SoulCalibur IV (PS3)

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]

Breast physics, next-gen style.

Of much more value are the female characters' assets. SoulCalibur 4 features the most in your face boobs we've ever seen in a video game, bar perhaps Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. They're certainly the most ridiculous - some of the costumes Ivy, Taki and Sophitia wear are, how shall we put it, on the revealing side. Boobs jiggle and bounce as if they have a life of their own. We swear they stare at us. We can see all that hard work with the Havok physics engine has paid off.

But it's the character customisation, for four, that proves to be the biggest innovation. It's the best we've seen in a fighting game to date. As you might have already seen from the many user-generated videos that are currently doing the rounds on the web, pretty much any popular culture figure, from Super Mario to John Rambo can and has been recreated to a surprisingly realistic level. By using an existing character as a base you can tweak pretty much anything you'd like, from outfit to physique to voice pitch. We tried to make a character that looked like our fearless leader Tom, which we thought was pretty good. He thought it looked more like Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard.

 Advertisement

The best bit? You can kit out your custom character, select special abilities (triggered by pressing every button except block) like invisibility or automatic Guard Impact, select weapons and accessories purchased with gold earned by playing through the single-player modes, and take it online. Online play is a first for the series, and long overdue. The games we've played online (on the PS3 version) have been relatively lag free, but it can take way too long for the game to match you with an opponent. It can be quite a drag to have to wait 10 minutes for a two minute game.

Still though, online play is there, and, with a patch, SoulCalibur IV should become one of, if not the, most popular online fighting experience around. The character customisation, which can itself suck up hours of your time, will only fuel the game's popularity as millions hone their skills against real players around the world.

Get this game if you like SoulCalibur, or boobs.

It's a good thing the game has online play, too, because we reckon the single-player modes won't keep your attention for too long. There's the standard story mode, complete with hilarious text, voice acting and cut scenes, arcade mode and practice, and the new Tower of Lost Souls mode, where you face groups of increasingly difficult enemies as you ascend or descend using multiple characters and the new tag system. For us, the only motivation for playing any of the single-player modes was to unlock new characters and earn gold to spend buying bits to customise created characters. For others, however, it might be a different story.

The first hour of play feels wonderfully fresh, what with the new Critical Finishers, character customisation and online play. But after that SoulCalibur IV starts to feel increasingly familiar. In reality, this is a reserved effort from Namco Bandai, and feels almost as if Project Soul has merely dipped its toe in the next-gen water for fear of causing too big a splash. It's gorgeous, and an essential purchase for any fighting game fan who likes aggressive counters and weapon clashes, but it's no fighting game revolution. Looks like we'll have to wait till SoulCalibur V comes out for that.

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]