SOULCALIBUR IV REVIEW PS3

As is usually the case, the real mileage here is in multiplayer, and as well as the standard Versus from local games, you can jump onto Xbox Live and scrap challengers from around the globe. The single most important improvement for most fighting fans will be the online mode.

This tag-team element is great for long, tactical battles, and comes into its own in the Tower of Lost Souls mode, where you have to carefully conserve your precious health. You can fight with more than one character in some situations, which you can change mid-fight at any time. It’s also possible to shatter an opponent’s armour, fighting Vipers-style, with repeated blows, which is a nice touch. This makes those annoying block-happy players a thing of the past, and greatly encourages fast paced play. Once the orb of your opponent flashes red, they’re open to your powerful single-hit finishing move. and even invisibility.Ĭhanges to the battles include the ‘Soul Gauge’, which changes colour as damage is received while blocking. Example skills include health boosts, increased damage, invulnerability to ring K.O. Each character can be equipped with various skills, as long as their stats allow. Speaking of skills, SC4 features a host of power-ups, as well as a couple of major changes to the combat system. Sadly though, some bonus characters, and the Star Wars characters cannot be edited much, aside from weapons and skills. Almost every piece of equipment, from shoes to monocles can change your character’s stats, so there’s plenty of scope for longevity, as playing the other modes opens up more and more possibilities in the character creation. The aforementioned character creation mode lets you edit existing characters, changing their appearance, clothes, weapons and even voices. Vader floating around the Internet surely means that both platforms with soon see both the light and dark side combatants strutting their stuff via downloadable content.

This, along with the various videos allegedly showing Yoda vs.

On a side note, it’s interesting that there’s a blank character space on the Star Wars row in both versions of the game.

SOULCALIBUR IV REVIEW PS3

In a clever bit of marketing, the game has been released as the light side of the Force for the 360, with Yoda entering the fray, while the PS3 is depicted as the Dark Side, with Lord Vader spreading his brand of love.īoth versions also feature the Apprentice from the upcoming Force Unleashed game, although sadly, Jar Jar Binks isn’t available to smack even further back in time into a galaxy about as far far away as possible. Yes, ligthsabers, as this instalment features a few characters from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Each character is armed with their weapons of choice, with armaments ranging from swords, staffs, axes and rapiers, to more interesting fare like circular, hula hoop-style razors, ‘Snake swords’ and lightsabers. There’s a plethora of weird and wonderful OTT characters, a bevvy of gorgeous-looking arenas and a wide variety of fighting styles and tactics to make use of. Fans of Soul Calibur will know exactly what to expect here, and SC4 covers all the combat basics perfectly. So, when, after playing SC4 for what I thought was an hour or so, and looking at the clock only to see that I’d actually been duking it out for over four hours, I was more than a little surprised. Whereas I once lapped up each and every scrapper, such as Street Fighter II, Tekken, Virtua Fighter and so on, the lack of any form of originality eventually dulled my sense of enjoyment, and the genre has long since been MIA in my collection, with perhaps the odd retro title like Marvel Vs Capcom 2 still doing the rounds. As a rule, I can give or take one-on-one beat ’em ups these days.

Soulcalibur iv review