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[Prowler]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

It also came out on Wii-U though.

A console I never owned. In fact, most people never bought a Wii U. It sold possibly even fewer units than the GameCube.

Not everyone wants to own or is able to afford every single videogame console. I have a feeling you've come from money since you always brag about owning and playing a lot of games and have bragged about spending about 2 hours at home working during the pandemic. Plus, well off people tend to be out of touch with society and other people's problems, so that would explain a lot about you.

[CyberCubed]

I didn't get a Switch at launch either, I got it in late 2017 I think around September. I waited 5 months, I could wait no longer.

[Prowler]

Good for you, then.

[CyberCubed]

It's great living in the U.S.A. God bless America.

[Turo602]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

It's great living in the U.S.A. God bless America.

You should see it sometime.

[shredder orokusaki]

6 days ago on August 15 i started playing yakuza 4 and i beat all of them! Only i THE SHREDDER with my foot ninja control Japan not those weak and cowards yakuza! Here you see me beating them all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po1MFIKB-TI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVgmrsKWIo0

Yakuza are from the best action games sega has made.

[Leo656]

I've been playing SoulCalibur IV (Xbox 360) off and on lately. Last time I played it was the PS3 version a few years ago. I knew I'd played it on 360 at some point, since I had it on that console first, but apparently I'd played it quite a bit, since I'd had a bunch of Achievements unlocked and made a bunch of created fighters.

I've always really liked this series. It's a little bit disappointing that so much of the single-player content was scaled back so much from III, though. Story Mode is super-short (although it does make it easier to finish it with each character), and aside from that, Arcade Mode, and the Tower of Lost Souls there's not as much to do as there was in II or III, it feels like. The Tower is interesting but I'm not super into it, and aside from the Match Conditions it's not much different from the other single-player modes and doesn't reward you with much money for as long as it takes to beat some of the Floors.

Pretty much all I've got left to do is buy all the Create-A-Fighter stuff and alternate Weapons, which unfortunately costs a ton of money. So I'm pretty much stuck playing Story Mode with everyone multiple times, which is pretty repetitive. I wish they'd tweaked that part a bit, and not made things quite so expensive. I do really like the Creation mode, though; it could be a bit deeper but you can come up with some cool stuff in it. I wish they had more unique fighting styles like III, though, rather then keeping strictly with the styles of the in-game fighters.

Gameplay's great as always, though. Like I said, I've always had a soft spot for this series, because before SoulCalibur II I'd hardly ever played any fighting game for more than a half hour or so. So it's pretty much because of SoulCalibur II and III that I got into playing more fighting games in general. I haven't played V or VI yet; I'm aware V was the one that had its development time cut short because of the disasters going on in Japan at that time, but I'm still looking forward to checking it out soon.

[Leo656]

So I unlocked everything in SoulCalibur IV, finally, so I felt pretty comfortable finally moving on to SoulCalibur V (Xbox 360).

So far... man. Lots of mixed feelings about this one.

The gameplay is great as always, and the graphics are a tick better than SCIV. But MAN, the single-player content is scaled even further back to the point it's barely there at all. And you can absolutely tell that the game simply isn't finished, at least if you've played all the previous games in the series. Someone jumping in for the first time with V might not notice or care, but TONS of stuff that's always been a staple of the series simply isn't there. They don't even have an Art Gallery or a Cinema to watch the in-game cutscenes on.

The Arcade Mode is still there, but aside from unlocking two or three fighters there's not much impetus to keep going back to it. Story Mode is... well, it is what it is, and is the most glaring example of the game simply not being finished. Every other SC game had you play through Story as all of the different characters, which explained what each of them were doing and what was motivating them, and so on, not to mention unlocking everyone's ending scenes. Even just trying to beat it with each character gave you a lot to do. In this game, though, you only play as a couple of characters - mostly two different versions of the two "main" characters - and you only get any insight into those two main characters, specifically. You play it once, it takes maybe two hours to beat, and that's it, you've seen 99% of the game's content right there.

It's not even that the Story is "bad", exactly - although neither of the two new main characters are favorites of mine. But it just SCREAMS "This Game Isn't Finished". For one thing, this game jumps ahead 17 years after SC IV, with some major characters being left out and a bunch of brand new ones being introduced. And after playing the entire game, you know almost as much (or as little) about any of them as you did before. "Where's _______?" No explanation. "Who is _____, and how do they relate to (character from previous games)?" Nothing. Only Sophitia's two kids - and by extension, Sophitia herself - get anything resembling storyline clarification. In Sophitia's case, all we have to go on as to what happened to her is word-of-mouth from an unreliable narrator, so I don't even fully count it. The story as it relates to her two kids is "fine", but... it's the ONLY Story Mode content there is. So if you hate those two characters, you're sh*t outta luck. If you want to know where Taki is, or who Viola is, you won't get any answers here.

As a way to introduce Sophitia's kids to the franchise, Story Mode is "fine". As anything else, it's a total failure. If not for Wikipedia, I'd have no idea about anything else going on in this game. Considering how deep the Story generally is in this series and how much attention EVERY character usually gets, it's very obvious to see that huge corners were cut here. Not their fault, I know, but... Jesus. Anyways, once you've played it once, that's it, you're done with it. Again, that isn't typically how SC works.

The overall presentation of Story Mode also suffers. It's mostly static, "drawn" cutscenes with voice-over, with intermittent cinematic cutscenes popping in occasionally. The overall aesthetic works okay, and gives everything a certain "storybook" quality... but it's very obvious that the entire thing would've been cutscenes. Again, someone who's never played a SC game before might not care as much, or someone who didn't know about the game's disastrous development, but if you DO know in advance about that and already know that the game isn't finished, it's just one more thing that screams in your face that "This Is A Place Where We Cut Corners, Sorry About That."

So you've got Arcade Mode and Story Mode, each of which only benefits you to play through once. Another single-player mode is Legendary Souls, where you fight some of the heavy-hitting characters on a really hard difficulty, but aside from wanting a serious challenge there's not much to that one, either. Quick Battle kind of adds something, as you fight a couple hundred different Created Fighters (some of which have AI based on real-life players' styles) and earn their "Titles" when you win, so you can customize your Player Card or whatever. So far I've spent most of my time in this mode after beating Story and Arcade. It's the closest thing to having a sense of "variety" out of anything else in the game.

Character Creation remains a high point, but like everything else it suffers from being severely stripped down. You start the game with barely any good clothing options; you do gradually unlock more stuff as you "level up", but MOST of the best stuff is paid DLC, which adds up to being over $60 worth of stuff that, let's face it, really should have just been in the damn game in the first place. So it's better than the Creation Mode in IV because you do get more options, but it's worse because most of those options aren't available to you unless you pay for them. The good news is, fighters' stats aren't linked to their clothing anymore like in IV, so you don't have to worry about whether or not those boots you want to give them are going to have them start with 50% Health.

One huge bummer is, not only are some major characters gone from the game, but their fighting styles are, too, so if you want to make Talim or Zasalamel, you're f*cking beat. You can make "close enough" versions of a couple, like Taki and Sophitia, by using in-game styles that are 99% similar, but mostly anyone from earlier games who's absent here simply isn't able to be created, and that's horsesh*t. They had to have known that the very first thing people would want to do is create some of those missing characters; not being able to do so almost feels like spite. Especially since you can buy Talim's outfit for use in Creation BUT it's f*cking pointless since her fighting style isn't even in the game.

I know. "Real World Problems". It still sucks.

They removed the in-game "store" and you no longer earn currency for playing fights; instead basically get Experience Points, and unlock stuff like Creation parts or new weapons every few levels. That's a way to do it, I guess, although some of the "big" stuff still requires you to at least hit Level 50 and I've read that you still unlock stuff all the way to the level cap at 100 or something like that. So you still have to play the game for way longer than necessary to unlock everything even though the method for unlocking is different. BUT, this series has always been like that, and I guess it gives people a reason to keep playing.

The actual in-game is still smooth and lots of fun, as usual. There's some changes from IV, the biggest one of all being that now you have to win three rounds instead of two. Not sure why, but you get used to it. Doing a "Critical Edge" move is a lot easier than pulling off a Critical Finish was in IV, so I do like that better. Breakable Clothing Gear from IV is still technically there, but severely scaled back and isn't a prominent feature anymore. It's a lot harder to get a Ring Out. It's generally more difficult and some characters' movesets are a bit different. Otherwise, it's SoulCalibur; jumping to this one from IV was about as seamless as it gets gameplay-wise.

The new music and announcer are something to adjust to; not "bad" but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the older stuff much better. I mean, after so many games the "real" SC announcer guy is just what you expect to hear when you play a SC game; the new guy sounds like he just woke up. But hey, if you really love the classic music, you can get it... as paid DLC for roughly a dollar per song!

I'm being pretty harsh, I know, but I gotta call it like I see it. I do like playing it, but it feels like a huge step backwards from IV in every way except graphics (and the graphical "improvements" are minimal). Even allowing for the Real-Life Why of how the game turned out the way it did, it doesn't change the objective reality that there just isn't much to this game that demands owning or playing it if you already have IV. I just can't recommend playing it over IV. Too much missing content, no explanation whatsoever as to what's going on in the story or who these new characters are (or where the old ones went to), and about $75 worth of music and Creation items that REALLY should have just been in-game unlockables and not paid DLC. The gameplay, as always, is great. BUT, it's SoulCalibur; "Good job doing what you're supposed to do." All of the Other Stuff people have come to expect from the series simply isn't there in V.

In a perfect world, they would've pushed the game back a year and released it in better shape.

As it is, it's "fine" if all you wanna do is have some fights with your buddies once in a while, but the overall experience is lacking. If you have IV, you can safely stick with that one.

Hopefully SC VI is a step back in the right direction. Own it, never played it yet. Might get to it in a few days, just to "close the loop" or whatever. I just really hope it's not as stripped-down as V.

[shredder orokusaki]

I started playing aliens fireteam on pc when it was released 4 days ago and i kill all the aliens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAjABxiEQLQ

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Hopefully SC VI is a step back in the right direction. Own it, never played it yet. Might get to it in a few days, just to "close the loop" or whatever. I just really hope it's not as stripped-down as V.

Soul Calibur peaked with II, especially with Link playable in the Gamecube version. Also the reason the single player is practically non-existent now is due to the rise of online multiplayer, so fighting game developers outside of Mortal Kombat/Injustice have bare bones single player modes these days. Even what they try to pass off for a "story mode" is ridiculously short.

[Leo656]

SCII was great but I think I liked the single-player options in III better. Especially with the Creation mode. I had a ton of fun with that, especially since you weren't locked-in to only using the fighting styles of in-game characters, as it's been ever since.

[shredder orokusaki]

4 days ago i finshed Yakuza 4 and started playing Yakuza 5. Those who say that yakzuza is sega second best series after Sonic are sayign the turth. Iti s a amazing action series! a must play for evryone!

[Leo656]

Still playing SoulCalibur V, and a few more things have jumped out at me the more I play it. Some good, some bad, some just interesting. I've mostly just been creating characters - almost out of slots already - and trying to Level Up and unlock all the Titles and Creation parts. I think I'm up to level 64 or 65 and I know I've got all the clothing parts unlocked.

Even though there's not so much to do compared to other SC games, the actual gameplay itself is still tons of fun. I've got like 57 hours into it already and it just flew by. However, I've noticed an issue where some of the more powerful attacks will literally just pass right through an opponent at times without doing any damage; most likely a glitch having to do with the game not being entirely finished. Not the end of the world, but it's cost me a few Rounds here and there when I risked everything on hitting that one Big Move, only for it to phase right through the other character. Blocking also seems to just plain not work right in this game, compared to all the previous games where it was very responsive. Again, it's not impossible to adjust to, but since blocking and guarding is such a huge part of the gameplay in SC, it's a bit irritating. Especially on higher difficulties.

I did better at the Quick Battle mode than I expected, managing to get up into the Advanced difficulty level. But I finally hit a wall around most of the opponents at B2 level; I can still win a Round or two but can't consistently win matches at that level, mostly because opponents start unleashing unblockable Combo chains the second the fight starts. But it's whatever, I got a lot farther than I expected to and managed to Level Up a lot along the way.

One thing I couldn't help but notice is the complete lack of any tag team modes, which is interesting since it was such a big part of III and IV. IV was more or less entirely built around tag team fights outside of Arcade Mode, so to see it completely missing from V feels a bit strange. Not saying it needed to be a main focus or anything, but it's one of the multiple things that stands out since it was such a big part of the preceding games.

I'm really having a ton of fun with the Creation mode, though. I wish more fighting games had a mode like this, and that it was even half as deep with options. It does suck being locked in only to the fighting styles of in-game characters, but the amount of clothing options available lets you really get creative visually. It doesn't have the sheer abundance of creation options as some of the WWE games, but for this type of game it's pretty amazing. One of those games where I could easily spend hours just making people and barely playing as them.

If this were the first or second game in the series I'd probably have few complaints because I'm definitely having fun with it. It's just hard not to miss all the things that had been taken out or not finished.
------------------

I also went ahead and got the Xbox Live version of the first SoulCalibur, since I don't have a Dreamcast and don't know when I'll get one. Been messing around with that one a bit, too, in between rounds of SCV. I gotta say, aside from the obvious graphics and sound disparity, it's really impressive just how much of the series was locked-in right from the beginning and how consistent everything is. It's easy to go back and forth from playing SC to SCV without making too many adjustments at all. That's pretty neat.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

SCII was great but I think I liked the single-player options in III better. Especially with the Creation mode. I had a ton of fun with that, especially since you weren't locked-in to only using the fighting styles of in-game characters, as it's been ever since.

I've only played one SC game so far, and it was sprecisely the GameCube version of Soul Calibur II. Pretty good game. Having Link in it is a nice bonus.

I'd like to play other games of the series someday. Fighter creation mode interests me a lot, especially since you can easily create rather realistic looking Ninja Turtles in that mode. But other than the Switch I don't own any other modern consoles, so I don't think I'll get a chance to play SC again anytime soon.

[IMJ]

I've been playing now and again sessions of the PS2 era TMNT games from the animated series from around that time....

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Prowler

I've only played one SC game so far, and it was sprecisely the GameCube version of Soul Calibur II. Pretty good game. Having Link in it is a nice bonus.

I'd like to play other games of the series someday. Fighter creation mode interests me a lot, especially since you can easily create rather realistic looking Ninja Turtles in that mode. But other than the Switch I don't own any other modern consoles, so I don't think I'll get a chance to play SC again anytime soon.

You kinda can, the heads still don't look right in V. I've seen pictures of stuff people have done in VI that looks decent, though, so I'm looking forward to checking that one out soon enough. I went ahead and made 'em in V anyways just since they put a turtle shell in as a clothing item, and a helmet that looks almost identical to Shredder's, so it's like "EH doesn't have to be perfect." I mean literally nobody looks "perfect" but a ton of them are really close if you squint.

I made He-Man and a bunch of other Masters of the Universe characters, which all look near-perfect and fit in great with the general SC aesthetic. Then I made some DC, TMNT, Zelda and Thundercats characters to round things out. The only "missing" fighters from previous games I made so far were Taki, Sophitia and Cassandra, since you can make all of them near-perfect and I don't care so much about guys like Hwang or some of the others who were left out; not having the fighting styles for guys like Zasalamel or whoever makes me not really want to even bother making them since they'd only be half-assed.

It's definitely a great thing to have in there, though, and has been since SCIII. I haven't played it in ages since my PS2 died, but I had a TON of fun playing "Chronicles of the Sword" mode in that; it was like a mix of RPG and real-time strategy but with fighting game-style battles, and it was a lot of fun. I think I even had a couple different memory cards with all my Creations on it. I've had fun with all the SC games but not having that mode in IV or V was a huge letdown, it might've been my favorite single-player mode in any fighting game.

I also miss how there were little Quick-Time Events in the Story Mode that would affect your path and your ending. That game had tons of replay value, I played it to death when it was new.

SCII will always be a sentimental favorite, though, as it's the one that "really" got me into the series; I'd played Soul Blade and the first SC a few times here and there but it wasn't until I got bored one night and started messing with my wife's copy of SCII that I became a "fan" of the series. It literally started as "Eh, lemme play as Link for a while" and then it just went from there. My Gamecube isn't hooked up right now but I'm definitely going to hop on that game again once I do have it hooked up; still not sure I even unlocked everything in that game.

Hopefully you'll get a chance to play some of the more recent ones at some point. I've had a lot of fun with every game in the series despite some of them having some rather glaring omissions; but even in those the gameplay and especially the Create-A-Fighter are awesome.
--------------------

Originally Posted by IMJ

I've been playing now and again sessions of the PS2 era TMNT games from the animated series from around that time....

I did that last year or so (I have them on Gamecube, though). I still think the first one holds up pretty well; at one point I think a case could have been made for it being the "best" TMNT game overall but I think a couple of the ones since then were better. It's aged better than some, though, for sure.

My feelings on TMNT 2: Battle Nexus are pretty notorious. Hated it when it was new, didn't play it for years, went back to it committed to finally beating it and did so, and if anything it was even worse than I'd remembered.

I haven't played TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare in a long time but I remember that one being a LOT better than 2. Might've been the best one in that trilogy, but I'd have to play it again to be sure.

[CyberCubed]

Who is your favorite character in Soul Calibur? I was always partial to Cassandra, she's quicker to play as than Sophitia. On the plus side all the female characters have big boobs in the game (besides Talim, lol), that the game is fanservice the whole way through. I'm glad the recent games never censored the female characters either, in fact they only got worse with some like Ivy (who honestly, looks kinda gross now), and Sophitia's and others default outfits now show more cleavage than ever before.

[Leo656]

Hah. I'd still bang Ivy.

Taki would be my overall favorite, as I do the best with her in general out of everyone in the series regardless of which game it is. She's super-fast, has tons of great, cheap moves, and it definitely doesn't hurt that she's super-hot and her outfit is literally just painted on. Seriously, in III and IV you can totally see her "naughty bits" when she holds her leg up during her victory pose. That's awesome.

Since Taki wasn't in SCV, I had to create her using Natsu's moves, which were like a composite of all of Taki's various movesets from various games. Outside of Story mode I played as Natsu mostly in the beginning so I could get used to everything again before branching out to other characters.

I probably play as Siegfried second-most. Again, he has a ton of cheap moves thanks to his huge sword, and a lot of the fighters I create end up using his fighting style anyways.

I never used to care much about Sophitia but I found a new appreciation for her while I was going through Arcade mode in part IV, so at this point she might be my third-favorite.

Once I've unlocked all the main stuff and get to the point where I'm mostly going through the motions to get Achievements or level up and so on, it becomes ideal to be able to finish a fight in a few seconds to accumulate points or currency or whatever more quickly, so I end up using Taki and Siegfried a lot in those situations so I get done faster.

I do generally play as everyone at least a couple of times, whether it be for Arcade mode or whatever. I miss all of the character-specific ending cutscenes from previous games; they're non-existent in SCV and they were a big motivator to play as everyone in the first place. I find myself sticking mostly to my main few so far in this one, although I'm experimenting with several different ones just to try and get the "Soul Of..." Titles you earn for using each different fighting style 50 times.

I really do like how each game has such drastically different fighting styles between most characters. There's a lot of variety and it's fun to try and explore everybody's moveset.

[Prowler]

Wait, Taki, Sophitia and Cassandra aren't in the latest entry of the series? Why do fighting games love to do that kind of stuff? Scorpion also missed the vanilla version of MK3. Seriously, why do Fighters often decide not to put popular characters from previous games in their latest installments? I can understand older games doing that due to there not bring enough space for a larger number of characters, but why do modern fighters keep on doing that?! Makes sense. Taki and Sophitia are very popular characters. Makes no sense not to include them.

It's been about 2 years since I last played SCII. I really liked Cervantes and Sophitia. Taki too. Link was fine too. Didn't use Ivy much because she was a bit harder to control and I guess she wasn't much my style. I never got around to beat the story mode/mission mode. Some of the later missions are hard as hell man.

Voldo can die jn a fire. I HATE facing him.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Wait, Taki, Sophitia and Cassandra aren't in the latest entry of the series? Why do fighting games love to do that kind of stuff? Scorpion also missed the vanilla version of MK3. Seriously, why do Fighters often decide not to put popular characters from previous games in their latest installments? I can understand older games doing that due to there not bring enough space for a larger number of characters, but why do modern fighters keep on doing that?! Makes sense. Taki and Sophitia are very popular characters. Makes no sense not to include them.

It's been about 2 years since I last played SCII. I really liked Cervantes and Sophitia. Taki too. Link was fine too. Didn't use Ivy much because she was a bit harder to control and I guess she wasn't much my style. I never got around to beat the story mode/mission mode. Some of the later missions are hard as hell man.

Voldo can die jn a fire. I HATE facing him.

Some of them are back in Part VI, but I'm only on Part V yet.

There was a 17-year in-story gap between SoulCalibur IV and V, so some characters were replaced with their successors and whatnot (who are pretty much just stand-ins); Natsu is apparently Taki's protege' and thus takes her place in the game having almost all of the same moves, Sophitia's daughter Pyrrha has almost all of Sophitia's moves, and so on.

The developers claimed that certain characters like Taki would be "too old" to still be doing the same thing in V, but most people call bullsh*t on that because several characters like Ivy, Maxi, Mitsurugi and Siegfried are all still in it and in most cases look exactly the same as they did in IV, age-wise. It feels honestly more like they wanted to shake up the roster a bit with some fresh faces but didn't want to lose the basic elements of some of the more familiar characters, so rather than create fully-new ones they just tacked their movesets onto newer, "younger" characters. Like in Taki's case, she's definitely missed but playing as Natsu instead is physically the same experience, so I guess they figured "good enough".

In Sophitia's case, by the time of SCV she's alleged to be dead, killed by Tira, but we honestly only have Tira's word for that even though it's probably true. So being dead might've been a bit of a problem towards her appearing in that one. Although again, I think Raphael was technically "dead" at that point in time too yet appears as a playable character (not entirely sure on that one; story events around V seem a bit muddled, since the game itself doesn't give any detail on anyone except for Sophitia's kids, leaving it up to folks to search the internet to find out what happened to anyone else). But in Sophitia's case, it makes *some* sense that they'd move her aside to better distinguish her two kids, especially since Pyrrha's style is so similar.

Not sure where Cassandra is during V, as she's never mentioned. I'm guessing that both her and Sophitia were essentially thought of as redundant with Pyrrha and Patroklos there instead. I know she's a huge part of Part VI, though.

As I understand it, the plot of VI goes back to the timeline of SCI and II and takes things in an alternate direction, so a lot of the main characters like Taki and Sophitia who were absent from V ended up coming back. So there's that, at least.

I agree that it's frustrating when games will do that sort of thing, regardless of reasons. Every character is someone's favorite, after all. I know space is limited and sometimes "new" characters make old ones redundant, and you can't just repackage the same exact roster every time, switch some costumes around and say it's a whole new game... but selfishly, I wish these games would only add characters, not remove them.

Like I know that Mortal Kombat: Armageddon wasn't considered to be a high point of the series by a ton of folks, but it was just so cool to have 99.9% of the entire roster from every MK game thus far that I could forgive a ton otherwise. I wish more fighting series would do that, but I understand why they don't.