18)Soul Calibur 4 Ps3/Xbox360 Review

Review by CrimsonGear80
"Beneath all that awesome bewb-age lies a soul that still burns!"
Namco Bandai's Soulcalibur series has never let me down. I may be more of a Tekken man, but the tale of swords and souls eternally retold has stolen many hours of my life with it's fantastic characters and gameplay. Now we come to the series fourth installment and the first on next-gen systems that just further proves that the fire is not even close to being put out.

ETERNAL GAMEPLAY

Namco Bandai took the phrase “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” to heart as they made SCIV, as the same great weapon-based fighting game engine pretty much returns unmolested, offering very fun action with responsive controls. The thing about Soulcalibur is that it's a very noob-friendly fighter, whereas other games like Tekken and especially Virtua Fighter cater more to the hardcore crowd. You have four buttons to work with (horizontal slash, vertical slash, kick, and guard) and it never rarely takes more than a directional press and a couple of button presses to pull off some flashy moves. Don't get me wrong, a few characters will still appeal to the hardcore, like Ivy and her multiple sword forms and Mitsurugi and his various stances, and some of the more damaging moves and combos may require practice to pull off, but overall pretty much anyone can easily get into the Soulcalibur action. Speaking of characters, pretty much every regular character from every Soulcalibur game makes an appearance, and all 30 of them bring their own weapons and fighting styles with them. Also, a couple of guest characters make an appearance from a galaxy far, far, away…

For PS3/Xbox360 owners, we get to play as the dark lord of the Sith himself, Darth Vader! With lightsaber in hand, Vader hits hard but moves fairly slowly, making him a pretty well-balanced addition. The other Sith we get to play as is Vader's secret Apprentice…named The Apprentice…here to help advertise his own game, The Force Unleashed, which comes out in September. Unfortunately, The Apprentice can hit hard, move fast, and can use such moves as force lighting and throwing his lightsaber across the screen, making him a pretty cheap, especially when the computer takes control of him. Not my favorite character, but luckily he can be easily ignored. The only “true” new character to the SC universe is Hilde, a princess who's decked out in full armor and uses both a short-sword and long staff in battle. She's another well-balanced character with some cool moves and fits in to the fray quite nicely. The only another new additions made to the gameplay is the equipment destruction and soul gauge systems. Each character wears three pieces of armor (head, upper body, lower body) and blocking too much against your opponent raises the chance that a piece of armor might break off. If you continue to block after armor gets destroyed, then your soul gauge (represented by a colored orb next to your health bar) will be in danger of breaking, causing your life bar to flash red. If your opponent manages to break your blocking habits during this state, then you'll be open to a critical finish, an ultra-flashy super move that is activated by pressing all four face buttons (or L1 by default) at the same time. Get hit by this and it's round over. A couple of welcome additions to keep the suckers who think they can block their way to cheap victories from getting them.

Another welcome upgrade is to the customization options that were introduced in SC3. Not only can you still create your own fighters, but you can now customize any of the regular fighters as well! Tons of new customizable options are available for you if you want to build a fighter from the ground up, including face and voice styles, body type, colors, fighting style, weapons, and so forth. One of the things that is kind of disappointing is that there is no original fighting styles for your created characters that SC3 had, like a style that focused on kicking. The only styles available are the ones the regular characters use, so your creations will pretty much just be copies gameplay-wise. Customizing regular characters only extends to their apparel, hair style, colors, and weapons. Clothing and armor does more to your character than just make them look good, as they can also raise or lower your stats like HP, offense, defense, and what skills you may be able to use. Skills are attributes you can set on your characters, like auto-unblockable attack or HP drain, that can help give you the edge in battle. You can earn and use better skills by playing the game and leveling up fighting styles, so if you fight as Talim a lot and level up her fighting style, you can use more skills for her and any created character you have that uses her fighting style. With all these options to choose from, dedicated character creators will be spending hours, um, creating!

SCIV's three main single player modes are the classic story mode, an arcade mode, and a survival mode called tower of lost souls. Story mode is where SCIV fails to live up to it's predecessors. There are only five stages, everyone you face is INCREDIBLY easy to defeat (including the wussy last boss), and it takes a whopping ten minutes to complete. Sure, every character has an unique ending, and you can play it on hard to up the difficulty a little bit, but when compared to the more fleshed out story modes of SCII and III, this is a pretty big disappointment. Tower of lost souls, luckily, fairs a whole lot better. When playing this mode, you can either choose to ascend or descend the tower. Ascending the tower allows you to tackle floors 2-3 at a time, where you can earn new customization equipment by fulfilling certain conditions on each floor. Descending the tower is basically a straight up survival mode where you can earn ever greater rewards. The fighter AI for both ascending and descending will get harder as you go along, making this mode a fun, long-lasting challenge. It should be noted that in both story and tower modes, you'll occasionally be able to use up to three characters at once, who can be chosen in real time during battle by pressing R1. There's no crazy tag-team moves or anything like that, it's just simple switch-outs. Arcade mode is your basic fight guys and defeat the last boss deal, and rounding out the single player modes is the always helpful training mode.

For people with friends, SCIV offers local muliplayer for both standard and special (customized equipment and skills enabled) matches. For people with no social lives because they smell, Soulcalibur IV offers a first for the series: online play! Standard and special matches are available for both ranked and player matches, and you can even invite friends into your games (for player matches only). The main problem with online is the total ass way the game has for finding matches for you. You can use a quick game option which is supposed to find an available match for you, but for some reason it also searches for games that are full, leading to many “this game is full” messages! You can also use a custom search option that gives you a list of matches, however there is NO indication if a match is full or not, and if you happen to accidentally choose a full match, the game makes you do a custom search all over again! What. The. Hell. MAN! Your last option is to create a match and have peeps come to you, but it shouldn't always have to come to that. Here's hoping Namco Bandai makes some server upgrades or gives us a patch in the future to make things easier. Anyway, I found actual online gameplay to be pretty much lag-free and responsive against players with good connections. The game also supports leaderboards and voice chat (although not during matches), so dedicated fighters have a lot to look forward to if they can stomach the matchmaking system…and the obvious cheapers and spammers that will undoubtedly pop up.

ETERNAL GRAPHICS

Soulcalibur IV (Ps3/Xbox360)is, without a doubt, a beautiful looking game. The many stages (including a couple of Star Wars ones) are all beautifully designed and have fantastic backrounds and effects. Character models are extremely well detailed and have phenomenal designs and animations (I'm sure most people out there don't mind the extra “augmentation” some of the ladies display). The game runs in 720p at a smooth 60fps, and the PS3 version has an optional 2.6gig install that allows things to run even smoother. Easily the best looking next-gen fighter so far (and one of the best looking PS3 games as well).

ETERNAL SOUND

Running in Dolby Digital 5.1, weapons clanking together never sounded so good. Music is as epic as it's always been in the series, and having a battle while “Duel of The Fates” from Star Wars: Episode 1 plays in the backround is beyond awesome. The English voice work is decent (except for the cheesy as hell announcer, but that's a series staple), but you also have the option to switch to the Japanese track if you prefer. Definitely no complaints here, it's very solid work.

THIS FIRE BURNS, ALWAYS

Playing pretty much any mode in the game will allow you to earn gold when you win. You can use this gold to buy more equipment, unlock characters, or unlock the tons of concept art and illustrations in the SCIV museum. Despite the disappointing story mode, most people will want to beat it with every character, and the tower of lost souls is definitely a time consumer. You can also unlock Honors (accomplishments) during gameplay that will unlock even more stuff! Add in the endless hours of online play you could possible accumulate, and Soulcalibur IV won't be leaving your PS3 for a while.

Some disappointments may be present, but it won't keep even casual fighting game fans away from Soulcalibur IV Ps3/Xbox360. Besides, Darth Vader says he'll melt your brain if you don't buy it, so might as well save yourself the trouble and get your soul burning bright red!

KEWL
+Fantastic gameplay is still fantastic
+Equipment destruction, soul gauge and critical finishes are welcome additions
+30 (mostly) well-balanced and cool fighters to choose from.
+Tons of customization options
+Tower Of Lost Souls is a fun, time-consuming and challenging mode
+Online play and multiplayer in general is fun as hell
+Excellent graphics and sound
+Crap-load of replay value

LAME
-Story mode is pretty disappointing
-Online matchmaking could have been a lot better
-Some original fighting styles for created fighters would have been nice
-The Apprentice is a cheap-ass…
-…like a lot of players online, unfortunately

Reviewer's Score: 9/10

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