Odashima didn't stop there, even post-release he maintained that not even one fourth of the game's planned story content was actually part of the title. This is not a bad thing in theory, but another problem was that even during development, the game's director Daishi Odashima openly said that he felt Bandai Namco were rushing the team. In interviews, it's been stated that one of the goals with Soul Calibur 5 was to capitalize on this and many of the game's decisions were made in order to appeal to competitive players. When 2012 hit, fighting games were in the limelight in a big way, and eSports was beginning to grow. I played Soul Calibur religiously way before I got in to any fighting game community, and bought every game - even the Wii spinoff Legends - since 2. With all this in mind, it's not difficult to see how Soul Calibur managed to build up such a robust fanbase amongst casual players, actually including myself. Sure, you were still choosing from generic movesets in the game, but with so many customization options available, as well as a very expansive single player experience to enjoy, the game was played extensively in family homes across the world.Īlthough they maintained the character creation mode in the game and endeavored to keep players engaged through single player content, Bandai Namco also fell back to guest characters to spur on extra interest in Soul Calibur 4, and although they didn't achieve the same buzz Soul Calibur 2 had, seeing Yoda, Darth Vader and The Force Unleashed's main character Starkiller in the game was a bit of a hot topic. Playing a character like Link was obviously novel and exciting, but creating your own character? That was fresh. It was hard to imagine how they were going to top such a huge PR move with the next game, and although it's hard to argue that they surpassed it, they did introduce a new staple to the series which secured casual interest in a big way - character creation. This was expanded upon greatly with the relase of Soul Calibur 2, when the developers decided to release the sequel on each of the three rivaling consoles - Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox - with one unique guest fighter for each platform.Īlthough Heihachi wasn't that exciting of a choice (it was actually originally meant to be Cloud from Final Fantasy 7), Link and Spawn excited many a fan, and the game received amazing publicity. It turned a lot of heads at the time, and with fighting games being decently big at the time, especially the newfangled 3D variety of them, it wasn't just a competitive favorite, but gained many casual fans as well. It was an engaging and deep 3D fighting game, at a time when arcades were still alive even outside of Japan, and had a home console version that was in fact graphically superior to the arcade version. Receiving perfect scores from publications left and right, ending up with a Metacritic score as high as 98%, there's no doubt that Soul Calibur was a critical darling, but it was a commercial success as well. One of the most critically acclaimed titles of its time, it was seen by many as the main reason to buy a DreamCast when it came out. Although the series actually started with 1995's Soul Edge, it's often 1998's Soul Calibur that's fondly remembered when talking about the series' origins.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |