"Soul Calibur 2," Namco's new fighting game for GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation2, has little new to recommend it. Thank goodness for that.

The first "Soul Calibur," which was only released for Sega's short-lived Dreamcast game console, was a brilliant spectacle that was fun to play and beautiful to watch. My biggest fear with "SC2" was that in trying to update and improve on the original formula, Namco would ruin a really great game.

Luckily Namco left "Soul Calibur" pretty much intact. "SC2" looks and plays like a slightly improved version of its predecessor. Who could possibly need an all-new game when the old one was so good?