![]() Once a fighter’s guard bar is broken via excessive blocking, it’s easy to lose the entire match outright if the player on the offensive is quick enough. ![]() The two main additions to the game engine are the ability to destroy pieces of clothing and armor (with wonderful fanservice-laden results), rendering them more vulnerable a la Sega’s Fighting Vipers, and the Critical Finish, which stops massive turtlers cold. Many move motions have been reset to their SC1 and SC2 versions, nullifying the jumble-thon that was Soulcalibur 3, and allowing people who’ve learned legacy games in the series to shine once again. Soulcalibur 2’s skittishness and ability to ring-out someone simply by breathing on them is gone. Right off the bat, the fighting feels much improved from the previous games. It’s a shame it’s not really finished (we’ll get to that later), but what’s here still impresses. Fortunately, in terms of playability, Soulcalibur IV is one of this year’s pleasant surprises. Thus, no test locations, no playability info, no high-level character analysis. To find any news on the game’s actual feature set and engine, you had to dig a mite deeper, and even then, there was no way to fully know what to expect, since, like Soulcalibur 3, this game is debuting on consoles rather than arcades. The "hype" centered around it certainly wasn’t pretty for me: giant chests (no!), Star Wars characters (why?), seemingly random (not unwelcome, really, just random) contributions from Japanese guest artists and designers, and the director of the game inexplicably feeling proud of himself for "managing" to create a fully clothed female character (who you can strip to her skivvies using the character creator if you wish, but it’s far too early in this review for biting irony). It still feels strange for me to say this, because up until I played it at E3, I was sure I’d hate it. There's no reason this setup couldn't work for multiplayer, too.I really like Soulcalibur IV. And not just as a singleplayer mode, I think. I will grant the conceit that separating character and moveset, as in what each robot can do, does lead to this idea working better, but the idea of a mode with light RPG elements where you have to focus on the basics early on for the simple reason that your character explicitly cannot do the fancy things yet has some potential. ![]() I mean combo out of sweep ridiculous here. So when you roll into the World Championship having bought the arcade mode boss robot and feeling invincible, well, don't be surprised to see other fighters having done the same and pilot their own maxed out Nova, too.Īs for the upgrades, they go from early single strikes and special moves being what you have to later speed, power and armor upgrades making ridiculous combos not only possible, but necessary to do meaningful damage. But as you progress, upgrade you skills, upgrade or trade your robot, so do they. You'd fight on a tournament early on and everyone has middling skills at best and one of the four cheapest robots. The interesting bit here is that the opponents were doing the same. You then fight other pilots, some returning from the arcade campaign, some new, and some curious secret characters, as you earn money to upgrade or replace your robot or train your pilot for general stat upgrades. But that's not important here.įor Tournament Mode, however, you start with a custom created pilot (well, pick one of four images, it was early days), with no skills, and the cheapest Jaguar robot you could own. The setting of OMF is that you are a pilot controlling a giant robot, and there's a singleplayer arcade mode where you pick a character, pick a robot, and fight for the control of Ganymede. I'm honestly surprised that this hasn't been shamelessly copied by bigger fighting games by now. I still think One Must Fall 2097's Tournament Mode is the one to beat.
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