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Review: Virtua Fighter 5 |
The pioneers of 3D fighting continue to revolutionize the ‘game.’
The Virtua Fighter series has been synonymous with 3D fighting since its original inception into the arcade world so many years ago. While it has spawned a few extremely strong competitors, namely Tekken and Dead or Alive, the Virtua Fighter series has long been considered the great grand-daddy of all 3D fighting games. Despite the fact that critics have spent years judging the game on the basis of its lack of character depth and the generally generic feel of the game in terms of appeal and style, Virtua Fighter as a series has largely been praised as the most technically sound fighting game ever created. Some choose to diminish the importance of this truth by labeling Virtua Fighter as a ’simulation.’
In this fifth installment of the series, Sega and AM2 have chosen to not only improve the already sound fighting engine dramatically, but also directly address the very critics that attempt to discredit the franchise due to the reasons listed above.
Do they succeed? Allow the game to speak for itself.
From the first time that anyone plays this game, the reaction is always the same. “These are the most incredible graphics that I have ever seen!”
It’s true. Virtua Fighter 5, is currently the single best looking game of the current generation. Nothing is even close. The textures are spot on, the character models are flawless and the arenas are large, illuminated, and completely gorgeous. Individuals within the game have stubble, wrinkles, bumps and imperfections that characterize them and bring them to life. Hair doesn’t clip, facial expressions are communicative, and the lighting and shadowing effects are completely realistic. The level of detail, all the way down to the smallest cherry blossom petal has clearly been crafted with care. Not a stone was left untouched. What I’m saying is that visually, every other so-called ‘competitor’ has been completely outclassed.
For the first time in Virtua Fighter’s history, the characters, from top to bottom are completely compelling. The awkwardness inherent within all of the characters in past installments has gone through a metamorphosis into somewhat of an off-the-wall campiness. I’m not sure if this was an accident or what, but the game has become absolutely hilarious. I would go so far as to say that Virtua Fighter 5’s characters are by far the most entertaining since Fighter’s History Dynamite.
Make no mistake, everyone who was stupid before, like Jacky Bryant, and Brad Burns are still stupid, but the way in which they are stupid has been completely changed. Both of these characters have been given deeper, more manly voices. Jacky has replaced his hands of lightning with the swagger of a Garou MOTW Terry Bogard. Brad now enters the arena with proclamations such as, “The big time player is here!” or “Presenting… the BRAD SHOW!”
New to the game, are El Blaze and Eileen, who continue the trend that began in VF4 with Lei Fei and Vanessa, of new characters being extremely unique and new to fighting games. Eileen is a practitioner of Monkey-Style Kung Fu, and El Blaze is a Luchador. Both of these characters are poetry in motion, and their execution from a design point is absolutely flawless.
One of the most important things about fighting games is finding the right sound production and matching it to the backdrops that your characters and opponents do battle on. Yet again, Virtua Fighter succeeds in their attempts. Not only do every track and stage match, but the music provides an epic feel that magnifies the impact of what is already arguably the most engaging game in the genre.
The game provides new gameplay mechanics and succeeds at adapting older mechanics to the current generation with finesse. The result is a highly addictive experience that is both motivating and educational. Every character plays decidedly differently and each of their fighting styles demands a new and different approach to learning and understanding the mechanics of the game. If there were a flaw to the gameplay, it would have to be the mechanical, almost robotic nature of it in the sense that there is no freedom to play such and such character in a multitude of ways. There seems to be a decidedly ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ way to play each character and there is very little room for asserting your own personality into your character of choice.
When you introduce the quest element of the game, which is a virtual town of sorts that allows you to traverse a multitude of arcades and do battle with close to 1000 different opponents with varying levels of experience, along the way, earning prizes, items, money and emblems, what you have is a gaming experience that is almost impossible to put down. There are so many things to collect and so many opponents to beat that you could spend as much time playing with one character as you would playing a Role-Playing Game and still not have achieved 100% completion.
The learning curve is a bit steep, in terms of going from being able to hold your own, to truly understanding the depth of the game and all that there is to do, so the old criticism of, ‘None of my friends play this,’ that has permiated the opinions of western gamers for years still applies. Even then, that’s not something that one can discredit the game for. In fact, it is more of a knock against the resolve of our so-called fighting game community, if anything.
Ultimately, Virtua Fighter 5 succeeds in reinventing itself and has blossomed to the point of being the current uncontested ‘Best Fighting Game Ever.’ The gameplay has been refined into an artform and the complaints of the past have been addressed in an aggressive fashion and completely abolished. If there is one word that can describe any given aspect of this game, regardless of what it is, it would have to be ‘polish.’ If this game had online capability, then it would easily be an absolutely flawless game.
Whether you have a 360 or a PS3, Virtua Fighter 5 will be the must-own title of 2007, as it is a gaming masterpiece of unfathomable proportions. Whether you’re a fighting gamer, or just a casual fan, there is no reason for this game to be omitted from any gamer’s library.
