Soulcalibur iv review full#
Soulcalibur iv review series#

I thought Ninety-Nine-Nights and Devil May Cry 4 had established new benchmarks for reflective breastplates, swords and shields, but Soul Calibur IV makes even that work look clumsy. I’m a little disappointed to see that Namco has taken a trip into the seedy Dead or Alive T&A district when it comes to character design – I’ve never seen so many female fighters who look like they’re on their way to a World of Warcraft-themed S&M party – but the amount of care and detail that has gone into the human (or inhuman) form, not to mention arms and armour, is frequently breathtaking. On that, we should be clear.īut once you get past that slight disappointment, Soul Calibur IV is utterly fantastic. This isn’t the Resident Evil 4 or Half-Life 2 of fighting games just a more gorgeous, more polished and more generous package of what we’ve already had before. The eye candy might have moved on in leaps and bounds since Soul Calibur I, but the basic combat hasn’t.

Soulcalibur iv review full#

While the fighting seems to take place in full 3D, you still have little control over movement outside of a straight 2D plane.ĭespite the incorporation of the Havok physics engine, the arenas are no more interactive than they were in previous versions and there’s little evidence of any realistic location-by-location damage modelling going on.

Soulcalibur iv review series#

Can Soul Calibur IV turn things around? Can the series still deliver one more genre-redefining masterpiece?Īfter a few hours with Soul Calibur IV your answer will probably be “maybe not.” It’s not that Soul Calibur IV doesn’t push the boundaries at all – it’s undoubtedly the most beautiful and graphically advanced fighting game ever made – but like the last iterations of Tekken and Virtua Fighter it plays safe. Now a new version is looked forward to with about as much expectation as the average FPS.

Once, Soul Calibur was the beat-em-up that redefined expectations of the genre and actually looked like it might rescue Sega’s doomed Dreamcast. The fighting game that then made jaws drop around the world now feels as familiar and comfortable as a pair of old slippers. Nevertheless, the one game I played, namely Soulcalibur IV, was an epic experience.Let’s face it, Soul Calibur IV was always going to struggle to make the same impact that the original did when it appeared at E3 in 1999. Like I said, I am not a diehard fan of the series and not that familiar with the game. You build up a gauge by fighting, and when full, you can unleash a massive powerful series of brutal attacks, always instantly finishing off your opponent. This is, of course, mainly because of my lack of experience with the series, but the mechanics, moves and combos just feel very unnatural to me and really hard to pull off. It almost played like Dark Souls to me, but then in a Tournament Fighter. In this game, he looked even more badass. I also really liked the fact that I could choose Yoshimitsu, a character from Tekken that is all familiar to me. It was so weird, but epic at the same time, to see Yoda all of a sudden appearing in the arena. Soulcalibur IV featured some crossover characters from other games and media.

It does not matter that much, but being a Tekken veteran, it is just remarkable how different and basic the lore is in this game as far as I experienced it. Every character is connected to the same cause via “The Chain of Souls” but none of the characters do have any canon endings or story endings as far as I can tell. I do not know any story or lore from the previous games, but in this instalment, you apparently have to reach Algol in his special tower and them whoop the floor with him. Unlike Tekken, Soulcalibur does not have that strong of a story. Nevertheless, I thought this was a pretty epic game. With that said, I do not know much of the lore, the characters and their backgrounds and the mechanics of each character. Soulcalibur IV is the only game in the series that I ever played personally. They feature great combat mechanics, beautiful graphics and some fluent character animations. The Soulcalibur games are on par with the Tekken series. Amazing game but a little too hard for me.