Back when Soulcalibur (yes, the correct spelling is one word) released on the Dreamcast, I thought I was in absolute heaven. To that point, I hadn’t played such an enjoyable and amazing looking 3D fighter. I was never too big of a fan of Tekken, and Virtua Fighter never seemed to click just right with me, but Soulcalibur was a game that I enjoyed from the first time I sat down with it. When Soulcalibur II came out, I ended up going with the GameCube version (while also sinking a few bucks each week into the arcade version in my college’s arcade), and again, I found the game to be quite enjoyable. By this point, Soulcalibur was becoming one of my favorite fighting series, and when Soulcalibur III was announced I was pretty happy about it. Upon release, however, Soulcalibur III was a terrible disappointment for me and I didn’t play the game beyond the five days I had it for a rental.
Flash forward a bit and Soulcalibur IV is revealed for the 360 and PS3. I was skeptical about the game due to the lackluster SCIII, and the fact that the screens shown seemed to mostly exist to show off Ivy’s boobs (which were unnecessarily and embarrassingly large). The game neared and I kind of pushed it aside in my mind, and a week before release I threw it to the top of my Gamefly Q. I figured I needed to at least give it a chance. Well, a day before release I found out that I was getting a review copy, so I’d be stepping back into the realm once more for sure.
Is that really necessary? I mean, c’mon…
After playing the game for a few hours and messing around in its various modes, I must say that I’m impressed. The online worked very smoothly for me, and despite some extremely rusty skills, I had a great time online. The single player offerings were as good as we’ve seen in the past, and the character creation system is just plain amazing. Soulcalibur IV has easily the best fighter character creation ability that I’ve ever seen. The amount of depth and customization allowed in the creator is very cool.
The gameplay sits somewhere between what we saw in SCII and SCIII. Namco Bandai seems to have found a balance between what they needed to tone down in II and what they needed to scale back from III. Even this early in the experience, I can tell that we’re dealing with a much more balanced fighter than the last release, and this time around we’ll be able to get patches and tweaks via downloadable updates if needed. I’ve spent my time with the 360 version, but I hear that the PS3 version is practically identical from a gameplay standpoint. If you’re a fan of 3D fighters, then Soulcalibur IV is a guaranteed pleaser.
Now that looks like fun!
I’ll have my full review coming soon. I think I want to spend a bit more time online to see if when the numbers of people on Live pick up if the lag stays at a minimum. For a fighter these days, online play is very important.
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mcmark
