Two pieces of wood and some string - that's all you ever needed as a youngster in order to amuse yourself with a make-shift sword.

Now, all grown up, we've become a little bit more accustomed to putting our tools away and turning on our consoles instead - and, in particular, the brilliant SoulCalibur series. 

In fact, we've enjoyed playing this classic ever since it first burst onto the arcade scene under the name Soul Edge back in '96. 

We learnt the tricky combos, unlocked the extra characters and even endured our fair share of sore thumbs whilst bashing those buttons. But, with all this experience under our belt, are we actually any good with a sword?

To test the theory, we went along to learn some tricks of the trade from some real life SoulCalibur characters ...

So - ahem - we're not quite as graceful as we'd hoped. Maybe it's better we stick to the Xbox controllers from now on. Like ZOO, we reccomend you ditch the sword and go buy yourself a copy of SoulCalibur 5 instead.