Blood, Steel, Good, Evil... And The Force
Customer Rating: 
A most anticipated release for the new generation systems, and thankfully not a disappointment, Soul Calibur IV is far from disappointing actually, this game is freakin awesome! Namco definitly utilized that next generation console technology properly, beefing up the graphics and gameplay to match the ever-rising standards of today's gamers.
First, a review for the game in general. Soul Calibur is renowned for its intensive weapon based fighting engine, and for its pretty in depth story line. Ever since Soul Edge (PS1) we've seen these characters grow and progress as the story of the evil sword Soul Edge made its way from owner to owner, leaving devastation and death in its wake. That being said, having a few new characters added to the roster is always a welcomed thing for two reasons: new fighting styles to try out, and new stories to be told. SC4 actually has quite a few new characters added, although unlike SC3 where a new character had his/her own fighting style, a bulk of these new characters are carbon copies of original characters in terms of fighting style. Furthermore disappointing, most of these new characters you cant customize like the primary ones, but I'll come back to that in a second. SC4's storyline, while informative to an extent, is severely lacking. Clearly, a bulk of the production of this game went into the online portion, but unfortunately the story suffers severely. Many endings are left with lots of unanswered questions, plot holes, and are all around disappointing. But hey, at least the graphics are good right?
Where the storyline fails, the online play is fantastic. This, combined with the Character Creation are what makes the replay value of this game so high. The Character Creation is moderately complex system that allows you to build the perfect character for you, or as close as you can get to perfect. You can either create your own new character, or re-dress and re-arm an existing SC character, which is equally fun. It takes some practice, but once you get it, taking your character(s) to any battlefield is a satisfying experience.
To make up for the lack of single player options that SC3 had, SC4 has a mode called Tower of Souls, a survival type mode where you "climb" a tower, pitting your players against waves of characters with various status effects and advantages over you. Obviously as you go higher, the stages are harder, but some of them get downright ridiculously hard around floor 40. If you get bored with "ascending" the tower, you can "decend" it, which is basically the traditional Survival mode. This one is more fun in my opinion, and a quick way to make money in the game.
The difficulty in this game is pretty standard. Easy, medium difficult, although medium can get a bit hard on story and arcade modes, especially towards the end when fighting Angol and The Apprentice. For those who dont know already, Angol is this game's final boss, and the Apprentice is "Starkiller" from Force Unleashed. Angol is interesting and at times difficult, but in my opinion, The Apprentice is the true boss of this game in terms of difficulty. He is a monster one on one, even against the cheesiest characters with long range weapons like Kilik or Sigfried. He's fast, strong, and has the force, so he can easily become your worst nightmare. He's even hard to learn how to USE!
Finally, the online portion of the game is done pretty well. Thus far, the only complaints I have with it are that there is no distinguishing the skill levels of different players, so you as a beginner can get paired with someone who's a true pro and get the crap kicked out of you in 30 seconds. Secondly, there is a strange lag sometimes when you play online, and your characters don't move when you command them. I've lost many battles to this little flaw, and it is infuriating. So best of luck to anyone who faces such a challenge.
360 Review:
Thus far, the 360 version of SC4 is just as impressive to me as the PS3 version. To be honest, I havnt played the PS3 one in depth, so the diferences between the two are unknown to me, but here's what i know about the 360. Firstly, you get to play as Yoda, and yes, it is cool. For those of you who are not Star Wars buffs, this is no big thing, but for those of us who know Yoda is the friggin man, he's got a lot to offer if you learn to use him. Like all characters in this game, you have to actually take the time to study moves in order to get the best of your opponent (especially online). Yoda's move are a bit tricky to get used to because of his height, but it can also be an advantage. Basically, all high attacks and grapples cant hurt you.
Secondly, as with all 360 games, there are the achievements, so those are always fun to try and get, but other then that, nothing special about those. Thirdly, the controls. I've never been a big fan of fighting games on the 360, so this has taken some getting used to. I still prefer the PS3 control over these, but whatever, this does just fine when you get used to it.
Overall, this is a very solid game, great fun for years to come. Now if they just made a SC that combined elements from this game and those of SC3, it would be perfect. Until then, this should do pretty nicely.
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