Back in the old SNES days there were only 2 noteworthy fighting games – Street Fighter and the more mass-friendly, yet oh so bloody Mortal Kombat. With the advent of 3D graphics things changed. Both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat didn’t manage to stay afloat, no thanks to the sub-par 3D versions that came out. New franchises appeared trying to fill the void and 3 out of that bunch became especially popular. I’m of course talking about the Playstation crowd favorites Tekken and Virtua Fighter and the currently Xbox-based Dead or Alive series. And while both Tekken and Dead or Alive require much practice to truly master them, Virtua Fighter games have the reputation of being the most technically demanding of them all.

Bow to the master

Having spent some considerable time playing VF5 I have to disagree with the public opinion. The game is as far from beginner unfriendly as possible. Sure, when I tried playing against a pal of mine who is a huge fan of the series I was lying on the floor before I was able to say “Whatjusthappened”. But when I challenged my brother, who just like me only played the occasional fighting game here and there, I was amazed by how evenly matched we were. For every tackle and throw I managed to slip through his defenses I received at least one round-house kick straight in the face.

What I gather from this is that VF5 is as challenging as you want it to be. If you want to spend hours training and learning every single move available, then yes, the game is very difficult and requires a lot of energy. On the other hand, you can easily perform some great looking moves just by mashing buttons semi-randomly. You won’t stand a chance against a pro who knows how to time his moves to the frame (literally), but it wouldn’t be fair if you did, now would it? And as with every fighting game some characters are easier to use when you don’t know all the moves, so there is always that.

The interesting thing about the Virtua Fighter series is that it only uses 3 buttons, not counting the directional ones. You only have a punch, kick and guard button at your disposal. Comparing this to the other popular fighting games where you have several kinds of each this might sound simplistic. Believe me when I say it is not. Just by looking at the moves list for each character (found in the training mode and the game’s manual) you can see that there are dozens of moves available to every single one of them. And while most of the key combinations are shared between them (after all, how many combinations of the 3 buttons plus the directional keys are there?), the end results are often surprisingly different.

A lot of this is due to very unique fighting styles the different characters bring to the table. SEGA only adds 2 new characters per version for a reason. They tend to make sure that the newcomers fit well in terms of balance, but they also want their fighting styles to be unique. As you can imagine the two naturally contradict each other, so months of fine-tuning are needed for the characters to be finally good to go. The two new contestants are a Mexican lucha libre style wrestler whose quick moves make him a very tempting choice for beginners and Eileen, a monkey style kung-fu fighter whose moves look almost childish (don’t let her looks fool you though, she can deliver a beating just like everybody else). Counting the returning fighters and the two new ones, the number of playable characters reached 17 (18 if you count the unlockable boss Dural).

Barebones

Virtua Fighter games were never famous for having loads of gameplay modes and unfortunately things haven’t changed for VF5. The bulk of the singleplayer experience revolves around the quest mode. Here you enter various arcades where you play against other AI players, trying to raise in ranks. Every now and then a tournament is held, with different prizes awarded to the winner. They range from different items (more on this later), money (that can be spent on items) and emblems (icons that can be displayed under your fighters name). The different arcades are focused around certain ranks, so you’ll probably want to start in the beginners arcade and then gradually move up (you can go straight to the elite arcade though). Beating opponents of roughly the same rank as you earns you points – when you accumulate enough you raise to the next rank.

If you are a loner and the quest mode doesn’t sound all that interesting, you might want to skip this game as your only two other options are arcade battles (beat a predetermined number of opponents to reach the boss stage) and training stages (command training and free training). Yep, a distinct lack of content for people who like to keep to themselves. At least you got online play, right? Wrong! The only multiplayer option is the “versus mode”, where you and another player fight each other on the same console. There is even no online ranking that has become so popular lately (Tekken: DR for the PSP comes to mind). And for some reason one of the best features of the Arcade version of the game was cut as well. You can still customize your characters appearance (for which you use the previously mentioned items), but you can’t use a flash stick to carry your characters data over to a friend. As you can imagine that part was the greatest appeal of customizing your character, so I can’t see a single good reason for them to drop the feature.

Thankfully what’s left is still proverbially good. When playing against a friend the game reaches new heights, regardless of the skill level of both players (as long as they are roughly equal in terms of experience). One of the reasons for this is that you can laugh in your opponents face if you defeat them (not much fun laughing at the PS3). The other reason is that the AI in the game is not all that great. Until you learn all the nuances of the combat system they provide a good challenge, but it is surprisingly easy to deal with them if you use hit and run tactics. Not even the highest difficulty setting is immune to this, although the AI will block more of your attacks.

Photorealism

Because of their focus on the combatants, fighting games tend to have some of the prettiest looking characters. And since VF5 is a next-gen game the fighters should be nearly indistinguishable from real life fighters. Unfortunately this is not quite the case though. The character models are extremely detailed and their animation is near flawless. A good physics engine makes sure that all the pony-tails, gowns, robes and anything else that should react to gravity actually looks like it has weight and mass (certain parts of the female fighters also act according to the laws of physics *wink*). The details don’t end there though. When playing in rainy stages or if a character falls into a puddle (one of the stages is filled with ankle high water) they actually get wet, which means that their skin becomes shiny and their clothes look heavier and change color. It’s a small and pretty insignificant detail, but it makes you appreciate the game more.

The stages don’t look as good as the player models do, but they are still better than what you would normally expect. Outside of the main square area where all the fighting takes place you can see waterfalls, canyons, cities and more depending on the stage you are fighting in. You’ll be fighting on rafts which travel down a river (you can throw your enemy off the raft, thus winning the match), in ancient Japanese courtyards where petals fall from the nearby trees, each casting its own shadow, and high in the mountains where the ground fog actually reacts to the movements of the fighters. All the stages are filled with small details like that, which helps hide the fact that not all of the background objects have high resolution textures or high polygon counts.

Sounds as always are limited to grunts and hit effects, except for the intro and outro taunts that take place before and after each fight. They are good enough to fit in with the action, yet they fail to impress at the same time. The same thing is true for the music. It’s enjoyable and it does justice to the stages it plays in, but once you stop playing you won’t catch yourself humming one of the tunes.

Conclusion

Games that are difficult to master usually turn away the majority of the potential customers. Hopefully this won’t be the case with Virtua Fighter 5. In Europe the game might get overlooked because of the huge launch lineup, but hopefully at least in the states people will notice a good looking, excellent playing game in the midst of no other new games for the PS3. That is not to say that Europeans should ignore the title though! It might take a few days before you start appreciating the depth of the combat system, but believe me when I say that every moment spent in the game will be repaid tenfold at that point. So, if you want to kick some ass and look good while doing it, this is the game for you!