Hello my pretties!

Not only did I get Soul Calibur 4 this morning, but we Cali residents also got another surprise, a 5.8 earthquake! I was in the bathroom at the time ("when the bathroom's a rockin', dont come a knockin'"?), but nothing happened, other than a little rocking for about a minute, nothing even fell down. My fellow tenants however, were slightly less calm than myself. They had gathered outside and apparently formed an impromptu end of the world cult (I'm not sure how Los Angeles residents managed to learn to chant in Ancient Greek so quickly, or find enough hooded cloaks for everyone), though it may just have been an oddly themed pool party.

Anyway, I finally got around to playing SC4 and its a lot of fun. There are numerous modes for both single and multiplayer. Single player consists of story mode, a tower mode, arcade and training. Story mode is where you progress through the story, viewing cutscenes between battles. Tower is where you ascend and descend as many floors as you can, earning gold and weapons/armor, arcade is score based and training lets you practice. There's also a nifty create a character feature.

I knew my rusty skills from SC2 wouldnt help much at this point, so I gave Yoda a shot, and he has some pretty nifty attacks. He jumps around like a madman, and is pretty lethal with the lightsaber, using it in overhand swings and circular strikes and even lunging stabs. I went through arcade mode first, to try and get some practice in and it wasnt too much trouble. I had the most trouble with ring outs (due to Yoda's excessive jumping), and against the apprentice, who has some wicked force powers. I then tackled story mode, which is also a lot of fun, and some of the interactions with Yoda make for some funny cutscenes. For instance, one of the opponents said, "I dont even know who you are!", to which Yoda replied, "Know yourself first, you must". Definitely funny stuff.

I then gave the Tower Mode a shot, which was pretty interesting. You pick two characters, and can switch between them at any time, and work your way up a series of floors, defeating a certain number of bosses on each floor. You earn weapons/armor for your created self, and these can be unlocked through a variety of ways apparently, as I got a perfect kill on an early floor, and they gave me a soldiers hat. I also got a set of pauldrons by switching characters more than twice in a fight. Its an interesting mode. I managed to unlock the apprentice, a short ranged cute winged fighter named Scherazade, and the end boss of story mode Algol. I'm gonna have to check out create a character mode soon.

Hope your day was as eventful as mine!