Virtua Fighter 5 PS3 Review

Virtua Fighter is a franchise with a good deal of history behind it. The first edition of Yu Suzuki’s Virtua Fighter was released in 1993 as an arcade game that won instant success in Japanese arcades. Virtua Fighter is thought to have brought the versus beat ‘em genre to a new frontier by using polygons and hardware jointly developed by aerospace technology firm Lockheed Martin. The original arcade cabinet has won a place in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It introduced the 8 initial fighters as well as a boss. In 1995 it moved to the Sega Saturn. Since then the Virtua Fighter games have been released on all the major consoles.

Finally in February of ‘07 the version of the game that would become Virtua Fighter 5 called “Version B” was ported onto the PlayStation from what they had in Japanese arcades. In January of ‘08 Sega revealed the disappointing information that the online feature will not be able to be added to the PlayStation 3 version because of the “Version B’s” limitations. The Xbox 360 port of the arcade game ended up being Version C. This later version made it possible for the Xbox 360 version to include online play and online update-ability. In the rush to be a “launch title” for PS3 those features were lost.

In spite of it’s limitations Virtua fighter 5 is still at least a fun rental. The fighting mechanics are ok. It seemed a little sluggish and unresponsive. The female characters that I like to play lacked some of the vigorous jumping and flipping attacks that are better in older versions of Tekken.

The Virtua Fighter 5’s visuals on PS3 were sharp and very brightly detailed. the richness of the reds, golds and pinks were reflected by superior lighting effects. The game has lots of drama and staging to it. It looks good in the high definition 720p. The animation frame rate is 60-fps and it does look excellent.

The fighting system could be a little better. It made me look at my controller a few times quizzically. And I did make sure that the lamp was well away from the front of the PS3 so that I was sure that nothing was impeding my wireless signal. It did lag on me.

The characters do each have plenty of moves. Only 5 out of the seventeen are female avatars. Eileen, is a new character to the series. But even so I wasn’t all that impressed with her Monkey Stance Kung Fu. Pai was really disappointing. Aoi was better. With Sarah, although she is very effective, her body movements on her kicks looked very unrealistic. On the whole she felt disproportional and the force from her attacks didn’t seem to match the animation of the moves. Give me Jun any day. There are 17 fighters. The character selection isn’t as huge as in other fighting games. There could be more depth given to each character.

Virtua Fighter Quest Mode is for a single player. You get the standard arcade mode and practice modes as well. You pick a specific fighter and create a profile. There is little customization at first. You can buy new outfits and you can unlock up to four different styles of clothes and shoes for your character.

By playing opponents in the arenas and rising through the ranks you earn gold and unlock the ability to buy items to customize your character. The prices are very high and the customization isn’t as interesting as it could be.

Where the game suffers unlike other comparable fighters like Soul Calibur and Tekken, Virtua Fighter doesn’t share the same fun accessibility that other fighters such as Tekken or Soul Calibur do. There’s a learning curve, steeper depending on which character you pick. It does use all the buttons on the controller practically and that should give you lots of flexibility of movement, but it doesn’t really compared to say Lara Croft in the last Tomb Raider game. There is still this feeling that you are fighting against the mechanics of a game that is trying to still be a side-scroller.

Virtua Fighter 5 for the PS3 could have seriously benefited from some online features. They could have included more characters. I’d have liked to see a light weight and more acrobatic female character too. The re-playability is questionable because the game is a closed system. It won’t be updated. If you are a big fan of the series and you want to be a completist you probably won’t be disappointed to collect this one. But for most people there are better and more modern fighting games out there for the money. I give it 7 golden gaudy settings out of 10.

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