Boobies + Star Wars = Soulcalibur 4

Posted by Royalcow




One of the reasons I was brought in on IR was to do some posts about video games since I do tend to play quite a few. Most of the other guys here do have at least a Nintendo DS, and some even have a Wii, but they aren't as interested as I am I suppose. Recently a game came out that I was very excited about so here goes my inaugural video game post about ...(drum roll here)... Soul. Calibur. Four!

Many a drunken night has been spent playing SC2, which made me very excited to try out the newest entry in the Soul Calibur series. I had basically played the crap out of SC2 when that came out on the PS2 and Gamecube. SC3 came and went, but the character creation stuff really kind of fell flat and it didn't get all that much play time. Enter SC4.

For those of you who don't know, Soul Calibur is a weapons-based fighting game series which has been around on consoles since 1999 and really made a name for itself as a fighting game with great mechanics (and basically the reason to buy a Dreamcast). It also was recognized as featuring female fighters with ridiculously sized boobs and magic clothes that nipples never slipped from (see the artist's rendering of Ivy to the right).

One of the most exciting things about the newest version is being able to play online. After playing online on Xbox Live it was easy to tell that the gameplay was good, but the lobby system and matchmaking really needs a bit of work. By default you get placed into a lobby with four other players. I don't know if the hosts that I was playing with were sore-winners or -losers, but the first four matches ended with the session being terminated when the host left the session after his match. It was quite frustrating. I ended up needing to host my own session with only two people in it. Oh and I have yet to be able to get into a ranked match.

The character creation aspect of the game has really come a long way from SC3 as well. Instead of designing your person from scratch you start from another existing character, which makes things much easier. Of course the first thing I had to do was create a big boobed female pirate based off Cervantes (shown to the left).

A welcome tweak that I felt was a long time coming was that they seemed to have scaled back the character speed and movements from previous versions. The fast characters are fast and the slow characters are much slower than the previous incarnation. Siegfried was way overpowered in SC3 since he seemed just as fast as Taki. What's the use of ninja weapons, when you can just bash someone in with a ginormous sword, all other things being equal.

Oh right the Star Wars stuff. The game comes with Yoda (Xbox 360) or Darth Vader (PS3) as well as Vader's Apprentice (I HATE fighting the Apprentice, but can't wait to learn him). I really didn't like playing with Yoda (one of those small characters that is impossible to hit with a high attack), but the gameplay footage I have seen of Vader looks pretty impressive. Yes a lightsaber should easily slice through any of the weapons in this game, but I think we can look past canon and just enjoy some Star Wars ass-kicking.

So who do I play with? I can hold my own pretty well with Kilik (who I was nearly unbeatable with in SC2) and Cervantes (I just couldn't resist an undead pirate with two swords, one which has a gun in it) with some Taki and Talim (fast button masking characters) thrown in there for good measure.

There you have it Hops Ons . I think SC4 is a solid game, and if you liked the first few, or just like fighting games, I would say it's worth picking up. Hit up the comments with any thoughts, or other fond memories of Soul Calibur.