Journey Back… Soul Calibur IV

Into this stage of history…

Soul Calibur IV is upon us. The game has long been a staple to fighting came fans. This version is actually the Fifth in the series. (Let’s not count Legends on the Wii) Getting it start on the PsOne as Soul Edge, this game from Namco could’ve easily become Tekken with swords. As we all know it became so much more.

Starting with the stellar Soul Calibur on the good for its time Sega Dreamcast. Namco redefined what a fighting game could be. Full of graphical flare and animation, this game immediately became the killer app no one thought it could be. It kept legends of fans happy until the sequel came out with a new quirk.

The original “Next-Gen” was upon us and Soul Calibur 2 saw release on all three major consoles. R.I.P. Dreamcast. But with it, came more fuel to the console war fire. Namco decided to include three special characters for each console. That announcement sent the Internets ablaze with fury about which console had the best character. PS2 got Heihachi Mishima of Tekken fame, GameCube got Link, and the XBOX got Spawn?

The first two made sense as they were tenants of said consoles, but the XBOX wasthe fledgling new kid on the block and hadn’t benefited from having a star character to include. I personally liked playing with Al but I had to concede that Nintendo’s Link was probably the most worthwhile inclusion. I mean Heihachi didn’t even have a weapon!

Soul Calibur 3 suffered from the fact that part 2 was so great. It went largely overlooked, not to mention the fact that it came out exclusively for the PS2 when everyone was anticipating the new “Next-Gen” consoles. So lets skip over that.

Which brings us to the newest iteration. Soul Calibur Eye Vee. Again Namco reached down into it’s bag of tricks and decided to give the consoles an “exclusive” character, with Darth Vader!?!?!?! for PS3 and Yoda!?!?!?!?! for XBOX360. Now, how two Jedi (technically three but we’ll talk about that lata) ended up on this stage of history is anyone’s guess. We can pretty much expect anyone who can fight to be open season for entry.

Now. First things First. The game looks beautiful on both systems. The animation is top notch, and the vistas are great. I’ve always felt that this series couldn’t look better and then it does. But I have to ask… It must be some sort of tradition or something, but how come fighting games don’t have deep character interaction and fully fleshed out endings and stories? I don’t want to read about it, I want to SEE it.

Namco first teased us with the original TEKKEN with these non-sensical CG endings. Damn right we beat the game with every character just to see those beautiful 10 sec endings. Even if they didn’t make any damn sense. But this part of the fighting game experience has not been updated. This is unacceptable, especially when the Soul Calibur series goes as far as giving you paragraphs to read about each characters personal journey and interactions. I know it may be a budget thing, but damn it, that would be NEXT GEN. Other than that you aren’t really luring me into connecting with a character other than I just like their moves. This isn’t the arcade (yes I know it’s there too) give me a reason for beating that boss who kicked my ass 32 times.

End rant… The game is still beautiful ya’ll!

The gameplay on Soul Calibur is a mixed bag. Like any fighting game ever created, there are imbalances between certain characters. To this day, Mitsurugi is too powerful and the majority of his attacks connect no matter what you do. Maxi is great for pulling out a win with constant barrage and girls (all 2,000 of them) are annoying as hell. But the game is still fun, because its beautiful to see the distinctive fighting styles collide.

Too often an important hit just misses or even worse connects but doesn’t register, but it’s often forgotten at the beginning of the next round when you release a combo straight from a Shaw Bros flick.

In this stage of history, Namco introduces a visual guard break, consisting of head, torso, and legs. When broken your character becomes more vulnerable to attack of that area and is disrobed! This is where 2,000 women is a good thing . Fighting women in their skivvies may give some heart attacks and the uninitiated to sit back down after unleashing their wrath for fear of their mums or sisters questioning their playtime.

Speaking of control, I have no idea how the game works on a normal controller. Purchase of a new SC game, for me, also includes a purchase of the official arcade stick from Hori. 60 beans? That’s a steal for comfort and memories of the arcade machine in the Pizza shop. (Damn I have to many video game accessories) The Hori stick gets my full endorsement, with its metal plate for a bottom, official 8-way arcade joystick and authentic buttons with microswitches. You just can’t get a better feel. I suggest copping it, and for you trash talkers you can plug your XBL headset in as well.

As for the included characters I have to say XBOX has gotten the short end (pun intended) of the lightsaber once again. Yoda may be the most revered Jedi in history and made people wet their pants when he fought Dooku in Ep 2, but playing with him has the unduly effect of feeling cheesy on both sides.

He is too short to grab, so no grabbing Yoda. Nope, Yoda can’t even grab Yoda. I guess he got the Teflon force! Plus almost ever attack causes him to launch himself in the air and swing around like a gnat. I totally wouldn’t want to fight him in real life, much less the game. Its fun to watch Asteroth bring down the axe on him. But I guess I’m just sadistic.

Vader on the other hand, is balanced well and fights like a Zen master. Errrm Jedi Master. His attacks aren’t too powerful and it’s generally fun to fight with him. I’ll do a separate review on Vader.

But all in all they don’t stick out, but I doubt many people will rank them as their favorite SC fighters.

Who is your favorite fighter? Well now I get the chance to create my own (I know it was in SC3 but we’re not gonna talk about that, are we? Right) and take him online and vanquish the world. Although I don’t like the fact that your characters moves are identical to the character they are based on, I respect the limitation, but it would be great to add some flare to the style. Like err a drunken monk with a staff. How cool would that be?

I also wish that they included a screen capture and upload system in the game similar to Halo 3. People have made all sorts of creations online Hulk, Snake, Raiden, Altair and many many many more. It would be cool if you could legitimately send your creations to yourself and make galleries, come on “Next Next-Gen” let’s go with the simple features already.

When you create your character you get to take them online for the first time. Yippee! I get to bust some ass with my Afro Shoalin Monk Hells Wind Staff dude! I wish you could see! I played dozens of games without the dreaded lag that has plagued the one-to-one input necessary for the precision of fighting games. EVERY FRAME COUNTS! This bodes well for the upcoming Street Fighter Eye Vee! Fighting fans rejoice the time may come where we don’t have to be in the same room with each other and can really claim supremacy due to the ability to take on many more challengers.

The ranking system isn’t as robust as it could be, but it’ll suffice.

Yup that’s Soul Calibur IV in a nutshell. If you are a fan of the series, pick it up. You will definitively melt away the hours when you have friends over.

DaveDaGamer OUT!!!

Another Soul Calibur IV Update

As if this game needs any more good news to bring even higher into the gun range of hype fire.  About every month within this year received some new news about Soul Calibur IV. 

The first big news about the game was the inclusion of Darth Vader, which made an obvious hit with Star Wars fans but then users started speculating about including Yoda.  Though the idea of the lower statured Jedi Master seemed like a mixed bag idea, Namco deceided to include him anyways … but only on the 360.  Vader stayed on the PS3 though, but hey, you never know, there are things called downloadable updates (I hear cash opportunity there for Namco though).

To date, some 5 new characters have been added, and Namco has even decided to start including Anime type characters in the game. If you’re world can’t be rocked any harder, you can check out Ota desho’s Omakase translation from the recent manga strip created for the game here.  If you have the time to translate the entire Japenese series, check out the full strip here.  Don’t worry, this was strictly made for new comers to the series but I doubt it will see the light of day over here through anything other than fan subs.  So before this post turns into a massive college paper, here’s a list of what you can expect so far:

• Darth Vader
• Darth Vaders’ Apprentice
• Yoda
• All previous standard modes in the series
• Tower of Lost Souls Mode
• Active Matching Battle Mode
• All previous characters
• Possible tag type mode for Story Mode
• Create a character mode (20 editable parts per character)
• Rumored to have 50 slots for create a character mode
• Museum Mode (with Bio/relationship charts)
• Kratos is not included but would have been nice
• Last but not least … Online Lag Battles

Sorry Kratos, maybe in Soul Olympus you’ll get a call from Namco’s agents.

Lightsaber action on the Wii

Eager fans wanting some lightsaber action using the WII remote will finally get their chance! In LucasArts upcoming WII exclusive Star Wars: The clone wars, players will get the chance to use motion gestures to control a lightsaber on screen. For instance, swing the WII remote to the left and the character on screen swings their lightsaber to left, swing up the character swings the lightsaber up etc. LucasArts promises to let players recreate the hot saber battles from the movies. So far it’s looking good but my only question, is this game a vs. or straight up action game with levels, objectives, bosses etc. I know more info will be revealed soon but for now peep the debut video from Gametrailers.

OMG Moment 2 – Vader Enters the Tournament of Souls

The only thing more amazing looking [and sounding] that XBLA’s Omega 5 is the announcement from Namco that Darth Vader will be joining the cast in Soul Calibur IV. Okay okay. I know what you’re thinking – “this doesn’t make sense but yes I think its phat and Fighting games don’t have a solid story to begin with.” Some of us think its a despearate push but really Ain’t This Cool News? Namco must have moved some serious CREAM to get rights to put this bad boy in there classic brawler. Yoda snuck into Vader’s time dimension thingamagiggy and made it to. “Brave I am.” The only other problem is the light saber itself. Since SC 2 and 3, multiple weapons became available so perhaps each character will get the Lightsaber version. Cool. For the Star Wars geekz though, they would know, like myself, that there is an item that Lightsabers can’t cut – obsidian.

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