Best fighting game EVER
A bit much you say? Well ok let me rephrase. As a 'game' Soul Calibur 4 is phenomenal but if you're looking for a story, logic, or brown tinted black and white garbage clone trash realism then this game isn't for you.
It's probably not an overstatement for me to say this game is to the fighting genre what world of warcraft is to the mmo genre. It is insanely close to 100% AAA crazy perfection and everything that follows it will be copying or ripping it off in some fashion guaranteed.
What does that mean for anyone thinking about buying it? Nothing if I don't list good reasons for the above statements so here we go.
You know how when you play a game and your not sure why but when you look at it, listen to it, interact with it, when it all just sorta 'clicks' together like magic you get that funny feeling like you just don't want to stop playing ever. That's exactly what happened to me with Soul Calibur 4.
The animation, the sound(well accept some of the voice acting), the color palette, the character designs, the art style, the controls, heck even the sword like menu buttons, its all just so well done. I don't know how namco did it but they truly have some of the industries best working for them.
Ok so let's talk about modeling. Polygons, textures, bump maps, all that stuff that makes up a games world. Well let me just state that the modeling in this game is truly breathe taking. If you find yourself staring at a character in the custom character editor don't worry, I am positive lots of people will be too.
People go on and on about graphics in games all the time but in a fighting game they are very important, if your characters look bad then that's like 60% of your game is a failure so it's pretty important.
On top of looking dead sexy all the characters move so fluidly and wonderfully, I don't know if they motion captured or just whipped there animators with omni-lashes(simpsons reference) until they looked awesome but wow. Keeping in mind this is yet another aspect of fighting titles you might shrug at but again it's essential. This genre is after all extremely simple when you think about it. You push buttons and one of the health bars on screen goes down. Which ever goes down first loses.
So that's looks and moves, sound doesn't really need covering, some characters are well acted, some are so irritating you'll wish you were born deaf. The music isn't bad but I can understand people wanting to turn it off as it can get repetitive. Hits are hard and lowd and I never get sick of that armor breaking sound, it usually means boobies are now exposed. hehe
Story? what? No there's no story, by the time I got to character five in story mode I was already skipping the cut scenes. Lets be honest here, Soul Caliburs stories have never made any sense and at best you could compare them to those of say a junior high school fanboy/girl. So yeah skip away people, you'll be glad you did when you get to 's version of the exact same cinema.
Though each regular character has there own ending maybe two or three are actually entertaining, the others yeah don't bother.
The game plays as wonderfully as ever and is even more accessible to new comers. The practice mode allows you to learn easily while fighting on low difficulty in story mode will teach you what to do and when to do it rather well. Trial and error my friends.
Trust me when I say new peeps shouldn't play on hard right off, it can get pretty crazy. Being good at fighters as most gamers know involves knowing when to attack, when to guard, when to block and when to chain a combo. Soul Calibur is really responsive, I don't know why not all fighting games do this as well as sc but when you hit ->,A,B-K,G -AA for example it actually does exactly what you want it to. And if your like me and have difficulty remembering combos, probably because you like playing alot of different characters don't worry as a basic knowledge of attacks is all you need to win generally speaking. The combo-memory thing is designed more for tournament players and hardcore competitive people. Even so the reason so many different skilled people can play sc and still kick ass is because a button masher can pretty much have an equal chance of beating a combo obsessed player.
Now as far as changes go, not much has actually changed in sc4 gameplay wise. And that's mostly because like tekken and virtual fighter the original mechanics didn't need changing and with each version they've only become more refined and better.
The only real change is the little colored circle in each characters corner, it starts off blue and the more you block the closer to red it gets, when fully red and glowing your opponent can do a critical finish which is basically an 'I-WIN' insta kill move that will only ever occur if your opponent is blocking and only blocking, which is never. I've yet to see it myself.
Bottom line; anyone can play soul calibur 4 and have a blast. Vets and newbs alike.
It probably doesn't mean much to some people but I would hang myself if I didn't go over this next thing. The custom character creator; oh my god. It is the single most addictive feature I've played with in any game ever. This feature is doing for this game what the sims, littlebigplanet and spore are doing for there entirety of gameplay. Basically giving you the player countless options and saying; 'here's a million things you can do and make for yourself, have fun'.
Ok so a million is an exaggeration when you have around 50 custom character slots but keep in mind every character has around 9 optional pieces of gear. Head, shoulders, chest, legs etc. Basically its rpg gear slots for a fighting game. Each slot can have an item placed in it and subsequently displayed visually on your character and then if you chose have its color changed. Every item has stats that will increase the number of that stat available to your character. You can then add a max of 4 abilities to your characters weapon/fighting style(which is a clone of any of the 25 or so regulars styles) that will for example increase how hard you hit or give you a chance to regen health.
World of Warcraft players will know what I mean when I say they're like enchants or ability procs. They either give a consistent stat boost, a unique ability or a 'chance on hit' effect.
Now add to all this visual whoring a sequence of sliders, for muscularity, physicality(body size or in the case of females boob size), face type, hair style and color, skin color(can be any color) and the possibilities just go on and on. What makes this so addictive? well by playing the various game modes with different characters you unlock more items and options for the custom mode and before you know it just like me and everyone else your playing 6 hours a day not just because the game is wicked fun but because every fight you participate in there's a chance it leads to getting more cool stuff for your own personal creations.
Using this mode you can pretty much create a character that looks almost identical if not at least very close to, just about any character that has ever existed in anything, I've seen people create characters from other games, from movies, from comics, you name it someone's probably making it. Now would be a good time for me to remind you that the game is visually stunning so no matter what you make, guaranteed its going to look as cool/silly/scary/bad ass as you originally intended.
I'm an artist myself and for me to be able to create my own characters in almost perfect 3d is pretty satisfying indeed.
Oh and don't worry about which version you get, vadar and yoda both suck so preference pretty much comes down to which system you own if not both and which controller you prefer. I like the duelshock/sixaxis so ps3 for me.
Online is pretty good I hear, with rare lag and generally good performance. I've yet to try it out myself.
So what are you waiting for? Go buy sc4 already.