Platform	Arcade
Genre	fighting
Developer	Namco
Publisher	Namco

Well its a slow Friday night and I had a few extra minutes on the way home today after a ravaging encounter with my dentist (root canal a very real possibility in the near future DOH) and I decided to while away my time waiting for the anasthetic to wear off so I could eat dinner. Luckily there is a big noisy game center right on the way home with all the newest games, the weird new one I saw today involved a virtual dog (looked very convincing except the jerky movement) that you talk to via keyboard. (wtf I have no idea) It was by Konami. Nuff said.

ANYWAYS after watching some young Tidus looking Japanese "badboys" beating the hell out of each other at Virtua Fighter Evolution (which looks really neat btw), I plopped myself down at the lonely Soul Calibur 2 machine to give it a whirl. Been meaning to ever since it first came out, just haven't gotten around to it which is actually funny because Soul Calibur on Dreamcast was one of my favorite fighting games ever.

So I dropped in my hundred yen and hit the start button, which was a second slow to disappear so I jammed the start button again promptly choosing me some new young tonfa wielding girl as my character instead of my beloved Kilik. Doh. The first thing I noticed as I started playing was there are quite a few polygons in the backgrounds, much more than the Dreamcast version. Solidly built, but not overly flashy. Definately get the job done. Characters looked good, nothing amazing but after playing so much Virtua Fighter 4 nothing is really gonna stun me at this point. One thing I noticed was although the eyes blink, they didnt seem to show much emotion, either ON or OFF it seems. Kilik, when I finally got around to fighting him, seemed a lot different, face looks much changed. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

The difficulty was jammed WAAAAAAY down, in fact I quit fighting a few times the first few rounds just to make sure the CPU was indeed fighting back. The intensity picked up after a few more rounds though, nothing to be too concerned about, although I did get to the last guy without losing more than once with this new character. Like I said tho, think it was jammed way down so people could get a feel for the game without getting worked.

I didnt get a lot of moves figured out, and it felt, different to me than Soul Calibur, but I cant really make any final calls on it until I play a lot more. As far as the sounds and music are concerned I couldnt hear a thing over the noisy ass game center and all the young kids screaming at each other over their Menthol Marlboros but I can declare the graphics very much up to par and totally capable.

More to come when and if I play more in the coming weeks.