The soul burns bright and strong in the newest iteration of Namco Bandai’s Soul Calibur franchise.
Story:
Given the fact that the story in Soul Calibur 4 (and every other fighting game) makes about as much sense as eating an army ant sundae I will not be elaborating on it. Pretty much a bunch of skilled warriors are clashing iron in an attempt to collect the Soul Calibur sword. Somewhere along the way Darth Vader, his secret jedi apprentice and Yoda make an appearance to claim the weapon…now that I come to think about it the army ant sundae makes more sense than the story, but that’s not the allure of a fighting game. And if that’s why you play fighting games you need to seek psychological help. The allure is the finely tuned and accessible combat that is open to you.
Rating: 2.0
Gameplay:
The fighting mechanics to Soul Calibur 4 are openly accessible to newcomers and more refined for veterans. But it’s not hard to notice that the button mashers are a little bit more dangerous than the people that know what they’re doing. They throw a certain amount of unpredictability into the match. You don’t know what they might throw at you because they don’t know what they’re doing. You can move up on one and the next thing you know some unblockable technique is thrown your way and then they miracle some three to four hit combo and next thing you know you have no life bar.
The interesting thing about fighting in Soul Calibur 4 is that a win isn’t guaranteed. Sure a better opponent can and will win, but not always because of ring outs, which can lead to a cheap victory, but takes a certain amount of strategy and skill for it to work. You have to employ a character that can either force your opponent to the end of the stage and get them out or know which character has a specific throw that can literally throw them out when needed.
A lot of the fighters are actually well balanced and if you know the weakness of a character or your opponents play style you can pick a different character to take advantage of that weakness. I’m personally a ring out king with Taki, but if you pick someone like Kilik, who does a really good job at keeping people far away from him it becomes a pain to use an attack against him, especially if you’re using a character with short-range weaponry. On the other hand Taki can murder the slow tank like characters like Nightmare and Rock. There are also Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur 4.
Though they look cool and read really well on a press release they really don’t add much to the game. Yoda is terribly broken. You can’t grab him and a lot of moves will just go above his head, and when you find the move that will hit him you just wind up spamming that move until the round ends making the match terribly unentertaining. A Yoda vs. Yoda match is just a joke until you manage to stop jumping over each other and you still find yourself spamming the same move over and over again. And get this Yoda can’t even throw Yoda and they’re the same bloody height. The Apprentice is more useful, but he’s way overpowered (especially if used by the computer). The only remotely balanced charter is Vader, but I really wasn’t too impressed with his move set. The force powers employed by each character varies, but it seems like The Apprentice received the better attacks. As much as I don’t like the Star Wars characters I can safely say that I like the default Soul Calibur characters. If you’re willing to put the time in you can effectively learn how to use a lot of the characters in the game. As polished as the core gameplay is they made some changes to it for the better.
One change to be noted is the introduction of Critical Finish moves, which kill the person in one flashy move. These for the most part are practically impossible to do because of the requirements for them. You first have to break your opponents guard and for this to happen they have to block for an obscene amount of time, and then you still have to put your opponent into the Soul Crush status (the orb next to their life bar has to be red). After this eventually happens your opponent then has to flash red and you have a split second to press the left shoulder button to initiate it. The only way I’ve been able to do them is during an online match where we had to stipulation of if you win two in a row you get to hammer away at the opponent while they’re blocked. Then you just counter attack until the opponent flashes red. It’s not much of a pay off for the hassle. Though some of them look cool, it’s just a pain to do them.
Another improvement is the introduction of counterattacks and breaking equipment. Counterattacks allow you to be on the defensive, but still be an offensive force to be reckoned with. You have to understand the timing of the attack and press forward and guard at the same time to deflect the attack and leave your opponent open. It requires a good amount of timing and strategy to utilize these, but it pays off. Breaking equipment doesn’t have much of an effect on how much damage a person takes. It honestly seems to be a way to work in more T&A, but it’s good for kicks.
One more thing to talk about is the character customization. Normally this is a feature I don’t care that much about, but in Soul Calibur 4 I was hooked. The more you use a character you raise their Style level, which unlocks more equipment. You are then able to buy equipment with money, which you get from completing the story and arcade modes. You also unlock new equipment in the tortuous Chamber of Lost Souls. This is pretty much a Survivor mode and the best thing to do is to customize two characters with a lot of health to get through this, but back to the customizing. You will be surprised when it comes to how much control you have over your characters appearance. Personally I have an Army of Taki’s with a good amount of Seong Mi-Na’s and Cassandra’s to boot. I have also managed to create a rather convincing Ada Wong from Resident Evil 4 and Kenshin Himura from the anime Ruroni Kenshin. It’s pretty fun to notice your improvement as you go from characters with random pieces of crap thrown on them to characters with color coordinated armor and accessories. The only thing I don’t like is that you’re limited to 50 customized characters.
Soul Calibur 4 offers a nice balance between accessibility and hardcore fighting mechanics. It’s not as technical as something like Virtua Fighter, but it’s a lot better than Dead or Alive 4 (I enjoy DOA4, but not as much as SC4 (especially online)).
Rating: 9.0
Graphics:
As with every franchise making the leap to the current generation of consoles there is a noticeable step up in visuals. The stages look great showcasing a lot of stunning details. A few stages have a fire theme and it’s nice to fight and notice the heat plumes in the air. There is one stage with animals (including the extinct Dodo bird) running around, with hippopotamus’ and Flamingoes also in the background, with no noticeable effect to frame rate. Every character sports nice skin textures with fluid animations. Of course one of the lowbrow factors is of course the cleavage factor. For some odd reason I think Ivy is wearing even less clothing and Taki…probably has the best boobs in a fighting game. I must admit that even though I’m not the hugest fan of Vader as a fighter I like the detail in his design and how he looks when he fights. When Vader swings his lightsaber you can see that he puts all of his mechanical weight behind it. You can see his brooding anger with everything that he does from a force push or pull to when he charges his unblockable attack. The opposite can be said for Yoda because everything he does is nimble and agile yet peaceful. One thing I like is that when you play the story as a customized character they use your character in the ending cutscene and every little detail in your armor just pops off the screen. I also must say that the lighting adds to the intensity of some of the battles. This is because when you’re fighting for your life on a stage where the sun gleams in your eyes and reflects off of your characters armor it can be quite beautiful.
Rating: 9.0
Sound:
I’m going to get the bad out of the way first. It’s not really going to detract from the score (heavily), but I must say that the voice acting is more over the top than the opening theme to The Venture Brothers and Adam West’s performance as Batman Batusi and all combined. The announcer comes off like he’s trying to quote Shakespeare, but not a thing he says makes a lick of sense. He would make just as much sense if he started screaming, “I’m going to wake up and brush my teeth with ice cream flavored toothpaste while singing Frankly Mr. Shankly while dancing on the toilet with the seat up.” The same can also be said about most of the other characters, but they are far less over the top. The only real problem with them is that they all sound the same and half of the women (especially Tira) sound like they get off by torturing animals while drenched in the blood of infant children. Once you’re able to get accustomed to the voiceovers you’ll be able to notice the epic music that Soul Calibur has always been known for. The sweeping orchestra in junction with the clanging and clashing of swords and axes makes for an incredible audio experience. The only problem is the music just tends to blend into each other and it becomes hard to tell each song apart thus making it sound like one really long song.
Rating: 8.0
Replay:
Online is quite addictive especially when you’re gaming with a close set of friends. I lost countless hours of sleep playing this game with friends and part of the fun comes from the character customization. You don’t know what kind of animal headed monstrosity or cool recreation of another game character you’re going to run into. Online play is a lot more lag free (but it does occasionally happen) than Dead or Alive 4 and makes for a more enjoyable and fair game. One complaint that I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about is how people play ranked games. There are numerous stories of people spamming the same Kilik combos and quitting early. Basically the consensus is that it’s irritating and it’s just better to partake in player matches. Though I’m no proponent of online I feel that it does add a lot to the experience especially in fighting games and with the addition of customizing characters you just might be playing this game a lot.
Rating: 9.0
Overall:
It has giant phallic shaped swords, skin tight outfits and boobs the size of steroid infused watermelons. On top of this it has nicely balanced combat and a reliable online network. It has pretty much all a fighting game needs to be successful. Once you get past the cheesy voice acting you’re in for a game you’re going to love. Granted it might have a feature or two that series veterans might miss, but it’s still an enjoyable game. If you own both the PS3 and Xbox 360 and don’t know which version to get just get the one your online or real life friends are going to get because they look the same. I personally think the A.I. on the PS3 version is a lot cheaper though.
Rating: 9.0
