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To check out this feature, we tried out Hilde, a new girl who fights with a spear and a dagger. We picked her full-length white dress, but every character will have two outfits. She seems to fight well at medium distances, and has some very powerful spear-thrusting combos. That's really more of a guess than a fact. Frankly, we aren't good enough to figure out how to use her with the limited playtime we had.
Breaking off Hilde's middle armor reveals some cleavage. Then, smashing her low armor tears the dress, showing a little bit of leg. The armor breaks carry over through rounds in a fight, and with her dress not protecting her, Hilde was vulnerable to a Critical Finish attack.
Each character has a unique Critical Finish that results in an instant kill and slick animation. But before they can use it, they have to break at least one section of an opponent's armor, beat them back into red flashing gem mode and string together several attacks of their own. You see, your Soul Gauge, not only turns red but will turn blue as you attack your opponent. Blue - as everyone knows - means that you can unleash some serious whup-butt by using a Critical Finish. We only saw Cassandra's, who performed a spinning jump attack that resulted in her sitting on Hilde's face. It was strong in a you're dead way, but still kinda sexual.
What more can we tell you? Thescreenslook really cool. Some damage to environments seems to be persistent. While other damage, like busting up the floorboards of a pirate ship, are nice but revert to normal after a few seconds. We've been promised a couple other things. First, that the balancing (which was a big issue for SC III) has really been looked at for Soulcalibur IV - so that's in Namco Bandai's hands. Also, the game is supposedly really, really fun. That's straight from the mouth of the game's developer, so believe it if you want, but then again, the track record for SC is pretty good.
Apr 16, 2008
