Soulcalibur IV

"The soul burns a little weaker this time around..."

I'm a long-time Soul Calibur fan and a huge Star Wars nerd to boot. Hence, hearing that my favourite Star Wars character, one Darth Vader, was going to be in SC4, it was actually enough to convince me to buy a PS3. I wasn't really paying attention to the launch date, so when I saw it in stores, I was thrilled and picked it up. Only then did I realise that it actually WAS the launch day and I had managed to snag a copy. Very cool. However, I did feel somewhat obligated to write up a review on my observations, given that I was one of the first people to play it.

So what's the game like?

Unfortunately, it seems a little harder to get into than previous SCs. Too much complicated stuff (more on that below) and not enough straight up mayhem. Story mode has been absolutely butchered. We've gone from that awesome choose-your-own-adventure style story in SC3 to 5 matches. You heard me. 5 per character. One line of dialogue from you and your opponents per match. The stages even stay the same, so you see the same five stages for each match. Seeing how watered down story mode has become really made me feel disappointed after the epic adventure that SC3 led you on.

Call me a socially-stunted hermit, but I don't really enjoy multiplayer in very many games. Soul Calibur is usually an exception, but I live in a rural area, so finding people to play against isn't very easy. You'd think the addition of online play would remedy this but, unfortunately, in a game as dependent on split-second timing as Soul Calibur, you really need a perfect internet connection to get the full experience and mine is anything but. As a result, I always enjoyed how the Soul Calibur series catered to the single-player audience as well as the multiplayer legion. All the “quest” modes the game sported, from the original's map-trekking adventure to SC2's “Edgemaster” mode and even that bastardized RTS/Fighter hybrid that SC3 had were things I greatly enjoyed.

Which is why it is an even harder blow to me to see them turned into the “Tower of Lost Souls,” SC4's single player campaign mode. All Tower of Lost Souls amounts to is a series of consecutive matches with a few conditions thrown in every once in a while. No cool overhead map, no special storyline to go alongside it, just a straight beat-em-up, slaughterfest more reminiscent of the series' “Endurance” modes than the previous campaign modes. It's really a shame because if there's one thing fighters are (somewhat understandably) notorious for, it's a terrible single-player experience and, up until this point, Soul Calibur was the exception to that rule. Where most other fighters had AI that was either laughably easy or teeth-grindingly difficult, SC seemed to hit the perfect note of hard, but not too hard. Where other games had no story and just one match after another after another, Soul Calibur put a story alongside its single player campaigns and set different conditions for victory in each match. SC4 does none of the things that its predecessors did so well with regards to single player and what they threw in instead seems like it was almost an afterthought.

For those of you curious about the game's resident Dark Jedi, Vader is absolutely awesome! His voice, though not done by the infamous James Earl Jones, is still a very convincing substitute. His story is actually semi-decent, considering what they had to work with, and doesn't come across like a cheap cop-out like SC2's guest characters. His moveset is both cool and fairly practical and even includes a few cool-looking Force powers. I'm still getting used to his actual moves but I can confidently say that while he's not t3h ub3r like, say, Hamachi from SC2, I see some serious potential for pwnage with him if used right. Oh, and you get to fight on a Star Destroyer.

A Star Destroyer hangar bay.

With TIEs flying by and everything. Seeing that was perhaps the single most badass moment of my playing time so far.

The game's music is its usual awesome self and fans of the series will recognize some old tunes that have been prettied up for the new game. While we're talking about the sound department, it's worth mentioning that the voice acting is it's usual craptastic self as well. The game's visuals are gorgeous, but that's kind of getting to be a redundant comment these days, what with every other game on the block sporting graphics that border on photorealistic.

The create-a-character from SC3 has returned in force and is one of the few things the game does better than its predecessor. The amount of customization and gear you can put into your character borders on the obscene. And this time around, you can also customize existing characters, giving them different clothes and weaponry. Vader has pretty much no customization beyond his weapon, but most of the classic SC characters can be dolled up pretty impressively. Unfortunately, each piece of wargear has an effect on your character's stats and fighting style. The end result of this is the dreaded "clown character" syndrome, wherein your character's best combination of gear usually ends up making him or her look completely ridiculous. You can make a cool-looking character, but there's no guarentee he/she will be any good. For example, in order to get through the Tower of Lost Souls, I created two specific "healing" characters loaded up with healing abilities. The only problem was the pair of them looked like they'd gotten dressed by setting a bomb off at a ren fair and standing in the ensuing debris shower.

I'm going to go off on this feature for a bit, because it bugs me. Yes, it's quasi-realistic (as realistic as you can get with an SC game, that is) in that armour will offer more protection but less mobility than, say, robes but it's also needlessly complex. Each piece of equipment modifies several stats either positively or negatively and because of the sheer amount of clothing involved, finding the best combination without use of a guide or FAQ is really damn annoying. And I also hate this trend SC has gone on of doing it's best to try and take the actual "skill" out of the fighting. Soul Calibur is a fighter, not an RPG, but SC4 seems to like to think that it's both. Dating back to the first Soul Edge, you could buy or acquire weapons that changed around your stats, a feature that was only missing for one game: the original Soul Calibur. This weapon-selection got out of control in SC2 where some weapons were so horrendously overpowered, they completely nullified any pretence of skill and could end the match in seconds by their sheer damage-dealing power (I'm looking at you, Soul-Edge-Nunchucks and Katana)

Speaking of which, weapon customization is another new feature where you can take all of those overpowered traits from the previous games and ram them all onto one weapon. Provided you have enough skill points. Again, there's enough options for customization to make your head spin. Fortunately, as always, the option is still there for purists like me to just turn off all the customizable gear and fight with the default weapons, creating a relatively fair match. But, after being able to do the same in SC3 and still have a badass and completely unique, individual character to call my own, this really feels like a step backwards.

There is, however, an upside to the feature. Within each section of clothing, there is a "nothing" option you may select so, for those of you who enjoyed catching glimpses at the various pieces of underwear sported by the Soul Calibur girls, you now no longer have to go to the trouble of smashing them upside the head beforehand. The ability to remove clothing means that you can, if you are so moved, create your own SC-themed mud-wrestling pit complete with scantily clad babes in tight-fitting underwear. Except there's no mud. And there's swords. You can even customize the underwear worn to suit your specific tastes, ranging from leggings to a thong. Regrettably, the one clothing section that doesn't have the "nothing" option does happen to be the underwear section. Maybe you can buy it in the online store...

For those who believe the journey is just as important as the destination, there is the ability to knock off clothing and armour in battle by hitting the same area on a person over and over. It's an interesting cry back to the "weapon break" system employed by Soul Edge, though I usually found my opponents were dead before I'd knocked more than a piece or two of their armour off.

There are some... strange unlockable characters. I won't spoil anything with names, but one looked like she came from an anime of some sort, another looked elvish in nature, but if either of them were another cameo, I didn't catch the reference. However, given that other characters from Namco games have wound up in the Soul Calibur games in the past (like the series' black sheep, Soul Calibur Legends), I wouldn't be surprised if this really was another new guest character.

SC3's psychic AI seems to have made a return, but it seems to be somewhat irrationally proportional to the skill of the player. For example, on my first run through story mode with Vader, I had a relatively easy time. Despite still learning his moves and relying more on button mashing than actual skill, I carved through the opposition with little difficulty, even taking down the (double-health-barred) final boss without ever being in any serious danger of losing. Yet, when I repeated the task with my usual character, Siegfried, who I tend to pwn face with, I found my usual comboes and chains being blocked flawlessly, even as I varied my targets from high to low. It got a little frustrating at times but thankfully the game developers seem to have actually listened to the complaints about this unfortunate case of virtual prevision. Now, if you spend too much time blocking and not enough time attacking or guard impacting, your health bar will flash red and, if your opponent can deliver a single strong attack or guard impact before you recover, you will be left momentarily dizzy. At this point, your opponent can perform a "soul crush", which instantly kills your character in one hit.

Yes, just one hit. It must be hard to pull off then, right?

Well, actually no. Just press L2 (or mash block and all three attack buttons if you want to do things the hard way) and enjoy the show.

This will, hopefully, cut down on turtling and provides a good way to take out annoyingly cheap psychic AI characters, but still seems a little... harsh.

You may think from all my complaining so far that the game is terrible. Let me say that that is far from the truth, hence why the game got an 8/10 for me. Nearly everything from the previous SC games is here in some form or another and the gaming engine and overall controls remain almost untouched. The casual-friendly, button-mashing style of gameplay is still here in force, but with slower and larger characters for those who prefer putting some skill into their playstyle. If you were expecting any drastic changes to the formula that made Soul Calibur the wildly popular series it is, then you won't find them here. And that's not a bad thing, in my mind; if it ain't broke, don't fix it, a lesson Namco apparently learned well from Soul Calibur Legends.

No, SC4 isn't bad by any means. What it is, however, is a game that doesn't live up to the legacy set by the previous games in the series. Instead, SC4 just seems to be a new, prettier SC with the same old combat system and all the extra features that the previous SCs hosted being gutted and stripped out, leaving a rather hollow experience. All the single-player modes and features feel horribly rushed, giving you a feeling almost like you were playing a beta instead of a completed game, while the cool little features like the museum and art galleries that used to have lots of interesting aspects to them are either gone or replaced by a severely dumbed-down version. All of this comes together to make SC4 just feel like a generic fighter. A very pretty, very crisp and very well made generic fighter, but a generic fighter nonetheless.

So for those of you who simply liked Soul Calibur for its multiplayer awesomeness, you'll appreciate Soul Calibur 4 for doing nothing different, aside from looking better. But for those who enjoyed all the subtle little touches that made the Soul Calibur series stand apart from the rest of the fighter crowd, prepare to be disappointed. Regardless of which crowd you fit into, Soul Calibur 4 is still an entertaining game and a worthy purchase, so you could do a lot worse than buying it, but just don't be expecting the moon from this game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/08, Updated 08/06/08

Game Release: Soulcalibur IV (US, 07/29/08)