one of the new female fighters, and tell you about the new Soul Gauge system, but let's get two obvious points out of the way: Soulcalibur IV is due out July 29, and it's a very pretty game (look at the screens). The character designs are covered with details and sparkles and arenas are bright and unusual, even the lightsabers (yes, they have those now) glow like deadly Christmas ornaments. Of course, saying a fighting game for 360 and PS3 looks good is about as unusual as saying that they decided to include a punch button, so let's get on to the stuff that actually matters about Soulcalibur IV.

First, the two bonus characters are Yoda, for Xbox 360, and Darth Vader, for PS3. The reasoning behind who goes with which platform is supposedly based entirely on system color schemes. Other than those two, and Achievement points, the two versions of the game should be identical.

Aside from new fighters, the biggest change in the series is the addition of a Soul Gauge, which is a gem next to each fighter's health meter (you can't see it because we aren't allowed to publish screens with the HUD intact, but we promise it exists). The gem starts out a nice healthy green but as you block attacks it turns redder until it starts flashing. While your Soul Gauge is flashing red, your opponent will have a couple of seconds to perform a strong attack and break a piece of your armor off. Each character has three sections of armor, high, middle and low, and breaking off each will not only remove one of three signifying green dots (also located on the invisible HUD), but will visibly change the character's outfit - outfits that often require the word armor to be used liberally.

To check out this feature, we tried out Hilde, a new girl who fights with a spear and a dagger. We picked her full-length white dress, but every character will have two outfits. She seems to fight well at medium distances, and has some very powerful spear-thrusting combos. That's really more of a guess than a fact. Frankly, we aren't good enough to figure out how to use her with the limited playtime we had.

Breaking off Hilde's middle armor reveals some cleavage. Then, smashing her low armor tears the dress, showing a little bit of leg. The armor breaks carry over through rounds in a fight, and with her dress not protecting her, Hilde was vulnerable to a Critical Finish attack.

Each character has a unique Critical Finish that results in an instant kill and slick animation. But before they can use it, they have to break at least one section of an opponent's armor, beat them back into red flashing gem mode and string together several attacks of their own. You see, your Soul Gauge, not only turns red but will turn blue as you attack your opponent. Blue - as everyone knows - means that you can unleash some serious whup-butt by using a Critical Finish. We only saw Cassandra's, who performed a spinning jump attack that resulted in her sitting on Hilde's face. It was strong in a you're dead way, but still kinda sexual.

What more can we tell you? The screens look really cool. Some damage to environments seems to be persistent. While other damage, like busting up the floorboards of a pirate ship, are nice but revert to normal after a few seconds. We've been promised a couple other things. First, that the balancing (which was a big issue for SC III) has really been looked at for Soulcalibur IV - so that's in Namco Bandai's hands. Also, the game is supposedly really, really fun. That's straight from the mouth of the game's developer, so believe it if you want, but then again, the track record for SC is pretty good. 

Apr 16, 2008