Soul Calibur V announced

Newegg has SC 5 for $49.99 with coupon code.
EMCNJGJ78 - PS3
EMCNJGJ79 - 360

Shipping is free. Still not sure about this one. I rarely play these games alone so online multiplayer is important for me. Hopefully the net code is better on this one than the last.

I should get my copy today. I'll let you know what I think tomorrow.

I actually thought the netcode from SC4 was pretty solid, at least on the X360. By that I mean it was usually playable. Of course I'm not exactly a pro so maybe it's only playable if you don't have much invested in winning or losing.

I'm interested, but I don't really have time to play it at the moment, and I have a lot of other stuff I've already bought and haven't played.

Still, I do like getting new pants for my dudes...

TheCounselor wrote:

I'm interested, but I don't really have time to play it at the moment, and I have a lot of other stuff I've already bought and haven't played.

Still, I do like getting new pants for my dudes...

I'm waiting for the day someone dumps a AAA development into just a character creator. Sadly, I'd wind up paying $60 for it.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
TheCounselor wrote:

I'm interested, but I don't really have time to play it at the moment, and I have a lot of other stuff I've already bought and haven't played.

Still, I do like getting new pants for my dudes...

I'm waiting for the day someone dumps a AAA development into just a character creator. Sadly, I'd wind up paying $60 for it.

Try APB on the PC. I think it's free on Steam. It has the best character generator I've ever seen, and I'm really hoping someone else picks it up for a game that's, y'know. Good.

Giant Bomb's got a Quick Look up.

Yup. Looks like more Soul Calibur. I think I might hold off until either a price drop or my birthday, whichever comes first. I've got no real-life friends who can hack it against me in Soul Cal and I can't hack it against crazy people online (or deal with even the slightest bit of lag in a fighting game), so the one thing that might've made this a Day One Purch for me was a more robust single-player campaign mode, and on that front it looks like they've gone backward, not forward.

Yeah, the IGN review said it sported the weakest single-player content to date.

What a shame.

That is a shame, although the best thing about Soul Calibur remains full-random local play.

The single player stuff is pretty weak. There's a single story mode (with set characters) that isn't particularly stellar in terms of narrative or dialog, so seems like kind of a waste. Most of the unlocks are based on your player level (which is separate from your online rank).

Aside from the story, even the offline modes try to emulate the online mode. Going to offline "quick match" takes you to a world map populated by fake players with fake gamertags and fake customer characters. It's a good way to earn new titles and player points but come on, who are they kidding? There's also a "Legendary Soul" mode, which looks like it's some sort of super hardcore version of arcade, which means I will not be playing it. Soul Calibur IV's story mode had maybe 3 lines of dialog and a fairly limited range but I still found it more engaging than any of SC5's offerings. They stripped the single player content down to the bare minimum, lacking even options from the very first Soul Calibur, like global difficulty and number of rounds per fight. That said, Quick Match and Arcade are definitely playable and enjoyable. But that isn't why I spent 5 hours playing last night.

The character creation is freaking awesome. They start you out with a very decent assortment of items to use and you unlock more as you go up in player rank. It still suffers from weird spacing issues as an attempt to avoid clipping: some items seem to hover in the air as if waiting for you to fill the gap with armor, while others clip. They have a solution to that problem right in the game: you can very precisely position items in three generic "equipment" slots, so that they rest on your character perfectly and without clipping. I'm not sure why they didn't let you adjust all creation items in the same way.

I'd say the biggest problem with the character creation system is selecting a voice. You can adjust the pitch and tone, but any significant change and your character sounds like a robot. Worse yet, the voices sound completely different depending on your language settings: from English to Japanese, it sounds like an entirely different person speaking, with a different tone and inflection.

By the way, I would strongly recommend switching to Japanese voices, unless you feel a certain nostalgia for over-acted, oft-repeated, unreasonable lines in the middle of your fight.

I'm a bit torn. I'm tempted to just buy SC IV for $20 in Games On Demand, because all I want is a fighting game to casually when I want something more than Peggle. Seriously, I just think SC is the fighting game that just feels right to me. I don't care about career modes and such.

That said, there does seem to be an interesting score chasing component in addition to the online play. Is this right? And character creation would actually be kind of a cool feature. Plus, Ezio is kind of a big deal for my daughter, who is not only a big AC fan, but plays SC like me, as pure arcade distraction.

I just don't know if that is worth $40. I imagine there will be a good sale on it within a month or two.

I imagine you're right.

LobsterMobster wrote:

By the way, I would strongly recommend switching to Japanese voices, unless you feel a certain nostalgia for over-acted, oft-repeated, unreasonable lines in the middle of your fight.

Ah, c'mon. Can't hate too hard on a dub that gives you material like this.

LobsterMobster wrote:

The character creation is freaking awesome.

I'll second this emotion. Here I surrender my last pretense that I ever was or could be considered in any way, but I was really delighted that I was able to make rough approximations of two tiefling characters I play in D&D campaigns, with something sort of like the weird-ass horns I imagined, and I hope I get something more antler-like soon.

>sigh<

SpacePPoliceman, I just hit player level 10 and unlocked some horse legs. They're furry enough to look like goat legs to me, if that's your flavor of tiefer.

I played a few hours with Yoyoson last night (thanks for the games, my friend, you were a worthy adversary). Again, I'm not hardcore enough to know much about timing but the online play felt exactly like the offline play. No lag whatsoever. I felt like every hit was earned (except when I was playing as Ezio, who is incredibly cheap with his ranged attacks) and I never felt like the game had robbed me of a hit or a win. Yoyoson seemed surprised when he realized my custom characters did not come pre-made on the disc, which I will take as a compliment. Oh, and Lance sends his regards.

I did find one really weird quirk of the editor last night: some items use a color palette that does not include red. It skips over the red section (the first few columns) and goes right into yellow. At the end of the spectrum you get your violets and purples but the closest you get to red is a magenta. When I set the entire outfit to a single color it seems to do that by number, so those aberrant bits of equipment turn yellow instead of red. I even tried applying some textures that have red in them by default and they switched to purple. I have no idea why they did that.

I can also confirm that setting the game to create a random custom character is just as satisfying and hilarious as always, if not more-so. If anyone else has this on 360, I'd love to go a few rounds and show off some of my work.

Benticore asked me last night if it's a big enough improvement over 4 to warrant a purchase. That's kind of a tough call. If you like playing fighting games online and you like character customization, I'd say it's definitely a solid buy. That said, I can't imagine the price staying at $60 for very long, and there's nothing to lose by waiting a little while.

I put in some more time with Taki (NOT Natsu... well, yeah, Natsu) and Ivy. Natsu has some pretty significant changes, which makes sense since she is technically a new character, but most of her moves seem to do something similar to what you'd expect having played Soul Calibur 4. It doesn't take long to adapt. Most of Ivy's whip moves are functionally the same as they used to be, though some are performed in slightly different ways as they've simplified her stances. They also got rid of her rarely-used but humiliating heel stomp, and replaced it with a slightly more useful and much more disturbing move where she holds her sword in front of herself like a phallus and thrusts her hips. Classy.

Watch Zelda beat up Link

Character creation can be kind of neat!

LobsterMobster wrote:

SpacePPoliceman, I just hit player level 10 and unlocked some horse legs. They're furry enough to look like goat legs to me, if that's your flavor of tiefer.

I got those last night, too. They aren't for my doods, but I hope they're indicative of the other crazy parts waiting to be unlocked.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I put in some more time with Taki (NOT Natsu... well, yeah, Natsu) and Ivy. Natsu has some pretty significant changes, which makes sense since she is technically a new character, but most of her moves seem to do something similar to what you'd expect having played Soul Calibur 4.

I need to spend more time with her because I know she has a bunch of teleporting zaniness, but all of the AI spamming kicks I use on Taki seem to be still there. Xianghua, on the other hand, has some moves I haven't found on Leixia yet.

The real tragedy, I feel, is the loss of Cassandra, even though she's technically still there. Most of her moves now seem to belong to Phyrra, who possesses those traits everyone wants in a fighting game character: frightened and cowardly. Her opening animation has her backing away and shaking her head. Cassandra was fun, Phyrra's pathetic, and it's annoying.

The Elephant in the Room question, I guess, is "Will you pay for the inevitable Old Characters DLC?" I think I might.

farley3k wrote:

Watch Zelda beat up Link

Character creation can be kind of neat!

Pshhh.... Like we all didn't know how that fight would have gone down.

I will pay for Sophitia DLC, because it isn't a Soul Calibur game without Sophitia. I would also pay to get Setsuka back, because Setsuka > Patroklos.

Other than that, they have all my favorites covered (Ivy, Mitsurugi, Siegfried, and Hilde).

Why do the girl's butts look like 12-year-old asian boy butts?

(Just assuming that's what they'd look like, of course.)

Aaron D. wrote:

Why do the girl's butts look like 12-year-old asian boy butts?

(Just assuming that's what they'd look like, of course.)

Uh-huh...

*Hits the red Fed alert button*

I'm not sure why teenage boys would be interested in playing dress-up with virtual dolls. That sounds more like something that teenage girls would like.

Aaron D. wrote:

Why do the girl's butts look like 12-year-old asian boy butts?

(Just assuming that's what they'd look like, of course.)

Because Asian girls' butts aren't any different.

farley3k wrote:

Watch Zelda beat up Link

Character creation can be kind of neat!

Oh, man. Is that what the announcer sounds like through the whole game? What a lame Mortal Kombat reject. Soul Cal announcers are supposed to be over-the-top and bombastic.

My copy should be here from gamefly today. I grabbed it on the 360 and would love to get some matches in with some of you all this weekend. Just add me.

I agree that Pyrrha's kind of a bad character. One of her "throws" has her literally falling on top of her opponent. You unlock a different version of her playing through the story mode so maybe that one's a little more assertive. Or at least doesn't end rounds by falling over whilst proclaiming quietly that she is hungry.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I played a few hours with Yoyoson last night (thanks for the games, my friend, you were a worthy adversary). Again, I'm not hardcore enough to know much about timing but the online play felt exactly like the offline play. No lag whatsoever. I felt like every hit was earned (except when I was playing as Ezio, who is incredibly cheap with his ranged attacks) and I never felt like the game had robbed me of a hit or a win. Yoyoson seemed surprised when he realized my custom characters did not come pre-made on the disc, which I will take as a compliment. Oh, and Lance sends his regards.

Indeed, thank you, my friend, for helping me acclimate.

You did have a lot of inventive characters. I'll keep that image of Lance in my heart for the rest of my days, whether I'd like to or not. Good times

LobsterMobster wrote:

I agree that Pyrrha's kind of a bad character. One of her "throws" has her literally falling on top of her opponent. You unlock a different version of her playing through the story mode so maybe that one's a little more assertive. Or at least doesn't end rounds by falling over whilst proclaiming quietly that she is hungry.

I wouldn't say she's a bad character, I would say she's just being passive-aggressive. During her critical edge attack, she expresses her heartfelt regrets at the same time as she's ripping you a new one.

Yoyoson wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

I agree that Pyrrha's kind of a bad character. One of her "throws" has her literally falling on top of her opponent. You unlock a different version of her playing through the story mode so maybe that one's a little more assertive. Or at least doesn't end rounds by falling over whilst proclaiming quietly that she is hungry.

I wouldn't say she's a bad character, I would say she's just being passive-aggressive. During her critical edge attack, she expresses her heartfelt regrets at the same time as she's ripping you a new one.

Which is very much a Sophitia thing. Sophitia was all about saying "sorry" and "are you OK?" while breaking your neck, then flipping you head over heels. I read that Pyrrha Omega has a moveset that is almost identical to Sophitia too, so maybe Pyrrha is more than just a nod to the Sophitia fans. You know, besides being her daughter and all.

Man, now I really want to play this.

I prefer Ivy's method of laughing at your pain.