E3 '07: Soulcalibur Legends Hands-On

Fans of the Soul Calibur series of fighting games will likely be glad that publisher Namco Bandai is finally giving the series its due. In addition to the upcoming fourth installment in the core fighting franchise, the Wii will see its own Soul Calibur game--though this one is a third-person hack-and-slash adventure called Soulcalibur Legends. The game will primarily focus on Siegfried, before he was corrupted by the legendary malevolent blade and became Nightmare. Of course, plenty of other favorites from the original fighting games will be in here too. The demo on display at Namco Bandai's E3 suite today was the same one featured at the company's San Francisco press event last month, only this time company reps were glad to let us play it ourselves.

The controls in Legends are pretty easy to get into, by Wii standards. You move around with the Nunchuk analog stick, and you can do two basic attacks by slashing the remote vertically or horizontally. Slashing multiple times will make you perform basic attacks, of course. The game offers a useful lock-on feature that seemed to target new enemies as soon as they entered the area, and we could switch to other targets by tapping the A button. Jerking the Nunchuk to the side allowed us to do a dash maneuver, and we could hit the C button to do a charge-up move that would allow for more powerful melee attacks when timed properly with the basic Wii Remote slash moves. Finally, we were able to instantly switch between our two playable characters--Siegfried with his massive Teutonic blade, and Mitsurugi, the more agile Japanese warrior armed with a katana--by hitting the C and Z buttons simultaneously.

We got a feel for these controls quite easily, and subsequently hacked and slashed our way through lizard men and other unsightly foes in a generic temple environment before taking on an Egyptian-themed boss character which looked somewhat like a flying sarcophagus. Dispatching the boss was a simple matter of waiting for it to finish its multidirectional flame attack and then open up briefly so we could damage it. The demo ended there, so we didn't get a large sample of Soulcalibur Legends--but thankfully, a Namco Bandai rep did confirm the presence of other classic, playable Soul Calibur characters--such as the buxom, whip-wielding Ivy--in the final game.