*** THE CASUAL GAMER ***
| Main | Rating: Commendable |
Virtua Fighter 4
Wolf is blown away by either the view or the stench
Virtua Fighter 4 is a very deep, polished fighting game experience. Only a couple fatal flaws of its gameplay keep it from being the greatest fighting game ever (a title that belongs to Clay Fighter 64). But nothing will keep it from pleasing many a fighting game fan for a long, long time to come.
The first thing that may catch a player's attention is the extravagant graphics of the game. The character models in the game are nothing short of amazing, and they set the new high benchmark for fighting games. The backgrounds and arenas are nothing to be ashamed of, either. The backdrops are often vast and detailed, and many arenas have interactive elements such as breakable walls, floors, and deforming snow. The only flaw the graphics seem to exhibit comes from the difference between the textures on the characters and the ones on the backgrounds. The characters look so good that the slightly lower resolution of the textures in the backgrounds make those backgrounds look somewhat blurry or bland by comparison. But that's a small complaint for an overall excellent visual presentation.
The next thing you will surely experience is the gameplay. That is where both the joy and the problems occur. The fighters exchange blows at a very smooth, fast pace. The characters all have a large assortment of moves and combos that allow for many subtle variations, creating and deep and crafty experience. While some characters share moves, each character has unique strengths and weaknesses, and are very well balanced against each other. The game really shines when you play against other people, becasue it trully feels like a match of will and skill instead of luck and fuck. There is a lot of painstaking detail put in here that results a wonderfully deep fighting experience.
Although the fighting engine seems fantastic, there are a couple flaws that really disappoint me sometimes. One is in the collision detection department. There will be times in the game when you should be at a safe distance from an opponent, but aren't. An opponent's move that only comes as far as your character's extended hand will rock your character like they just got their skull cracked. That seems a little too generous to me. And at other times I experienced the opposite effect. I would be close to my opponent and execute a kick, only to have it pass through my opponent, all while my opponent stands there like nothing happened. No blocking; nothing. Just a huge whiff on my part. That really sucks when a match is really close and you get screwed. Another complaint I have, while it really isn't a flaw in the gameplay, is the steep learning curve of this game. Whoever made this game must like to tease and torture players, because it starts off really, really easy and then gets really hard, real quick. The computer seems to play quite perfectly, and that's just on normal. I think that there should be a little more gentle difficulty curve, especially in Kumite mode. I think that the steep and sudden rise in difficulty will turn off a lot of players.
Overall, Virtua Fighter 4 is an amazing fighting game, with plenty of depth and difficulty for all the hardcore bastards out there, but its steep learning curve might frighten away newcomers. With a few tweaks and improvements to the engine, the next installment in the series could really blow away the competition for good. But for now, just enjoy this newest evolution of the fighting genre.