Soul Calibur 4 Cheated Me and Will Suffer for its Audacity...But is Also a Great Game

So, I got Soul Calibur 4 and I was promised that both Yoda AND Darth Vader would be made available as playable characters. What I was not told is that Yoda is available on the 360 and Darth Vader is available on the PS3. That's totally weak, man. However, the upside (I guess...) is that they are supposed to be available as downloadable characters in the upcoming season. While that's cool and everything, I get this distinct feeling that Microsoft will want to charge me money...or no, I'm sorry, not money, "Microsoft Points", to acquire Lord Vader. So, I then begin to ask myself: how much would I pay for Darth Vader? And the answer is that I would probably pay whatever they wanted to charge, in all seriousness. In turn, that makes me think that others will do the same and that Microsoft can truly charge whatever the funk they want. I don't know if Sony will be charging for Yoda but they don't seem to do that kinda junk...because they're nice or something. Who knows, maybe this time they will...

But! It's not all bad...the game itself is totally the sheeeiiiiit. Yoda is tight to play as and you can change the language settings and listen to his wisdom in a variety of languages (I chose Japanese and all I can catch is "force-ah" and "Dark Side-uh" and things of that nature). Aside from Yoda being sweet, the character creation is pretty gosh-dern fantastic. The game allows you to change everything about your character including obvious choices like fighting style, headgear, weapons and body armor, but also the color of each section of each piece of armor, the shape of the face, the build of the body, character voice, and a bunch of other aspects. I spent a good hour today just messing around with the customization of my character and I found that spending some time finding items that look cool and also have excellent traits (offense, defense, etc.) can make playing against the computer a lot easier and a lot more fun.

SC4 also includes a ton of game modes including "The Tower of Souls" which, in true Soul Calibur fashion, is a collection of fights in which the characters are infused with special traits, forcing you to employ different methods to killing them. However, I find that repetitive attacks and constant throwing of the opponent works better than anything fancy. NPCs are dumb.

All in all, SC4 is fantabulous, and once I get Darth Vader my life will probably be like, at least half complete.