Soulcalibur IV (Xbox 360)
The soul still burns, but where's the mythic story?
7/30/2008 7:08 PM | 1 Comments | Page 3 of 3
What's Hot: Finally, online play; Critical Finishes rock your world; New character Algol, the Hero King; Yoda and Darth Vader are characters.
What's Not: Lack of story; Critical Finishes are hard to pull off; Yoda and Darth Vader are characters.
Ivy's boobs are bigger than ever. But are they weapons
As an old-school gamer, I was disappointed by the fact that the text-based portion of the story has been appreciably cut back in
SCIV, as have the number of levels you have to climb to take your character through his or her story. Again, I know it sounds old school, but I just wish there was a mode with some interactive fiction that had a lot of precise, compelling words and illustrative animation or screenshots. How much could such a mode cost in production? A couple of hundred thousand bucks at most and we'd all get to know everything we needed about the Soulcalibur universe.
Ultimately, the online aspect of
SCIV is what makes it a step forward in the series. But there's still something missing in the story. Remember the mode in
SCII where you could move from country to country, winning gold to spend in the shop? This mode included sometimes arcane, sometimes revealing paragraphs of story throughout. Having a compelling fighting system with hundreds of moves is significant, especially when Internet play is part of the mix, but it could have been enhanced by the rich
SC mythos surrounding a demonic blade that preys upon the very essence of humans. This seems to be the only part missing in a game that, in all other respects, is the finest new-generation fighting game ever made.
