Games of a higher calibur

Finally, just when summer was hitting its doldrums, Soul Calibur IV steps in to take an unnecessarily giant sword to August and splits the month apart with a force of sheer awesomeness.

Soul Calibur has returned to living rooms everywhere with an army of returning characters, a couple new ones and a few changes.

For one, Namco’s Project Soul development team apparently decided that what people want the least from a Soul Calibur game is a backstory.

Storyline is thrown right out the window in this installment. Instead, in Soul Calibur IV, gamers get a nonsensical introductory montage involving a dude getting turned into ice, lots of people scowling at each other in the traditional menacing fashion and the absolutely random, unexplained appearance of Darth Vader on a boat, fighting Mitsurugi sword-to-light saber.

Of course, many players of the fighter genre may not even have realized Soul Calibur ever attempted a storyline in the first place, so in leaving it by the wayside, Namco seems to be going along with focusing on more of exactly what their players do want–more customization and more graphically enhanced ways to kick some ass.

In this fifth installment of the Soul Calibur series, graphics have been upgraded to make the jump over to the world of high def., which may be detrimental to anyone attempting to play on a non-HD television screen.

While this game looks pretty sweet on a shiny new HDTV, on a 25-inch standard television the text on the screen was almost impossible to make out, turning actions such as weapon selection or item purchasing into an unexpected mini-game of “guess what this is.”

Where the new and improved graphics really shine is the custom character creation portion of IV. Players have nearly free reign to make any kind of humanoid fighter of their heart’s desire, with an updated physique-builder with greater options for voice acting (down to choosing the pitch of the character’s voice) and face types.

Custom characters also have better clothing options than in the last attempt at customization in Soul Calibur III, where custom outfits were bland and unremarkable. In IV, a well-made custom character can look every bit as polished as the studio-designed characters.

This is a point game developers underscore with their inclusion of playable pre-made custom characters designed by guest artists, such as the steampunk android character “Ashlotte,” created by manga artist Oh! great.

Combat in IV has been revamped with the addition of the “critical finish” feature. Critical finishes push players to rely less on defense and move into the world of full-on offense. The more a player blocks, the more their Soul Gauge meter depletes, leaving the player wide open to the new fatal finishes by their opponent.

Also new to combat is the inclusion of an online mode, hammering yet another nail into the coffin of video arcades nationwide. Why throw quarters in to a machine and play with your friends in person when you can sit on your couch and talk smack a safe 300 miles away from your opponents, right?

Online play is nice, with few delays and plenty of opportunities to earn bragging rights or get your ass handed to you by a mega-gamer of alarming intensity from Ontario.

All in all, a good advancement for the series–especially if you are all about the online beat-downs and tarted-up goth girls.

Soul Calibur IVNamcoPS3 and Xbox 360$59.993 1/2 stars