Soulcalibur IV
Preview
Get slashing
by Howie Howard
previewed on PS3
Online mode
Namco will come up with another great single player fighting game with Soulcalibur IV. Previous versions of the game didn’t include an online option but this one will! That’s great news for the fight game player who sometimes becomes bored fighting against the computer’s AI. Now you can fight your fellow human beings.
Online play adds oodles of new options to an already option- and action packed fight game. The new option that I will probably like best is the ability to create a customized character. You can design a fighter that looks the way you want it to look along with customized weapons and armor and take it online. You can also do the design before you log in for an online fight. This is a good thing and it will increase the life-expectancy of an already very replayable game. I can only imagine the amount of tournaments and other action-packed excitement that you will be able to find when you take your fight online.
Graphics
I’ve talked a lot about characters and online gameplay, but I have neglected to tell you a bit about what the game looks like. We all know that the Soulcalibur fighting games are simply one-on-one fight games where you start out in the game fighting weaker opponents. Your goal is to pile up victories and to advance up the levels where you find yourself fighting continuously harder opponents as you progress. That’s the premise behind a fighting game and Soulcalibur is no different in that aspect.
However, Soulcalibur IV features extremely detailed graphics and something that other fight games lack, which is visible damage. When you fight, you might miss your opponent from time to time and smash your blade into a rock or a tree. In Soulcalibur IV the tree splinters and the rock explodes into massive shards of stone. Another area, where damage shows, is on the characters armor. As fights progress and armor absorbs hits it becomes damaged and can break and even completely come off. This damage serves to open up an exciting new aspect to the game. Often, less skilled players like to parry or block attack hits. Doing that is maybe viable in other fight games, but Soulcalibur IV can, and will make you pay for that tactic, by allowing a Fatal Hit to occur. A Fatal Hit is simply a single hit that puts the opponent down to stay.
The same but better
Well folks, it’s time for me to wrap up this preview. All I can say about Soulcalibur IV is that I like what I see. If you have played any of the earlier Soulcalibur games then you know what to expect. With Soulcalibur IV you will be getting more of the same which is a good thing. Only this new product is visually more detailed, the characters are developed more, there are new weapons and new characters and there’s an online mode where you can beat up your friends and other players! Well, you can’t actually beat up a real person but you sure can try to beat up his or her customized character with your own! That’s what I’ll be doing so…
See you online!
