Soul Calibur V

THE GOOD:
- Beautiful, lush in-game character models & fluid animations
- Deep, enjoyable and rewarding fighting game engine
> Rewards the players who really invest time into the game (explained later)
- Anyone can pop in the disc and play this game!
- Soundtrack is great
- Great online features
- An expansive character creator
- Amazing netcode

THE BAD:
- A lack of original characters to play as in comparison to older installments (3 characters mimic other character styles, for christ's sake!)
- Story mode pales in comparison to earlier installments
> Who are these bloody characters, anyways?
> Lack of gallery mode and character bios dig the knife even further into this game's skin
- Some stages are terrible to fight on
- A few notable characters + their fighting style are missing
- Don't have online? You might not want to buy this game.

SUMMARY:

I don't play much Soul Calibur. What do I mean by this? I played Soul Calibur 4 for a week or so before I had to give it back to my friend, and I d...

I'm going to be honest in saying that I don't particularly like fighting games all that much. I tend to buy one, play it for a little while to learn how a character functions, go through the story mode or play arcade mode, and... then add it to the trade-in pile because I'm already bored of it and am instead playing something else. But Soul Calibur 2 and 3 were like the complete opposite - I'd actually spend heaps of time going through those games, playing through their arcade modes to learn about the individual fighters and play through the story mode to experience a different (albeit not exactly well told) story while fighting waves of opponents under different (sometimes cheap) conditions. I skipped Soul Calibur 4 because at the time, I didn't have a 360 or a PS3, and... I don't know why I still skipped it. I guess... because I didn't want to be disappointed by a Soul Calibur game, even if 4 had the capacity to give me a super boner. So I skipped to 5, just to check and see what'...

Day 1:
I've had a lot to live up to. My oldest brother, Soul Edge, was the first to introduce 8-way running to fighting games, which had since become a fantastic addition in terms of smooth movement and strategy - in particular, the execution of a few attacks. It may not be as strategically demanding as fellow weapon based fighting game, Samurai Shodown, but Soul Edge had a rapport with people who were intimidated by SNK's somewhat tricky fighting games and people who think Street Fighter is for philistines. Let's face it, Street Fighter wasn't all that complex, nor was Mortal Kombat, because those games, at the most, required rotating the d-pad and pressing a button to use special attacks, while King Of Fighters required you to learn combos with such strict timing... but yeah, then my two bigger brothers, Soul Calibur 1 and 2, put the series on the map, telling everybody to watch out. Even their rivals, Tekkens 1-4, had to watch their backs, lest they get a sword in the back.

Day 2:
O...