Xbox360 Fighting Stick EX 2 - Soul Calibur 4 Limited Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this joystick so I could really enjoy the arcade feel of playing fighting games as well as the Xbox Live Arcade games I own. The description for the product isn't that great so I thought I would provide some more information on this product.The stick itself feels pretty responsive although it does make a clicking noise when it is pressed against the edges. I'm assuming that was done to let the player know they are successfully pulling off motions. I personally don't mind it, especially with the game volume on.

The joystick is indeed wired but it is very long so I don't see it being an issue for most people. Wireless would of been nice but I guess at least this way you have zero chance of losing a signal in a heated match (although I've never lost a signal with my normal 360 controller).The cord does have a release in case you tug too hard on it just like the older Xbox controllers. You connect the joystick via USB (flap by power button on console).

The joystick itself feels pretty sturdy and is responsive. It does not include any special features such as slow motion or turbo in case that's your thing(like the old school NES Advantage). The only reason that I have not given this joystick a full 5 rating is because the joystick is not compatible with a lot of non-fighting games. The stick is mapped to the directional pad anddoes not support Analog control. What this means is you can't use it for most other non-fighting games like Lost Odyssey that support movement with the analog stick. Not a big deal since I got this stick for fighting games only but I thought everyone should know.

I can't speak to it's long term durability at this time but will probably update this review in a month's time to indicate whether the stick becomes too loose or buttons become non responsive.

*Update: Well, I've been using this joystick for about a month now and it's still good as new.The stick is not loose and the buttons are still very responsive. Overall, a very nicely made joystick.

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Product Description:
Dual licensed by Microsoft and Namco Bandai Games America Inc. Arcade style controller for the Xbox360 featured with Soul Calibur 4 characters. Recommended for Fighting, action, shooting, and classic games that are available on xbox live.

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Soul Blade Review

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(More customer reviews)Compaired with games of simular weight (Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Bushido Blade 2) This game ranks #1 in my book. The graphics are great and looks almost EXACTLY like Soul Edge (the arcade version of this game).Although I beatthis game rather quickly, the game has loads of replayability with the EdgeMaster mode (search for the ultimate weapon for your character and use itin other modes), Player Vs. Player modes, Survival Mode (goal is to not gethurt and to see how many fights you can win), and Team Play Mode (play as ateam against the CPU, when you are beaten your team mate takes over).
Anadded plus for younger people is that no blood or gore is in this game.Soif you are a concerned parent, that prohibits such things from youryoungster, this game offers a fighting genre without blood, guts and goreor death (says "Knockout" when you are beaten or win).
Bottemline, this game is a classic and warrents a place on any gamer's shelf thatenjoys a good fighting game.

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Product Description:
USED LIKE NEW. ROM AMAZON PRO MERCHANT. For rush delivery (3-6 business days), please use Expedited Shipping.

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Soul Calibur 3 Review

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(More customer reviews)To begin with, theres a huge amount of unlockable content in this game. You will be unlocking new costumes, characters, weapons and things every single day you play... for weeks!
This is an awesome addition to fighting games, which i feel lose their replayability too quick.

The new content adds a lot to an already jam packed game.
Theres 30 characters to take through story mode and theres a giant strategy/fighting side game called chronicles of the sword. This side game took me 12 hours to get through. Thats a pretty decent chunk for a side game.

Theres also a decent amount of fun little games in the mode called Soul Arena though some of the games are a bit too difficult.

The thing that seems a little screwy in this game and is its biggest flaw is its AI. This game has no difficulty adjuster so the game is always locked in the same difficulty. The AI is extremely smart, or cheap, and can string together fast moves and reactions that a human opponent cant. Its extremely lame to lose 75% of your life bar to one string of cheap attacks by the computer.

But strangely, even though the computer AI is very good and cheap, there are some basic moves which the computer just cannot block. Want to beat the game without losing a single battle? Pick Sophitia and just keep pressing triangle.
Its very lame that the computer will block and dodge the most advanced tactics but cannot block the most basic move. Its funny to see the hidden final boss, Night Terror, get beat with the most basic attack in the game.

While this game is boatloads of fun and an awesome fighter, it still isnt without a few flaws because of its strange and unbalanced AI. And thats what makes it 4 stars, and not a perfect 5 in my books.

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Product Description:
The legendary battle of Soul Calibur and Soul Edge moves to the next phase in SOULCALIBUR III, the latest installment in the celebrated weapon-based fighting franchise ? offering players unprecedented variety in gameplay modes and fighting styles. Players can guide the fate of their favorite character in the narrative Tales of Souls mode, play head-to-head with a friend in VS Standard mode, create their own custom fighters in Character Creation mode and battle as these custom fighters in a real-time simulation in Chronicles of the Sword mode. Players can also engage in unique and original battles in Soul Arena mode and even recount the history of the franchise in Museum mode. With an additional three new characters to the existing family of classic warriors, there is a collection of more than 25 playable characters, each with their own unique fighting style.

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Soul Calibur II Review

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(More customer reviews)Thsi game is totally awsome! I personally hate fighting games but this one changed all of that! With over 20 characters, multiple costumes, over 200 weapons and awsome graphics and sound, no wonder this game got the "best fighting game award!"Play it now! PS2 controller is the bomb, even better than the Gamecube and X-box ones! All of the characters have multiple attacks as well as individual skills.
The graphics are jaw dropping. I love them, they are flawless and don't sketch or stop in any place. The movements are easy to see, and you won't be overwhelmed by fast movement. The music is incredible, as well as character voices.
There are lots of unlockable things like weapons, modes, characters, and photo galleries. There is an endless list of things you can do here, as well as weapon master mode where you can go through hundreds of missions to fight. There are tons of missions like specific kill missions, last ??turns, kill multiple enemies, etc. Tons of possibilities!
I would highly recomend this game, I think its better than the others on Gamecude and X-box!

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Product Description:
The quest for the all-powerful sword known as Soul Edge continues in Soulcalibur 2, as old favorites and exciting new characters compete for the right to wield its power. Featuring seven game modes including Arcade, Time Attack, Survival Mode, Versus Mode, and Team Battle.

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Soul Calibur Review

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(More customer reviews)Wow.I pride myself on my vocabulary skills but this is the only one-word definition I could come up with for this game.Soul Calibur is the best fighting game ever made...hands down.It also ranks in my top five favorite video games of all time, which is saying a lot because I've played hundreds of games.Now that I've said that, I can get down to the big question:why should you spend your hard earned cash on this game?I'll tell you why...
Graphically, Soul Calibur has some of the best visuals on any system, including PS2.The first time I saw this game in action I was amazed.I've simply never played a game that looks this good.The character animation is incredibly lifelike, both during fighting and in the pre-rendered opening and victory scenes.The backgrounds are very realistic and add to the overall atmosphere of the game.
The music is well done and the sound effects are tremendous.The sounds of blade hitting blade, blade hitting air, and blade hitting flesh are dead-on accurate.I mean I've never actually heard somebody being hacked into with a broadsword in real life, but I'm willing to bet that it would sound pretty close to the sound you hear in Soul Calibur.Other impressive sound effects are the character voices both during and between battles.From the grunts and roars of the hulking Astoroth to the Bruce Lee-esque high-pitched hooting and hollering of the nunchaku-swinging Maxi, these characters come to life.
Control is extremely tight and responsive.Which makes it a lot easier to learn new moves.Every move in the game is easily accessible through the in-fight move menu.Just push pause during a battle and the entire arsenal of moves for your character is available for the taking.The characters are also very well balanced each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
There are 19 characters in all, although nine of them must be unlocked through beating the game in arcade and mission modes.It's through all of the unlocking hidden characters, levels, costumes, options, art cards, game modes, etc., that the game shows its true depth.Each character has his/her own unique weapons and fighting styles.Each character also has hundreds (yes, hundreds) of attacks, combos, and special moves to keep you coming back for more.
As if you needed any more reason to pick this game up, I will mention that the menu system is very streamlined and straight-forward, the two-player mode is a blast, the art gallery is surprisingly well done, the story lines are more than adequately interesting, and at the recently discounted price you'd have to be crazy to pass this one up...Wow.

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Soul Calibur IV Review

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(More customer reviews)If you've played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally don't notice that much.

This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.

Some specific notes:

Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local + online) - A
First off, I don't believe games like these aren't really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, you'd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.

AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.

Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.

Online gameplay is smooth and overall as good as the local multiplayer experience. I have not experienced any issues with lag or skippy gameplay. My only complaint here is how selecting "Quick Match" in ranked has the tendency to just match you with someone who has an open game. As a game creator, you can select the level of players you intend to play against. As a level 1 trying out the online game, I got put into too many matches against level 60+ and got slaughtered.

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Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.

If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases don't even seem to make any logical sense together).

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Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. It's purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless you're really into this series.

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Product Description:
The world's premier weapon based fighting game franchise returns to deliver a true next generation fighting experience. Set to finally reveal the origins of the Soulcalibur saga, Soulcalibur IV features both new and familiar faces from across the galaxy, seeking the rival swords for vengeance, honor and salvation. In a monumental alliance, legendary Star Wars icons, Darth Vader and Yoda invade the Soulcalibur IV continues the series' tradition of reinventing, enhancing and breaking new boundaries. Now the world's favorite fighting game redefines the entire genre for the next generation of both new, and fiercely loyal Soulcalibur fans.

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Soul Calibur IV Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm not much of a video game reviewer, and I'm certainly not a "serious gamer" but I do enjoy blowing off an hour or two every once in a while playing games.Up until we rented this on gamefly I had never played a Soul Caliber game before.I enjoy fighting games provided there are some speedy characters involved.My Hubby and I enjoyed this game enough to pay the extra loot to "keep the game" so we are now the proud owners of Soul Caliber IV.

What I liked:
1) I didn't have to hit 40 sequential buttons to get the character to do something cool, in fact my inner button masher was quite happy with the moves that I was able to do right off just by smashing in patterns.

2) The graphics are good, the surrounding areas are cool to look at and you can smash up your surroundings, which is always fun.The playable characters come in a wide variety and all look fairly good (some of the women are ridiculously proportioned but whatever). They have a variety of weapons that are quite fun and all look great.

3) The characters level, meaning the more you play with one, the more options you get with them.

4) The online option is interesting, but for some reason the pairing doesn't seem up to snuff, I mean why would the computer match up a level 1 with a level 41?It seems that it should be a bit more balanced as to who it sets up against who.

5) The tower is a blast, and it's HARD! basically you have to fight different groups of baddies on each level of the tower to ascend to the next one... we're on level 20 or so now and it's no walk in the park!The good thing is that each level has a way for you to unlock another article of clothing to use in your character creation.

6) Character creation, this can be quite fun, and I'm really bad at it.My hubby can spend over an hour tweeking his dude... I just slap some clothes on them and go.

7) The other options are your standard Arcade mode and the story mode, both of which allow you to unlock different playable characters.

What I don't care for:
1) When you are either beating the tar out of someone or they are laying the smack down on you, armor can break... effectively leaving your character almost completely in the nude.Now I'm not sure who gets their jollies from video game semi-naked people, but I'm not one of them.

2) It would be great if the female characters weren't trapsing about with their boobs hanging out wearing thongs... and the closeups of the boobs and booties gets to be rather tiresome... men wonder why more women don't play video games... this is one of the reasons.

3) The commercial showed Darth Vader fighting Yoda... um... you only get Vader on the PS3 version, apparently Yoda is on the Xbox version.It would have been nice to have had both.

4) The loading times from fight to fight get a bit tiresome, especially in the tower when you just got your derrier handed to you and you have to re-fight the same guy for the 15th time and there you are; waiting for 2 minutes or more to reload the battle.

5) In the character creation I should be able to pick some better undergarments for my people just in case all of their clothes get busted off so that they aren't standing there in a bra and thong.

Still, I love the game, it's an absolute blast and well worth a purchase (especially used)

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Product Description:
The world's premier weapon based fighting game franchise returns to deliver a true next generation fighting experience. Set to finally reveal the origins of the Soulcalibur saga, Soulcalibur IV features both new and familiar faces from across the galaxy, seeking the rival swords for vengeance, honor and salvation. In a monumental alliance, legendary Star Wars icons, Darth Vader and Yoda invade the Soulcalibur IV continues the series' tradition of reinventing, enhancing and breaking new boundaries. Now the world's favorite fighting game redefines the entire genre for the next generation of both new, and fiercely loyal Soulcalibur fans.

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Soul Calibur 2 Review

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(More customer reviews)The original Soul Calibur was the best game made for the Dreamcast, and since that platform's demise, fans have waited four years for a follow up. It was well worth the wait. The game is premiering on all three major game systems at once, and although each version is essentially the same, each game has one distinct quality: They feature different lead characters. For the Playstation, it's Heihachi. For the XBox, it's Spawn. But the Gamecube got the best one: Link. He's joined by many of the classic characters from the original game, plus some great new ones. The biggest question, however, is this: What prevents this from just being another run-of-the-mill fighting game, another Kakuto Chojin or another Mortal Kombat clone? One needn't worry.
Although similar in style to other combat games, this one rises above them with extraordinary gameplay, first-rate graphics (esp. on the Cube and XBox) and surprisingly easy controls and fighting techniques. The attacks are pretty straightforward: kick, horizontal weapon, and vertical weapon. But there are some good combination moves available, as well. Like all other combat games, this requires button/control combinations and some tricky maneuvering. Unfortunately, the Gamecube's basic controller is not well-suited for these moves; the buttons aren't aligned very well for some of the trickier moves. (Of the 3 systems, only the PS2's basic controller was the most user-friendly). But Gamecube fans have a good alternative: the wireless Wavebird controller works really well with this game. Another advantage for Cube fans: The Cube's excellent graphics engine make this game a real treat visually; the player is surrounded by beautifully detailed scenery and environments. Truthfully, it's not that much different from the first version. (But if it ain't broke...) For those who never played the first version, here's a chance to enjoy one of the best combat games ever devised. For those who loved (and miss) the original, it's just like experiencing this fabulous title all over again.

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Product Description:
Soul Calibur II returns you to the incredible quest of the world's greatest warriors, battling to claim the ultimate sword!

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