Reviewed: August 14, 2008
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Namco Bandai
Developer
Namco Bandai
Released: July 29, 2008
Genre: Fighting
Players: 1-2
8
9
9
8
8.8
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Fighting games have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. I never got caught up in the Mortal Kombat frenzy although I did enjoy watching seasoned arcade pro’s rip the spinal cord from their victims or perform dozens of other grizzly fatalities. When it came time to play fighting games on the home consoles I instantly fell in love with the Tekken and the DOA franchises.
Tekken offered cool characters, cool moves, and even cooler opening and closing movies. Honestly, it was those gorgeous cinematics that kept me playing. DOA offered the ladies, scantily clad ladies with measurements that would make Lara Croft envious…plus as that one famous TV commercial noted…”she can kick high”. But there is another fighting game that seems to pop up every two years to test you skills at memorizing outrageous combos.
My first Soul Calibur game was back in the late 90’s on the Dreamcast then the sequel arrived in the summer of 2003. Soul Calibur II did something no other game had ever attempted – it offered a custom character on each of the three systems it was shipping for. It was a brilliant marketing scheme that sent gamers rushing out to buy multiple copies. Then Soul Calibur III released in 2005, a PS2 exclusive that left GameCube and Xbox owners slightly pissed off.
And now here we are in 2008 with a new crop of next-gen systems and Soul Calibur IV ready to dazzle you with flashy graphics and a massive library of characters and all new combat moves. And borrowing on that aforementioned marketing scheme, system-specific characters are back in vogue, and this time Namco has joined forces with LucasArts to bring a couple of Star Wars characters into the Soul Calibur universe.
PS3 gamers can unleash their Dark Side with Darth Vader while Xbox 360 owners can shine their Light Side with Yoda. And if you play your cards (and the game) right, you can unlock Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, star of the upcoming game, Force Unleashed, as a playable character on both systems. I have to admit that not having Darth Vader in my 360 game leaves me a bit wanting, and I would probably drop upwards of 200ms points if Namco ever decides to offer him as a downloadable character…hint…hint.
Soul Calibur IV is a fantastic fighting game that doesn’t stray far from the core gameplay roots that have made all of the previous installments equally as good. You have more than 30 characters to play as, although many share the same fighting style and thus, the same moves. There are numerous stages to battle in including many animated levels as well as the popular suspended arenas where you can “ring out” your opponent.
One of the cooler aspects of Soul Calibur IV is the new character creator where you can quite literally build the custom fighter of your dreams by combining the equipment of other fighters as well as weapons, clothing, and accessories you can buy with your hard-earned gold from play in all the other game modes. It’s a powerful character editor and extremely easy to use, and I have to confess my first attempt at creating a female pirate came out fantastic, and I would stack her design against any of the built-in characters.
Even better, you can go in and customize any of the pre-designed characters. There are ten slots for each character, two are reserved for the P1 and P2 designs but the others are open to your creativity and ability to mix and match from thousands of possible combinations of clothes and accessories. Selection of equipment will also affect your ability scores and subsequently, your choice of up to four skills.
Skills add bonus powers to your fighter but they also cost a fixed amount of various resources or attribute points. The sum of your skills cannot exceed your attribute points as determined by your equipment. It’s an interesting mix and quite the balancing act. In fact, one of the hardest achievements you can earn in the game is to perfect balance your skills and your attributes so all points are used. New skills become available, as your character levels up through continued gameplay, and some of the best skills are obviously reserved for the highest levels.
Regardless of whether you are playing as your own character or any of the unique fighters that come with the game, you can jump right into the 8-stage Arcade mode or play out the 5-chapter Story mode for each character. The Arcade mode is best two out of three and can take 20-30 minutes to finish. The Story mode consists of 5 chapters with single round fights, but many of the battles include multiple enemies. Chapters 3 and 5 are boss fights but you can still finish a character’s story in about 10 minutes on Normal skill level.
Sadly, there aren’t that many rewarding cinematics to encourage you to play as all the characters. There is usually a short in-game movie followed by a black screen with some cryptic text about the character and their future. Many of the cutscenes even repeat across multiple characters. A few of the movies are decent but nothing comes close to the cinematic masterpieces of Tekken or DOA.
When you have mastered the Story and Arcade modes you will likely want to head for the Tower of Lost Souls. The tower mode allows you to advance through 20 floors rising to the top or descend 20 floors into increasingly dangerous territory. As fancy as this might sound, it is merely a mask to hide a tiered level structure. You pick your primary and perhaps one or two backup fighters then head into the tower for a tag-team tiered battle. Along the way the game will checkpoint and you can even switch up characters if you find your first choices are no longer working out for you. Along the way you will discover chests with new equipment and can earn new bonus items by fulfilling certain fight conditions.
You cannot descend the Tower of Lost Souls until you have climbed it, and for good reason. This is a much more difficult challenge in that you can only choose two characters and you must stick with them for the entire journey. The good news is that the character you aren’t using will slowly be regaining any lost health. Once again, you’ll earn all sorts of cool goodies by defeating enemies and descending through the various levels.
Controls have never been a problem with Soul Calibur and this forth installment may just actually squeeze a bit more perfection out of the system. The game (and the manual) still use A,B,K,G indicators for commands forcing you to translate to the corresponding controller buttons. Moves that require combo-presses of multiple buttons are already assigned as macros to the bumpers and triggers so if you can mange to push all four face buttons at the same time – just squeeze the left bumper.
Also new to Soul Calibur IV are Critical Finishing moves. Once you wear down the opponents Soul Gauge you can execute a finishing move that not only delivers insane amounts of damage, the slow motion animations that deal this damage must be seen to be believed. These are truly some of the best moments of the game, at least when you are the one doing them and not having them done to you.
The levels are 3D and you are free to move about in all directions, circling, dodging, jumping, retreating, and charging. Depending on your movement and your momentum, your basic attacks are modified accordingly. Characters are also wearing armor and other equipment that can now be smashed with powerful attacks when they are blocking. There are even rewards and achievements for doing this.
Soul Calibur IV offers a robust Versus experience, both locally and online. You can choose standard modes where you are locked into the preset character list, or you can go for the Special modes where you are free to fight with your customized characters in both ranked and unranked matches. The online gameplay is fast and fluid with virtually no noticeable lag. My only complaint is that I kept getting my ass kicked, but I learned long ago that just about everybody online is better than me when it comes to fighting games.
Nailing down the 360 specifics, we have Yoda and the unnamed Apprentice, both visitors from the Star Wars universe courtesy of LucasArts. Swords are replaced with lightsabers and a Force gauge is added to the HUD indicating how much Force power you have remaining for each encounter.
Yoda is the mighty dynamo we all saw in the last Star Wars movie. He jumps and tumbles around the levels with outrageous speed. Hit short stature makes him invulnerable to all grabs and most normal attacks unless you are crouching. This means he’s a great character to play but not to go up against, which is something you must do for a certain achievement point.
The Apprentice is another story. This guys is a total badass, both going up against him and while playing as him. He has one move where he flips the enemy over his shoulder then crouches and does this Force bubble that repels the opponent halfway across the level. Well, if you can position and time this just right you are guaranteed instant “ring outs” on every level that has an abyss, assuming the opponent doesn’t have the skill to disable “ring outs”. The Apprentice can also hover and shoot Force Lightning across the level. Both Yoda and the Apprentice are fun additions to the single-player game, but they are just too unbalanced to be competitive in versus modes online or off.
Visually, Soul Calibur IV left me wanting more…more of the insanely cool graphics I was already seeing. The levels are gorgeous, the characters are amazing and the animations are fluid and deadly. Clothing drapes and flows off the characters, tuffs of hair blow in the breeze – the only thing that bugged me was the stupid heavy breathing bounce animation pose every character does at the end of a fight. They just stand there and bob up and down…who does that?
You can’t possibly begin to imagine how intricate and cool the character designs are until you start to build your own from scratch or start modifying one of the existing characters. There are so many layers of clothing and equipment and most items have numerous color values that can be changed for virtually infinite design combinations. There are so many awesome characters it would be impossible to pick a favorite. Ivy obviously has the most ample assets of any of the female characters, but for sheer creepiness, I’d have to go with Voldo – that guy is sick…in more ways than one.
The level designs are awesome. There is a giant animated carousel with toy soldiers around the perimeter, there is a raft level where you fight on a river, there is a pirate ship, an icy cave, a stained glass tower, a throne room with an advancing line of spiked shield guards, and many, many others. Many of the levels are so gorgeous you can get your ass kicked while you are admiring the scenery if you aren’t careful.
On a more personal level, you can customize poses and animations for your custom characters as well as assign specific backdrops for their character splash screen. You also have full zoom and rotation camera control during the character editing process. Special effects are outrageous with all sorts of colorful flashes and motion blurs and streaks. Throw in a couple of badass Jedi and you’ll have one serious light show.
While the Apprentice wasn’t much to look at Yoda totally stole the show with an in-game character model that was as easily as sophisticated as the 3D model they had to use in the last movie. You can see every wrinkle and every strand of hair and every fiber in is robe. Outstanding!
Even before I had my copy of the game I saw that the soundtrack was available for purchase, so I suspected it was going to be awesome. I was right. The music is quite simple, in a word, EPIC, with majestic orchestral pieces, creepy ambience, flares of royalty, and even some triumphant Star Wars themes snuck in. This is definitely a soundtrack worth owning outside the game. It’s inspirational.
The character voices are always a mix when it comes to these types of games, especially when you factor in the English dubs. There is the option to read the text and listen to the original Japanese – always appreciated by the purists, but I find many of the Japanese voices to be annoying. While I didn’t mind any of the English voices, a lot of what they were saying was sort of stupid. Yoda probably had the best and most authentic lines in the game.
Sound effects were excellent with lots of metal on metal clashing and physical impacts for hits and kicks. Flames crackled, objects break, things splash in water, and armor shatters when broke. There is an amazing amount of sound going on in each and every fight and the mixing of these multiple layers was flawless. The Dolby Digital mix was expertly used to put you in these arenas and make you a part of the game.
My first objective when I sat down with Soul Calibur IV was to finish the story modes for all the characters. That took about 5-7 hours. Then I had to unlock the Apprentice, which meant playing Arcade mode as Yoda, then I wanted the Achievement for fighting Yoda which meant replaying the Arcade mode as the newly unlocked Apprentice. By the time I had done all of that I had thousands and thousands of gold built up which made it easy to buy out most everything in the character creation store. I still have a few items left to purchase; mainly those pricey lightsaber modifications.
At this point I have 19 of the 50 possible Achievements, most of which are acquired through normal play through Story and Arcade modes. I still have to finish the Tower and go for some of the more difficult challenges, and then you have about a half-dozen online challenges. As with any fighting game, there is no real end, and with so many characters, it could take you a lifetime to master them all, and if you do manage to do that you can always create your own.
At first I was a bit disappointed that Soul Calibur IV wasn’t this huge revolutionary change in next-gen fighters, but then I realized that there really isn’t much else you can do with the genre other than keep refining it, and that is what Namco has done. The only thing I would have liked is more story and cutscenes. After four games I still know very little about these characters.
Soul Calibur IV is the ultimate evolution of the franchise to date, with gorgeous visuals, solid controls, immersive sound, and a deep character builder that will keep you involved with this game for months to come. Button mashers may make it through to the end, but only the skilled and experienced will become true masters of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur.