Soul’d Out

Movie execs still refuse to acknowledge one of the basic laws of the universe: a successful computer game does not automatically translate to a successful film. This is especially true when the game in question barely even pretends to have a story and essentially relies on playability to shift copies to millions of nimble-thumbed youngsters. Soul Calibur is one such game and the screen rights to the title have just been snapped up by some misguided people in Hollywood. For anyone unfamiliar with this towering giant among console fighting games, Soul Calibur is the sequel to Soul Blade and debuted on the now defunct Dreamcast console. The game essentially boiled down to two people with whopping great swords trying to hack each other to bits in a variety of different arenas. Now Empire Online is the first to admit that we were crap at it and, let's be honest, there really aren't enough hours in the day to learn the hundreds of moves and multi-hit combinations without abandoning all pretence of a life in the outside world. But, tricky moves aside, the game wasn't exactly known for it's great storytelling. Heroes must fight people to get a magic sword that can end the world. That's it in a nutshell and you'll forgive us if we don't see the cinematic potential. A cursory look at Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat reveals the fate of similar endeavours and don't expect Soul Calibur to avoid ending up in the Woolworths bargain bin either. We doubt even the fact that the game's latest instalment, Soul Calibur 2, has sold more than five million copies will be enough to keep this project afloat.