A great fighting game, but not without some problems.
The first Virtua Fighter game I played was VF3 on the Dreamcast, and I absolutely loved it. When Tekken 2 came out it really raised the bar for 3D fighting games, and Sega hit back with VF3 and stole the crown back, with the most advanced fighting game ever made to that point. Since then both series have had their ups and downs, but now while Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection is easily the best Tekken game (I’m posting a review of that here too, where I explain why), I don’t believe Virtua Fighter 5 has lived up to the greatness of VF3, so now I’ll explain what has happened to the series since.
In Virtua Fighter 3 you fought in full 3d arenas, these had undulating terrain, like steps on the Great Wall of China stage and even boats tied together that bobbed independently in Shuns’ stage. If you were standing on two different rafts, they would move in the water differently, and your fighters feet and legs would move perfectly with it. When Tekken 4 tried this stuff the result was a glitchy mess, with infinite combos being possible and stuff. But in VF3 it was all seamless and worked perfectly. But it also introduced a random element into the fight. Combos would work in some situations but not others, you had to work with the environment and react to the situation on the fly. Your strategy might be different if your opponent is on higher or lower ground, and when you got used to it (I put in several hundred hours into VF3) it was great. But I guess Virtua Fighter fans never really got used to it and complained about it though, because all that was stripped out in VF4. Virtua Fighter 4 brought back the flat and square arenas from the original, and VF started to rely on combos a lot more. It took the Ukemi role from Tekken 3, and crumple stuns from Tekken 2, offering more combo opportunities and changing the emphasis. They also made the fighting engine more complex, giving most characters new stances and things like catch throws to compensate for what they took out. When I first started playing VF4 I didn’t take to the changes very well at all, it was a backward step in a lot of ways and also had a ‘new style’ that was pretty hit and miss. I think Sega knew it was going on the playstation and copied Tekken in this way too, look at Goh and Brad introduced in VF4 Evo, and the horrible metal music, I guess this was supposed to make more the game more ‘extreme’ and broaden the appeal, I just thought it was obnoxious.
Anyway Virtua Fighter 5 has a better style, true to the series roots, but it has inherited a lot of the same problems from VF4, the same square arenas, and some questionable changes. A lot of the cast in Virtua Fighter 5 I can’t bear to play now, because of the changes to individual characters. For example Jacky, my fav in VF3, lost his best Lightning Kick strings, these were his best moves, they looked great, and lead to good mix ups. I’ll never forgive Sega for taking these out, and giving him countless boring punch string options instead. Another of my favs, Taka Arashi the sumo, he’s been missing since VF4.
It is not all bad news, Akira is still the best fighting game character, period (well, maybe a tie with Ryu from Street fighter). Aoi is the most graceful, and Jeffrey the most brutal. Characters like Lei Fei and Vanessa are great too. If you thought VF4 was great then you need Virtua Fighter 5. It’s easily the best looking VF and the PS3 game is a spot on conversion. Just get an arcade stick if you want to try doing Akira’s stun palm of doom.
Couple more things to mention about the PS3 version. First, the AI is horrible, it really isn’t fun to play against which is a major problem. Second, the interface is clumsy, from when you boot up the game, to when you try to pick a character, it can be annoying that you can’t just pick a character and go. You have to scroll through a list and create a profile, you can’t just use the arcade select cursor, which is dumb. So the single player is lacking, but if you are going to be playing VS mode in the main though, this version delivers.
Just a few final thoughts about the fighting system itself, yes, it is deep and complex but there are a few things that bother me. One is when you go down, you are pretty safe in most situations, because attacks getting up off the ground are so strong. It leads to some weird situations where you knock someone down, then backdash to get away from their possible rising attack, which is nuts. There is no Okizeme game like in Tekken, where the person on the ground is at a disadvantage, and has to use skill to get out of trouble (more realistic, and more of a pressure game). Also there are annoying poky low punches that are used a lot to break someone’s momentum, they look stupid, obviously no one would crouch down to their knees and punch someone’s’ kneecap when they are charged at, and this wouldn’t stop them dead in their tracks. Finally there are strong attacks that lead to a stagger, when this happens a waggling joystick appears onscreen, and waggle furiously you must if you want to shorten the stagger and avoid a combo. This kind of mechanic worked in crappy 80’s arcade beat em ups, but I don’t think it works here. Except for these points though, the fighting engine is rock solid, and you have a great range of strategies at your disposal. The throw escape system, for example, is way better than Tekken - or any other fighting game for that matter.
In summary, even with all these problems VF5 is still one of the best fighting games and fans of the genre really have to check it out. While it’s disappointing to me I’m probably in the minority. But I’ll hunt down a VF3 arcade board one day, and Tekken is going from strength to strength in the meantime.
