Soul Calibur IV Premium Edition

I got this game from a store a few months ago. I've played the game a lot, unlocked all the characters and have played about 60 matches online. I've been a fan of Soul Calibur since Soul Calibur 2, which I purchased on my Gamecube. Let me explain what the game is about.

Soul Calibur is the updated version of the series on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The roster includes about 30 fighters, a dozen stages and a character creator mode.

In the singleplayer department, you get 3 modes. The first mode is Story Mode. What happens here is that you are shown a written history of the character before you even play. Then you are shown a screen with some odd collections of words such as "A Dark Warrior" and proceed to fight a match. Now what surprised me was the addition of tag teaming. With a press of a button, you can switch your characters in a match. After you beat the enemies you face the boss and are treated to a short cutscene.

Then there is arcade mode. In this mode, you fight enemy after enemy until you get to the end with the same boss. One thing that I think improves on SC2 is that the boss does not always predict your moves and counter it so effectively. He's simply the same AI, except twice the amount of health.

Finally, you have a Tower of Souls mode. This mode has two variations. You either "ascend" and fight tough enemies or you can "descend" and fighter hordes of weaker enemies, sort of like survival mode in the old games.

That's about it for the singleplayer modes, other than practice and character creation. Now for character creation, you can change things such as the sex, the weapon, clothes, hair/eye/skin color, name and a few other things. The clothes and items that you use also affect the attributes of your character. You can also take a custom character online.

As for multiplayer mode, you are given two options, normal and special versus. Normal is simply a normal mode, where status effects are not played. So items don't mean anything. Special versus is where the clothes you have chosen have status effects that work. Interestingly, there is no tag-team mode.

You can also play online, either casual or ranked. Latency will affect gameplay, making moves much more difficult to time.

So what is my opinion on the game? As the title implies, I'm not completely satisfied. Yes, the graphics are great, the gameplay is still there and you do get more characters, but I think a lot of additions are unnecessary.

The critical finishes that they've worked in the game rarely happen and contribute nothing to the gameplay. The character creation mode is where you can play Barbie, but again, not necessary. The female characters in the game do not need to have implants and revealing outfits. The singleplayer modes don't impress me over how SC2 did it. The multiplayer modes are pitiful. They added tag-teaming in singplayer, yet fail to include it for multiplayer.

Online play is painful, especially if you have a slow character. Fast characters can spam their moves and interrupt fighters that operate slowly. Now you are supposed to counter these pokes with guard impacts, but that technique requires timing, which the online latency makes impossible.

If you want to get the Soul Calibur experience at a fair price, I highly suggest picking up older versions, Soul Calibur 3 if you want, or Soul Calibur 2 if you have a Xbox. The change isn't too great. The online mode is the only thing that sets SC4 apart, but that is flawed. As of now, the latency makes playing slower characters an unnecessary and frustrating challenge.

The best way to play this game, as well as all fighting games is with a competent buddy in your living room. The core game itself is very strategic, where pattern recognition and applying counters is a key part of the game. Soul Calibur sets itself apart form other fighters because it's not execution that wins the game, but strategic decisions that determine the outcome.

Overall, it doesn't reinvent the series and if you have older games, the game only feels like a patch. I would only get this game to play online. Otherwise, I would purchase an older copy, save myself $50 or so and still experience 90% of what Soul Calibur 4 is.

This collector's edition comes with a ton of extras, and while the box it came in isnt huge, they crammed a lot into it. Shirt, poster/tourney chart, pen, comic, code, game. Plus the game itself is fun to play, and has excellent graphics. Controls are a bit difficult on some of the charachters I want to play, but other than that no real complaints.

The game is one of the best balanced fighting game for the summer.The graphics are very nice and the stages are very eyecandy due to very detailed representation. The games offers a lot of unlockables and a big list of characters to choose from. Even you can customize you own character , plus other features of the game. I recommend this game for people who likes to challenge other players to see which one is mightier.
Also online versus mode is very efficient.

If you're reading this it's because;
A) You're gamer and you're considering this game for purchase
or
B) You're adult considering purchasing this for your friend or loved one.

Not that the two are mutually exclusive or anything.

Anyway, I'll skip telling you what you can already gather from the other reviews. Yes, Star Wars characters are in it, yadda yadda yadda.
I will add however that I disagree that adding the Dark Apprentice (Star Killer) to this game was a smart move. Why? Because he looks good! I know that sounds weird but anyone who's played the demo of Force Unleashed knows that the appretice's head look like a rotting grapefruit about to split compared to his SC4 likeness. He looks waaay better in SC4. More, well,...human.

Now, the Premium edition is just another marketing scheme to get more money out of you. The T-shirts are pretty flimsy, and the other content in the tin likely cost the publisher less than a third of what we're being charged for it. The tin itself is of more value than it's contents, other than the game itself, of course. So unless you're a die hard SC fan like me, and absolutely MUST HAVE all things SC, just buy the regular version of the game, so publishers will stop throwing cheap novelty crap in with a game and calling it a special edition, then charging us an arm and a leg for it.

The content is pretty kid friendly. I'd say it's safe for anyone over 10 years old as long as they have a pretty good grasp on reality vs. fiction. There's next to no gore or blood, despite the heavy use of weapons in this series, and there's absolutely no cursing. It has a teen rating from the ESRB because of "Animated violence" and "Suggestive themes," meaning which loosely translated into human-speak means that the characters are sticking each other with swords in a fasion that WOULD be violent if there were blood and gore to go with it, and some of the females dress kinda skimpy,... okay really skimpy, like dominatrix skimpy.
So it really depends on what kind of content you as a parent decide what's appropriate for your child.

Online, you can expect the usual mix, of screaming children, and angsty teens, and amused adults. The ESRB can rate the online content because they can't be responsible for what some idiot online is going to expose your child to. Considering that this is a game that features a character creator, you may want to take that into consideration. I myself have created a "Party boy" character based on the guy from the show "Jackass" who dances in front of strangers in thong underwear. (I did this to both amuse and disturb the people I play the game with. Yes, I'm a sick, sick person.)

Outside of that, while the game's has a deep supernatural bent, dealing with demonically possessed swords and all that, it really doesn't touch on anything religous or political, so I would imagine only the most conservative of parents would be offended by the story content of the game.

That's going to be the extent of this review because my opinion is far too biased in favor of the Soul Calibur series, to truely write a non-judgemental review of the game. I've been a die-hard fan of the series and in my opinion this has been the best release to date. Yes, there are some flaws most of which are aptly described by other reviewers, but thanks to that wonderous thing called internet Bandai Namco can fix and improve this game until the end of time via downloadable content and patches. Let's hope they're on their toes.

This game is very polished and balanced, and I think fans of fighting games as well as casual gamers can enjoy it. Novice and expert fighters seem to have close battles more often, unlike Dead or Alive where experts always clobber novices, or the opposite end in Smash Bros. where the battles can be very random. Also you can make your own character and the online mode is pretty good, but not amazing. There's no online tag team and it's one-on-one fights only, but at least you can spectate when it's not your turn and there's not a lot of lag. Unlocking things like new weapons, characters, stages, and clothes is very rewarding.

The graphics deserve special mention. They're probably the best I've seen in a video game ever, with emotive and nuanced facial animation, antialiasing, blur, heat effects, and 1080p running at 60 fps. If you have an HDTV, this game will surely impress. The sound isn't nearly as amazing but there are some catchy songs in the soundtrack and the voice overs and weapon effects are decent. Yoda and the Apprentice are cheap, but beatable and it didn't seem as important as many other reviewers said it was.