Lately, I’ve been listening to Bud Powell while I play Soul Calibur II. Listening to jazz while playing a frenetic tournament fighter like this seems incongruous, but the two complement each other surprisingly well. Both are about the creative assembly of simple elements (notes and chords, punches and kicks) into surprising and beautiful chains that floor the audience (or your opponent). Pulling off Seung Mina’s CH AAB 3B 66B combo while Powell’s four-bar transition at the end of the head to “A Night in Tunisia” plays behind me is one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Soul Calibur II itself is as great as you’ve heard. I never played the first Soul Calibur game, so I haven’t suffered the nagging feelings of disappointment at the lack of significant innovation that some fans and reviewers have. I’ve just been enjoying it for what it is: a top-flight 3D fighting game with all the depth and fun you could hope for from the genre.
In spite of my love of fighting games, I’ve never actually been very good at them. Even back in the days of the original Street Fighter II, I had to cover up my lack of skills by playing E. Honda, a character who’s disadvantages have consistently placed him in the lowest tiers of fighterdom; if you’re playing a character who doesn’t stand a chance anyway, you don’t feel so bad about losing. The situation hasn’t gotten any better over the years, as games have gotten more competitive and the controls ever more intricate. Luckily, SCII’s learning curve is not nearly as steep as I was afraid it would be. Unlike the mercilessly difficult Virtua Figther, nearly every character in SCII can be played by novices and button-mashers as well as more dedicated students of the game.
There’s a lot to study, as well. Since my 3D fighting game experience is mostly limited to the more linear VF4, I’m not as comfortable with the free-running style of play that SCII offers, which usually leads to me wondering how my opponent managed to step around my attack and whack me from the side. The single-player Weapon Master Mode turns out to be a good tool for learning different aspects of the game, as well as being a cheesy collection of fight situations. As always, though, the best source of tips for learning the game is the community, and sites like soulcalibur.com are full of people who will give you advice on a character’s best combos, provided you’re willing to listen to them brag about how good they are first.
Unfortunately, the GameCube controller may be the single worst controller for fighting games ever made. I seem to be in a very small minority of people who think that directional pads are a completely stupid way to control any kind of game, but I don’t know anyone who really likes the GC’s lumpy cross. The game does allow you to use the analog thumbstick, but it’s not really a replacement for a good solid arcade-style stick. Worst of all, though, is the arrangement of the kidney-bean-shaped X and Y buttons, which makes it hard to press them both at the same time and makes large parts of each character’s repertoire almost completely inaccessible. These can be remapped, and extra buttons can be used to automatically trigger combinations (e.g., mapping the Z button to B+K), but at this point, I’m just going to get a third-party stick and see how that goes.