That's not even mentioning the game's T&A, which Namco cranked to Spinal Tap's proverbial 11. The point is: Something about so much of the content stuffed into SCIV makes you think Namco's just not sure what else to do with its once-upon-a-time-briefly-great fighting series, so — for lack of vision — it just sat in the boardroom, passed the bong, and scribbled down ideas between mouthfuls of Thin Mints.
It may sound as though I'm about to tear SCIV to shreds, but I'm not. It's fun, in the same modest way a bad kung fu movie or a box of fireworks smuggled from Tijuana is fun. And even gamers totally disenchanted by the staleness of the whole exercise will admit the game looks spectacular, the fighters approaching what, only a couple years ago, would be pie-in-the-sky CGI renders — but in real time, at 60 frames a second.
Part of what's led SC off the path of greatness, though, are questionable layers of game play added in the spirit of fixing things that weren't broken. Game play depth is a tricky thing; the geekerati vie for it as if it's an inarguable cosmic good. In truth, though, depth is sometimes merely just that: depth — the dirt, boulders, and old roots between you and buried treasure. With each iteration Namco adds a new game play wrinkle (Soul Crushes and Critical Finishes this time), none having really contributed much besides more jargon and button combinations, further obscuring what is essentially a straightforward fighting game. Or was.
For those not sure whether to go for Darth Vader on the PS3 or Yoda on the 360: Don't worry about it. A patch allowing both on either disc is inevitable (if not already out by the time you read this), the only question being whether Namco will charge you to access a character that's seemingly already available.
There is a glimmer of life, though, in the Character Creation mode. Unlike the interesting but ultimately pointless equivalent in SCIII, player-designed fighters in SCIV can actually be taken online — making the whole exercise of perfecting the look of a character a lot less masturbatory. The first few days of fiddling with the mode are predictable, but after you've made Scorpion and Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat, King Leonidas from 300, and 15 variations of ninja hookers with the properly inverse relationship between cleavage and clothing, there are deeper levels of customization to dig into, like options that make your fighter harder to juggle or move faster.
Regarding all that T&A: Dead or Alive is no longer the king of exploitative fighting games; the female cast of SCIV makes them all look like the nuns at your local parochial school. Just about every costume fetish is represented here, from the pedestrian (double E-cup, S&M-flavored Ivy, in her thong and spike heels) to the troubling (15-year-old Talim mixing it up in see-through pants and a bra). Some in the gaming press have been critical of the escalated sexual content in a rote (and somewhat disingenuous) way, missing the larger point: Like a teenage girl proudly showing off her whale tail and slapping on eye shadow with a palette knife, Namco seems to be out of ideas on how to get attention.
