SOULCALIBURNING DESIRES

A few years ago, I was a part of an alternative weekly in Olympia, Washington. I snuck in a few game reviews, and at the time Soulcalibur 2 was a big deal. So here it is, my years-old, written-with-a-decidedly-gay-edge review of Soulcalibur 2.

Soulcaliburning Desires
Well, SoulCalibur 2 is white-hot new on all three consoles, so for you button-mashing simpletons who stand no chance in 3D fighting glory, I'll try patiently to explain my words of wizardry.
I was at the end of a thirty-six hour session of D&D when my friend Brad walked in with a shrinkwrapped copy of Soulcalibur 2. Though I immediately wanted to jump from the table and drop the disc in my console, my friends and I were at the conclusion of our epic adventure, and I was the DM. I had coaxed my campaign to take a trip back to the Advanced 2nd edition rules so I could lead them through the TSR boxed set adventure classic Dragon Mountain.
But as Brad warmed up Soulcalibur 2 and ran through arcade mode with Link, the attention of my collegues was shifted from 20-sided die to 10 hit combos. Since then, I have moved the GameCube out of the D&D room and into my heart. Having unlocked Weapon Master mode the day Brad got it, we continued out epic battles, as the soul still burns.
SoulCalibur 2 is my new favorite GameCube game. It fills in the hole I felt after mastering Wind Waker and is as social as a good round of AD&D- 2nd Edition. When Brad, Mike, Leif and I are feeling a little frisky, we add the drinking rules and the tourney always turns sloppy. Here's the rules: You drink whenever you lose, get a perfect or ring someone out. Of course, once you beat the entire rotation, you have to drink and pass the controller. There's a few more rules, but you need to have mastered the intricacies of multiplayer SoulCalibur to be ready to comprehend them.
If any of you SoulCalibur players think you've got skills, you can just forget about it. I guarantee that if you went head-to-head with my Talim or Leif's Ivy, you'd go crying back to Yoshi and your SNES for a sesh of MK2. So when you and Baraka realize that the 2D days are over, me and Mitsurugi will be waiting with our swords, ready to 8-way run your ass into the ground. Poindexter.


...uh, yeah.