Review: Soul Calibur IV

Soul Calibur IV is one of the latest additions to the series of the popular weapon-based fighter games. It was produced by Namco, and released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Players face off against a single opponent in one-on-one, free-roaming combat. There are a wide variety of arenas, weapons, and characters to choose from, and almost every one has a unique set of moves. This allows for a greatly varied set of play sessions with only the basic components of the game.

The primary modes of gameplay are story(a few scenario battles tied to a common plot, not a good one either), arcade(fight through a series of progressivly tougher opponents), and versus(player vs player). Secondary modes include 'extra' versions of arcade and versus where the different weapons have different attributes (nullify ring out, auto-counter, etc), a tower with an endurance section (never ending opponents, no health recovery) and a challenge section to unlock equipment. However, equipment can be unlocked by playing arcade, story, and versus repeatedly, so some may find that more appealing than most of the 'very' difficult challenges.

It's the difficulty of the game that may turn some away if it's their first time with a game like this.while most of the characters are not difficult to find a few moves that work in most situations once the basic mechanics are understood, there is no 'easy' setting for the game, and the AI can range anywhere from average to merciless, even on standard modes like arcade. At that point, a person would need to put some serious practice into a favorite character or hope one of the cheap moves they learned will get them through.

The difficulty can be ofset by creating a custom character. Players can make up to 50 characters of their own design ased of of the fighting styles of pre-existant characters. This includes skills the character has. More skills are available to a fighting style that's been used more, and different clothing and gear allocate points towards different types of skills. Stuck on a challange that requires countering? Build someone who automatically counters instead of blocks everytime. The opponent blocks everything and breaks your grapples? Make some of your stronger moves randomly unblockable, or make it so you do some damage even with a blocked attack. It's also fun to just try building yourself or a favorite character. However, I find that the options for creation are fewer than when the idea was introduced in Soul Calibur III.

Anyway, it's a fun game, and is easy to pick and play with friends. Patience and practice will get you through most of the challenges, but fortunatly you don't need to be hardcore to get everything out of it. 8/10