SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny

Namco has wisely made Kratos a solid character for beginners with easy to perform combos which do good damage. He is lacking a bit in the speed stakes, but thanks to the Blades of Chaos he's an effective midrange fighter with some nasty aerial combos.

Broken Destiny's other new character is Dampierre. The story portrays him as a silver-tongued conman who fights with concealed daggers. His appearance leans towards SoulCalibur's more irregular side as he sports a yellow jacket, bowtie, handlebar moustache and top hat - although it's hard to diss a guy who evades via moonwalk.

Unlike Kratos, Dampierre is targeted towards the more advanced player. His individual attacks do minor damage but his speed allows him to keep on the offensive. His play style also revolves around his ability to feign injury and fall to the ground, where he has access to various throws and wakeup techniques which make him difficult to pin down. His Critical Finish is suitably absurd.

In terms of the battle mechanics, Broken Destiny is the same Soul Calibur it was on the PS3 and 360. Players use the 8-Way Run to dance around their opponent, the Guard Impact system to repel and parry attacks and tactical Ukemi to avoid being pummelled on the ground. But the one major change is how the Soul Gauge and Critical Finish work.

In Broken Destiny every character has a new move which is activated by pressing all three attacks. As an example, Mitsurugi's Demon Slayer makes him flash for a split second before launching his opponent into the air. However, connect this new attack whilst the opponents Soul Gauge is flashing red and you'll automatically perform a round-winning Critical Finish.

The old method of achieving a Critical Finish - i.e. Soul Crushing your opponent and immediately pressing all four buttons - is still available, but the new technique makes Critical Finishing a turtling (guard happy) opponent all the more possible. However, to balance things out Namco have also included the Active Purge system.

Once per match a player can restore their Soul Gauge by pressing down three times followed by all three attacks - the trade off being that you lose all your remaining armour and take more damage. This gives defensive players a way to avoid a Critical Finish and stage a flukey comeback. That said, although these new systems rarely affect the outcome of a battle, they do make the Critical Finish less redundant.

But now we come to the question which all fighters on the PSP face: how much do the control ergonomics impede play? Well, because SoulCalibur is a 3D fighter it avoids the frustration of Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, and is instead on par with the excellent Dark Resurrection. It's not perfect - I had to map Guard and Vertical Strike to the right shoulder as my thumb is way too big to press them independently - but in most cases it's manageable. However, if you play a high-level Hilde ring-out machine you may find yourself whiffing the odd combo.