SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny

Broken Destiny gets all the important stuff right during combat, but the available modes are disappointing. The main menu houses the familiar Training, Versus and character Creation modes, and to Namco's credit, the latter retains many of the features from SoulCalibur IV. Also included are the new Quick Match, Gauntlet and Trials modes.

Quick Match is relatively self explanatory and involves picking fights against a simulated lobby of AI opponents. The better the opponent's win/loss ratio, the more challenging they'll be. Trial meanwhile is Broken Destiny's survival mode and is split between Trial of Attack, Trial of Defence and Endless Trial. Each tests the player differently with the Trial of Attack awarding players a higher score for longer combos.

Lastly we have Broken Destiny's answer to a story mode - The Gauntlet. Initially I'd hoped this was going to be similar to the classic Edge Master Mode from Soul Edge, i.e. fighting opponents for new weapons in different scenarios, but the reality turned out to be 34 chapters of advanced tutorial.

You play as a member of Hilde's party as she travels in search of a cure for her sick father. Every chapter opens with a brief piece of narrative told through text and static manga images. The whole thing is pretty offbeat, with one typical chapter being a battle against Cassandra to determine who cooks dinner.

The story is cheery enough but the problem is how the battles play out. On average, each chapter is themed around a specific opponent and split between three stages - with each stage comprised of five rounds of combat. Virtually every round lasts three seconds with the player having a slither of health. The objective is simply to land a hit or survive the opponent's assault.

That's Gauntlet in a nutshell. It's all about teaching the player advanced techniques like guaranteed hits, inserts and interrupts, and how and when to effectively counterattack. But without a few normal matches spliced in-between, the whole thing gets very dull very quickly. If Namco had just included a normal arcade mode on top, this wouldn't be such an issue.

Broken Destiny is an accomplished achievement because in gameplay terms it's no less than SoulCalibur IV in your pocket. Ad-hoc functionality lets you fight anywhere but unlike with Dark Resurrection, Namco has been stingy by not including a game share option - so players will each need a copy to battle.