Alas, the dark side of the force won't get to kick Yoda's shiveled green butt: while Darth Vader will appear on the PlayStation version of Soul Calibur IV, the Jedi master will be on XBox 360. Curse the console industry's walled gardens!
At a CES party, Namco let us play with an early build of the game, now scheduled for release this summer. Mitsurugi, Taki and Sophitia were playable – I left early, however, so maybe Namco had some more surprises in store.
How did the game play? Not the best man to ask, as I skipped the much-changed third in the series and therefore can't compare the fourth to it. There's a new battle system, an expanded character customization system (including an online character show-off setup), and "secrets so big it'll blow your mind." That refers to the trivial epic melodrama that goes into each protagofreak's backstory.
Also: the game demo was awesome.
And now, enjoy some dreadful shaky digicam video. First, some in-game fighting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=&rel=1
The demo's intro:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=&rel=1
