Namco is more than partial to the odd guest character appearing in their Soul Calibur franchise as most of you are probably well aware. Soul Calibur IV featured none other than Yoda and Darth Vader from the Star Wars universe, and this time players will be treated to Ezio Auditore from Assassin’s Creed as a playable character on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

For those of you that are already playing the game, you are probably wondering how to unlock some of the secret characters in the game. You’ve probably figured out that characters such as Edge Master, Elysium, Alpha Patroklos and Pyrrha Omega can easily be unlocked by simply completing story mode. However, a few other secret characters are more difficult to obtain, such as Kilik and Algol. To unlock these two characters, you’ll have to go through Legendary Souls Mode, defeat each respective character and then complete the mode fully to unlock both of them.

These are the secret playable characters in the game, but we can tell you that Namco has inserted one other hidden feature in the game, and it is going to make a lot of you who played Tekken very happy. It turns out that you can unlock the fighting style of Jin Kazama as his alter ego Devil Jin. You won’t get the actual character from Tekken, but just his fighting style which is still pretty good.

If you want to see what we mean, we’ve included a video below showing the ‘soul of Devil Jin’ in action. Let us know what you think of the game so far and if you have discovered any more notable secrets other than the characters we’ve mentioned above.

It has to be said that while graffiti and tagging is frowned upon and is actually an offence, when it is permitted, in this case as part of an art project, it does produce some pretty impressive artwork. The piece itself is part of the art project called the Great Eastern Wall, which is being carried out by Rockwell’s aerosol art group ENDoftheLINE. The project is situated in a place called Shoreditch, which is part of London.

Several marketing ploys similar like this have been used in the past and in London also. The West End played host to a drop-in house which was covered in Monster Hunter artwork, a project commissioned by Capcom. ConceptArts, another art group was also commissioned to create a painting on the side of the Westfield shopping Centre, promoting the launch of Halo Reach.

The latest project took three days to complete but luckily for us the progress has been recorded in a video that compresses that time down to just over five minutes. The finished piece also features guest character Ezio Auditore as well as new comer Patroklos and the familiar Nightmare. If you are interested you can watch the video below. What do you think of the finished piece? Do you think this method of marketing should be used more often?

First of all we hear that Play.com, The Hut and HMV are offering the character Dampierre, the French dandy from Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny as a special pre-order bonus playable character, if you so choose to purchase the game from any of them. However if GAME is more likely the place where you will be shopping then you will not be disappointed to hear that they are offering an impressive deal on the Collector’s edition of the game.

The Collector’s edition will also include the bonus character Dampierre, along with a bunch of other cool goodies such as an exclusive White Knight and Dark Knight costumes DLC for the character creation mode, exclusive signed artwork from the development team, a ‘Making Of’ DVD and an exclusive book box case. All this can be obtained for just £69.99, which I’m sure you’ll agree, is great value.

More details about retailers’ offers, the pre-order bonuses and where to get them can be found at the official Soul Calibur V website. The game is due out February 3rd so there isn’t that long to wait now, so get those pre-orders in now if you want to experience exclusive content. Remember everyone who gets the game will also get to play as the character Ezio Auditore from the Assassin’s Creed series as standard, a master with the sword and one of the best guest characters to feature in the Soul Calibur series yet.

Where will you be going to get your pre-order goodies for Soul Calibur V?

The game is set to release in the US January 31st 2012 with Europe set to get it a few days later on February 3rd. While Soul Calibur V is not set to break any sales records and is unlikely to prove as popular as other more established fighting games like Mortal Kombat, it still looks very impressive and judging from the character customization feature it is a very detailed game.

The publisher has been treating fans of the series to several screenshots recently, a total of 30 new ones to be exact and has also released a new trailer that gives us a sneaky peek at what the graphics are going to be like during the game’s cut-scenes. The new screenshots include images of the characters giving their best fighting faces, or as CVG explains ‘angst’ expressions, and close-ups of their weapons during gameplay scenes. The collection also includes cut-scene images and shows some of the characters for the first time.

In the trailer, which can be viewed below we can see cut scenes with descriptions that highlight some of the key features of the game. It is introduced as being 17 years on from the previous title and some of the descriptions include returning characters as well as new successors and clues as to the plot of the game by saying the sword’s power seemed to have been lost. Check it out for yourself below. You can also view all 30 new screenshots by hitting the CVG link above.

Are you looking forward to playing the new game?

For those that aren’t aware, Soul Calibur V will be available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime next year, although we did get a first play of the game at the Eurogamer Expo in September – shame Ezio wasn’t playable then.

He is however, very much present in the following video, and it comes courtesy of a 90 minute stream that Namco Bandai recently uploaded to U-Stream. Our Japanese is non-existant at the moment sadly, but the general jist of the video runs gamers through some of the critical edge hyper moves in the game, and the controls needed on the pad in order to execute them successfully.

If you skip to the 28 minute mark, that’s when you see Ezio take to the main stage and you’ll see the developers testing out some of his move set against some of the other characters in the Soul Calibur V roster.

We’ve seen some early criticism of the graphics featured in the new game, but we don’t think they are disasterous by any means, especially compared to Soul Calibur IV. Don’t forget that this stream isn’t a very good representation of the game’s visuals and since the game is not out until 2012, it’s probably a very early build anyway. We’re looking forward to seeing some true HD graphics of the game so that fans can get a better idea.

If you are a Soul Calibur fan, what are your thoughts on the graphics – are they as bad as everyone is making out?