Marking the series' 20th anniversary, a tale of souls and swords is retold once more in Soulcalibur 6 - a sequel that positions itself as something of a successor to the Dreamcast classic, in reprising its cast. It's a direct link that only highlights just how far we've come in the interim. We have two decades worth of move-set changes, added mechanics and technical upgrades to factor in, where Bandai Namco's efforts today are based on an entirely different engine. With the move to Unreal Engine 4, as with Tekken 7, it gives the team scope to push for more effects and shaders than we'd thought possible back in 1998. At launch, it also gives it the means to scale across more platforms than any entry before it. In doing so, there's a huge gulf in image quality between the four current-gen machines.

As usual, it's resolution that scales most obviously across all four console versions. Xbox One X fares best here, even though it's only truly hitting 2560x1440 while connected to a 4K display. There's no hint of dynamic res scaling, but it does hold up reasonably well even so - just expect more shimmer on specular highlights. In terms of the visual feature set, it's effectively a match with PC at its best - the only system that can deliver full 4K. We tested this on a Titan X Maxwell, broadly equivalent to a GTX 980 Ti and the popular GTX 1070. This still drops frames in targeting 4K at max settings, requiring internal resolution scaling to drop to 80 per cent to lock at 60fps. For reference then, a GTX 1080 should be your target for a full 4K60.

Tracking back to the consoles, the next-best version of Soulcalibur 4 is inevitably the PlayStation 4 Pro, though only a native 1920x1080 is possible here. Anyone expecting proper support for an Ultra HDTV will be disappointed, but if you connect the Pro to a 1080p display, it's the only console to give an unscaled match for the final output. Indeed, a standard PS4 renders only at 900p, while Xbox One only pushes a comparatively meagre 720p. The trade here is obvious - aside from some small frame-drops in non-playable sections on Xbox One X, Soulcalibur 6 delivers a locked 60 frames per second - essential for a game like this.

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2B from Nier: Automata is coming to Soulcalibur 6 as a guest character.

The Square Enix / Bandai Namco crossover was announced at Paris Games Week, and there's a video, below, showing 2B slicing and dicing while using some of her trademark abilities from Nier: Automata, including a teleport and the pod support system.

2B, who has beef with veteran Soulcalibur 6 character Ivy for some reason, is an interesting choice for a guest character since she's an android and Soulcalibur is a medieval fantasy fighter. But, then again, Darth Vader was a guest character in Soulcalibur 4, so really anything goes.

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UK physical launch sales of Soulcalibur 6 are down drastically compared to Soulcalibur 5 - just the latest of many 2018 games where this has occurred.

Earlier this month, UK physical sales of the excellent Assassin's Creed Odyssey were 25 per cent down compared to last year's Origins - although worldwide, combined digital and physical sales were up overall. And then last week, Black Ops 4's UK physical launch sales were the lowest seen in a decade.

Soulcalibur 6 this week has, arguably, a tougher comparison than both. Its UK physical launch sales were down more than 55 per cent compared to Soulcalibur 5 - although this launched all the way back in 2012, when digital sales were far from the norm.

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Soulcalibur 6 came out yesterday - and already people are fighting online with their penises.

The game has a character creation mode that's... well, it lets you make some pretty nightmarish concoctions.

Twitter user Nordaenn is credited as coming up with the Soulcalibur 6 penis, but it's this tweet, below, that's gone viral.

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My fondest memories of Soulcalibur, the long-running 3D fighting game from Bandai Namco, are playing on Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube, parrying until I felt like I could parry blindfolded. I've always loved Soulcalibur's parry - a clash of weapons, a spark, a cling! Predict your opponent's move, time the parry to perfection and counter. Soulcalibur is at its most satisfying when you get in your opponent's head and expose the chink in their armour. Parry, parry, parry, slice and dice. Done.

Yet in recent years Soulcalibur had lost its spark - a funny thing to say about a series that's all about sparks flying all over the place. 2012's Soulcalibur 5 washed over me, and the less said about Soulcalibur: Lost Swords, the free-to-play, single-player-only spin-off released in 2014, the better. Soulcalibur 6, then, which arrives six years after the last mainline game in the series, rediscovers that spark, and it achieves this by taking stock of what made Soulcalibur great and focusing on those fundamentals.

First up, Soulcalibur 6 is super responsive. The characters feel snappy as they dart inside and out of the series' trademark eight-way run. So much of Soulcalibur is about spacing and punishing whiffed attacks, so it's fantastic to feel the game respond - at the double - to your commands. Sophitia, for example, has a wonderful forward dash stab move that's fantastic for punishing missed attacks. It's blisteringly fast on-screen, a flick of your thumb for the input command and a flash of a button press all it takes for Soulcalibur 6 to spark into life.

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