Hit and Miss
Well, I was really pumped for Soul Calibur IV to come out. Once it did I went down to the local Hollywood Video, which for the first time ever had a game for rent on launch day. The game was amazing at first, but steadily lost attraction. Maybe it was the fact that I had not played a fighting game this generation yet that made it exciting at first, but in the end I was glad I rented it instead of buying it. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a solid game it just did not do it for me and here's why. Normally it's not strange for me to unlock every character in a fighting game in less than a week. In Soul Calibur IV it took me an hour... I am big on unlockables, and I must say this dissapointed me. You only need to play through story mode a few times with certain characters, and arcade mode once with Darth vader. For the rest of the characters you just need the gold to buy them in character creation mode, which is pretty lame. The story mode was also a serious miss for me, I guess I wanted endings like Tekken and I really didn't get that. On a positive note I really like the fighting. There isn't a very large gap between skilled and unskilled players like in most fighting games, so it isn't ridiculous for anyone to give it a try. The online play is also quite welcome. From what I experienced there is litle to no lag. As always Soul Calibur IV offers an entensive amount of Weapons for each character to use. Soul Calibur IV also expanded upon the character creation that Soul Calibur III intoduced. The character customization is very deep, and you can make some very interesting characters, BUT WHY THE HELL CAN'T I MAKE A CHARACTER WHO USES A LIGHTSABER!? I mean if you're going to add Darth Vader and Starkiller at least let me make a character who has their style, or at least let me edit how they look! While I'm on the rant about Star Wars, Namco felt the need to leave a blank character space between Darth Vader and Starkiller. Gee, I wonder who that could be...Clearly not Yoda when you offer him as DLC in a few weeks. They could have at LEAST not left a blank character space in the middle of a row. We won't even discuss my opinions on the DLC crap Namco is offering.
But in all seriousness I enjoyed Soul Calibur IV. It is a fun multi-player game with good graphics, and while it took some steps in the wrong direction DLC may be able to fix it. If it doesn't there is always Soul Calibur V to look forward to. If you have been a fan of the Soul Calibur franchise from the beginning this game will obviously be a good addition to your collection.
