AI would just stand there and let me wail away. That’s weird in a fight­ing game, but then again, most Soul­cal­ibur entries felt that way in the begin­ning of the series. I just wish that was fixed by the sixth game.

Over­all, Soul­cal­ibur VI tries to make up for the mis­steps of the past with a sol­id re-imag­in­ing and return to its roots. Though it’s been five years since release and no new con­tent has been on the hori­zon, it’s a still a viable fight­ing game for those who haven’t dived back into the world of souls. The soul still burns in this rehabbed and reformed sequel.

Retro Replay — Soulcalibur II (GameCube version) — Issue 41

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Heart and soul of calibur

Some­times, when you’re the sequel to one of the great­est fight­ing games of all time, you need no intro­duc­tion and you’re allowed to have repeat praise heaped on your shoulders.

We pre­vi­ous­ly reviewed the PlaySta­tion 2 ver­sion of Soul­cal­ibur II in 4Q2010, yet here we are again talk­ing about it in glow­ing terms for the Game­Cube ver­sion. There isn’t much new to say oth­er than this port is just as beau­ti­ful as the PS2 version. 

With the addi­tion of Link to the cast for this ver­sion, the game is even bet­ter. Link fits right in with the pro­ceed­ings and man­ages to unbal­ance the game heav­i­ly in his favor. He’s the per­fect addi­tion, to be honest.

With a killer sound­track, beau­ti­ful graph­ics that hold up after 20 years, a deep sto­ry­line and supe­ri­or game­play to almost every­thing avail­able on the mar­ket at the time, Soul­cal­ibur II is a wor­thy suc­ces­sor in every way to one of the great­est fight­ing games ever made.

Gundam Versus — Issue 38

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Gun­dam soars in top-notch mecha simulator

I’m a HUGE Gun­dam fan. Next to my love of Mega Man, Gun­dam is my sec­ond great­est obses­sion. Because of lim­it­ed space, I’ll have to be con­tent with the lim­it­ed Gun­dam merch that I have amassed. The lat­est addi­tion was giv­en to me for my recent birth­day; it made me recall play­ing a Gun­dam arcade fight­ing game at Nashicon 2016. Would it serve to sat­is­fy my hunger for giant robots caus­ing mas­sive dam­age and beat­ing them­selves to obliv­ion? “Gun­dam Ver­sus” for PlaySta­tion 4 gave me my answer.

Gun­dam Ver­sus has some unique advan­tages going for it as a fight­ing game. Its source mate­r­i­al is based on a uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized ani­me series. Unlike oth­er fight­ing games, it does not have a sto­ry­line, allow­ing you to jump straight to the action with­out know­ing back­ground sto­ry. That sold me as some­one who knows a series’ back­ground, not need­ing knowl­edge about spe­cif­ic char­ac­ters’ background.

The abil­i­ty to choose a series favorite from a ros­ter of more than 90 mobile suits from var­i­ous Gun­dam works ensures that you are not lim­it­ed to char­ac­ters in Gun­dam series only aired in the U.S. Each stage is open area, allow­ing you to plan offense or defense with the ben­e­fit of hid­ing or run­ning from your oppo­nents while recov­er­ing from attacks. Also, you can have two addi­tion­al char­ac­ters to back you with one serv­ing as a strik­ing part­ner to tag team oppos­ing forces with the per­fect tim­ing. They are avail­able to have a train­ing ses­sion to get you famil­iar with your cho­sen suit.

Those who are not accus­tomed to run-and-gun gam­ing will get frus­trat­ed and want to quit play­ing. The open bat­tle­field requires a 360-degree view, which the PS4 con­trols are decent enough to help han­dle the action. While Gun­dam Ver­sus made an hon­or­able attempt to include all Gun­dam ele­ments, some open­ing themes were played on repeat way too much and that took away the focus from game­play and placed it on the music. Music for the game is top notch, which is to be expect­ed from the Bandai Nam­co sound team. This was the first time the team did an inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Czech Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra for the open­ing visu­al. That adds some fla­vor and extras to the pre­sen­ta­tion. While I was dis­ap­point­ed that the game didn’t offer an Eng­lish dub track, the orig­i­nal Japan­ese audio for the Gun­dam fran­chise ensured that Ver­sus has the appro­pri­ate Gun­dam feel.

A down­side is that cer­tain series I liked and want­ed to use suits from are stuck as paid con­tent, which left Gun­dam fans like me at Bandai Namco’s mer­cy regard­ing afford­able pricing.

Gun­dam Ver­sus is a tes­ti­mo­ny of how ani­me, sci-fi and fight­ing games have merged to cre­ate a prod­uct that is playable for every­one, regard­less of fan­dom knowl­edge. As a Gun­dam afi­ciona­do, Ver­sus is well worth the time spent play­ing and is the next best thing to own­ing a Gun­dam or mobile suit. I wel­come this new addi­tion to my Gun­dam col­lec­tion as I con­tin­ue my quest to build a mas­ter­piece col­lec­tion of all things Gundam.

Tekken 7: Fated Retribution — Issue 38

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Tekken’s fate unknown after mile­stone entry

Tekken is about a cer­tain sub­stance and style. The fight­ing engine is so deep in Tekken that if you’re just start­ing with the sev­enth game, you’re at an imme­di­ate dis­ad­van­tage because you’re behind. Way behind. Sto­ry-wise, you’re behind, too. There’s so much going on with the Mishi­ma clan that you’re bound to be ask­ing the ques­tion: Why now? Tekken isn’t just answer­ing that; it’s pos­ing the ques­tion of what’s next?

For the Mishi­ma clan — and Tekken’s ros­ter at large — the future is the ques­tion on everyone’s mind, but to get there, Tekken 7 stakes its ambi­tions on look­ing back to tell the sto­ry of the future. Spoil­er alert: With Hei­hachi gone, there’s only Kazuya and Jin left to car­ry on the blood feud of the clan. The sur­round­ing enti­ties are on either side of the con­flict between father and son, and there will be casu­al­ties. But that isn’t Tekken 7’s main sto­ry to tell. Real­ly, it’s two ques­tions: How did Kazuya become enmeshed in the dev­il gene fool­ish­ness, and how is Hei­hachi entan­gled in that as well? The answers lay with new char­ac­ter Kazu­mi Mishi­ma, Kazuya’s moth­er and Heihachi’s wife. She plays a cen­tral role in unrav­el­ing the mys­tery of Kazuya’s trans­for­ma­tion using the dev­il gene and why Hei­hachi threw his child off a cliff more than 40 years before.

While Bandai Nam­co is set­ting up the pay­off, look around. You’re in a Tekken game and many things will be true at once: The sound will be phe­nom­e­nal, and the graph­ics will be stun­ning. After all, this is a Tekken title; the King of the Iron Fist tour­na­ment does not slouch. What’s strik­ing is, this is a four-year-old game and it still looks decent. Tekken has nev­er been one to hold back when it comes to looks, and even with the upgrad­ed PlaySta­tion 4 Pro, it’s still a good-look­ing game. Tekken 7 could look worse with the ben­e­fit of more pro­cess­ing pow­er, and some sec­tions do show the age of the game. How­ev­er, it’s min­i­mal as far as Tekken is con­cerned, and Tekken 7 is still a pow­er­house when com­pared to every­thing else on the market.

The sound­track is excel­lent, though I want­ed a lit­tle more from it. I real­ize that not every Tekken sound­track is going to be the first Tag, where every track was a banger. How­ev­er, this is Tekken, and a cer­tain bar has been set by past games that cur­rent games must live up to. There are some bangers here, but not near­ly enough. For ref­er­ence, I have every Tekken sound­track ever released, arcade and home ver­sions. For the first four games, I have the entire sound­track saved on my iPod. As the series pro­gressed, I had few­er songs from each sound­track. As of Tekken 7, I have two tracks. It’s a good sound­track, but it just isn’t any­thing I haven’t heard before in a Tekken game. Tekken 8, or what­ev­er it will be called, will have to step things up in the sound department.

As far as Tekken’s playa­bil­i­ty, I can’t real­ly attest to it on a hands-on lev­el. Full dis­clo­sure: I’m not a good Tekken play­er. That said, how­ev­er, I find it a lit­tle eas­i­er to pick up Tekken and play with the new fea­tures added in the arcade mode. I real­ly like that there’s an easy com­bo assist fea­ture. It makes it far less frus­trat­ing to learn the com­bo sys­tem, and it makes it much eas­i­er for begin­ners to under­stand how moves flow together.

Tekken, despite hav­ing only four attack but­tons, has always been about depth, and that’s scary for the unini­ti­at­ed like myself. With the assist fea­ture, I’m more inclined to take the time to learn and dig just a lit­tle deep­er with the series. It’s a fan­tas­tic addi­tion that needs to stick around in future entries.

The char­ac­ter cus­tomiza­tion mode also deserves some praise as it’s com­ing along nice­ly. It’s been around now for at least three games, and it’s got­ten bet­ter each iter­a­tion. This is part of the depth of Tekken — along with its engine and com­bo sys­tem — that makes it such a great series. Tekken 7 takes care of the details, and the obvi­ous love and care put into the cus­tomiza­tion sys­tem gives the game con­tin­ued life, even as it gets a lit­tle long in the tooth. The fact that new char­ac­ters and upgrades are still being released is fan­tas­tic con­sid­er­ing the game’s age.

With the sto­ry­line dic­tat­ing growth and the graph­ics engine need­ing to catch up to oth­er fight­ing game dar­lings, Tekken has its work cut out in keep­ing up with the sur­round­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Tekken 7 does an admirable job demon­strat­ing its sta­bil­i­ty and abil­i­ty to lead the pack as the King of the Iron Fist, and its longevi­ty and intu­itive fea­tures con­tin­ue to make it an attrac­tive option for those need­ing a fix from Mishi­ma and Co. Tekken 7 is good enough to keep its crown and can prob­a­bly shrug off new chal­lenges for the throne until its time for the eighth go-round. Long live the king.