Profile: MaeEye
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I'm going to stray away from MMORPG's for a bit, because there are so many other games out there.  If you constrain yourself to just MMO's, you simpily WILL go nuts. 

Anyways.  So I picked up Soul Calibur 4 the other week.  The game is a blast; great story mode, a never-ending tower full of treasures, classic arcade, custom characters, unlockable art, and dare I say....Online fighting! 

Ok, I have been playing fighters since I can remember, my first one?  Hell I don't know.  Something like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter rings a bell.  I'm sure some of you might be able to upstage me, good for you.  I never was a huge fighting fan, until I played the Dead or Alive demo on my PSX magazine disc summer of 1996.  Holy crap!  Talk about a great fighter.  I remember staying up super late in the morning trying to learn combos and moves for all my characters.  For some reason Kasumi stuck and I begun to master her.

Well time sped through, twelve years into the future and we get a game that is called Soul Calibur 4.  Do take note that I've played pretty much every 'Soul' game out there, from Soul Blade to Soul Calibur 2.  Skipped Soul Calibur 3, mainly because I lack a PS2. 

I am a pretty decent fighter in this game.  Not the best out there, but decent.  If I had to rate myself, I'd probably give myself a B++. 

Now, Online fighting can always be a problem because of lag.  Always has been in Dead or Alive 4, but you both lag together.  So no, it's not the core problem.  The core problem going way beyond just lag.  The main issue with any fighter out on the market is skill.  Skill of the player.  No, let me refraise that.  Sportmanship of the player.  Yeah.  I have this reacurring problem in Soul Calibur 4 that players online will just do one combo over and over and over until your face is melted by anger and steam.  To me, there is no way out of this.  You either block or be pelted by the fastest character in the game.  If you usually do manage to get away or counter their attack, you get a couple nice hits in before they go back into doing the same damn combo over and over. 

You see, Dead or Alive 4 was a well balanced fighter, in my book.  Sure you would come across your players that would do this, but you had the ability to counter and attack.  And if someone was doing the same one over and over, human nature would kick in and time those counter moves.  Most of these counter moves did pretty good damage and put the other player at a disadvantage. 

My problem with Soul Calibur 4 is that there is countering, but it's only a matter of pushing the character back and dealing slight damage to them.  Their down-time is not long .5 of a second?  You have to get your fastest attack up and ready or else their back at it.  Even if you do so, they usually block a few attack and once your open they are beating your ass with the same moves again. 

I have a major problem with Soul Calibur 4.  To me, this game is broken.  The combos consist of a couple of buttons and there are not many of these combos.  Sometime the combo buttons and the moves that are delt don't even make sense.  You push a few buttons and they character flys around the screen like their superman destroying everything under them.  Anyways back to what I was saying.  In Dead or Alive 4 there were combos, plenty of combos.  The best combos were not easy to pull off and took timing and skill to make sure you can trick the other player so they won't counter every attack you throw at them.

Basically I think I've had enough with fighting other people online in Soul Calibur 4.  Just tonight I fought 4 people in a row that went back and forth between 2 different attacks.  I'm sitting there for 5 minutes just blocking trying to time everything so I can pull an attack off. 

Soul Calibur 4 is a single player game, or a game you play with friends.  Don't think you can just randomly fight anyone, because 6/10 times they will pull some kind of crap like this. 

Anyways, that's my rant for tonight.  Feel free to comment, complain, or praise me.  If you have Soul Calibur 4, I hope your enjoying it more than I am.

-macr0