Title: Soulcalibur IV
Platform: Xbox 360 (review platform), PlayStation 3
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Project Soul
ESRB Rating: T for Teen

It's no wonder why game franchises such as Street Fighter, Tekken and Soulcalibur are so popular. You dish out the built-up frustrations of the day on a virtual opponent without causing any physical damage or landing yourself in jail. This aggressive primal urge is in all of us, and publishers feed off our needs by dishing out new doses of their popular franchises virtually every year. After all, fighting games are a lucrative business, dominating the arcades and home consoles alike. If anything, controller manufacturers benefit the most out of our primal need for anger release, and that holds true even today with Namco's sixth entry in the "Soul" series, Soulcalibur IV.

But when you think of it, if you walk away from a fighting game fired up and ready to take on the world, then the developer did things right. With Soulcalibur IV, Project Soul did do things just right in every way, from splendid graphics to an online system that brings fighters from across the nation together. The only drawback to reviewing such a game is that there's very little to evaluate; they're not known for lengthy campaigns or extensive level designs. What they are known for is character design, arena layout and a vast feature implementation. Soulcalibur IV certainly shines in every department - although the game is far from perfect, and does have one or two annoying flaws that keep it from reaching the divinity level.

Probably the biggest feature Soulcalibur IV has to offer is its online multiplayer mode. For this review the Xbox 360 version was used, and heading onto Xbox Live proved to be both great fun and highly annoying. Why the latter? If you're aiming to play a ranked match, then you'll spend a good deal of time just trying to connect to a game. For example, you might hit the "Quick Match" button only to get "This game session is full" more often than you should. This will happen at each press of the button until a session finally opens up. The same holds true when hitting the Custom Match button, only this time you'll see a list of sessions to join. The problem here is that this list doesn't tell you whether the session is full or not; you must select a game and hope for the best. If the session is full, you return to the Quick Match/Custom Match screen and must repeat the process.

Granted, you can always hit the Create Session button and wait from someone to join. But it seems that you're better off going into the Player Match section and joining a session there. In this section, you can join a session with other people and watch the game while you wait your turn. This perhaps is a good way to "watch and learn," as you'll come across gamers who seemingly have nothing else to do but sit in front of the console all day. Project Soul tries to help the player by implementing a level system, with the player earning points with each win. After obtaining a certain amount of points, your player advances a level, although this process only appears to indicate your time spent online, and doesn't actually advance the character in stats. Still, there's no question that the online multiplayer portion is the meat of Soulcalibur IV, but there needed to be an improved matching system in the Ranked area rather than the "hit-the-button-and-gamble" method.

Soulcalibur IV features some incredible visual fidelity.

The same holds true in the Special Versus area, except all is forgiven in this section. But before explaining why, the review has to take a sharp turn and dive into another awesome feature Soulcalibur IV has to offer: character creation. This portion is actually not part of Xbox Live, but is found on the main menu and can be used in two ways. First and foremost, you can generate a male or female character from scratch, although these characters are still based on the 25 fighters already available, from Kilik to Cervantes to Nightmare. Once the basic fighting style is selected, you move on to choose the equipment trait (light armor, heavy armor, standard equipment or none), battle trait (attack focus, defense focus, HP focus, maximum attack, maximum defense, maximum HP, concentrated skill type, dispersed skill type or none) and alignment (good, evil and none). After that, you hit the "Auto-Generate" button and your character stands ready.

Character customization gets even better in the next section, giving the player more options to alter, ranging from equipment (helm, pauldron, gloves etc.) to skin color. You can pick various hairstyles, facial features and voice patterns and even change the character's overall physique. Most importantly, however, is the equipment selection, as these items will increase or decrease the player's stats. A simple loincloth can increase HP by 20 points, but it will also lower defense by 10. The choice of equipment affects how skill settings will work as well - if you're beefed up on equipment, you can load up on special skills like Impact Heal, Soul Gauge Recovery and so on.

Once the character is up to snuff, you can name him/her and save. However, if you're not into generating characters from scratch, you can alter current player characters by only adding equipment, weapons and skill settings. These characters are saved alongside the originals, and can be accessed from within the multiplayer and single-player game modes. Unfortunately, you cannot use any special equipment in the Standard Versus mode online. That's where the Special Versus mode comes in. But even though you can't use special equipment in the Standard Versus mode, your unique character still shows up on the roster, which is readily available against your opponent.

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