SoulCalibur V sees the long-running series undergo a serious makeover to the core gameplay. The major changes centre around the new Critical Gauge meter. Most of the moves you do consume some of your Critical Gauge: Critical Edge moves, the game’s flashy super moves, cost one bar of the gauge, while Brave Edge attacks power up regular attacks and cost half a bar. Even counters come at the expense of your Critical Gauge. Traditional parrying has been removed from SoulCalibur V, and replaced with a new Guard Impact system, which requires a sacrifice you to sacrifice half your Critical Gauge to deflect an enemy’s attack, allowing you to turn the tide of a match.

I could talk endlessly about the ins-and-outs of the new combat system but the important thing to note is that even in what is the most mechanically complex SoulCalibur in the series, there isn’t a decent tutorial mode to help explain all of these details to new players. The training mode offers character move lists and a brief explanation of tactics, but nothing like explaining the actual inputs themselves, or telling you when your timing’s off.

Despite the lack of a decent explanation for newcomers, the game is still fantastic no matter your skill level. Each match is intense and thrilling, with fast-paced action taking place in stunning arenas and supported by a beautiful soundtrack. Matches feel absolutely epic. The new Critical Edge moves really add something special to not only the gameplay, but also the presentation, allowing you to see the game’s detail up close in a series of quick, cinema-esque camera shots. The focus on block-counter-attack as opposed to all-out attack means matches can go down to the wire, and with all the tools at your disposal, you rarely feel completely overwhelmed.

Sadly, there is a lack of variety in the matches themselves. While there is a good amount of game modes, with Arcade, Story, Legendary Souls as well as online and an offline mode that replicates the online experience, there is nothing that adds something different to fights.

Where games like Mortal Kombat and even SoulCalibur IV excelled was in the different types of fights they offered. Some fights gave characters 50% health, poisoned, or even an inability to block. None of these are present here. The lack of fight variation is disappointing and would have been a nice twist to the already great fighting.

SoulCalibur has taken a leaf out of Street Fighter IV’s book by including a reward system for everything you do in the game. You earn points for every fight you compete in, both online and offline, which increase your overall level, and allow you to unlock different titles and player cards to customise your own playercard, as well as new characters, arenas, and customisation tools.

The large character roster sees a number of new faces, most of which are just slight alterations of older characters. The two brand new characters, Viola and Z.W.E.I (I have no idea what it stands for either), feel fresh and offer something new to the game. Each character feels strong and well balanced. Unlike other fighting games, there don’t seem to be any clear weak-entries on the roster. Ezio Auditore, the latest guest character, is a perfect fit. His move set employs all of the weapons you see in the Assassin’s Creed series, and his backstory slots in well with SoulCalibur lore.

The only filler are a few of the unlockable fighters, who act as copycats, replicating the move-sets of other fighters and changing style between rounds. If you get bored of the roster that Project Soul have provided, you can always make your own in the extensive character creation mode. You can lose hours creating the perfect incarnation of your favourite character in this mode, which is the best seen in the series yet.

Patroklos and Pyrhha, a brother and sister duo, and children of Sophitia, act as the core of the game’s story mode, which is sadly lacking in all areas. Most of the cut-scenes are presented in charcoal-drawn stills on parchment, which is a shame considering this is a graphically stunning game, and it would have been nice to have fully rendered cut-scenes. Considering the story takes place in 17th century Hungary, the voice acting hardly helps create the sense of the setting, and is dull at best. The very odd (and slightly incestuous) relationship between Potroklos and Pyrhha certainly raises an eyebrow at one or two points, and it sounds as though the majority of the male characters were voiced by the same guy. It also doesn’t help that for the first half of the story, Patroklos is an ignorant arsehole, and you not only have to fight as him, but win also. Luckily the disappointing narrative only takes around an hour or two to complete, and doesn’t detract from the fighting.

Online has been fleshed out to cater for all types, including a new Global Colosseo, which allows players to group together in large parties and take part in player matches. Text chat is supported, as well as spectator mode and the ability to upload replays of your fights.

This is a great game. It would have been nice to see more spice in the matches, but the thrilling combat, excellent roster, and stunning presentation make this a worthy purchase for anyone with a taste for fighters.

This, Arkham Lockdown, is nothing like either of those games however. It has Batman in it, obviously, and it has thugs what look like them in the other games too. It does not have a detective mode, or a 3D environment for you to move around freely nor any particular narrative device outside of the opening cinematic. It lacks glorious fights featuring multiple opponents, has a limited set of combos for you to pull off and strictly occurs on a level to level basis. At its core, it’s an attempt to do an Infinity Blade, but stripped back with a level selection screen and no sense of rhythmn.

Which, seeing as Infinity Blade 2 just came out and fixed loads of issues with its predecessor, is a case of incredible shortsightedness and bad timing.

This is what happens: you select a level from a screen which looks like the Arkham City map and you get told a threat level and the number of opponents you face. You barely glance at this as it’s pretty redundant and borderline impossible to lose. Batman appears in the level, and thug number one appears. You dodge or deflect their clearly signposted moves and then beat them back with the same combo you’ve used every time before.

Rinse and repeat for each thug, complete the level, get some cash and potentially level up. Then select the next level for that section and play through the exact same environment and animations again. Clear these levels and you get a crack at the boss, which introduces a solitary and never used again mechanic for you to be subjected to before you kill them.

The boss levels are pretty much the only place where you will die and mainly because you have no way to prepare for the mechanic you need to use to beat them.

I was over half way through the game before I purchased my first upgrade (to health, mainly). I was three quarters of the way through before I bought my first gadget. By the end of my first play through (around 90 minutes or so) I had everything and it was just a case of turning me into a massive killing machine. Despite there being no real reason to go through it again, I’m half way through right now. It seems marginally more difficult, but the ability to stun opponents with gadgets makes it too easy. Even with the Waynetech points slowing to a dribble I would expect to be maxed out on everything by the third run through.

I doubt very much I’ll finish this play through though.

As a premium app it also offers you the nice opportunity to spend more money and buy alternative outfits. I don’t know why you would want to with such a limited camera and minimal interactivity with the game itself but, hey, knock yourself out. It’s your cash.

Right now it feels like a horrendously limited game – all flash graphics and licensing costs with little under the hood. It’s the epitome of riding on someone else’s coat tails, and it sullies the “main” franchise quite badly. At £3.99 it’s massively overpriced.

My recommendation? Get it if it comes up at less than a quid, otherwise go and see what Infinity Blade is doing. This was outclassed right out of the gate.

Tekken Tag Tournament HD

Let’s start with the biggest (and best) inclusion in the pack, Tekken Tag Tournament HD. A PlayStation 2 launch title, Tekken Tag has become known as one of the strongest offerings from the Tekken franchise. It includes a strong roster, an impressive and unique tag mechanic, as well as one of the most fun mini-games ever, Tekken Bowl.

Sadly, aside from a slight update to the game’s visuals, nothing else has been done to this game. No addition of online functionality, no improvements to the game’s sound, and no inclusion of a dedicated training mode for new players. Even with the graphical upscale, this is a decade-old game, so it is naturally showing signs of age, but still holds up surprisingly well. No training mode means newcomers to the series will need to look online for guides if they want to pull off the flashy tag combos or chains, which is a shame because this is a great opportunity for new players to get to grips with the mechanics before the sequel is released.

Despite all this, the most glaring omission from Tekken Tag is online multiplayer. In a fighting game, which hinges on competition and the ability to test your skills against fellow players around the world, it’s bizarre that it wasn’t added. The only option is for local multiplayer, which can be either competitive or co-operative in the form of “Pair Play Mode”, where each player takes control of one character in the tag team.

On the plus side, this is still a solid game. Each of the dozens of characters has a unique feel, and finding the best tag team can take hours. You can take on opponents in Arcade, Survival and Time Trial, but the most fun you can have is in Tekken Bowl. Picking two players, ranging from powerhouses such as Kuma and Jack-2 to the more accurate throwers like Jin and Law, you have to try and get the high score by knocking over golden Heihachi pins. Although it sounds dull, it is surprisingly addictive; much like Tekken Force was in Tekken 3.

Tekken Tag 2 Prologue

Tekken Tag 2 Prologue gives you a sneak peek at four characters in a small number of stages before the game’s release next year. You get the chance to try out Alisa, Ling Xiaoyu, Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya, the main characters from the Tekken movie.

Taking the demo for what it is, it plays very well. The game looks stunning, and really benefits from the new motion blur added to the character’s movements. But its a bare bones demo that you would expect to see on the PSN Store. Considering its inclusion in a paid game, there should be more characters to test out, especially as the game is still some way from release. The inclusion of trophies is nice for the trophy hunters out there, but still doesn’t do enough to make this a worthy addition to the bundle.

On a side-note, you have to also install the two games before you can play them, and you have to have the disc in the tray in order to play them even when installed. This is annoying as they are hefty files at a few gigabytes each, so expect a long wait once you sit down before you actually play the game.

Tekken Blood Vengeance

Now, we must move on to Tekken: Blood Vengeance. In terms of its presentation, it is an example of graphical excellence. It is clearly one of the best examples of CGI and 3D-implementation seen in cinema. In terms of narrative, not so much. It is one of the strangest storylines out there, with very poor English voice-acting to boot.

In a series which includes stories of the massive struggle for power and control of the Mishima Zaibatsu, infighting among the Mishima family; the battles of Lei Wulong working as a cop taking on China’s deadliest criminals; the comical interactions between Paul Phoenix, Marshall and Forrest Law; as well as countless other surprisingly well put-together storylines, the decision to follow two giggly schoolgirls (Alysa and Xiaoyu) as they track a random hot guy is mind-boggling. There are some scenes that will no doubt raise an eyebrow or two (including a naked man and a soldier in a shower… but not how you think), and overall the film is ridiculous and self-contradictory.

So it seems in a package that includes three separate titles, there is only really half of a fully-fledged one. Tekken Tag feels like a cheap upscale, with no new features added to make it a noteworthy addition to the ever-growing list of HD remakes. Tekken Tag 2 Prologue feels like a demo with trophies, and the movie is atrocious but pretty. This could have been something special, but in the end it isn’t worth your time.

I suppose if you really miss playing Tekken Tag Tournament, you could buy Tekken Hybrid now for the PS3.

The series adopted the ‘Tenkaichi’ subtitle after the release of Budokai 3, which was more of a bog-standard one-on-one 2D fighter. The dynamic was shifted somewhat in the Tenakaichi games to render the fights even more faithful to the TV show. It was initially a very confusing move. The view was almost third-person, hardly ideal for a one-on-one fighter. However, this has developed over time into an amalgamation of the 2D style, with the normal left and right view when opponents are close (Melee Range), and the third person view when opponents are far apart (Blast Range). If you’re too far away, a quick double tap of ‘A’, and your character will boost forward to the opponent, with the chance to strike a blow also. The graphics are cel-shaded, suiting the look and feel of the series perfectly. The voice actors are from the original series too.

Unfortunately, this is about as original as the game gets. The fighting system, combo system and aforementioned boost attacks are far too simple to be engaging in any way. There is only one melee attack button and after a few taps you’ll get a QTE with the maximum of two choices, X or Y. Then it’s a (very) simple case of holding a direction and pressing the right button with no skill or timing required. Yawn. The same goes for Blast Range; fire off a series of Ki blasts with X, and the same QTE clash happens. Again, yawn. You can counter these ‘Attack Clashes’ by pressing the same button as your opponent, but this is pure luck, not skill, and is ultimately tiresome.

Each character is assigned two signature moves and even these are performed in an incredibly simple manner; by flicking the right stick up or down. The spirit gauge that fuels these moves is easily filled by using the boring techniques described above, over and over again. The only addition to this system is an ultimate finisher which unlocks as the fight goes on towards its conclusion. However, as exciting as that sounds, execution of such a move is just a click of the right stick away. Zzzzzzzz…

There is some hope provided, as with many DBZ releases over the years, with the Story Mode. As a fan of DBZ myself, this is what I look forward to the most in a DBZ game – to be the characters in the story and fight in the battles that took place in the series. The cutscenes look new, with the faithful drawings from author Akira Toriyama brought to life on screen once again. There are certainly hours to be lost in this mode alone and some nice touches. Flying around the map area allows you to continue with the main story, have practice fights, or even find the seven Dragon Balls, which are cleverly used to unlock bonus material for other modes.

However, even for a fan such as me, it’s all over the place. The story-telling is patchy at best. There are massive gaps in the story – mostly the best bits – and these are told by a window of slow, white text on a black background. Very droll indeed. This also leads to the dialogue looking even more random and to a non-fan it would be utterly pointless. Dragon Ball Z can be a confusing anime at the best of times. This won’t help draw in new fans.

There is also Hero Mode, which allows the player to create their own warrior, albeit in a limited manner, and play out a new story in a parallel universe to DBZ itself. Be prepared to work for it though. Any warrior created needs to build up power and abilities that are unlocked as you succeed in battles throughout the map. It’s something different but is ultimately just a spin on Story Mode. More of the same, unfortunately.

Overall, this game was certainly only designed with the Dragon Ball Z fan in mind but, unfortunately, I had nowhere near as much fun with this as I did with the original Budokai series.   It’s difficult to market this for kids also, as Cartoon Network did with the TV series by heavily editing it for their target audience. Ultimately, everyone is just kicking the crap out of each other, there is bad language, and the game overall has a very serious tone. It’s rated PEGI 12, which I find misleading as the games retain the violence and bad language. It may be cartoony, but violence is violence at the end of the day. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with my 10 year old playing it. Although, to be fair, even he said it looked rubbish.

Despite that, I still find myself getting excited knowing which bad guys are coming up later in Story Mode. There is no skill involved in the fights and every attack scenario is 50/50 but I just love that Kamehameha attack and the long, Super Saiyan glowing yellow hair. Long crazy/mental/shouty/musclar/macho-voice-acting story short, it’s terrible. I do love it but this game is only for die-hard fans of the franchise.

Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi is available now on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3

This game is a Kinect title and a very active one at that. In Hulk Hogan’s Main Event, you play the part of Hulk’s protegé, being taught all his classic moves and poses. There’s a comprehensive customisation screen that allows you to choose your character’s size, build, and costume. From what I saw, you probably won’t be able to create Little Kato and definitely not a female wrestler but I’ve been assured that if you want to make a humongous Yokozuna-style character, you are free to do so. Even better, you don’t have to play ridiculous amounts of the game as a boring monochrome-clad amateur to unlock good costume options. Everything will be available from the start.

The training is simple and intuitive. Hulk pops up in the corner of your screen with a pose and you copy what he does. Master the old hand-to-the-ear pose or Hulk-Hogan-shirt-rip and you’re off to do battle.

Wrestling matches start out in finest WWE tradition with name calling and taunts. You can record your own taunts and have them played at your opponent, which might be good for some people. Personally, I can think of nothing less likely to instil fear in the heart of my opponent than my weedy high-pitched twang screaming “GerronoutofitYERBASTARD!” I did suggest a voice-changer option to producer John Black during the demo. He’d better credit me if it goes in ;)

When the taunts are done, you make your entrance. Don’t forget, this type of wrestling is about showmanship, so you’d better entertain that crowd. You’ll have your chosen music track to accompany you – pick this from the in-game library or use something from your own collection. Pull off your best poses as you approach the ring and the crowd will go wild for you. Screw up your entrance and they’ll throw chairs and fruit.

Get In The Ring

Once you get through the ropes, it all kicks off. The game will have more than 60 poses and stunt moves so you’d better rack those up to fill the Crowd Meter. The team at Panic Button LLC have worked hard at the user experience for this game, studying all the existing Kinect menu systems and putting in lots of effort to reduce the effect of lag. Happily, they’ve gone with a Dance Central-style interface on the menus, which is far and away the best use of Kinect I’ve seen to date. When it comes to the wrestling itself, it looks like they’ve taken the same care and attention.

There are 4 main game modes:

• Campaign: Build your rep through great wrestling, battle through the story mode and work your way up to the big stadiums to avenge Hulk Hogan against his nemesis.
• Tournament: Tag-team with a friend and take turns crushing your opponents.
• Quick Stunt: Practice doing specific stunts until you’ve mastered them.
• Hardcore: Wrestle opponents on the hardest difficulty setting.

All the classic moves you would expect are in the game. You can do the Leg Drop of Doom, clotheslines, hit wrestlers with chairs and plenty more. From what I saw at Black’s demonstration, the movement tracking looks very good. They’ve done what they can to mirror actual motions you would do while wrestling, within safety limits of course. For a piledriver you start off doing exactly what you’d expect; reach out to grab your opponent, lift him above your head and rotate your arms to turn him over. Where the game differs from reality is that you then jump forwards to drive your opponent’s head into the ground. As we all know, you SHOULDN’T leap forward onto your knees like a real piledriver because you’ll probably do yourself an injury. Black informed me during the demo that if you happen to do this – contrary to the explicit instructions of the game – your movement will still be recognised as a piledriver. So yeah, don’t do it kids. Honest… it’s dangerous.

Back breakers are similar. Grab your virtual opponent, raise him above your head, lift one knee and drive him into it with your hands. For Hulk’s leg drops; raise one leg to waist height while jumping. For god’s sake don’t land on your ass from a great height like the wrestlers do. It may be recognised by the game but given that you’re unlikely to have a spring-loaded floor installed in your living room, it would be very bad for your coccyx.

I must note that this was a demo led by Black. I saw the game responding to his movement but didn’t have the chance to test the motion tolerances for myself. Given my recent experiences with UFC Personal Trainer, I will reserve judgement until I have first-hand experience. Last year’s Fighters Uncaged was promising in theory but because your motions bore little resemblance to the actions you wanted to perform, playing it was just a confusing mess.

If all is as intuitive as they claim, Hulk Hogan’s Main Event could be bloody good fun.

Hulk Hogan’s Main Event is due for release on Xbox 360 in September 2011.

But then I just got bored of fighting games, and moved onto other genres, particularly racing games. So I thought it was about time to see if I’d been missing anything in the meantime with King of Fighters XII. Unfortunately, as it turned out I hadn’t.

I know that many people have been waiting for this game for some time. It was a very popular series of games on the Neo-Geo, which it must have been since this is number 12! Also I’d been hearing about the oodles of time that SNK had spent hand drawing all the characters, so I expected so much more from what is a fairly basic fighting game.

Visually the graphics look terrible on a big LCD TV. I was playing this on 1080p setting on a Toshiba 46 inch LCD, and to be honest I wish I wasn’t. It was like plugging in the Wii with the component cable, looking at the screen (aaaggh, the horrible graphics) and plugging the scart cable back in (mmm, better looking fuzzy graphics). I thought I was playing an Xbox Live Arcade game from the early 90′s. Everywhere you look your eyes are assaulted by nasty looking pixelation. I honestly thought that I’d missed a setting when loading the game as the screenshots I’d seen and even the ones I’ve used on this post, don’t really show just how rough the graphics look. Seeing as everything on the screen (backgrounds etc) is hand drawn, there is no escaping the pixelation.

However, there are some nice touches amongst all this graphical carnage, mainly centred around each characters individual moves. Many of them just look really good, very smooth and well, hand drawn. So hats off to the SNK animators and all their hard work. Oh, hang on I’d forgotten about the huge wrestler character “Raiden”, there is nothing redeeming about him what-so-ever. He looks terrible. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad artists.

The next thing to assault my senses shortly after the grpahics was the game sound. Aggghhhh. After playing precisely 3 rounds I quit the game, found the SFX options and muted the in game music. What on earth possessed SNK to include such terrible music in this game I really don’t know. Were they trying to make you angry so you’d enjoy beating up the other characters. TAG top tip: Do not play this game with the in game sound enabled using a home cinema system, your ears will bleed.

Ok, so what about the fighting action. Well, when it comes to the battles they are fun while they last. Standard fighting game set-up really. Choose up to 3 characters in your team and go fight. The gameplay does lean heavily towards combination fighting, rather than 1 punch and a kick here and there. So I did get to experience some pretty spectacular combination action, usually from the console kicking my ass.

You do have new moves available in this version namely, guard attack (escape being trapped), emergency evasion (run away), blow back attack (anti-special move) and critical counter (special attack). Of these I had all sorts of trouble activating my characters critical counter move. Fortunately, SNK have included a n0ob’s setting allowing for easy special attack critical counter activation. Yay, for easy activation.

The arcade mode is a bit limited in that you only play five 3 round fights and that’s it. No boss battle or anything. That’s a bit cheap SNK don’t you think? Ok, there is a practice mode and a gallery, but very little else. Also when playing 2-player against Weefz, it was about as awkward as Resident Evil 5 (just try playing it with 2 players, annoying as hell) to set up. The menu system was just not intuitive when you throw 2 controllers into the mix. Come on developers, it’s not that hard to let the 2 players select their characters at the same time! And yes, there is online multiplayer available too.

In summary:

Average fighting game, with terrible music and few gameplay options. Recommended only to fans of the series and those without big screen LCDs!

Screenshots:

King of Fighters XII is out on the 25th Sep 09 for Xbox 360 and PS3.