The PSP has many fine portable brawlers, but the Soulcalibur series has not made the transition...until now. I had a chance to spend some quality time with Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny on the PSP at E3 this year, and I really liked what I saw.

Broken Destiny has many of the features you liked about its big brother, the console game Soulcalibur IV, tucked inside a little package.  Or at least it's supposed to. In our demo, there were only a handful of characters shown as playable. I'm told that a "huge roster" is coming up for the final version, and we know that some new characters, like God of War's Kratos, are coming. But as for this demo, there were only 9 or so characters, so I played with my go-to character, Mitsurugi. 

The first thing I noticed about Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny is that it looks really good. Stunning, really. It actually compares very nicely to the console version Soulcalibur IV, if you can believe that. I was taken back at how sharp and crisp these characters looked on screen, and the flashy sparks and other effects you've come to know from the other series games are all here too. This title looks so good that I wouldn't be surprised if Sony uses it as a visual showcase for their PSP Go when it launches this fall.

This PSP title plays exactly like it does on the console. The movement, timing, and move sets were exactly the same for my favorite character, Mitsurugi. I spammed my same moves and chains to win against the CPU. The control was as tight as you'd expect for both the movement and the button commands. I'm glad to say that the experience has not been watered down for this portable version. I will say that the less raised buttons of the PSP Go made for a different feel at first, especially when trying to do the two-buttons-one-thumb thing, but it all worked out once I got used to it.

Namco Bandai says that there will be improvements to some parts of game play, with focus on fine tuning Soul Crushes and weapon breaking. I didn't get to check any of that out in my demo, but that's definitely good to hear, and something we'll look forward to trying out.

Broken Destiny has the Arcade mode, as usual, but there will also be a survival mode and a new PSP-specific solo mode. I only tried the Arcade mode, as some of the options were locked out. Versus play will come by way of ad-hoc wifi connection, and you'll still be able to create and customize your own character. 

Tight control, beautiful graphics, and portable fighting action? My soul is burning for this summer release.