Score: 4 out of 5

SC4 has tweaked its successful gameplay and has been given a graphical overhaul along with several new characters to deliver a solid game

 I want to be clear that I consider “Guilty Gear XX Reload” the best fighting game ever released; hence, I’ll be only referring to 3D fighting games here. However, although a huge fan of 2D fights and only a casual player of both Tekken and Soul Calibur, I can fairly say that I enjoyed this game. 

A big plus goes for the game play of Soul Calibur 4, which is a big part of what makes the game a success. The different fighting styles emphasized by the different weapons of choice add an exotic taste to the game. Characters are well-balanced, where powerful hits have the disadvantage of being slow and hard to hit and vise-versa. It may seem at the beginning that you can’t block, but after getting used to it, you realize that the blocking system is decent one. It still takes a while to learn what hits are considered high, low, or unblockable. New to the series is the soul gauge meter. This meter is effected by the amount of times an attack is blocked. When depleted the opponent can execute an instant kill. Although it sounds easy, it is hard to execute as even though the opponent may have his meter depleted, you need to have him in a state to execute it. The state is achieved by either performing a guard impact or when you break through an opponent's block with a hard hit.

One of the things that stands out for us in terms of gameplay is that you only really need to learn a few moves for a character to play well with him or her. This allows people to play well with many different characters in a short period of time rather than spending hours in and out learning about one character. I am looking at you Virtua Fighter 5!

Although most of the characters are the same as previous editions, SC4 introduces new characters to the game, such as Star War’s Yoda. Tekken’s own Yushimitsu returns as well, which got me thinking: would the next logical step be having a “Tekken vs Soul Calibur” game? Yes, SC personnel have an advantage with their weapons, but I’m sure Namco can find a way to produce a hybrid game that includes characters from both of its top games.

Speaking of Tekken, this game shares a problem that the Tekken franchise never cared to solve: the stories SUCK. The story is told mainly via text with a cinematic ending. There is hardly a build up for the stories and it seems like an afterthought. You go through the pain of finishing the game, and you get this feeling that there’s something missing. You feel unsatisfied after the game is over, and you still don’t understand your character. However the main component of the sinlge player is the ascending and/or descending the tower. This is also the place where you can unlock a lot of the game's items.

At first glance, Yoda seemed unblanaced and seemed as if he had an unfair advantage over other characters because of his short height and the fact that opponents can not grab him. However as we learned the game we realized that Yoda was easy to beat. That also goes for all other characters in the game, there might be some characters that seem to be tough but they all also have their weaknesses. Although Darth Vader is not present in the 360 version of the game, we have a feeling that he would be available as downloadable content later on as there is an empty slot for the Star Wars characters. 

One of the best features in the game is the ability to create characters. Used more by sports games, I believe that the Create Character option should be featured in all modern games regardless of what genre of game it is. The feature lets your imagination run wild. Now, gamers can put themselves in the fighters’ shoes, all from the comfort of their living room. You see yourself as a ninja fighter; you might as well show up to the battle field. If you are upset that Hillary Clinton lost to Barrack Obama, you can easily create both characters and duel it out. As the graphics of this game are one more thing that deserves applause, you have unlimited options when creating fighters when it comes to the tone of the voice, style and color of the hair, etc… Moreover, the clothes a fighter wears are not only for style, as you can customize even default fighters by changing their clothes or equipment so that they’ll change their fighting stats such as offense, defense, and health. Customization in fighting stats and special attributes allows people to deeply customize the way a character fights, with everyone having different preferences this means that most of the online match ups will feel different.

If you are bored of defeating your friends again and again you might want to try SC4’s online feature; you might not be that tough after all. The online feature is where Soul Calibur 4 truly shines. At first, I didn’t totally agree with the online ranking system, which rewards wins, not winning percentages. However, playing the game some more I realized why this is efficient. If you’re new, you might always start with something like a 2/10 winning percentage, but you still get credit for those 2 hard-earned wins to develop your character better. A problem though, which I don’t see as Namco’s fault, is that you’d expect online gamers to be pretty hardcore ones. Remember all those times you got a beating in Halo3!! Well, not this game! You always get a sense that many people playing against you do not really know what they’re doing. And what’s up with those same people always picking up Siegfried or Nightmare, we all know that Cerventas is the best (personal bias).

The one major issue we had with SC4 is that it lacks different match types in the multiplayer mode. Partner tag is introduced in the single player section but is not implemented for multiplayer. Different match types add variety to regular one vs one. Considering most fighting games come with a variety of match types, we were disappointed to not see them here.

Final word: It didn’t seem that long ago when Tekken 5 was at the top of the world as the best 3D fighting game. But there goes Namco and creates (again) another top-notch fighting game that might have won the crown with its enhanced graphics, balanced game play, and its extra features.

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