Review of Soulcalibur IV- Part 1
By blog on Sep. 6, 2009.
Here is the first of my game reviews that I stated I would be doing for my new PS3 games… Soulcalibur IV.
I’ve played the previous two version of this game, Soulcalibur II on the Dreamcast – right before Sega gave up on creating consoles – and Soulcalibur III on the XBOX, so I was already familiar with many of the game mechanics and characters. SCIV has a few new characters, most of which use weapon styles that veteran players will already be familiar with. The graphics are nice and clear, with good interfaces and character models. The backgrounds are nice in most cases, but the voicing at the beginning of each battle is inane to the point of irritation or hilarity, depending on your mood.
The fighting is very responsive, with no control lag to speak of. Some of the characters moves remain the same from previous games, though some moves are achieved with distinctly different button and direction combinations. Some of the new game mechanics really add a nice touch to the game, such as armour destruction and the Soul Gauge Critical Finish manoeuvre. The Soul Gauge can be found at the end of your character’s health bar, and is a small coloured gem type thing. It starts green, but if you are blocking all your opponent’s attacks without landing any hits yourself – blocked or not – then this gem will slowly turn yellow and then red. Once it’s flashing red, the opponent has a chance to do a Critical Finish, which is an instant kill move, but it only works if your opponent has also broken a piece of your armour, or broken through your defence, which is when they hit your weapon a whole lot and there’s a metallic breaking sound followed by your guard being down in spite of you still holding the correct button. To do this move you have to hit all four face buttons at the same time, or simply L1.
Now, there is too much more to put in just this post, so I’ve decided to spread the review over two. Not sure if that will happen with all my reviews, but it will with this one.
Category: Gaming