SoulCalibur IV: A New Hope

I've been waiting for something to kick-start my angry rant engine, and here it is.

It's not the news itself. I couldn't care less what's on the box, and frankly my skepticism regarding SoulCalibur IV has nothing to do with the uncanonical cameo characters, instead being informed by the fact that SoulCalibur III was a steaming pile of horseshit. I'm waiting for a demo to make or break it for me.

No, its Kotaku's coverage of it which rubs me up the wrong way.

Ashcraft seems to think that representing one of a game's primary selling points on the box is somehow detrimental to the product itself. And as we all know, this kind of thing is completely unheard of for the series.

And, though this is hardly surprising, the majority of the Kotaku commenters - people whom, I hate to admit, pretty much represent the core videogaming audience - back him up on this, displaying either a YouTube comments level of eloquence:

"lol this game is a disaster."

Or a Squidi level of pretention:

"Gotta agree with you on that one Ashcraft

Being a long time Star Wars fan, I feel that the Star Wars characters have no place in the Soul Calibur world.

Inversely, with all this, it diminishes Soul Calibur's.... soul, as an entity in and among itself..."

What the hell does that even mean?

On top of this is the frequent ridiculous criticism that "lightsabers would cut through metal swords". But if we're going to go that far, isn't it equally valid to point out that metal swords would cut through people? No, no it's not equally valid. It's more valid. Because swords and people exist, whereas lightsabers do not exist. We have tangible evidence that swords cut through people, while we only have Rule of Cool-compliant ILM special effects to back up the lightsaber complaint.

In making a game where characters can have their necks broken, spines twisted, and vital organs impaled and sliced, but still get up to fight as if nothing had happened as long as they have some hit points left in their health bar, I don't think the Project Soul team is especially concerned with physical realism.

So, gamers, stop complaining about the addition of some potentially very distinct swordfighting styles to a swordfighting game.

And more broadly, stop complaining about everything that... no, just stop complaining about everything.

You obviously like games, so stop pretending to yourselves that every game you play marks some kind of downturn in standards.

Portal is long enough.