It doesn't take a genius to realise that the two worlds couldn't be further apart. Sci-fi, as a general rule, doesn't mix with medieval history, but did that stop Namco Bandai? (from here on in to be referred to as “Bamco”) No. It didn't. Andsure enough, Darth Vader, along with his secret apprentice, graces the world's TV's again, this time to partake in the search for the cursed sword, Soul Edge.
Aside from being a rather shameful attempt to advertise thenew, upcoming Star Wars Release, “The Force Unleashed”, the inclusion or Starkiller, Vader (and Yoda if you're playing on the 360) only fuels the fire, as thousands of fans of the Soul series experiment with the latest addition to the series. Spending yet more hours perfecting their characters repertoire, to compete with the best, (or as I like to call it, the Artificial Intelligence.) Yes, that's right, SoulCalibur is back. The fighting game community rejoices, and the computer A.I is just as cheap as ever.
If you'renot familiar with it, (where have you been?)The Soul series is one of the most popular fighting games, and one of the only to use a weapons based fighting system consisting of Vertical attacks, Horizontal attacks, kicks, and guarding. Stemming from its humble beginnings under the guise “Soul Blade” (or Soul Edgein the arcades) it was the first of its genre to include the revolutionary, and slightly controversial, “8-way-run” system, allowing fighters to move about a complete axis. It was new to the world, and thus, Soul Blade thrust the series into glory. From then on is has been through three more incarnations, (being Soul Calibur,Soul Calibur II and SoulCalibur III). Each time the critics and gamers alike praised it for its tight gameplay, and multitude of single player modes. Every year the game improving, but the mechanics becoming slightly more tired and stale, Its competition from the fighting behemoths, Tekken, Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter and others, still going strong, but unfortunately, not much has changed for SoulCalibur IV.
The next gen iteration of SoulCalibur sports amazing graphics, but that's about all that is new here. While the meat of the game remains strong and fun, everything else falters. The game has taken a real battering when it comes to game modes. Only offering a measly selection on generic ways to play, including arcade, versus, and a weak story mode, bolstered by the inclusion of the Tower of lost souls (a spin off of the popular survival mode, which is absent from this edition) in which the player ascends the tower facing a string of opponents with only one life bar, accompanied by a partner, creating a tag-team situation, or descends in a similar fashion, but with no breaks in between. Tower of Lost Souls is noting to fuss over though, proving to be a fun challenge at times, but at others, a playground rich with painfully cheap A.I that can really wipe the floor with an inexperienced player, making it too much of a chore to progress at times, which isn't fun.
Another disappointment is the Character Creation mode. While not being a total let down, it hasn't evolved enough since SoulCalibur III, and seems to have been downgraded! Though it is still possible to create your signature character, you wont feel as unique as before, due to the reduced amount of clothing available, and the fact that you can only choose from the existing characters move sets, doesn't help set you apart. You can, however, also customise the existing characters if you so desire, this time offering more than just palette swaps, but the creation of entirely new costumes for them. Unfortunately, you can only use the same equipment as the normal character creator, so your modified Sigfried could end up looking exactly like your custom characters., which is disappointing considering the sheer multitude of options that were available in SoulCalibur III
One redeeming factor of this edition is the inclusion of a selection of new characters to choose from. The only Original characters to be added to the main line up, are Algol, the new boss character you will fight after every successful run of the arcade or story modes, and Hilde, a sexy and suave female knight. Hilde, wielding both a short sword and a spear, is certainly a very original character and a breath of fresh air, providing relief from all the scantily clad females of the cast, and a more classy girl. Among the rest of the motley bunch are bonus characters from previous instalments, now beefed up to fully fledged members of the cast, Amy (Raphael's Adopted daughter) and Rock (a character from the original that has been removed from the main cast since then) being the most notable. A new collection of bonus characters have also been added, (nice to look at, but just clones of existing characters move setswhich is a shame). Darth Vader/Yoda and the Secret Apprentice round off the list, being surprisingly well balanced compared to the SoulCalibur original characters. To stop the Star Wars trio from being ridiculously overpowered a force meter has been imposed upon them that recharges over time, stopping them from abusing their force powers. Use too much force and you'll be stunned for a second or two leaving you open to attack, so be careful! All in all the decision to add Star Wars characters to the game worked well, providing good entertainment value, and interesting story modes.
All that being said, the saving grace of this game will never fail to swoop down in your time of need, and provide you with some fun, which is most definitely the on-line mode. Whether you are playing on PSN or X-Box live, the experience is similar. Some lag issues are experienced, but the game dodges this issue by providing you with connection information about everyone you fight, so you can tell on a scale of one to five how good the opponents connection is. Your next foe only has a 2 bar connection? No problems, find someone else to play. But as always, I am ever cynical, and cant help but realise that there will always be people in the mix that ruin it for everyone else.
If you are familiar with the term “spamming”, you have undoubtedly worked up an intense rage towards it! If you haven't, a spammer is someone who plays the game in the cheapest way possible, abusing attacks that leave them safe, and you at a disadvantage. It is these Spammers that ruin the community. When it comes to it, there are a couple of characters in the game that are particularly notorious for being easily controlled in effective ways, that attract more “spammers” than any others. During my time on-line with this game, I have observed that it is impossible to play a ranked match (where the records are kept to your name permanently) without playing a flood of Kilik's or Mitsurugi's. Its not difficult to outsmart your average “Spammer”, but it is quite disheartening to see that there are so many people in the SoulCalibur community that are so desperate to keep their records up. But this is a minor niggle. The on-line players are, for themost part, a lovely bunch, and its great fun and practice to play against your PSN/XBL friends.
So, the final judgement has come. SoulCalibur IV is an extremely fun fighting game. The battles work well, the characters are well balanced, (apart from a couple) and with a massive roster of 34 characters to choose from, all unique, you just never get tired of experimenting with them. However, the lack of fun game modes, unlockables, the crippling of the character creation system, lack of much replay value besides the on-line and versus modes, and the games momentum slowly subsiding, the formula is getting tired, and something drastic will need to be done to push it ahead of its competitors in the future.
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