next »

[mackattack]

Soul Calibur IV Review (also Soulcalibur IV but I like having the space in between)

Formalities: To start with I am reviewing the XBOX 360 version of the game.  I have played the Online Mode multiple times, finished Arcade and Story Mode with all characters, but I have not finished the Tower of Lost Souls.

Abstract Review:  Overall I found this game very entertaining and it was a big step up from Soul Calibur III in many ways.  I personally liked the improvement in graphics and overall flow of moves, it reminded me of the Gamecube Soul Calibur II's handling.  That being said it failed miserably in some parts that I thought it would excel in, those parts being Online play and Story Mode.  I would recommend this game if you: a) Have a bunch of friends that would play this game with you often and were strict control freaks, aka not button mashers. b) Are extremely obsessed with the series. c) Love seeing large boobed chicks flail around with various weapons, while screaming like they are playing the toughest tennis match of their lives. d) Have trouble finding ways to spend $59.99.

In-Depth Review:
Controls:
The Controls in Soul Calibur have always been very smooth and you are able to pull off some pretty sick combo's with relative ease.  This is a big plus when you are getting move spammed, having the same move done on you over and over again without having any recourse, by the PC or a friend.  The blocking is relatively affective, and the newly added features of the Soul Gauge and Critical Finish have made defense prone fighters pay for hiding behind their weapon/shield.  I won't go into depth on the new features because you can look up how to do them elsewhere.  This game is very prone to button mashers; I have been beaten by an exorbitant amount of players just whacking at the controller as if their Parkinson's was acting up after drinking 20 Red Bulls and doing a line of cocaine off of their 360 console.  It gets just plain frustrating that you could play the game for 45 years and still be beaten by a first time player hitting all the buttons.  Anyway, the default controls are good, but like every fighting game it takes some customization to find a controller layout that suits your fighting style.  I would still give the controls a 4/5, based solely on the fact that it is a fighting game and that Soul Calibur has been known for having a very forgiving control system.  This means that if you are buying this game you already know that you aren't going for the precise control and timing of other fighting games, aka Tekken series.

Gameplay:
As for the modes of the game I was slightly disappointed. I wanted to see a better storyline, this was being touted as the summation of all the other series well I think the only people that didn't get that memo was the game writers because this didn't sum anything up for me.  Every character ending albeit did have different characters in it, basically all ended in the typical Soul Calibur way; thats right the video clip then, our all time favorite, a few vague sentences about what happened to the character after they successfully beat their respective "bad guy".  Another thing that really bothered me was the awful and I mean AWFUL voice overs. I mean you could have had a little better timing or something, its like watching a freaking 1950's Godzilla movie. I know that it was translated from Japanese, and I know that Namco and Project Soul hate the English language; I mean just look at Project Soul's website, it baffles Google Translator because over half of it is done in images... okay enough of that rant.  The Arcade mode and Story mode are pretty straight forward you pick a character and battle until you get to the final boss, kill him, jump around, pat yourself on the back, and realize that you have to do this same thing for the remaining characters, ad nauseum.  Now for the Tower of Souls mode, I could only stand this for the first 35 floors then I just got bored out of my mind and stopped playing it.  Not to say that this wouldn't have been a great idea, but some of the floors are just impossible unless you sit there with a character and either spam a single move or just run up and keep throwing them repeatedly(something very easily done).  I think the only reason to even attempt beating the Tower is for either the recognition as SCIV god among your real life nerd friends, getting all the Achievements to impress your online nerd friends, or getting all the equipment and accessories to impress in your head friends because they are the only friends that you have.
   Now that I have gotten all that negativeness out of my system.  The gameplay does have some very good elements such as the new tag team options and it is very realistic that you carry all your damage including armor breakage over to the next round(although, compared to the unrealistic fact that the person you may have just killed with a sword through the face is back from the dead for round two, this may be a debatable statement).  I loved how the characters had specific things to say to each other before each battle, especially when the story led two familiar characters to meet up aka Cassandra and Sophitia.  The ending scenes although repetitive and short, were very well done and I do like the fact that they stuck to their roots with the text at the end of each cutscene.  Overall I would give gameplay a 3/5, it has all the elements of a great game but it just doesn't seem to flesh them out.

Online Play
Now I know that this should be in Gameplay but since it is new to Soul Calibur I decided to give it its own section.  I think that the idea of having online versus was a great idea for an antisocial like myself.  Boy was I wrong, this game managed to make me hate people even  more that I already do now.  This is probably partially to do with the XBOX Live community being a bunch of dick hats(<3 VG Cats), and partially to do with the ability to spam moves like nobody's business.  Finding a game quickly in impossible, you are better off just hosting your own game and having someone eventually join you.  This was my first annoyance, next when I finally got into a game I would face either Kilik or Cervantes 98% of the time and have the same moves spammed on me every time.  Eventually I learned how to dodge these moves, which surprisingly would go undetected by my opponent who would continue to spam the same move and yell "WHY ARE YOU RUNNING YOU PU**Y!?!", which I would inevitably reply "...." and proceed to beat them.  Anyway this became extremely boring and I stopped playing it.  Needless to say I would rate the Online Play as a 1/5, it need major work before it resembles anything I want to play over an extended period of time.

Graphics:
I personally loved the graphics for this game, they were outstanding.  There was never any blurring of the characters between attacks and the backgrounds were so in depth sometimes I wish it was a sandbox game and I could just jump of the ledge and run off into the nearest mountain(Unfortunately my opponents found it necessary to give me a helping hand with this request on more than one occasion).  Obviously there were very large and very jiggly boobs; at almost every opportunity for there to a boob and the possibility for said boob to be jiggly, there was one.  This was not a bad thing in my opinion because I am a fan of most jiggly things and boobs being on my Top 5 Favorite Jiggly Things of All Time list, made this game a perfect fit.  Now that I got that out of the way I must say that graphics should not be something that should come as a surprise, we are on Next Gen consoles and they should have graphics so good that I actually want to wait and sit through the opening sequence; which on a side note was particularly sweet with this game, also you had the ability to switch certain characters in the opening sequence and watch it as many times as you want.  I would rate the Graphics as a 5/5, but as I said all games should be 5/5's in this department.

Characters:
There are a slew of characters in this game both available for play and unlockable.  Of course there was the initial debate of whether you want to have Yoda or Darth Vader.  I personally choose Yoda because he is green, awesome, short, and I only have the XBOX 360.  Now there are some characters that are inevitably better and overall more annoying than other characters; these being namely Kilik, Cervantes, Yoda, and the Apprentice.  As I said before Kilik and Cervantes are massively spammed online and become very annoying.  The Apprentice and Yoda are probably the hardest part about the Arcade mode.  Yoda cannot be thrown, and I don't mean that it is hard to throw him, I mean you CANNOT throw him; it is built into the game that he is shorter than your waist therefore you cannot preform a throw on him.  This was beyond frustrating for me because you could only hit him with low and mid attacks, because high attacks would not work either unless he jumped into them.  The Apprentice on the other hand is so incredibly fast and powerful that he can wipe your health out in a few seconds without giving you room to recover.
   As for unlockable characters there quite a few of them, including specially designed characters from popular manga series.  The character choice and fighting styles are plenty so there is a style for everyone.  The character customization is also a really rocking feature that allows you to basically build a character from scratch and like I said in my abstract, have a very large breasted vixen wielding Astaroth's Axe, which is very ++ in my opinion.  By completing the Story Mode with every character(or paying the extra cash for the premium edition) you get an unlockable final soul form weapon and a humorous weapon such as a surf board, magic wand, and squid to name a few.  These extra weapons and the previously mentioned unlockable accessories and equipment allow you to design some pretty cool characters; check out YouTube for some neat designs that people have done.  So as for Characters I would give Soul Calibur a 5/5.  There are so many possible character combinations and designs that it would be hard for me to point out anything major wrong.

Extras
There were a few extras thrown into the game that I find worth noting.  This is namely the Museum and the Chain of Souls.  The Chain of Souls is a way that you can see the connection/relationship and background story of each character with the two swords.  I found this feature very interesting and as a note if you ever skipped an intro during the story mode the same information is displayed in the Chain of Souls.  As for the Museum, which houses the Chain of Souls, there is the typical Opening, Cutscene, Ending, and Credits options, along with the usual Soul Calibur Artwork.  The artwork in this game seemed to be lacking compared to previous releases but there was plenty of images of the special manga characters.  As for the Extras I would give them a 4/5, nothing that special except for the Chain of Souls.

Overall
I would give this game a 4/5.  Unfortunately for this game all of the things that scored the highest were things that didn't really matter.  I know that if I wasn't complaining about the Gameplay I would be complaining about the Graphics, but I feel that there should have been more focus on the Gameplay, especially the Online Versus mode.  If I had the choice again I would rent this game, instead I bought it and have been letting people borrow it so they don't make the same mistake I did.

-<3 Mackattack