I'm going to review a game that has been close to my heart for a long time - Soul Calibur. However this is not just any Soul Calibur, oh no, this is about which is probably weakest title in this outstanding series: Soul Calibur IV.
First off I’d like to say that I LOVE this game – I’ve loved every Soul Calibur game I’ve played. I liked the first one I bought, Soul Calibur III so much that I soon went on to buy Soul Calibur II, and the series’ debut – Soul Blade. They offered smooth and fast paced game play, top notch graphics and character customization. But moreover they utilized and focused on weaponry of all shapes and sizes, rather than the much more traditional unarmed fighting games; something which to me was something I hadn’t really seen that often. They were always adding things to the game play, adding new modes, characters and new options – as well as a face lift, of course. And since I fancy myself a bit of a sword master I just HAD to get these games.
So when I heard about Soul Calibur IV I was over the moon – and then I kinda crashed into the moon and died a little inside when they said it was the final chapter. But now that I have my own little crater on the moon, I know where to run and hide if the game sucked so the rest of me could die. Oh, and to those who are faint of heart, I’m probably gonna be cussing a lot, sorry.
The first thing I found was a picture of Mitsurugi in high-res detail. And after having a pseudo-heart attack at the sight of my favorite character and the thrill of a new game, I saw that the game would feature Yoda. YODA… YODA!?? Of all the characters they chose to make a crossover with they chose STAR WARS!!? What in the fudge has Yoda got to do with anything?? Why is he there? What’s his purpose in the game??
“Yeah, it’s pretty good, but ya know what the Soul Calibur series needs? Fucking STAR WARS characters! That’ll be AWESOME, man!!”
What the fuck people, seriously? You have a game which features swords and axes being pitted against fucking LIGHTSABERS?? I think someone needs a 'reality' check (for those who don’t know - a lightsaber is a futuristic sword capable of cutting though almost anything with ease). This doesn't even begin to make sense. Yoda, Vader and Starkiller can all use lightsabers and THE FORCE (both of which in-game actually suck pretty hard)! But thinking about it conceptually, how the hell would any of the other characters even stand a chance against them? An even besides that, it’s a fighting game that utilizes melee combat in the 16th century – it’s just out of place! Even if you look at it as just a thinly veiled attempt to try and promote The Force Unleashed (a pretty fun game in itself, to be fair), it’s still a giant 'fuck you' to the 4th wall - Sci-Fi characters, in a fantasy game? Seriously, have they started making games just to advertise other games now?? What’s next? Where does this end? Will Kane and Lynch turn up in a fucking Tomb Raider game or something? *Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light* Oh fuck you!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m a monumentally gargantuan fan of the OLDER Star Wars films – they’re quite simply some of my most favorite films ever: great story, great characters and great concepts (and I’ve seen A LOT of films); but in Soul Calibur, what the eff?? All it really boils down to is basically just 3 new characters (with clunky fighting styles which clash with all other Soul Calibur styles) who I suck with. Lame…
I suppose it's about time I tore my eyes away from the cover art and actually play the game!
Loading up the game and watching the cut scene I wondered what would be different in this game, what would be added this time, and will it suck harder than Reb Brown films? Well the cinematic was, as with every Soul Calibur cheesy, yet awesome – it’s a kind of guilty pleasure to watch. Seeing some of the characters in high-res detail was awesome, also the introduction of some of the new characters, like Hilde - a red-head who uses a short sword and a lance fighting against Ms. Bondage-- I mean Ivy! Yeah, Ivy...!
DM: Ivy's boobs - the REAL reason we buy a Soul Calibur game!
And *sigh* Yoda... fighting against Astaroth. And of course having the series 2 main characters 'fighting' each other - Siegfried (the hero - wielding Soul Calibur - the good sword) and Nightmare (the villain - wielding Soul Edge - the evil sword).
After talking my eyes of the mesmerizing start menu I saw they obviously had the modes that have to be there – the incoherent nonsensical non-canon story modes which appear in every ‘story’ mode in fighting games. Here’s something I don’t get – why does the story mode always have to be like that? Seriously, there’s a different ending for each character (which in themselves are short, dissatisfying, samey and lame) where their journey was supposed to end. Here’s my problem – its non-canon every time. I don’t think I’m really ++SPOILERS++ err, spoiling anything when I say that in one way or another you find and fight some guy the story writers kinda pulled out of their ass - Algol, and you get one or both swords (Soul Edge and Soul Calibur) and your character chooses to take them, destroy or seal them. Here’s my problem: almost every character does this. They almost always reach the same conclusion. So… who really wins? What really happens, and who gets the greatest and most powerful magic swords in the world (which aren’t really any better than any of the other ultimate weapons in-game)? Not all fighting games do this though; some of them are almost decent, like Tekken gives you more unique ending sequences, whether it’s Paul riding off on his motorcycle or Law failing to cook. Yes they may too be quite disappointing and turn out to be pointless to the overall plot - but at least they don't fucking contradict themselves! In Soul Calibur they thought of a good plot and a good story then bent it over a table and butt-fucked it until it became so convoluted and splintered that there’s no real point to it. They even added a flow chart explaining the character’s motivations and some of their history because they didn't put the story in the fucking story mode!! It’s what I like to call ‘the story that could have been’.
All the story mode really is that you select a character, you get some confusing little text intro and then it’s just a series of 5 stages, wherein there will only be 3 cut scenes – 2 of which will appear with any other characters you play as. The only difference in the character stories is that you get a different sense of annoyance and disappointment with the different endings, which like I said blows monkey scrots.
Then there’s the Tower of Souls mode, where you can choose to go up or down and you fight a series of enemies who are drastically overpowered. But see there’s the thing – that’s all it is - just 60 levels of seemingly endless enemies who get more and more impossible as ya go!! And that’s just going up! Going down is kinda the same except you don’t get a break; they’ll just keep coming ‘til you die. To put all this in perspective: imagine you are standing on a bridge - to your left is a tank, to your right is Superman, below you is a Mortal Kombat spike pit and as you look up the entire Japanese Air Force is about to bombard the SHIT out of you - here's a shitty sword, good luck, asshole...! There’s no story or even any real reward at the end of it all – it’s just another lazy-ass mode you might go on if you decide you want to hang yourself on your own controller with the wire. Only you can’t even do THAT anymore BECAUSE THE CONTROLLERS ARE FUCKING WIRELESS!! Soul Calibur IV even denies your attempted suicide when you inevitably get so frustrated and bored with the Tower of Souls.
In Soul Calibur III there was an entire coherent campaign where you make a character and take him or her through an awesome war story. There were 20 levels where it played out almost like a simplified R.T.S. where you could enter Soul Calibur style fights if you so chose when you encounter an enemy squad. Hell, even in Soul Calibur II and Soul Blade there was a campaign with a coherent story; which is why I think the Tower of Souls - just a ball-bustingly annoying extended gauntlet of enemies - is pretty fucking boring.
And of course it wouldn't be a modern fucking game without an online play mode; and... It DOES have an online mode. But there is a SLIGHT problem: IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!! Honest to God, folks - it's unplayable. The lag is so terrible that commands I input either doesn't register and my character does the exact opposite of help, or they just stand there like a complete dumb-ass and I quickly become someone's kebab. The timing, skill, tactics and practice with your character goes flying out the window and it turns into a luck-fest. It almost feels like the game SOMETIMES decides to let you win. Is the game really too complicated to run on its own servers? It can't be as complex a game as, say, a First Person Shooter game online, can it?? Movement is restricted to the 8-Way Run system seen in every fighting game. I dunno - I don't get it, folks.
There’s the return of the character creation mode too – where like in Soul Calibur III I had endless fun. Seriously, I would spend fucking hours on this mode just to get my character JUST right *twitch*. Some parts in this have been expanded on: you can now change whether you’re good, evil, an asshole or a douche at will, and even the pitch of your character’s voice. In Soul Calibur III you’re clothing was what determined this. You’re CLOTHING determined whether you were good or evil, WHAT THE FUCK??
“No… NO! NOT THE EVIL TROUSERS!! THEY DO THINGS THAT MAKE ME SHOOT MILK OUT OF MY NOSE!! THE HORROR!!! THE EVIL!! THE TISSUE!! NEVER ENOUGH GOD DAMNED TISSUE!!”
We were seriously meant to believe that every last item of clothing was blessed, cursed or pissed on? Well anyway, thankfully they got rid of that. Instead each item of clothing has skill points attributed to it – like how much health, attack, defense and skill points it gave. How a T-Shirt can make someone healthier is beyond me, but I digress. Each weapon works the same way as well – the magical abilities of the weapon are no longer fixed, but still have a fixed number of attribute points it gives you. What all this amounts to is that you get to tailor your character’s abilities a little better than before; which I must say made sense to me – but I liked the previous weapon setup too. Here are my problems: because your appearance now matters in the story mode, Tower of Souls mode and versus mode you still have to make a choice: do I wanna look awesome and be a total fart in the wind, or do I wanna look like monster from Power Rangers and win more? I dunno it’s up to the player I guess. And the attribute points don’t really make sense or match the item of clothing either. All in all, in order to have a character which is any good you probably won’t look like how you wanna look. Thinking about it, the character customization is pretty limited, especially when compared to the Smackdown game series.
There is also much less weapons in the game. In Soul Calibur III you could use everyone’s fighting styles, as well as an entire new armory’s worth of weapons, each weapon’s style being different. I think there were still more weapons in Soul Calibur II and Soul Blade. Aren’t you supposed to, you know, ADD STUFF to your sequels?? Has anyone else noticed this in gaming lately? Some games can be completed in 4 hours now - like Kane and Lynch 2 and The Force Unleashed 2. At most games only tend to last about 8 hours, though. See here's the thing - are games really worth the money anymore? You can pick up any given DVD for about £5 - and that's usually about 2 hours of entertainment, whereas you have to pay £40 for 8 hours of entertainment with gaming?
So what about the game play itself? It seems like the creators were focusing on that, right? The other modes have ended up being pretty disappointing – so clearly they were banking on the game play to carry you though, and to hold re-play value.
Well they have added a few new features, some of which aren’t really new features, even within the Soul Calibur series. First one is the Soul Gauge system – defining how healthy your character's soul is. Basically if you block too much your soul will ‘break’, allowing your opponent to do a critical finishing move to win the round instantly. Some of these moves ARE pretty cool, but you can almost predict what they’d do anyways and some of the characters even have the same finisher, like Rock and Astaroth! Okay, yes it is very satisfying to do this – but the thing is as soon as you get close to doing it your opponent will suddenly grow some balls and go Super Saiyan or something screaming “DENIED!!” Seriously – more often than not I’ll get close to owning the fucker and the junk-face will suddenly start to make me look like some kind of decoration; despite me owning them to that point in the first place – what the hell??? Moreover your opponent is usually nearly dead anyway, so odds are you won’t get the chance. Sometimes it’s almost like the computer doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction of punching it in the soul - I wonder why…
It’s kind of reminiscent of Soul Blade, where along with your health bar; below it you also have your weapon’s health bar. Hell yeah – you could disarm the fucker’s sword and he or she can disarm yours and you actually start to fist fight – THAT IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME! Even if your sword gets snapped it won’t stop you from trying to annihilate the bastard for daring to fight back and breaking your best pointy stick. It adds another layer of thinking to your strategy, making it more interesting (and in a way, realistic) – you’ve gotta think: can I block another big hit? If you get disarmed you get the feeling that you’re in trouble. But in Soul Calibur IV you know you probably won’t get the critical finish and you know that your opponent probably won’t either. There’s no real sense of urgency or worry if you’re Soul Gauge is low, or even if it breaks; because not only do you have to be beyond precise with the input to DO the move (finding the Higgs Boson would require less precision), but odds are you’ll get the Soul Crush mid-combo; meaning you automatically lose your chance, because the prompt is so fast and sudden you’d already be in mid swing with a follow up attack which probably won't kill them - which snaps them right out of it and they're fine! BULL SHIT!!
Another feature worth mentioning is switching; whereby if there is more than one member in your team (which only happens in the story and Tower of Souls mode). You can push a button to swap to the other fighter – who will SLOWLY recover lost health when they’re tagged out. Thing is you can’t tag as much as you want because there’s a gauge that empties when you make a tag – which is only good for three tags – what the fuck is that shit? Why can’t I just tag as often as I want? What the fuck is my other guy doing?? Do ya think it’s like in GTA where they run off and find a prostitute? It’d explain his or her health recovering when they’re on the bench…
Another thing they've added to the game is a three-tiered equipment system. If a particular zone of a character is attacked enough (low, middle and high zones) that area of their attire will break or get ruined. With the pre-rendered standard characters this look really cool, making them look like they actually are in a fight to the death. However, where this falls flat on its face is with the created characters. Instead of making the clothing on that plain look torn or battered - it simply disappears. Yeah - put time and effort into making your character look like a fucking bad-ass and suddenly they're just in their underwear.
"I am the all-mighty Auros! FEAR MY SHINEY PANTILOONS!!"
Dignity - WHAT'S THAT!!??
As for the character list - there are 33 standard/unlockable playable characters in the game - with 50 slots available for either modifying pre-made characters or creating your own characters. The possibility of being able to play with a roster of 83 characters is pretty damn impressive.
But that’s more or less it. That’s all that they’ve done to it – given it a face lift, sucked out some of the awesome modes and replaced them with shitty ones and added some features to the game play which aren’t new, innovative or amazing to the fighting game genre. It’s very disappointing everything considered… but I still love it! Like the Soul Caliburs and Soul Blade before it I will play it to literal death – as in I’ll play it so much I’ll fry the disc (and yet another part of my will die inside). My addiction to them will demand that I play them to the end of time, no matter how much convoluted bullshit they spew out of their anuses. It might just be another beat ‘em up now, with Star Wars characters in it for franchise and profit reasons, but its Soul Calibur.
But look, if I keep poking at everything that sucked or didn’t make sense you’d probably die of boredom and inappropriate use of pen lids. On the most part – it’s fun! The series always has been fun, and probably always will be. THAT’S how I think a game should be judged, not by whether it’s buggy or stupid but by how much fun you had when you played it! Games can be art, sure; and games can be of a high standard - but if it doesn’t appeal to you and isn’t immersive or fun, you won’t play it, no matter how good the graphics look, or how well the game play works. People love to say ‘gaming isn’t as good now’ probably because of nostalgia - and the fact that their 10 year old kid just beat them into submission on Modern Warfare 2 - which I suppose is partially true – but if a game is simpler, there is less than can go wrong (well, I SAY that)... Unless the creators are like, chimps or something… who are high… from snorting bananas…
Dare: Hey Auros, have you heard the rumors the makers of Tekken are thinking of making a farewell to the franchise: Soul Calibur V?
Auros: Gotta go, catch you guys later. Thanks folks!
Dare: Oh bananas... ^_^
