Soul Calibur 4 is the latest addition in this well known series of one on one fighting games for Sony PS3 and Xbox 360. The action is based around the story of a powerful magical sword which become possessed of an evil soul due to its involvement in years of bloodshed and death. In single player mode the character that you choose to play with must go through a series of battles with the ultimate goal of obtaining and then destroying this evil sword. As in all such games there is also a two player element so that you can fight your friends, at home or over an internet connection.

 What the Soul Calibur 4 game does best, in my opinion, is the quality of the graphics and soundtrack. It realy is a pleasure to watch the action in this game, and the music can be haunting and enchanting, really adding to the highly atmospheric quality that is often acheived. Amazing progress has been made on this front since the previous outings in this franchise, to the extent that in number 4 the game play graphics are almost up to the same quality as the cinema style interludes which guide you through the story. There is also great interaction between the character and the environment (such as shattering wooden floors when you fall) that is often missing in this kind of game.

As with 1,2 and 3 the actual action stands out from other martial arts and fighting games on the range and quality of the weapons that you have to play around with. They have also done a pretty decent job of updating familiar characters so there are plenty of new moves, but enough consistency with the earlier games for them to feel familiar if you have played the earlier games, and for them to have retained their distinctive personality.

Another good thing about this game is that although there are plenty of complex advanced moves to really get your teeth stuck into, it is still quite easy to pick up and play to a decent level.

With such great graphics it wouldn't have been too hard to make this game overall a great viewing experience as well as having the great game play, but it falls down a bit on an uninspiring and predictable background story.

One of the gameplay aspects that is (I think) unique to Soul Calibur is the ring outs. This means that you can win a match by knocking your opponent out of the arena as well as by beating them in the usual way. This can make things interesting by adding an extra dimension that you need to take into account in your fights, but it can also be really annoying sometimes to keep losing fights through a ring out when you have bee wining easily right up until the end. It would be nice if they had included an option to turn this feature on or off.

Soul Calibur 4 does maintain the position of this series as the best sword fighting games on the market, but it hasn't quite taken them up to the level where you could say that they are the best of any kind of fighting game. Overall I think that a fair assessment would be to give it 8 out of 10.