This year hosts far too many games with the suffix IV and Soul Calibur certainly did not want to break the trend. Another Soul Calibur game and another attempt to grasp that original awesomeness of this now tired series which perhaps should rest for eternity. But alas, beyond the skepticism you may have for a series which has completely given up on itself by throwing Star Wars characters into it there is a good fighter. There are plenty of strong qualities supporting this game but it makes one question whether flashy bonuses are any sort of replacement for brute force mechanics. Will it stand the test of time and will our hero perish upon the tower of fate?!!1one!!
Firstly (I don’t care if it is a word or not), I played the xbox 360 version of the game so I had the interesting pleasure to fight with Yoda, the geriatric lightsaber-wielding crack addict. With that aside I will say that the only main difference between the PS3 version and the xbox 360 is that the 360 has Yoda and the PS3 has Darth Vader (ya, I would have preferred to play as Darth Vader but whatever). So, now we have context… you boot up the game and are greeted with what has to be the worst beginning cutscene of the whole series. It tries to tell a story but there are no words and all the characters in it fight slower than they do in the game summing to a rather bland start (reminds me of another fighting game with speechless cutscenes…crap). Anyways, after the underwhelming cutscene you come to the menu which is all that you would expect; nothing too wonderful but it is easy to manage. New to this game however is an online mode where you can fight people from all over the world over xbox live or PSN. I did not try the online but then again why set myself up for disappointment? If there is any game which would suffer the most from online it would be a fighting game considering if there is any delay you are rather screwed. From what I have heard there are slight lag issues…which right there makes me disinclined to try it. Anyways, included in the package are story mode, online mode, training mode, tower of terror (not really but I can’t remember the real name of it), and thats about it beyond the typical multiplayer jargon. What has been causing most people to be distraught(including myself) is the lack of a good story mode. I remember the days when characters actually had a story and somewhat of a campaign…that was cool. Now all you get is a text scroll and a few short battles. Story mode is a bust but it is funny to note that Yoda’s story is rather ridiculous…just the fact that someone had to make sense of Star Wars characters in the Soul Calibur universe is rather hilarious. So, story mode is crap however the tower of terror mode more than makes up for it. In this mode you have the choice to ascend the tower (only option for a while) or descend the tower. In ascend mode you travel up the tower a few levels at a time before reaching a checkpoint and then taking on the next few levels. In each level are a certain number of enemies that you have to beat and generally there are subtle conditions like 1 v 4 however the enemies take hits like girls and you are superman. What really sets this mode apart though is that you can use customized characters or even characters that you create…but to take it a step further characters have special abilities depending on the gear that you give them and skills you assign them. Basically the game gives you an uncanny sense of customability with the characters and on the flip-side most every enemy you face will be different than the last. After ascending the tower (which is 50 levels high I believe) for a while you eventually unlock the descend portion which is basically a survival mode but renamed. In both modes there are also hidden treasures you can win if you meet the prerequisites for the fights based on a bullshit hint told before each floor. The treasures are unique pieces of clothing that you can give to you characters in the customize menu, so there is a fair amount of worth in figuring out what the haiku hints mean. As I said before, there is a customize part of the game where you can either make a character from scratch (clothing and features) and give them a fighting style based upon any of the other main characters in the game. The possibilities are virtually limitless with the customization and the fact that you can assign skills and attributes is a sweet bonus.
The game features the largest roster of characters by far for the whole series with so many characters that they don’t even all fit on the characters select screen; some characters are accessed through a star on the select screen. Each model generally has two outfits and small variations on the character models themselves. Even though there is a plethora of characters there are still some omissions like assassin (cool version of Yun-Sung) and Necrid. I guess they had to make way for returning characters like that girl with the circular weapon which is possibly the most retarded weapon I have ever seen. There are tons of levels which go to various locations inside and outside of dungeons but again there are still some classic level designs missing like the ice and fire floors. I was disappointed, but then again the music more than makes up for it. As to be expected in Soul Calibur, the music is a sure-fire hit and each track is meticulously coordinated for the fight which thereby proceeds it. The graphics are beautiful and the boobs are jiggly as ever. I saw very few hitches in the frame rate and only logical errors with the customization (e.g. weapons appear through cloaks) were seen in the character models; generally the game is impressive on most fronts.
Like SSBB, a fighting game must be judged upon its mechanics and luckily this game is far better. The gameplay is nothing new to the series; Soul Calibur is still a weapon based fighting game where grabs rule supreme. Swords clash and guards break throughout, but what is new to this game in particular is that armor can now be destroyed once it takes enough hits. What this means is that in the areas where armor is broken a character is more susceptible to damage. Personally I have never seen this before in a fighting game and it works worse than you think. Armor takes a long while to break unless you focus your hits on a specific area and even if your intent is to keep smacking the same place, the amount of damage that the receiver takes post armor break isn’t that much more than with armor. Beyond the armor break system which is new, there is a revamped soul gauge in which if a player constantly blocks their soul gauge goes from blue to red and once they hit flashing red the opponent can pull a finishing move to kill them outright. Reminds me of instant kills in Guilty Gear, but what this replaced was the soul charge moves where by pressing all four buttons your character charges up soul power and once maxed out can initiate a stronger and most times unblockable move. Apples and oranges really, but I prefer the soul charge because it at least does not take forever and does not kill someone in one hit. Where I am disappointed in the series however is the general combat system. To me, this game is a borderline 3-D fighter simply because the movesets for characters is rather slim and is a few edits away from being as simple as a 2-D fighter. The variance of moves is sad and this means that any button masher can pick up a controller and rock the house. The moves seem rather intricate on screen but really all it boils down to is mashing the Y button a bunch of times. Grabs are far too good as they are unblockable unless the opponent presses a button combination to break out of it before the grab is actually initiated. The fact that grabs do so much damage and are assigned to a single shoulder button to perform kinda pisses me off. My friend and I developed a tactic for facing the AI where once they got up we would just grab them again and keep repeating the pattern until they died or fell off the edge. It was cheap but the fact that the game let us get away with it even with some of the toughest AI in the game is a large letdown. Another thing that really killed me was that in the modes where you can use custom characters, some skills were downright unfair. For example you can gain the ability to not be knocked out of the arena or can automatically push out of every grab. Some powers allow you to regain health back and to have unblockable moves…all this just sums up to rather slanted gameplay. It is an interesting addition to have the abilities, but I think there are still a lot of kinks with the system as is.
To conclude, Soul Calibur IV is exactly what I expected: just another Soul Calibur game. I immediately fell in love with the original game and believe that it has yet to have been recreated with the titles that followed, but that isn’t to say that the other were terrible games. It just seemed as the game attempts to be more technical, more flaws appear and instead of making the characters they have better it seems as though we just get more. It is a common shortcoming of a game, quantity over quality, and it annoys me that so many games make the same mistakes. It is nice to see that at the very least some new additions like the tower or the custom characters were added, but both have nothing to do with the core of the game and that’s what needs to be fixed.
Major Infractions (-10)
Structurally still a button masher
No real depth to characters and movesets
Infractions (-5)
Clone city
Grabs are borderline unfair
Custom abilities are stacked
Story mode is nonexistent
Minor Infractions (-1)
Lack of interesting level designs
Custom character models are physically based on a random model
No custom fighting styles allowed
Star Wars characters do not belong/ need fine tuning
Armor system does not do much
Instant kills instead of soul charge
Final Score: 54 (Out of 100)
