Soul Calibur is a weapons fighting game from Namco. It was in arcades first, but the Dreamcast version is better than the arcade one, which never happens. Everybody says it. Everybody is right. I've played it every day since 9/9 except one, and that one I was grounded.

The basics, if you've never played: two people fight in an arena with weapons. You win by knocking out the other guy's life bar, or by knocking him off the edge of the arena, which is a ring out, and is the most satisfying thing in any game ever. You can move in all eight directions around the other guy (it's called 8-Way Run), so you can step around his attacks instead of just blocking. And if you time a Guard Impact right, you knock his attack away and leave him open. Learning Guard Impacts is the difference between button mashing and actually playing.

Kilik fights with a long staff, taller than he is. That means reach. He can hit you from farther away than almost anybody, and he spins the staff around so it's hard to get in close on him. He's fast for somebody with that much reach. He's a monk-type guy and he's calm, which I'm not, which is maybe why I like playing him.

How I play him: stay out at the end of the staff. Poke, poke, poke. When somebody gets frustrated and charges in, step to the side and sweep their legs. Most of my friends hate fighting him because "you can't get near him." That's the idea.

Who's hard for me: Ivy (she has even more reach, because her sword turns into a whip) and Taki (too fast, she gets inside the staff). See below for who plays those. Spoiler: it's Dana, and it's a problem.

Rickey: Mitsurugi. The samurai with the katana. Fast, hits hard, very straightforward. Rickey says he picked him because he's "honorable." Rickey has thrown the controller one time already.

Jesse: Nightmare, and now Siegfried. Both swing a sword that's as big as they are. Slow, but when it hits, half your life is gone. Jesse just waits for one big hit, the whole fight. He switches between the two depending on his mood. Nightmare is the evil one in armor. Siegfried is the knight. Jesse says they're "basically the same guy," and won't explain what that means.

Manuel: Astaroth. A giant with a giant axe. He grabs you and throws you across the arena. Manuel's whole plan is to throw you. It works more than it should.

Dana: Ivy. Ivy's sword comes apart into a whip and she can hit you from the other side of the arena. She's the hardest character in the game to play, everybody says. Dana picked her the first night she ever played and beat all of us. We don't know how. She says she "read the moves list in the manual." None of us had read the manual.

Sophitia - Greek, short sword and a shield. Fast, and she's good for learning the game. My second choice after Kilik.

Xianghua - Chinese sword, super fast, kind of flowy. Good if you like to keep pressing.

Maxi - nunchaku. He swings them around nonstop in a pattern and if you know the pattern you can chain stuff forever. I don't know the pattern.

Voldo - two blades on his hands, and he crawls around on the floor, walks backwards, bends the wrong way. The creepiest character in any game. Nobody wants to fight him and nobody wants to be him.

Taki - a ninja with two short blades. Fast fast fast. She gets inside my staff every time.

Yoshimitsu - from the Tekken games! Same Namco guy. He spins around with his sword and does weird stuff, and sometimes he hurts himself on purpose. I don't get it but it's funny.

Mission Battle is the mode where you travel around a map and fight special fights. They aren't normal fights. Some you can only win by ring out. Some have weird rules that change how the whole fight works. Every one you beat gives you points.

Then you take the points to the Museum, where there's an art gallery, and you spend them on pictures. A LOT of pictures. That sounds boring, BUT some of the pictures are special: when you buy them, they unlock stuff in the rest of the game. So far, between me and Jesse, we've opened:

* extra costumes for some of the characters
* new arenas to fight in
* more stuff in the Museum, like places where you can watch the characters show off their weapon moves, and the character bios

I'm not going to say exactly which picture gets you what, because finding out is the fun part, and because I'm not 100% sure on all of them yet and I don't want to tell you wrong. There's also stuff you unlock by beating Arcade mode with different characters, but that's a whole other page someday.

Mission Battle tip: if a mission says ring out only, pick somebody with big sweeping attacks that knock people sideways. Kilik is perfect for it. Of course.