....actually pretty good!

Yes, I've played the game, but before you go "ZOMG that game hasn't even come out yet! Off with ye head!", let me tell you how I managed to play it. Unfortunately, a very close relative of mine is a "pirate" and he somehow always manages to get the games before they even come out. I occasionally play them before I buy them (I like to think of them as my own personal demos)

I've only played it for like 2 hours and finished the story mode with 2 characters. Here's some first impressions:

- The controls didn't take that much effort to learn and the variations of moves kept me interested.

- The voice acting is pretty bad.

- There's a "Story", "Versus", and "Practice" mode

- Each character has their own back story and ending in Story Mode.

- The back story and endings are presented in comic book like animations. (The ones I saw were actually interesting)

- Some environments look really good while others look bad.

- The gameplay switches up by adding quick-time events.

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After playing some of it, I've decided that I will buy this game in the future. However, even though the price is $30.00, I can't see myself buying it for more than $20. Lack of online multiplayer, locations, and overall replayability leaves much to be desired 0.0

Cool

but no online, and only 9 characters? no thanks

From what I've seen, the game looks pretty good, but I worry about quicktime crap.

Also, are there any hefty unlockables to keep us fighting?

Yea. This game has about the same amount of content as Blades of Fury for the iPod Touch :|

Well for each character you can unlock weapons and orbs that give you special effects. There also two unlockable characters that you can get.

The quicktime events aren't that hard, they give you enough time to execute them and the motion controls work pretty well enough to make the right move.

I guess that doesn't sound too bad.

As I recall, it's MSRPing for like $30, which also doesn't hurt.

Does it require skill, a la Street Fighter IV, or can you win by lamely button mashing (or Wiimote swinging) like Soulcalibur IV?

Well atleast they'll have LOW sales estimates, because clearly its only a side project, in between both versions of Grinder and Conduit 2.

Well in terms of the story mode, the first few enemies don't require any skill, you can just keep hitting them and eventually win, but the later ones do actaully require you to time your moves and use defense to find open hits.

You have light attacks, heavy attacks, a projectile, and 4 special moves at your disposal

I wish they stuck with the gladiator kinda thing. That looked a lot cooler.

I may pick it up to play with my kid.  It has to be more fun than Shaq Fu.