The fourth installment in a long-running, much loved fighting series is upon us, with Star Wars characters in toe, to boot! Has it lived up to its legacy as one of the all time greats, or are we beginning to look at games that might need a serious kick in the arse?

You'll have to read our review to find out what we think, and be sure to check out our Soul Calibur IV game page for all related media.

Poor review. You're reviewing a game and you only talked about the actual gameplay for half of a paragraph. Don't bulls*** on about the number 4, or about how you hate the menus, review the damn game.

I was looking forward to your review as you're usually a great read. I have not played any console fighting games before, and had definitely not played any SC games, but I'm looking to buy this one as my first.

All I got from reading that 1K-something words was that I won't like the menu screens. Nothing on the actual story, nothing on battles, nothing on characters, nothing on environments, and a few half assed sentences on "the gaming mechanics are solid". WHAT gaming mechanics? HOW are they "solid"? How about those critical finishes I read about in the AG overview? Are they cool or not? You can do better than this Steve.

In fact, in reading it a 2nd time just to check i'm not being an angsty troll (lolqgl), I noticed you said yourself

So my ramblings until now might have little bearing on you. However, owning the previous game then really means you don't necessarily have to pick this one up.

This is 80% into the review. Seriously steve. "your ramblings up untill now" have been about a thousand words. I haven't owned the previous game, so basically i had to read 1000 words of you bashing the game for it's horrible menu screens for you to say "it's actually a good, solid game, BUT THAT CG INTRO AND THOSE MENU SCREENS MAN I MEAN SERIOUSLY f***!"

Hope you pick it back up mate. ;)

last edited by Phooks at 18:18:01 19/Aug/08

to be honest, i'd have to disagree with many parts of that review. you say the game looks old, yet i've played all the previous games, and without a doubt, the game has undergone a massive facelift in terms of graphics. the shift to high def gaming provides a level of detail that surpasses all previous versions, and rivals and other fighting game.

as for the yoda/vader thing, everyone knows it's there for a laugh, and they're great fun, but have no impact on the story. and yes, not mentioning the critical finishes, and glossing over the impact of switchable teammates is also a bit shady.

while they haven't reinvented the genre with this game, they have brought it forward into the high def online era, and that's really what a sequel is all about, when there's not exactly a tolkien-like storyline

Another SC4 review: Zero Punctuation review