New fighting system, new characters
Mon, 23/01/2012 - 17:20 by John Hill

We recently got a chance to have a go at at upcoming fighting game SoulCalibur V, and while we can't tell you too much about the sixth installment in the famous series (you wouldn't want to ruin the surprise would you?) we've got a couple of sneeky peeky tasty treats to whet your appetite…

First and foremost, the main mechanics of the fighting system have been changed. The Soul Gauge and critical finishes have been removed and replaced by a Street Fighter Alpha type combo guage, allowing the character to execute Brave and Critical Edge moves.

Character-wise, the (at times) slightly wacky guest characters from previous games have been pared down to simply Ezio Auditore (from Assassin's Creed), which can be either good or bad, depending on whether you felt the incongruities and anachronisms kind of ruined the last episode a bit. Meanwhile, the character creation section is much more advanced than its predecessor, allowing you to create whatever character you'd like (which in many cases is simply going to mean the choice between either a fat girl with huge breasts or a thin girl with huge breasts).

Unfortunately for ardent fans of the series, a couple of the more famous characters were missing from the roster, including Setsuka, and for the first time ever, Sophitia and Taki. 

From what we've seen the gameplay is slick and easy to get into, with none of the complicated button bashing involved in some of the other fighting games on offer, although we won't know properly until our review next week. Yeah, that's right. EVEN WE DON'T KNOW.