Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny – hands-on

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Dang purty, but will it be fun by your lonesome?

Broken Destiny also introduces the finely mustachioed Dampierre to the fray, a hero-turned-villain/jokester with a variety of moves that will elicit a giggle the first time you see them and most likely drive you crazy once he’s done them to you a billion times. You can opt to create a character using the same customization options weloved in SC IV, or you can unlock a variety of new costumes and accessories by playing through the various game modes.

Now, Namco appears to have gone through a lot of trouble crafting unique patterns of artificial intelligence for its fighters so that they resemble human players: they’ve even created imaginary profiles (complete with win/loss records and “personality traits”) that you can fight against in Quick Play mode. In playing against them, we were impressed to see that the behavior descriptors accurately depicted each opponent’s skill, technical ability, and proclivity towards throws, ring out attempts, parries, etc.

Impressive or not, our fondest memories of Soulcalibur involve staying up with a buddy all night playing Kilik vs. Kilik and seeing who could ring out the other first - memories we'll likely never duplicate in this single player-focused experience. We're willing to temper our expectations a little bit, but this could be a warning flag that, with no online multiplayer, there might not be a reason to stick around after the initial 'wow' factor of the graphics wears off.

Jul 27, 2009