You would think that there can't be enough of it. Sure, a world where even a horrific demon is gorgeous enough to turn gay even the straightest man who's parents were killed by a group of rampaging homosexuals should be great, right? Right? Not exactly...

I'm not the prettiest 16 year old male in the world. I'm not even average. Plus I have pretty low self respect and a few ten's of kilos of unwanted fat. But the fact that even uglier people exist makes me feel better. So is for the bigger part of this planet and we have to deal with it. People always try to look better. Some stop at dyeing their hair, others decide to go under a knife and inject various substances under their skin. There is nothing bad about it. Who doesn't want to be better than others? But there always should be uglier people, at least for the comparison. Apparently Namco Bandai has a different idea.

I've been playing in Soul Calibur IV for some time now. Mostly I've enjoyed it. It's a solid 3d fighter that really shows what you can do on consoles of current generation. Even such minor things like character creation were made just fun enough to use them over and over again. You get a huge expandable collection of clothes, faces and hairstyles. You can even tweak the physic of your characters from skinny and soft to bulked up and healthy human being. There is one thing you can't do though - you can't make an unattractive person. Even the manliest woman without a womb will look reasonably fine. So goes for the regular characters. Nothing can make them ugly. Let's look at some supposedly ugly ones:

Rock is a menacing hulk who wears an animal head as a mask. You can't see most of his face, but you can clearly see that he has a manly chin that Arnold Schwarzenegger could only dream of, even in his best days. Also his muscles are not overblown as you would expect from a man who can swing a giant axe or a huge spiked club.

Voldo. He is supposed to be a bizarre dude with all those chunks of metal on his body who doesn't even walks like a human being. And he is bizarre, but he is not ugly by any means. Although I'm not entirely sure that he is supposed to be ugly. I don't remember him having any scars or marks on his body but he never could be considered pretty or even attractive.

Mitsurugi was not supposed to be ugly but his body is nearly torn apart by previous battles. You can see huge scars on his model but for some reason they don't look horrific in any way. He is still a regular samurai. You can't even tell if he is old since every character has a beautiful but somehow natural face.

Even Lizard Man (who's story in SC III was all about turning into a man again since his friends and family didn't accept his horrible appearance) looks like a perfect humanoid lizard. And I'm not even sure if you can say that a humanoid lizard can be perfect.


Same goes for the newcomers from star wars. You've never seen a fitter Darth Vader and strangely fine looking Yoda.

Just to be sure. I'm not saying that those character designs are bad. They are just very unusual to see. There is not a single average looking character and it bothers me. It's like a game telling you that you can never become that gorgeous. It would be fine but everything in this game just rubs this fact in your face and you can do nothing about since the game itself is great. Also this makes more creepy and demonic characters look not that evil at all. My excuse for this article is that fit and beautiful people make me depressed, even in video games.