New to the Front Room is Soul Calibur IV a fine exponent of the video game martial arts, blades swoop, legs sweep and heavy burly men are toppled by unfeasibly proportioned women folk (Ivy still winning the gravity defying special award here).This time around the Lizardmen are more like lizards than ever, there is a seemingly never ending single player campaign thingy, a really cool character creation tool and I'm even familiar enough with a couple of the characters to spot where moves have been tweaked, added or removed.
So far, so normal for a one-on-one fighter sequel. However where Soul Claibur often marks itself out is with it's guest characters. We've had the likes of Link, Spawn and Tekken's Heihachi Mishima. This time however it get's really quite bizarre. This time we have Yoda, Vader and The Apprentice taking part.
The game's excuse to combine the two fiction worlds is flimsy at best and at first it just seems a crazy idea all over. But then you see the green menace himself bouncing around the screen as he bests the mighty Astaroth and then The Apprentice blasts poor old Taki with a bolt of Force lightening and suddenly you don't care that it makes no sense at all.
Then it just becomes fun. Ok, Yoda is horrible to fight against seeing as he's small enough for a lot of attacks to fly over his wizened little head but new guy on the block for the 'Wars' as well fits right in. Yep, the only thing that marks him out is that glowing red blade that hmm and buzzes it way through the air.
Online play also features here and landing a perfect round against another human being halfway across the globe is more satisfying than you could possibly believe.
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