I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about some of the weirder characters in fighting video games. I’ve played fighting games on whatever console I owned ever since Boxing was released on the Atari, and I’ve never grown out of them. I even played one of the most violent games of Atari Ice Hockey that you wouldnt have thought was capable of someone under 10.

Over the years I have seen Ninjas, Dinosaurs, Monsters, Medieval Warriors, Aliens, Turtles, Yogi, Jedi, Christians, Politicians and heaps of other people getting thrown into fighting games. I can’t really say I ever had 1 fighter that I liked over all others, but I always used to go the stranger characters, just because no one else did. They were usually overlooked but some of the better characters if they could be mastered. They were weird looking and often, excessively evil but they were awesome. Over the next 10 posts I’m going to let you have a little trip down memory lane with me as I pick out 10 of my favourite ‘weird’ characters. I’m basically going to choose 10 games and 1 character from each just for some variety and let you know why I’ve chosen them over the others. I’m going to try to be pretty neutral and keep what I think of the character aside and base it on creativity and weirdness. Feel free to voice your disputes, thats what the comments are for.

At the moment, the games list stands as:

• Darkstalkers (Capcom)
• Street Fighter 2 (Capcom)
• King of Fighters(SNK)
• Primal Rage(Atari)
• Killer Instinct(Rare)
• Eternal Champions(SEGA)
• King of the Monsters(SNK)
• Tekken 2(Namco)
• Mortal Kombat(Midway)
• ???

You might see publishers doubling up, but lets face it, there are a few heavyweights in the fighting game industry and credit where credit is due. I also haven’t thought of the 10th game, so get thinking yall! My restrictions are that the game has to be solely fighting, not a feature. The game can’t be based off a comic book or story, because they arent really characters build for fighting games are they? The last one, no crossover games, thats just self-explanatory.

First character up soon.

I know I’ve raved about how much I like puzzle games, and the PSN store, but I bought an absolute winner the other week. I downloaded PixelJunk Monsters, for about $10. This game is as simple as it can get. Its a tower defense game, you are a turtle in a forest, you put towers on the trees and they shoot everything attacking. The objective is to set up towers which will destroy wave after wave of beasties so that after 20 or so attacks, all your base are still belong to you. The sound is a bit annoying(to be honest I always have music on so I rarely notice it) and the graphics are obviously simple because the appeal is based solely on gameplay.

Without getting too far into it, you get gems to upgrade towers, or unlock more tower types depending on what you need. The game is unbelievably challenging and I am stuck halfway through. Like, stuck badly. My mate tells me it’s easier on 2 players, but not having a 2P, I’m trying to work out a formulaic approach to the level, I just can’t seem to remember it properly. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a game this much for a while, and for a tenner it’s a bargain.

I bought Soul Calibur 4 over the weekend and I will admit, I’m a bit of a noob with the SC series. I did buy number 3 but I waited till it was Platinum and used it to fill a month before God of War 2 came out. I was intrigued to know that SC4 had finishing moves referred to as Critical Finishers. The instruction refers to the Critical Finisher as a move that, when executed, kills your opponent, regardless of remaining health. From that we can safely assume there is little chance of pulling one off early in the game without some sort of antistandard equipment. The booklet also tells us that for a Critical Finisher to work, the opponent must be in ’soul crush mode’. To execute a Critical Finish, the magic button is L1 for a PS3. On an Xbox 360, whichever button is bound to press the 4 action buttons(horizontal attack, vertical attack, kick and block).

After a lot of playing around with characters, I could not get this working at all. Fighting our way through Story Mode with half of the roster, my friend and I couldn’t even fluke a critical finisher. As much of a button basher the game might be, this would take a lot more focus(and possibly less beer). A few hours later, I found this on youTube:

There you have it. Critical Finishers in Soul Calibur 4.

• Get your opponents Soul Gauge flashing(their Lifebar will flash red)
• Soul Crush your opponent, its basically when you hit them and they reel back with both arms, its a split second so you might want to learn combos that trigger the effect and know it by heart. Also if you break a piece of armour the event triggers, but usually you’ve knocked it off by now.
• Hit the magic Critical Finisher button

So there we have it. I’ve actually found it pretty easy to do in training mode(obviously) but it’s more difficult in the real game because by the time they’re flashing red, they have so little life or armour left that triggering Soul Crush mode without KO-ing your opponent is pretty tricky. How tricky? I still haven’t got one yet.

I found out the other day via game guides(or lack thereof) that I had finished Dragonball Z: Burst Limit. The game end sooner into the cartoon series than I was expecting. I checked guides to make sure no one had found any more secrets even though my content unlocked stat is at 100%. There isnt anything else I want to play, so I play my waiting games.

Waiting games are games I can pick up for a few weeks till something I want to buy comes out. At the moment the waiting period could be around a month as I’m quite picky. My main waiting game is World of Warcraft. I buy 3-6 months credit and just jump on. I never level a character past 30 because something usually catches my attention, but it’s a nice way to burn game time. I *could* use the time to do something more constructive, but hey, I enjoy gaming.

Luckily, Soul Caliber 4 comes out next week so I can stop listening to pre-pubescent teenagers bitching about nothing.