Gaming Ring gives their thoughts on the latest fighter from Namco.

A Tale of swords and souls this is how the story goes. The Soul Calibur series is one of the biggest fighting game franchises in the world today and for very good reason. After the release of Soul Calibur III, a lot of people gave up on the series for many flaws in the third version of Soul Calibur, from a handful of broken characters to a shallow creation mode, which ended up feeling like Soul Calibur III was just phoned in. While Soul Calibur III was a solid addition to the Soul Calibur series, it wasn’t up to the bar that was set with Soul Calibur I and II.

Soul Calibur IV brings a lot to the table by fixing a lot of things, while at the same time there are a few questionable things. Soul Calibur IV is a game that many gamers have been waiting for whether your a fighting game fan, a casual gamer or even just somebody looking to spend a day playing a  entertaining and engaging videogame. Soul Calibur IV makes its debut on the new generation of platforms and makes a splash doing so. We are proud to say that Soul Calibur IV is a great addition to your game collection, and  can stand up to games like Call of Duty 4, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4. Soul Calibur IV brings gamers back to the over the top , fantasy world featuring weapon based combat that is easy to pickup and difficult to master.

Soul Calibur IV is technical achievement on these new generation of consoles for many reasons, the graphics engine is a custom made engine that features HDR, depth of field and all the fancy graphics effects that you come to expect on your HD video games in today’s day in age. The sound has also picked up a lot since the last games, as there is positional audio so you hear every crunch and crack and snap, from armor breaking off to the clash of weapons to the thudd of being slammed to the ground. Every slam and fall happens with greatest of realism and authenticity and feels like your right in the arena. The environments are destructible from the raft that crack to the seamless knocking down of the gate giving your access to a quick ring out. The first time you turn on the game it will floor you guaranteed.

The game boasts a large feature set, with over 30 characters including Darth Vader on the Playstation 3 and Yoda on the Xbox 360, as well as Darth Vader’s Apprentice from Star Wars the Force Unleashed. These gimmick characters are good for a laugh or good for those casual players that play for some simple casual fun but, I wouldn’t want to see one of them used in an official Soul Calibur tournament as Apprentice and Darth Vader are over powerful and  Yoda is flat our broken as he is unthrowable and only vertical strikes have any effect on him. If it means another Soul Calibur game coming in the future because of the Star Wars characters then I am all for them, because the more Soul Calibur players the better.

Granted some of the characters are clones of each other, but each character has their own flair and fighting style that makes you want to learn every character from the novice characters to the advanced characters like Ivy. You have everything from your Samurai to your your fantastical Knight to the damsel in distress, Soul Calibur IV has a character for everyone. As well each character has a fighting style that is personal to them, the character animates different really such as drunken boxing to your classic boxing stance to a stance that is straight out of the exorcist with unorthodox fighter Voldo. The Characters that you chose also have different weapons such as katana’s, nunchaku’s, swords, staffs, axes, ring blades and even some crazy mixtures like sword and shield and sword and lance.

If those 30 plus characters aren’t enough, then you can feel free to have your hand at the character creation mode. In this mode you can clone any of the characters and edit their hair, attire, weapon type and more, certain features are locked down to retain the style of the character. So if you want to completely start fresh you can and create your own fighter and edit everything from the face to the body size to the name to the voice and much, much more. The creation mode is very deep with a variety of pieces to customize your character, you can literally make anybody you want in this game. Want to make Ken from Street Fighter and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid? No Problem, just be warned all of these pieces will not be available from the get go. Not only can you design how your character looks you can also edit the skills of your character with attributes such as dash upgrades to Soul Gauge Boosts.

Soul Calibur IV while keeping the game play pretty straight forward, based on the past Soul Calibur games, adds a few new twists that rewards gamers who master the game play. The jist of the game play is direction, strike, strike or strike , strike , throw. The dashes and guard impacts and parry’s return unlike Street Fighter IV. While the game play of Soul Calibur IV is very easy to pick up and play there is an addition to Soul Calibur IV that takes a huge part of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct to Soul Calibur IV.

The feature that they added was something called Critical Finish. This feature allows you to perform a one hit move, that ends the match instantly followed by an over the top cut scene of your finish. Critical Finish moves have requirements, such as doing multiple guard impacts, breaking off a piece of armor and your opponents soul gauge flashing red. One of our favorite features that i thought was a great addition to the game was the new armor system. Every fighter has 3 different spots which has armor on their bodies, the head armor, the body armor and the lower body armor. What this armor does, is it shields you from taking damage and it prevents critical finishes from happening. Armor is what i like to call a double edged sword while armor is a benefit to your health , armor will also slow your character down.

With this game you get a lot things to do and to keep you busy all through ought the summer or whenever you decide to pickup this great title. All the unlockables are handled all through the museum mode. Whether you want to just jump right into the versus mode and play against the computer in 1 on 1 matches or against your friends on or offline you can. If single player experience is more your taste you get 4 core modes. The main course of the single player experience is the Story. This is where the Soul Calibur IV story cannon continues, which starts with a great cinematic of epic proportions that gets you all excited for playing the story mode. The story mode consists of a story driven experience , a handful of matches and a boss battle at the end and not only are you treated to a ending, this mode is also used to unlock characters.

Not only is there a story driven mode there is a mode called Tower of Lost Souls. This is mode rewards you for playing as your created fighter, as certain creation mode items can only be unlocked while using your created fighter. Tower of Lost Souls is much like Weapons Master mode in Soul Calibur II, while you unlock weapons, creation items and other various items. You go up a ladder by yourself and sometimes up to 2 more CPU ai, where you have to complete challenges like 2 on 1 with half your health gone and opponent has double health. While this game is a good distraction from the other single player modes, the difficulty becomes really insane and next to impossible to beat even for the most accomplished Soul Calibur masters. A neat feature of the Tower of Lost Souls when you beat it, if you can accomplish that, you can descend the Tower and play through it again for more unlockables and to play it in reverse. To Accompany the Story and Tower of Lost of Souls there is Arcade Mode for classic Soul Calibur play and training mode to prepare yourself  for those competitive Versus battles.

Without a doubt the feature that we have been looking forward to the most is the feature that allows you to play online against Soul Calibur players all across the world. Online features are supported over both Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. You get the standard set of features that are expected leader boards, unranked, ranked  and custom matches. While there is no online tag matches, up to 4 fighters can join a match and the winner stays on and the loser goes to the bottom of the ladder, very much like classic arcade times. Created characters are more then welcome online as well as customized original fighters, so you have the freedom of showcasing what you created against people across the world. The Soul Calibur community is one of the best communities on the internet for fighting games and even rivals the Smash Brothers and Counterstrike community. From the online games that I played on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 the online play was butter smooth.

Soul Calibur IV is not without problems there are still a handful of issues that are present in the game, but may also have been intentional as well. Such things as the AI could use some work as you could literally throw the AI over and over until you won the match, and this is even on harder difficulties. The game can also be won quite easily by just mashing a bunch of buttons, this is the case more so then previous versions of the game as combos sometimes last a bit longer then they actually should. If you can look over those things Soul Calibur IV is a pretty commendable game.

Final Comments
Even with some of the concerns with the game, the cheesy and broken guest characters, the flawed AI and the extended combos and a somewhat short story mode, Soul Calibur IV is definitely a very recommendable game. From the story mode that offers you a look into the future of the different fighters in the game, to the extremely lag free online, to one of the best creation modes in any fighting game and yes im including the Smackdown series. I would recommend this game to the hardcore fans of the series, the casual gamers and anybody looking for some fun with a game, like I mentioned previously. The game features stages with amazing attention to detail, great music to go along with the stages, a diverse variety of characters and a whole lot to do. Whether you get the Xbox 360 version or the Playstation 3 version of Soul Calibur IV, which by the way has the best loading times of the two, either game will do you justice. So looking at everything together, the hype that I had going into Soul Calibur IV as one of the most competitive fighting games of this generation, the hype lived up.

If you asked me what was within my soul, my answer would be simply – Soul Calibur IV.

By : Brad Ward
News / Previews / Reviews / Features Editor

Gameplay – 4
Graphics – 5
Sound – 5
Value – 5
Tilt – 5

 

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Tags: Namco, Soul Calibur, Soul Calibur IV

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 4:21 am and is filed under PS3, Reviews, Top Story, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.