Wow this is the news post feature? Anyway time to copy and paste my game reviews now. Not that anyone will see anyway.

SOUL CALIBUR 4

This being one of the first fighting genre games I've seen in a long time that presents itself so well I was actually looking forward to it; and sometime after receiving my Xbox eventually made plans to buy it, myself having moved on from Mass Effect.

Immediately jumping into the game you find the graphics are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, taking full advantage of current consoles' capabilities. Characters and stages and even backgrounds go into an insane amount of detail making presentation one of the game's strong points. Every particle effect, blazing punch, lighting, and glowing trails are embarrassingly flashy and glossy and gives the game its flashy style which is a calling card for the Soul Calibur series.

But I'm at a disadvantage here as I haven't played the previous two (except for the first one; lord, what a classic) which apparently is needed to make a fair comparison between the improvements. You'll also find if you can't get a friend to play with you that the single player story mode in practise makes next to no sense about the setting of the game. All you can just about make out is that there are two magic swords, one good, one evil and all the various characters' reasons for seeking one or the other out. If you prefer the action part to the storytelling you'll be quite satisfied as all it consists of is five stages made up of you and 'the bad guys' and trying to defeat 3 or 4 opponents each in turn, and then advancing until the final fight. After this you're rewarded with a gorgeous cutscene ending that fits with the wishes of each individual character. This short formula makes the story mode easier as a way to unlock characters and get to grips with the game rather than bearing you down with a cutscene after each fight.
However none of the characters' endings from the previous games seem to have an effect apart from the main protagonist and antagonist's, which often makes you wonder what the hell is going on as well as what sense the small dialogue your character says makes.

That said there are a phenomenal number of characters to play as, not including bonus characters and the more easily noticed Star Wars ones just chucked in for a bit of fun. Some of them seem interesting if not slightly strange (Voldo, Ivy, Algol) while others seem like they all went to the same school of Generic Asian/European Protagonists (you get a samurai, pole wielding monk, two Chinese girls wielding varying weapons, a shirtless hothead with a sword and that's not even counting the ax wielders). The Star Wars characters are interesting and unique but characters such as Yoda don't seem to fit in with the game due to his ability to slip under high attacks and not be grappled. He's not impossible to beat, but his advantages certainly make it a lot harder. The Apprentice feels most at home in the game with a variety of different moves to use and he plays unlike any other character. I haven't been able to try Darth Vader (in the PS3 version) but he apparently is slow and heavy but lacks the reach of bigger characters. Bonus characters are more or less new and interesting player models designed by famous manga artists that use the normal character's styles which, while game-play wise add nothing new, still add to the overall presentation of the game. Nonetheless the normal characters all play with unique styles that you'll enjoy taking advantage of against opponents.

The Character Creation aspect also adds more of your own variety to the roster of characters already present, allowing you to use an existing character's move set and then construct it from the ground up, changing everything from cat gloves to a roman cape and your weapon and skill set for use in special modes. It's incredibly comprehensive and detailed for you to make a character in your own image and you'll have fun just messing around with the various items you can equip, though the sheer amount of detail you have to put may have you give up after a few minutes. My first attempt had me going for a solid snake-esque guy with white hair, headband and a monocle as I couldn't get an eyepatch and a red skin-tight suit to wear under his armour along with spiky epaulettes and other menacing pieces of equipment. Due to a lack of imagination on my part I ended up calling him Steve. While he didn't turn out too bad in practise, the skills that I could or couldn't put on had me so confused and annoyed that I didn't bother doing special versus mode at all.
In all honesty, if you're looking for a straight up fight with a mate, there isn't any point in the special mode, except for online play to prove your badass awesomeness in using no skills while opponents can turn invisible and still win.

Moving on to gameplay, it feels just like any other fighting game when you start except with sword slashes instead of punches but as you get the hang of things you feel the amount of style put into the game and the effort to make each fight feel different and exciting. It's more fun when having a tournament with friends but the differences in reach and power with some characters make some fights unfair and outmatched before they've even begun. I usually countered this point by thinking that it shouldn't matter if you're good enough to overcome these advantages, which was usually what I tried to do. But another thing I would also say is that at times playing the game against the CPU or a friend takes almost no skill as all you have to do pick is a character with fast moves or long reach and spam your opponent into oblivion. I literally lost 7 times in a row to my little sister as she just played characters I hadn't been yet and spammed with the same moves over and over again, in spite of me guarding and looking for an opening whenever I could. However once I got more practise I learned to get around these strategies. It could be just a question of practise in some respects, but as you see the varieties of styles that you can use, you find that a heavy mace-wielding person against a fast claw type character stands little to no chance of winning whether or not they know how to use it.

In essence, the main flaws of this game lie in the balance between characters. Even if you're a skilled player, you'll have a hard time against a new player if they have a better moveset than your character. You can tell effort has been made to balance out the imbalances with certain characters but it's almost like Namco got halfway through the characters before giving up and calling it quits. The amount of skill you have to put in at certain points is almost laughable and accidently jumping over your opponent and getting a ring out is as frustrating as ever. Copied move styles for bonus characters doesn't show much individuality apart from showing the amount of detail and style put into each character and the similarity with their concept arts. In the end, after you've unlocked all the characters and beaten all single player modes you'll find that it'll become as hollow as every fighting game you've finished, leaving you to play it again occasionally with a few mates and deciding to choose similarly overpowered characters to draw out the fights as long as possible.
Of course I haven't got to that stage yet, but the same thing happened when I was 12 with Dragonball Z.

In spite of these imbalances the game looks so good and the characters are so colourful and interesting that you won't mind making agreements to ban certain characters or certain stages, and the game is at its most fun when playing with a group of friends or online (which I haven't been able to try as my network sucks a big fat one). The story has no idea where it is, but you'll forgive it as you're not normally concentrating on that in a game like this.
To me the fighting genre has been rather lax and mediocre as of late, and Soul Calibur 4 has given it the kick-start it needs to get running again, a plateful of nearly polished fighting with a side of graphical brilliance.

I might post my Mass Effect review here too if i get a reply here :3

Oh and here's the only character i love out of all of them:

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