Divide By Zero - a blog by Kamran Ayub

Yes, they are mostly good.

I spent about 6-7 hours today with the game, with a friend. It’s not naturally a co-op game but it worked out beautifully taking turns, creating our own characters, and unlocking content.

The Good

• The character customization saves this from being “just another Soul Calibur.â€? It seriously is awesome.
• Graphics are fantastic and colorful. Great in the world of drab lookalike games.
• Tons of combos and moves… even if some characters are clones of each other.
• Use of leveling, equipment, weapons, styles, and skills is a great addition to gameplay, making it a lot more deep and faux-RPG.
• Challenging. We played Arcade mode a few times and there were many moments where we almost wanted to chuck the controller and game out the window. We made it though.

The Bad

• No “Adventure Mode.â€? Maybe it was just me but that’s all I played Soul Calibur II for. It was the closest a fighting game came to being an RPG. Thinking of how it would have worked in SCIV makes me cry for its lack of being.
• No co-op leveling in story mode, arcade, versus, or tower of chaos mode. That would have been a lot of fun, fighting each other to level up or if that’s too unfair, tag-teaming in arcade/story mode to level up would have been a nice feature.
• Story Mode is just cheesy and lame… but it is kinda fun.

We didn’t get a change to test Online Mode because we lacked an Ethernet upstairs at my friend’s house neither did we tackle the Tower of Chaos. It speaks volumes that we were able to stay entertained and addicted to Story Mode and Character Customization.

All in all I was very satisfied with my purchase even if it fell short of an amazing game and turned out to be a great game.

There is definitely playability to this game, as you gain better equipment by unlocking more achievements. It encourages you to be good at it and it rewards you properly for your efforts. Character Customization is so much fun… we pimped out a few characters and I created my own character, “Hulk,� that I plan to develop diligently.