Review: Virtua Fighter 4 |
It’s a new millennium and Sega’s back at it with another “GRADE A” fighter title. The fourth installment of Virtua Fighter is now available on Playstation2, and if you enjoy 3D fighters don’t pass this one up — even if you’re a Tekken fan don’t pass this one up. Virtua Fighter 4 encompasses everything everyone loves about Virtua Fighter and more. Read on.
First off the bat, and first one everybody’s mind is this: Didn’t Virtua Fighter 4 have a special network mode in Japan? The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, in the arcades to keep track of your rank, items, and win/loss ratio. Luckily Yu Suzuki and co. didn’t leave the console market out in the cold in this aspect — they’ve incorporated VF.net into the game’s survival mode — Kumite. If this isn’t the single reason to buy the game, I don’t know what is. Kumite really is nothing more than survival mode, except the fact that it’s beefed up in the capacity where you can earn better rankings by playing, unlock hidden goodies like VF1 character models, hidden levels and the playable, ever-popular DURAL boss character. Also within Kumite you can win special items to customize your characters appearances — everything from shoes to wine jugs to hats to weapons, you can accumulate by satisfying specific goals.
One quick note about another feature included in the home release: AI training. This is probably the most innovative mode to come around in a fighter in a long, long time. Essentially, you train a character to fight like you. Except, it will be controlled by the computer — working off charts of data pertaining to what moves you tend to do more than others, your style (defensive/offensive), tactics for dealing with throws, strings, floats, etc. It really is a hoot to train an AI character and have it kick ass all the way to the Emperor in Kumite. A true test of your Virtua
Fighter skill. Now, back to the review…
If you’re new to Virtua Fighter, or you have had little to no exposure to the series (that’s me, haven’t played it since VF3 in the arcade…) don’t fret. The game has you covered with the inclusion of the simply amazing training modes. Command training is your basic “do the moves and progress” mode, where all you do is what the computer tells you to do. Next up is the free training mode, which may seem awfully plain. But in this case, looks are deceiving. You can practice combos, moves, strings, floats, yadda yadda yadda on a dummy opponent. Or you can customize it to be a token computer controlled character, specifying every bit of what it does from reversals to emphasis on moves to evading to playing as a regular AI opponent on the highest difficulty. Not too shabby. Last, and probably the most useful, is Trial Training. Trial training is where you want to go if you’ve never played VF before. It teaches you all the basics of the game. Now, I think we’ll get on with the rest of this review.
The graphics, while being dumbed down slightly from the arcade (I noticed that sunlight doesn’t reflect off characters in Jeffry’s stage like it does in the arcade) are right on par with what they should be. Stages of particular interest include Lion’s Castle (running & throwing people into the snow just kicks ass), the palace (low-wall stage with ankle deep water), Sarah’s Ruins stage (if you watch the background you notice that the lightning just destroys everything back there), and the Rooftop (lighting from the chopper just looks amazing.) All the characters move like liquid, facial expressions look damn tight, and for that Tekken feel you can turn on flashing hit detection so you strobe when you get hit. All in all, the graphics are pretty top notch.
The sound is okay at best. That’s probably the game’s only flaw. Background music is nothing to write home about, bones breaking sound like hollow wood snapping, and all you get for hitting the ground hard is a dull thud. Voices stand out oddly well in the game though. Shun’s drunken ramblings, Lau’s pissed off Emeril yells ($100 to anyone who can make Lau
yell out BAM!), Aoi’s barely-legal squeaks, and everyone else is represented in their vocals to the best extent possible it seems.
Control is still the double-edged dagger, where it’s relatively simple on the exterior but insanely complex on the interior. One thing I’m glad for, and I speak for many people here: Thank heavens that lousy EVADE button from 3TB is gone. VF4 has the basic VF setup once again — you got your stick, and you’ve got Guard, Punch and Kick. It may seem easy to pick up on, but just about anyone who has spent any time with VF will tell you that it is definitely not. Evading is now done by tapping up or down on the stick. With that, there’s a lot of input methods put to use in this game. Things like multi throw escaping, guard throw evading, quick rising, tech rolling, and all other shit I can’t even remember at the moment. It’s all in Trial Training mode, luckily. One more incentive to go through it before attempting Kumite.
Replay value. Here’s something touchy. My personal opinion on it, is that it has a wheelbarrow full of replay value. Master all the characters. Get everyone up to a high king. Train AI characters. Get them up to high king/emperors. Get your buddies in on the fun. I’ve seen lots of people simply disregard the game because it was too hard - something us gamers don’t see a whole lot of these days (hard games, not people complaining — I see that every day :D .)
I personally enjoy my game not so damn simple where I just alternate between X and O, or base my whole strategy on who throws first and then who can keep away the longest. This game is aggressive. You have to play aggressive to get anywhere in it basically. But hey, to each his own, right? If you don’t like difficult computer opponents, and fun vs matches, you’d be best to steer clear of this and stick with whatever you play now.
And now I draw my review to a conclusion with this: Definitely give this beauty a whirl. At least rent it for a few days. If you like it, great. If you don’t, well then you’ve only wasted ten bucks rather than 50. I docked 5% for 2 reasons — Ver. C movelist and the audio. Here’s to hoping the Evolution patch (Ver. D move list) makes it for the PS2 HDD, even if VF JIN and VF KAZUYA don’t. : D
