I have, however, gotten a lot of mileage out of creating custom characters around my favorite fighters' movesets, and bringing them online in the Standard Versus mode. Of course, they're as ridiculous as I can make them -- my Yoshimitsu stand-in is an elderly man with a face like Dick Cheney, wearing a wizard's hat, loincloth, the same armored sports bra rocked by Voldo, and not much else.
Sterling: To be honest, as of review time, everyone I'm seeing online is in Player Matches. Looks like no one's ready to dip a toe in the Ranked pool, and Special Versus is a ghost town. I'm in total agreement that Special Versus is an open invitation for lop-sided victories and overpowered characters. I'm tempted to see how my tricked-out "White Knight Maxi" would fare against the best and brightest out there, though. I wouldn't have minded some tournament support alongside leaderboards, but I suppose that's a lot to ask from the team's first online effort.
Miguel: If I were Namco, I'd be thinking about the future of the fighting game tournament. Right now, it's largely the domain of pro gaming leagues at the broad end, and local promoters on the narrow. A thriving competitive community around a fantastic game like Soulcalibur IV could go a long way toward jumpstarting this sort of scene online. It's no secret that Capcom is taking community-building seriously these days, as Street Fighter IV's home release approaches. Fostering strong, meaningful online tournaments goes hand in hand with this sort of effort.
Personally, provided Namco Bandai is equally mindful of this stuff, I believe that Soulcalibur IV has got just as much of a shot.
