Later, when it came out on the Playstation 1 (called Soul Blade for reasons I’ve never understood), I played the hell out of it with mates. I used to run down to Wizard Video on Harrow Road (from whence I also rented lots and lots of crap sub-John Woo oriental action films) with pound coins in my hot little hands and hammer that arcade machine with limited competence but great enthusiasm.
And the gameplay was new and exciting too, with real variety to the different characters. At a time when 3d meant virtua-fighter and characters as blocky as the Thing, Soul Edge really did look frickin’ amazing, with revolutionary texture, gravity and detail. To those who don’t know, it’s a sword-fighting beat ’em up, in essence. Man, I loved Soul Edge when it first came out in the arcade. Well, maybe you had to be there…Īnyway, a nice little game with which to while away a few evenings, nothing too mind blowing, but does what it says on the tin, nicely styled, and has a wicked sense of humour, especially for those of us in the fantasy business. Death rocking out on his scythe while giving it the metal fingers. A giant incompetent theatrical show portraying the destruction of the elven race to an audience of bored demons. These really are pretty funny at times, something you don’t see often enough in computer games, that’s for sure. This being an expanded version, there are also a load of hell-like abysses over which you can extend your totalitarian dominion. The designers obviously have a deep understanding of cheesy fantasy mores as frequently expressed in the video game scene, and take great glee in taking the piss out of them. Force the peasants to do your bidding, or slaughter them to a man? It’s a laugh, this game, it really is, with nice graphics and great design throughout. So you have the option of evil, or really evil. Naturally, ever since that pathetic excuse for a piece of rubbish disappointment, Black and White (a game which bore the tagline, ‘find out who you really are’, to which my answer was, ‘bored’) there needs to be moral choices. The halfling is a monstrously overweight fascist, the paladin has become a pervert, the dwarf got so greedy that he invaded the elven realm and enslaved the fair folk, and as for the wizard … man, it’s always the wizard you’ve got to watch …Īnyway, as overlord you control a load of mischievous minions with varying powers, and need to grind assorted cliche fantasy lands (halfling hills, elven woods, dwarven mines) under your spiky heel and return your dark tower to its former sinister glory. Yes, we’ve been here before, except in this version you are the dark lord in question, and the heroes have become even more evil than you were. Simple as that:Ī dark lord a la Sauron (and owing not a little in terms of styling to Peter Jackson, not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily) is defeated by a load of squeaky-clean heroes, and many years later returns from the the dead to wreak vengeance upon them. See how I have amusingly combined their titles to make the name of this post sound like a badly translated Anime series? I will now discuss them in the order of playing. This past month I played 3 games on the Playstation 3.
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