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jdevl

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Reflex Review: Soul Calibur IV

By jdevl 1 Comments

All I was after with Soul Calibur IV was a next-gen version of Soul Calibur II with online play, a few new features, and few new characters. After the first night, I'd say it is living up to my expectations and I can already feel my obsessiveness to unlock everything growing each second that I do not have a controller in my hand. Some notable milestones so far:

  • Completed 24+ Character's storylines on Normal
  • Unlocked all characters to comple the "Chain of Souls" map
  • Cleared the Arcade Mode on Normal
  • Played about 15 matches online vs a friend
  • Customized a few characters
  • Yoda vs Yoda fights are hilarious and flawed
  • Pre-ordered Star Wars: The Force Unleashed after I realized how bad ass The Apprentice is
  • Unlocked the ridiculous Numeric God Achievement, look it up.
  • Tira is my new favorite character, she's hot, nuts, and her weapon is wicked.

The new features in the game are a bit intimidating. I haven't figured out the finishing moves yet, but it is satisfying when you break the armor off of your opponents. My skills have faded since I completely skipped Soul Calibur III so it will be a while before I can get the Guard Impacts down, too. The character creation is deeper than I expected, but there was too much to do to create a brand new character so I decided to just play with the abundance of standard characters for now. Online play worked fairly well, only a touch of slowdown at first, but after we stayed a strength of 5/5 on our signal for the rest of the session things were smooth.

The initial high is still lingering so I'll hold off my final verdict after I know whether or not I will stick with the game after the first week of play. At this point though, merely playing with The Apprentice has been worth the price of admission.
1 Comments

Soul Calibur IV and the Downloadable $ide of the Force

By jdevl 1 Comments

Rumors are flying around about whether or not the exclusive characters in this week's release of Soul Calibur IV are going to end up being available as downloadable content for both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The original story is that the each console would get one exclusive Star Wars character. Yoda was going to available only on the Xbox 360, and Darth Vader was coming to the PS3 version.  However, after a YouTube video showed up last week of Yoda and Vader doing battle on the 360 the speculation began.

Is the video fake?
Is this really on the 360?
What about the PS3?
I heard that Jar-Jar was going to be on the Wii Version.

The most common thought is that the code for both characters exists in both the 360 and PS3 versions, and the unavailable character will be made available as downloadable content. The question is will Namco allow access both characters and how? They have offered no official statement so everything else is purely rumor at this point.

Personally, the novelty of DLC is just gaining steam. Companies are going to continue to find ways to squeeze more money out of gamers. In this case, if the rumors are true, paying $5 bucks for Vader is better than no Vader or having to buy both full versions of the game like it was for Soul Calibur 2. However, in Soul Calibur 2 each exclusive character at least had some tie-in to the console it was on (ok, maybe not Spawn) so the exclusivity made sense. Nickel and diming us for Star Wars content at this point in the history of that franchise, seems a bit excessive, even if it tends to happen all of the time.

However, as a 360 owner if I get a chance to pay for Vader I'll do it, as long as the fee isn't ridiculous. Even if on the inside, I wish there was a way to fight this trend of getting content into the game that should be there at launch. Reserve DLC for episodic content that adds a significant new piece to the existing game. Hell, release SC IV now without the Star Wars characters, and give me a Star Wars character pack with Darth Maul and Obi-wan in addition to Darth Vader and Yoda in 3 months for $5 to keep me playing.

Then again, some people have their own ideas:
"Can I pay $5 not to have any star wars characters at all?" - tedsofbeverlyhills, Ars Technica article comments
1 Comments

Oh Ya, E3 2008: Microsoft Conference

By jdevl 1 Comments

Wow, what a difference a year makes. Last year at this, I was touting how far things had come for my favorite 24 hours of the summer. The day I absorb more streaming video than any other.

This year, not so much. The spectacle and fanfare of E3 is completely gone. I received all of my news from live blogs and rss feeds. It was quite the subdued transition. I already miss the old E3. PAX is evolving into it's spirtual successor minus the surprise announcement and one upmanships that we used to love from the old Nintendo and Sony press conferences.

Microsoft took the floor this afternoon, here's what got my attention:

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