by HB

Created on: November 24, 2008

Soul Calibur 4 is the highly anticipated next generation iteration of Namco Bandais popular fighting series, can it live up to the very highest standards set by the previous games? (short answer: No)

The big addition to this game is the Star Wars characters, in the Xbox 360 versions you can play Yoda and in the PlayStation 3 version of the game you can play as Darth Vader. You can also play as The Apprentice from the videogame The Force Unleashed.

The main mode in this game is the story mode, each character is given their own unique story to play through, however the way this is done is very poor. The bulk of the story is given to you in the form of a big wall of text, and a generic ending movie sequence. On top of that each story can be completed in roughly 20 minutes. This is a real disappointment as the other games had much better presented and more interesting stories.

This game is an arcade port so it is not surprising that they included arcade mode, in this mode you can pick your favourite character and just find your way through increasingly difficult battles. Unfortunately the difficulty goes through the roof after the first few fights, which happen to be ridiculously easy which makes this mode pretty frustrating.

If you do not know of any of the characters in the game, you can use the robust character creation mode to make a custom fighter, you can't completely create a unique character as you must use one of the fighting styles that the regular characters use. You can customize exactly how your character looks, equip them with different clothes, items, weapons and so on. This is quite enjoyable and is one of the high points of this game. You can also customize the existing characters with items you have unlocked which will increase their stats.

The Tower of Souls mode is the last game mode, here you can pick a team of characters and fight your way up the tower of souls, there is no actual tower you just pick floors and fight regular battles to ascend. In this mode you will be rewarded with new items for your custom characters. It is quite fun but is really nothing new, you might as well be playing any of the other modes.

The gameplay is very good, the fighting is based on button combinations, and each character has many unique moves for you to learn, this gives the game a lot of depth as there are so many fighters to master as well as your own created characters. There are new additions to all characters movesets as well as the critical finish move which lets you defeat your enemy in a single move, these are very stylish but are very hard to pull off.

The graphics are really astonishing, the character models are very detailed and they animate very well, the stages you fight on are also very highly detailed. There is nothing to complain about here, the graphics stand up to very close scrutiny. The sound design is also very good, with some great tunes throughout, and as it includes Star Wars characters it also includes a couple of the famous John Williams pieces.

It is a shame the gameplay modes are so dull as the game mechanics are very solid and the graphics are extremely good. If you just want a good fighting game with very traditional modes of gameplay this won't let you down but I get the feeling it could have been so much better.
Summary: Could have been so much better!

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