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A STORY BARELY TOLD Siths or otherwise, the fighting is pretty much the same decent fighting it’s always been, but we’ve established that’s a good thing, even if paradoxically it’s slightly disappointing. So what is there to supplement the standard Vs. Mode? If you’re looking for 1UP fun, the distressing answer is that there’s not much to Soulcalibur IV’s single-player game, with the Story Mode being distinctly shameful. For something supposedly associated with a narrative, it does a very good job of not telling a story at all. OK, so the fighter is unlikely to be the first videogame genre to win a Booker prize, but Soulcalibur IV’s Story Mode is beyond a joke. It consists of several swift, unconnected fights and the whole thing is preceded and followed by a couple of short, if admittedly well-rendered, cut-scenes... and that’s it. That’s your story mode, all five minutes of it per character. Oh, I am forgetting the preceding video’s preceding text explaining your character’s back-story but I doubt anyone will be willing to sit through the slowest scrolling text in videogame history. Not that you’re missing much; words such as ‘generic’ and ‘bland’ do not do it justice. The major timesink in terms of single player gameplay is the Tower of Lost Souls. In essence it contains two different modes in itself – ‘Ascend’ in which you undertake one mission at a time as you climb up the tower, and ‘Descend’ which is more like a survival mode, demanding you fight as many enemies in a row as possible until you die. Ascend missions are mostly tag-team, sometimes one character only, but the Descend mode starts you off with two characters. All of the single-player modes have rewards in terms of items and weapons that you can equip to characters in the Character Creation mode, but the Tower of Lost Souls is the best place to ‘mine’ these. It’s not really substantial enough but it is implemented well and reasonably addictive because of the rewards involved – it’s also quite challenging, particularly the descent, because it depends on your characters having good armour and weapons equipped and primarily on good tag-team strategy. This is because the character you’re not using replenishes their health, meaning you can’t just use one until they die and move on to the other. Typically for a Japanese game, the tag-team mechanic, which incidentally can show up in the Story Mode, has the bizarre nickname of ‘Active Matching Battle’. Just so’s you know. I touched on the Character Creation mode just now, but the returning feature from Soulcalibur III deserves its own paragraph because it’s been significantly improved in IV. The level of customisation has gone up another level, and players will be able to make unique and personalised characters with ease. The major advancements, however, are the abilities to make a character with one of the main character’s movesets and to then give them special attributes based on what weaponry and armour they have. The former means that players can create said unique and personalised character but equip them with the familiar moveset from their chosen main character. If you like Kilik’s style of combat but can’t stand his camp barbarian fop look in Soulcalibur IV, you can happily make a warrior princess and give her his moves. It’s an addition that significantly increases the value of the Character Creation mode, whilst the ability to customise character’s attributes further based on what they’re equipped with gives it a depth and longevity, and adds value to completing the rest of the single player content so that you can unlock all that’s available to purchase – Yes, some items need to be bought but money is not an issue in Soulcalibur IV since your income from playing through these modes is very steady, and so it should be. THE BRAVE NEW ONLINE WORLD At this point you might find yourself wondering whether there’s any point giving up Soulcalibur III for IV, but I’ve neglected to mention its trump card until last – online mode. You can play either a Standard vs game or a Special vs game against a random player or you can just play with a friend. The difference between standard and special games is that in the special battles your armour, weaponry and skill attributes are taken into account and also the Star Wars characters are selectable in this mode. Standard mode has no Star Wars dudes and no attribute changes. Your ‘random’ matches can either be ranked or non-ranked, with the ranking games containing an experience-based level-up mode similar to that found in Virtua Fighter 5 – the more games you win, the higher up in level you go. There appears to be no matching of player levels involved when your opponent is selected. There are, however, several issues with the online modes. Not only is the limitation in choice disappointing, but it takes more than a few tries to actually get into a match, unless you don’t mind waiting quite some time for someone to join yours. The game is in desperate need of some structure to its online mode, like lobbies or tournaments or something, anything. It feels detached and soulless at times, particularly because you can’t fight the same person you’ve been fighting over and over (unlike Super Smash Bros Brawl) and voice-chat is limited to the pre-fight screens. There have even been reports of players being able to quit matches before they die to avoid a ranking penalty or give the player they’re fighting their rewards. Just a smidge lame. However the most significant thing of all is that lag does not appear to be a huge issue. The majority (not all) of the fights run smoothly, something which is a must for a game like Soulcalibur IV as it is chuck to the brim with fast and tough-to-perform combos. Lag can be crushing when it does pop up because of the way the game handles it, which is to freeze up until communication is resumed, but luckily it appears to be not as much of a factor as everyone worried it would be. It’s a competent debut, especially when you take into account the graphics being processed, and offers hope for more in Soulcalibur V. Could there have been more to it? Certainly. Is it enough to make the move up from III for? I think so. THE 4S ARE WITH YOU In fact I do think Soulcalibur IV offers up a fair amount of improvements from its predecessor but I also believe the online mode is the most significant. Fighters are only so much fun on your own and you can’t have friends round all the time (or have friends at all in my case), so the online mode definitely does a job... even if it’s a job that could have been done quite a bit better. Soulcalibur IV is another good addition to the series although it’s not going to set the world on fire like Soulcalibur II did. Then again it’s been the year for slightly underachieving 4s and just like Devil May Cry 4, Soulcalibur IV will be liked by many but loved by few. Shoinan
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Soulcalibur IV 
