Soul Calibur IV Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 14th October 2008

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We battle for our very souls!

Soul Calibur IV Details:

	Beat 'em Up
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	Namco Bandai
	Namco Bandai

Out Now

N/A

Along with Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur IV is probably one of the most anticipated fighting games in recent years and the series first outing on the new generation of consoles. But will the game be able to live up to all the expectations of fans?

Soul Calibur IV doesn’t have a storyline in it own right rather than, each character in the game has their own story to play through via the games story mode. Whilst this may sound good it’s sadly a little disappointing as all it in tales is a text screen in the beginning followed by five fights and then a text screen at the end. If I’m honest I was a little disappointed by this approach, especially considering the game was suppose to reveal several secrets and conclude things in the Soul Calibur universe, but rather then doing this, things seem a little unfinished.

Aside from the disappointing story mode things do get better with the games other modes. There’s the usual arcade, training and versus modes which are all pretty standard modes you would find in any beat‘em up game. Training obviously allows you to practice moves and brush up on your skills, whilst the arcade mode consists of eight stages with you earning points based on your fighting style, your score is then ranked on online leaderboards. The game features two versus modes Special and Standard. In special versus you can use customised fighters with abilities you have given to them in the Character Creation screen. The standard versus mode only allows you to use characters with their basic set of skills.

The games final mode of play is Tower of lost Souls! There are two ways to tackle the tower, you can choose to ascend and conquer the sixty floor tower, this is split into chapters with each covering a number of different floors and a boss at the end of each one. Or you can choose to descend the tower to see how many opponents you can defeat before being beaten yourself. You have to play the Ascend mode before playing Descend. Choosing two characters to play as, you can switch between the two at anytime during the battle as you face an ever increasing number of enemies. This is a good system as some characters are more effective against AI controlled fighters then others. You also get to change your characters at the end of each chapter meaning you can match characters against the boss style of each chapter.

The fighting action itself is pretty good, the game runs at an electric pace that keeps you on your toes. Pulling off powerful moves is pretty simple, however it’s not really required as AI controlled opponents don’t really offer that much of a challenge and button mashing is all that is usually required to defeat them and when you do succumb to an AI opponent it’s usually the pace of the attack that catches you off guard. Soul Calibur IV comes into its own, with versus and online modes. If you come up against a player of equal skill then you will often find that button mashing simple won’t bring you success so you will have to make use of the games various special attacks. This is when Soul Calibur is at its best and the pace of the game really picks up when you can pull off an attack that disposes of your opponent in only a couple of hits.

Playing through the various game modes allows you to earn gold, which allows you to buy new skills, items and characters in the Character Creation menu. Here you can edit your favourite characters with new weapons and skills that make them more formidable. You can then take your edited character online with the special versus mode.

Graphics wise the game can’t be faulted, characters feature an impressive amount of detail and it’s nice to see armour shattering during battles. Animation is also excellent and very fluid and as already mentioned the game runs at a smooth and fast pace. Battle areas are also nicely detailed with lots going on in the backgrounds. There is however, a rather limited number so it’s not unusual to see the same areas being used over and over.

The games audio is also pretty good, the voice over narrative is a little exaggerated and sounds forced whilst the games soundtrack is very fitting to the graphical styling of the game. Sound effects are all pretty good, whilst characters voices have all been done to a good degree.

On the whole Soul Calibur IV serves up a pretty good beat‘em up, some fans of the series maybe disappointed with the games story mode but the game features enough content so as not to spoil the overall enjoyment of the title.