(Review title censored to preserve your innocence)

Before I begin, I want everyone to sit back and think about past Sega systems. There was the Genesis, the 32X, the Saturn, the Master System, and the Game Gear. In each case, the system was considered inferior to the competition. Why? Because Sega, while producing technically sound systems, had no game support for the systems. What games they did have were boring rehashes of other games already done better by other manufacturers.

With this in mind, we now turn to the Dreamcast, which is struggling behind the powerful PlayStation and the surprisingly surging N64 for gaming dominance. At last check, only about 13% of the gaming public supported the Dreamcast. A rather small number in all respects. Why? For exhibit A, I'm going to review Soul Fighter.

First, we start off with a constant in today's gaming world, the full motion video. In this FMV, we get to see a king, made nearly entirely of ovals and bubbles, explain in a clunky voiceover exactly who to kill and why. Apparently, his wife and younger son decided to become black magicians in response to the death of the eldest son. This has nothing to do with the game except to tell you what you could have gotten from a 15 second text-only introduction scene. Total waste of time.

So we have your standard "Go to point A from here and fight stuff, then go to point B and save the (blank)" formula. No plot to get in the way of this lean, mean, fighting machine. After all, what kind of pansies actually care if anything happens worthwhile to people's feelings?

I am that pansy. However, maybe the action would make up for it. Sorry, but no. You are playing through another 3-D style world with a behind the character view. Why, it's Mario 64 without the cute factor. Also, Mario could also move fluidly. The controls are clunky, and the characters don't move well at all. I think that in preparation for their big 'save the (blank)' journey, they have decided to get rip-roaringly drunk. They move like they have had ten tequilas too many. Fortunately, the enemy apparently has even more alcohol, so you can usually outmatch several.

Well, then again, that depends on which character you use. Of course, there are three to choose from, and you can switch between them between levels. But considering that you have to fight multiple enemies for the most part, and only the female spy (in a skimpy outfit, natch) can recover from hitting the enemy fast enough to hit another before her boxy butt is whipped in. But if you choose the brawny swordsman, then just get ready to watch your sissy-haired head get caved in.

By this unbalance in game play, I think this game was originally intended for two players. But even if you found someone you hated enough to play this game with, this is only one-player. The game has the feel of a two-player extravaganza (or mess), so the lack of multiplayer makes this game suffer even further.

The graphics are pretty bad. All the characters move around like either they are one wine cooler away from a coma or they are trying to perform capoeira while feeling vertigo. Strangely enough, they get worse during FMVs. While they look mostly human while in normal mode, they look like a preliminary step in a "how-to-draw" book during the video sequences. To put things in perspective, Final Fantasy 7, made a full 4 years ago, has better FMVs on half as many bits as this game does. Absolutely pitiful.

The music is the only part of the game that doesn't totally bite. It does, however, reach to new levels of mediocrity. I think that I heard most of the music they used for this game in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." It all feels so derivative, so you will probably want to mute it.

This game is perhaps the worst game I have ever played, even including Bubsy 2 and Battletoads 2. If anyone ever recommends this game to you, find a new friend. If anyone gives this to you as a gift, consider it a declaration of war. If anyone makes you touch it, get tested for all known forms of flesh-eating bacteria. This game is to be avoided at all cost. If Sega keeps letting garbage like this to be released, then I only hope that whichever next generation console is the best, that it beats the Dreamcast and the makers of this refuse into the ground.