The Capcomming of Soulcalibur V

Posted by on January 31, 2012 in Reviews

However you felt about Soulcalibur IV, you have to give it credit for its own sense of style and identity. I can safely say there was no other fighting game quite like Soulcalibur IV. I can say no such thing about Soulcalibur V. Because there are, in fact, several other fighting games quite like it, most of them recently published by Capcom.

After the jump, the Ryu that you do

Some of the new gameplay in Soulcalibur V smacks of “make it more like a Capcom game”. For instance, your new supermeter can give some attacks a “brave edge”, or you can can store up supermeter juice for a powerful “critical edge” attack. As a strictly casual fighting game fan who could never pull off the last Soulcalibur’s soulcrushes and soulbreaks and whatnot, I actually approve of this. It’s a simple and gratifying alternative, on par with the latest Mortal Kombat’s super moves. I can build up my meter and then stroke a pair of quartercircles with a three-button mash to trigger a quick cutscene of my dude doing something fancy. It’s not quite as spectacular as what my dudes do in Marvel vs. Capcom, but this game’s spectacle is all about the 3D models. Watching their breakway flashy ass-kickings is nearly reward enough. The extra damage from the attack is just gravy.

It’s less gratifying that Soulcalibur V has a whole new finicky guarding system that I can’t quite wrap my fingers around. Nothing makes you quite so lazy as Capcom’s move-backwards-to-block system. I had a hard enough time forcing myself to press a guard button in Soulcalibur IV. After no small amount of frustration in the training room, I’ve just accepted that blocking in Soulcalibur V is beyond my ken. I therefore resolved to hit more often. As those of us who suck at timed blocking are fond of saying, the best defense is a good offense.

But for the most part, the fighting in Soulcalibur V preserves its own sense of identity, with full use of 3D space and an emphasis on learning isolated moves rather than having to chain together combos. It’s still a mostly accessible system, and now it’s got a bit of extra flash where those inscrutable soulcrushes used to be. Who needs blocking? So far, so so-so.

The new character customization is either much better or much worse, depending on what you’re looking for in character customization. If you want to put stickers on your cape or make a short Asteroth, Soulcalibur V is the game for you. But if you want Soulcalibur IV’s indepth unlockable stat-based equipment RPG, well, Soulcalibur IV is the game for you. Because Soulcalibur V has none of that. What a disappointing step backwards. In the last game, you could make characters to play various ways, with special abilities and unique powers. You could carefully assemble costumes to maximize offense or defense. You could make a character designed to heal herself up over the course of a match. You could make a set of characters to complement each other during the tag-team matches in the dungeon mode. It was a fighting game with a flexible DIY hero-maker as a creative outlet perfect for anyone who liked games with custom superheroes, mechs, or cars. The customization system in Soulcalibur IV was brimming with actual gameplay. The customization in Soulcalibur V is strictly cosmetic.

Also missing from Soulcalibur V is any counterpart to the dungeon mode in Soulcalibur IV, in which you faced a series of challenges as you worked your way down a dungeon or up a tower, earning money to spend on unlockable bits for your custom characters. Now you just get a godawful story mode where sepia toned concept art fills in for cutscenes. The new characters have none of the, ahem, character of Soulcalibur’s traditional figthters. In fact, they seem to have stumbled pinkly and purply into the game on their way to the latest Final Fantasy. I’m sorry, fellas, but the Square/Enix offices are that way.

Without the customization RPG or the dungeon mode, Soulcalibur V isn’t much of a single player game. It has out Capcommed Capcom, whose fighting games famously lack any meaningful single-player content. Because Capcom has recently addressed that with the nifty Heroes and Heralds DLC for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. As such, Soulcalibur V has even less single-player content than Capcom’s latest game. That’s should be a pretty low bar to clear, especially considering Soulcalibur IV was one of the most uniquely addictive single-player fighting games ever made.

The drive to Capcom Soulcalibur is also evident in the new emphasis on online play, complete with a profile page with badges and titles, and a pointless leveling up system, and fancy new lobby options. This stuff might be grand for anyone who wants his Soulcalibur to be more an online esport. But for us casual fighting fans who felt like Namco was one of the few companies still making games for us, Soulcalibur V is a disappointing Dear John letter.

2 stars
Xbox 360

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  • Liero116

    I got this game roughly 5 days before it came out and played it nonstop for about 6 hours against the cpu because there was no online available.  After those 6 hours I was struggling to find something to do in the game.  Tom is right when he says the single player is lacking.  It really is.  I got it for the multiplayer part of the game, only intending to play single player to unlock everything.  After I had gotten all the characters and most of the costume bits, I found myself somewhat bored.  There really was nothing left to do.  Now that online is available, I don’t really care, but when my internet connection is down or suffering from lag spikes, I’ll be playing something else.

  • Benvenuto

    This is the same guy who gave 4/10 to Uncharted 3.

    Just sayin’.

  • My Opinion

    Hey I’ve got an crazy idea, now hear me out this may get weird but how about finding a reviewer that shares your tastes and you know stop reading Tom’s reviews? 

  • My Opinion

    If someone uses the word ‘noob’ without a sense of irony I immediately ignore their point.

  • Tristan

    What I dislike about the score (not the review) is that it’s misleading and drags the metacritic score down significantly.

    The problem is your review isn’t even reflecting the score properly. I get the feeling you don’t realize just how low a 4 is. It means it’s a failure of a game and clearly this is not the case it just doesn’t fit your personal tastes.
     
    Which leads me to another point. Reviews are meant to be as neutral / unbiased as possible. I say “as possible” because no one can ever be truly neutral when reviewing something but when you do a metacritic included review, imho it’s required.

    For example you can have me review the next call of duty and it will score a 2.5 because i hate the franchise and what it stands for however this is by no means what the game truly deserve thus shouldn’t belong on metacritic. Same thing here

  • ftyu

    Couldnt give 1 shit what you think about my point. The “point” of you replying to a comment that has nothing to do with you tells me you are just a troll. Run along kid.

  • My Opinion

    Erm, OK big guy I’m a troll.  I apologise if I caused you emotional distress.

  • Brandonb23

    I completely agree with most of this review.  I think the score should be a little higher, but I was really disappointed by the character customization.  Cosmetically its is great, but the complete lack of RPG-like stats customization is a horrible step backwards.  That was like 50% of the fun for me.

  • Pogue Mahone

    Is there some kind of reviewers’ bible that gets handed out to people when they take on this job? I had no idea there were so many rules involved and it would be awfully handy to have them all in one reference.

  • ftyu

    lol the only emotional distress something like you would cause is regret from your mother for spawning such a miserable disgusting excuse for a life. I mean really, if you are going to be a troll at least try to be a creative one. Yawn.  

  • Shivvystabs

    in My Opinion you just got owned. hahaha

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Cox/100000802824269 David Cox

    Causes…no. You’re still wrong. Online is for casual play. However it provides an alternative to learn match ups if you simply dont have offline available, but it’s not a replacement. He didn’t contradict anything.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Cox/100000802824269 David Cox

    My issue is not that you didn’t like it for YOUR personal reason, My issue is that you are not reviewing the product for what it is intended. It’s like reviewing a Ferrari and complaining that it doesn’t serve your fuel efficiency needs for trips to the grocery store. SC5′s selling point IS the multiplayer and online, that’s where all the effort went in. Yes people miss some of the old modes, but those are fluff. A fighting game is a fighting game because of mechanics. Fighting an AI isn’t the same as they do not follow the rules that make the game work such as mind games, reads, and reactions. It’s never fair to judge a fighting game based on story/modes unless that’s the selling point of the series, such as MK9. When SC was announced it was stated it was for competitive play. It was also stated as a way to bring in casual players with easier move sets and fresh mechanics. SC5 delivered in a lot of ways on what they promised.

    Due to the nature of the game when you give a review it is ABSOLUTELY necessary to isolate different aspects of the game. A fair review would target single player content (which is bad! Agreed), online (which is insanely good, way beyond expectation), and mechanics (most like them). Your review is aimed at 1 very small part that is not the direct focus of the genre, and ignores giving it fair voice to all audiences interests.

    If I were to review Mass Effect. I would need to address the gameplay and the story and make a declaration that speaks for both. I would write, the story is great, but the action is lacking. So for people who want a story: yes. For a great FPS: not for most. This review of SC is not doing that, it’s taking a complaint most view as negligible and saying the game as a whole is bad in the face of how much they got right that simply doesn’t interest you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Cox/100000802824269 David Cox

    I think another point to make, and what I accuse all review sites of doing in the face of competitive games, is that the reviewer MUST no something about high level play. The reason is that they can give a fair review on ALL aspects of the game for both pros and casuals. A casual however cannot address thing beyond their limited scope of the game and is regarded as not actually knowing how to play the game by most people. Casuals have a right to love a game for their own reasons and a review should include their interests, but neither pro nor casual should be the pure focus and what we see is FGs constantly reviews by people who barely understand the basics.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Cox/100000802824269 David Cox

    Yes but your review would not address other peoples concerns. A review should cover all basis, not just one person’s agenda. As well the review needs to respect the intent of the game and base it on that and single player is secondary in most fighters since there are flaws to the concept. They are generally added as a way to include more people, they are always ADDED on.

  • Anonymous

    Why should a review cover all basis? Seriously. How many reviewers are even capable of doing that, and can also manage to convey it in a way that can reach every reader in any useful sense?

    No one is stopping us from reading more than one review so I don’t see any reason why every review has to be done the same way. As long as the reviewer makes it clear what aspects of the game that they experienced and gives us their honest opinion I don’t see a problem.

  • Lk

    Baw. Baw.BAWWWWWWWWWWW

  • Anonymous

    He had a different opinion then you, so you’re all butthurt about it.

    Just sayin’.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/GYIRNY6DMS2GCQBJIMK6YE5I7E Zach

    What the hell is this website and how did you pull off ’90s web design so masterfully?

  • Pedro Filipe

    Congratulations for having the balls to just say it out loud. Soulcalibur IV was way better than V. I can’t believe the amount of people who are praising this version over the previous. It makes me think there’s something else involved other than a simple matter of taste.

  • Forofo

    What an idiot.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/WDQIZHXZXEZEKE7RA6GWQGCXYU drkessence

     You post that like it matters.  Are we supposed to be impressed?  Is the fact that he’s been in only one or two episodes of a small handful of shows suddenly supposed to mean that he knows what he’s talking about?  No.  This review is an insult to real game critics.

  • Bloodspoor

    Tom, in this Soul Calibur game, blocking is in fact put on the back burner so to speak, but it’s not something you want to forgo altogether. For one thing, almost every move is -frames on block. Just Guard just makes the -frames more and guarantees juggles in most cases. I don’t know anyone who can use them regularly and only a few who can land more than one in a match against actual players. These guards are going to be what separates the pros from the casualties. It’s also worth noting that you don’t need to Just Guard every hit, but just the last one.

    With that said, I can see your complaints about the “RPG” system and customizing from IV, but those were part of what made the game so unbalanced. One could work on customizing a character to work for their play style, but when they went out to a friend’s house or to a tournament, their custom character crutches would be missing and their lack of skill would shine through. Ultimately, I would love to see a fighting game that allows customization like that, but keeps the balance for tournaments. Sadly, a game like that would take forever to develop and even then would launch with balance issues.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the comments, Bloodspoor. And I totally get what you’re saying about the balance issues when you throw open the character stats, as SC4 did.

    But is that mode really something used competitively? I see that as something separate from the real competitive play. Compare, for instance, how a shooter might restrict certain modes for certain playlists, but they throw it all open for private matches or LAN games. That might not be a good comparison, but I think I’ll lose what little fighting game cred I might have if I bring up another comparison. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, the single player game let you put stickers on your units to modify them. But in multiplayer, you had to use the default characters.

    The main point is that I can’t imagine hardcore SCIV players expected the RPG system to be balanced anywhere near as well as the default set of characters. You’re right that’s not really a viable approach to tournament level play.

  • Kip

    I have every game on my shelf from the Soul series, and I had to return Soul Calibur IV. I felt stupid for having purchased it, to the point where I still haven’t picked up V since I’m afraid they’ve taken it even further steps back.Soul Calibur IV was basically “we upgraded the graphics, and threw in some horrible ideas to justify this HD remake.”Don’t get me started on the gimmicky, broken Star Wars tie-in.

  • Kip

    When this guy said Soul Caliber IV was anything but a huge step back for the series, he lost his Metacritic license.

  • Wykstrad

    That’s “bases,” not “basis.”  But I’m agreeing with mirumu here- I’d rather read 3 reviews that exhaustively approach a game from 3 different perspectives/priorities than one that tends to generalize across all priorities.  In a lot of ways it’s more useful to note how individuals react to a game than having someone tell you how he thinks you’re going to react.

    And “respecting intent” is something that videogame developers, film students, and absolutely nobody else expects you to do with their art.  ”You’re playing the game wrong” might be an ontologically valid argument, but it’s not one that’s going to get me to buy the game.  If I don’t enjoy the game and the response is “you’re not respecting the intent,” I’m just going to spend my money on a different game that doesn’t require me to have a correct preconceived notion of what it should be.

    If single-player in a fighting game is primarily an extra used to add on more potential users, then I appreciate a reviewer like Chick telling me why a particular game doesn’t succeed at attracting those additional users.

  • Guest

    At the same time, it is the responsibility of any game to show its players how to play it. Previously Soul Calibur’s did this through extensive and replayable single-player games, one way or another you would develop the skills needed to get better and the games kept the super-tricky command inputs in there strictly for the most hardcore. Guiding the player to its superb mechanics through an in-depth single player and not being particularly fussy about the little things was part of Soul Calibur’s identity. I think in this light, Tom’s criticism makes sense.

  • Anonymous

    This is an outrage!  Your review does not reflect my preconceived notions of which arbitrary number should be assigned to indicate the quality of this game!

  • Tristan

    Awesome job ignoring most of my points and focusing purely on a simple guideline (and blow it out of proportion) that IN MY OPINION is required to create a review people actually can use in their judgment whether they should get the game or not (isn’t that what reviews are for in the first place?). No bibles involved or anything.. a simple rule: approaching the game from a fresh perspective, no preconceived notions.. Is this so crazy? My CoD example shows my point. Again it’s what happened in this review as well.

  • Pogue Mahone

    Hey thanks man!  I put a lot of time and thought into it.

  • Anonymous

    You talk about having no preconceived notions, which sounds great as a phrase, but in your original post you actually advocate the opposite. You say that you would give a Call of Duty game a 2.5, but this would somehow be wrong because of a predetermined idea that it doesn’t deserve this. That entails bringing an outside consideration into your review, which to me is the very definition of a “preconceived notion.” So your experience of a game has less to do with the review than outside considerations (a lot of people like the game, it sells well, critical opinions are favorable etc).

    Game reviewers seem to be under a lot of pressure to produce what I would call “consensus reviews”, which resemble scientific review articles in which the writer’s perspective is only part of the review, and the reviewer serves as a kind of referee of other people’s experiences, putting the game itself into an overall context, rather than being a critical evaluation of one person’s experience. I understand all the reasons for this, including a need for validation of one’s personal opinion, an adolescent audience’s need to associate strongly with a product, brand, or group as part of emotional maturation, and a protective instinct in an immature industry, which already is insecure and feels misunderstood, to keep it from being misunderstood further. It’s not surprising. But it’s disappointing, because until we all move past this, and can get comfortable with individual critics having unorthodox opinions, and discuss these as ideas rather than transgressions against a received wisdom, gaming (and especially game writing) is going to stay ghettoized, because while I mean no offense, the collective everyday experience of 20-something gamers is mundane, homogenous, not very insightful, and certainly isn’t very interesting to read about. Which is exactly the state of most game writing. The sooner this tyranny of convention is abolished, the better.

  • Anonymous

    Just because your view of chess is that it doesnt have enough to satisfy you, doesnt mean that your review is good or matters.

  • Anonymous

    If you’re a “competitive” player(who doesnt play Ivy since she got grossly simplified), you’ll probably like SC5. The only major concern is that just guard might be overpowered, but if i recall older SCs had mechanics like that and were still considered quite good.

    If you want single player content, then what matters is how much you value modes versus how much you value gameplay. I felt that even though SC4 had a lot of modes, the base game didnt stay enjoyable for long. The way sc5 is redesigned combat wise means that it is a lot more enjoyable to me in single player, even with less modes.

  • Anonymous

    I like how you admit that your review is basically just like anyone’s opinion. Everyone has their opinion. An opinion does not mean you have a review fit for a website that carries them. A review doesnt say “This racing game is only good for racing, 2/5!” or “This jrpg doesnt have competitive multiplayer and so I hate it, 2/5.” because those sorts of opinions are irrelevant to people who arent the speaker.

  • Anonymous

    Opinions=/=Reviews. Reviews are intentionally 1)Mediated for audiences, expectations beyond the individuals 2)Well-informed

    One would not say “This racing game is only good for racing, so i hate it because i hate racing games and just want to play minigames between races instead, 2/5 stars!” in a review. That is mere personal opinion. There is a difference.

  • Anonymous

    Hello. Do you know what hyperbole is?

  • Anonymous

    Opinions=/=Reviews. Reviews are intentionally 1)Mediated for audiences, expectations beyond the individuals 2)Well-informed  One would not say “This racing game is only good for racing, so i hate it because i hate racing games and just want to play minigames between races instead, 2/5 stars!” in a review. That is mere personal opinion. There is a difference.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-McMaster/607680289 Jason McMaster

    What I get from this is that someone tells Mr. Chick to learn journalism.

    Someone else replies with his Wikipedia page that says: ” he was listed as “one of the field’s rare American practitioners” in an article on “New Games Journalism” in the New York Times.”

    As well as an entire section on his writing career.

    Are you being obtuse for a reason?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-McMaster/607680289 Jason McMaster

    fiks – reviews are opinion. If you want a fact sheet, read the “about this game” section of the games website.

  • Jestin Jund

    Alright, so let’s go down that list a little bit…..

    Forza: Mediocre
    Rage: Mediocre
    Gears of War: Mediocre
    Catherine: Mediocre
    FEAR 3: Excellent (wtf)
    Dirt 3: Mediocre
    Marvel vs. Capcom: Mediocre
    Crysis 2: Mediocre
    Halo Reach: Mediocre
    Uncharted 3: Poor
    Skyrim: 7/10 (guess that would be considered good but probably the lowest of the scores out there)
    Deus Ex: Poor

    I like to read a myriad of opinions and I especially like it when a reviewer goes against the grain for good reason.  However, as I mentioned in my first post, it seems pretty obvious there is a pattern here. 

  • Jestin Jund

    One more thing….

    The question remains as to why have a review score attached at all?  If the fundamentals of game journalism should be about a true critical review, I just don’t see the need for a score.

  • Anonymous

    If only there was some way to find out what Tom Chick was thinking when he assigned a score!  If only he would explain himself beyond the rating!  Ah, alack and alas!  If only he would actually, you know, write something!

    Hey, here’s another pretty obvious pattern for you, Jestin Jund:

    Arkham City: excellent
    Bioshock: excellent
    Shift: excellent
    Saints Row: excellent
    Kirby games: excellent
    Sims: good
    Resident Evil: good
    Dead Rising: good
    Call of Duty: good
    Starcraft: good

    Man, that Tom Chick guy is just another industry shill!

  • Anonymous

    Shitty review… but the review score is about right (if not too generous).

    The game may lack offline content–who cares, it’s a fighter.  But where it really does vie for the ‘Worst SC Game Yet’ award is with its ruined gameplay.

    Destroying the GIs system by tying the only parry available to a meter that’s used primarily for the game’s new super move and secondarily for the EX moves, is idiocy beyond rationale.  The Just Guard thing goes no way to compensating for this grave floor as the Just timing is too strict and entails far too high a risk.

    This game is clearly made for casuals in mind.

    The SC, as of V, is dead for hardcore fans.

  • Anonymous

     I think hyperbole doesn’t really fit what he’s saying. Hyperbole isn’t a dude telling another dude to kill himself because he disagrees with his review. Hyperbole would be, well, saying “Damn, it’s cold as hell outside,” or something to that effect.

    I think the correct term is being overly sensitive to video game reviews.

  • Benvenuto

    No, I wasn’t. I laugh about it. His reviews are unbelievably childish.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Cox/100000802824269 David Cox

    The problem is ignorance to the mechanics and core concepts that define the game. These types of games NEED to be reviewed by someone who understands it and can give a review on ALL aspects…and they do exist. A major issue with fighting games is they are constantly reviewed by people who don’t understand really any fighting games at all and can only really give a VERY minimal review of it. The depth of the game is completely lost on them and so gameplay can’t be fairly critiqued.

    An educated player however has the ability to give a review for all parties. They can tell the hardcore what to look for, what casuals will like, and what notes may be a pro/con for some. A casual can not speak for anything but their tier of casual, they cannot think outside that because they don’t understand what the game is as a whole. It’s like reviewing an RPG and skipping the sidequests cuz you don’t care and stating the game had no content.

    A good review always rates the game as a whole, not a personal bias. I HATE COD for many reasons, but in the review of the game as a whole it would still be given a 7-8, because my biases are restricted to small parts of the game and I know some people wont be affected.

    My biggest issue is these reviewers are not being isolated to ‘random casual player who likes video games’. These reviews are showing up in top sites (I spotted this on Kotaku and flipped my shit). People go ‘oh SC5 was bad?’….meanwhile over at the soul calibur forums on 8wayrun.com people REALLY like the game and are wondering why people with no FG experience are being spotlighted.

  • ftyu

    Lol looks like this particular troll is the only thing emotionally distressed. Hey how bout this, come up with something ORIGINAL to say rather then trying to poke holes in defense of your precious reviewer. dumbass.

  • Runeforged

    In all seriousness it’s upto the gamers to figure out what it is they will like. It sounds so simple but in practice you may be buying every 8.5-10 scored game out there yet never really get into any of them. Reviewers scores are usually based on a solid knowledge of game mechanics, controls, graphics, the industry ect. <–This is the foundation of a review. Now add to that  personal taste, experience and how influenced the reviewer is by Novelty and there you go: a full review. 

    Obviously ANY game review should be taken with a grain of salt. You should not buy games based simply on what score anyone gives them (unless u see a universal 1-4.0 then you got a problem..) or what anyone's opinion of said game is worth. Reviews can be and usually are objective and selective…it's all about WHO is doing the review and how that persons point of view/tastes reflect on your own.

    I will say that this review of Soul Calibur 5 should have been done by someone who is more then just a casual player of fighting games. Comparing this to Street Fighter or other Capcom fighters is a serious disservice to soul calibur. Adding a special "ultra" move does not make it a 2d fighter AT ALL.

  • luke

    This is great, Brooski. I feel like you completely wasted it by posting it in this thread, to be read by these people.

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