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For those unimpressed with Dead or Alive 4's contributions to bouncing body part physics, your panacea has arrived. After a less-than-wonderful third installment (fourth if you're counting Soul Blade – and why wouldn't you?), SoulCalibur IV brings Namco's weapon-based fighter to next-gen systems with gorgeous graphics, online play, and some odd guest characters.

Veterans of the series will notice that the game has been slowed down significantly, and has nestled somewhere comfortably between the speed of SoulCalibur and SoulCalibur II. The game has become slightly more tactical as a result, which is a welcome change from the rather spastic SoulCalibur III. Balance has been more or less restored, although a few characters, such as Siegfried, Astaroth, Kilik, and Darth Vader's Apprentice feel overpowered.

A Long Time Ago... In This Galaxy?

Yes, the Star Wars universe has collided with SoulCalibur, for reasons only LucasArts and Namco's PR managers know. Still, in a series where people take multiple hits from razor sharp weapons and a magic sword decides the fate of humanity, lightsabers, and Jedi Masters are hardly any sillier than anything that came before. Darth Vader, Yoda, and The Apprentice from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed are fun to play and are some of the most beautiful in-game renderings of the Star Wars characters seen thus far. It should also be noted that, while Vader is exclusive to the PS3 version and Yoda to the 360, there seems to be no other appreciable difference between the two systems' versions of the game. The PS3 version does load slightly faster once the optional install is completed, but your choice of version should mostly come down to which controller you prefer.

The story ostensibly continues from where the last game left off, but at this point the narrative is so muddled and unintelligible that none of it really matters. Soul Edge is evil, Soul Calibur is good, and various people want one, the other, or both for various evil and/or good purposes. Story mode has been significantly pared down, and now consists of only five matches. Each match can include fights against up to four combatants, but it's pretty easy to blast through each character's narrative in short order.

The Tower? Rapunzel!

In place of the more involved Edge Master Mode and its descendants is the Tower of Souls. Here you can either climb the tower, defeating each floor's occupants using equipped skills and dealing with special rules, or descend the tower in a full-blown survival grind. Each floor has a secret objective that will open up new items for character customization, so it's worth playing through to expand your creative closet, even if it's not nearly as involving as some of the older games' quest modes. The art gallery is even a little underwhelming, containing only a fraction of the content found in previous games' galleries.

Character creation is a heavy focus for SoulCalibur IV, and the game offers nearly limitless options. You're restricted to the main characters' fighting styles, but beyond that you can make your custom fighters male or female, choose everything from their build to their hair color to their voice pitch, and dress them in seemingly limitless clothing options. Even if your female wolf-headed ninja dancer clad in chainmail fights exactly like Yoshimitsu, the appearance is so radically different that she does feel like a fresh character.

The only downside to customizing is that there seems to be no way to take your badass custom characters over to your friend's house to compete against his superpowered custom characters. Unless you feel like leveling up your favorite fighter's style and earning items to deck them out on your friend’s save file, you’re on your own against his custom Ivy. Most players will probably just opt to play Standard Versus, which disables custom skill effects. You can use your custom characters online, but this presents its own set of problems.

Split-Second Sadness

SoulCalibur IV takes Mitsurugi and crew online for the first time, with very mixed results. Modern connection speeds invariably result in enough lag that a game that moves as fast as SoulCalibur is fundamentally hampered. Some throw escapes in the game have a window of 1/7th of a second, and with 200-300ms of lag, you just aren't able to pull it off. Online it's a fundamentally different game, and one that experts will have to relearn if they want to be proficient at it. More casual players probably won't notice as much, and those playing purely for fun will find it acceptable. If you intend to play to win online, frustration may be the only result. If you intend to irritate people online, always pick the Star Wars stages.

Despite the minor step backwards in single player depth, SoulCalibur IV remains a gorgeous, fast-paced, accessible fighter that also has enough depth for expert level play. While online is more of a novelty than a functional feature, players looking for a next-gen upgrade to the on-the-couch weapons clasher of the Dreamcast days will find the same addicting gameplay here.

Review by: Matt Keil