Number 49: Virtua Fighter 4, Sega 2002
Know first I am neither a big fan or adept at fighting games.
Intro:
Lots of pre-rendered and filtered clips of gameplay. Not especially engaging, but it makes it clear this is no NASCAR game, nor an adventure game where the player fights any sort of mysterious Virtuas. The menu is a typical list, but the collapsable nature of some of the selections is visually pleasing and makes navigating much clearer.
Getting Going:
Without a manual, I was pretty lost. I found no sort of tutorial, so a player is indirectly pushed towards just bashing around in training mode before approaching the Arcade mode blindly. Unlike adventure games, a fighter needs to have some kind of directed training, as every move is important and useful right from the start of the first match, every time.
Fun:
Despite being lost on the controls, I had a lot of fun playing this game. The stressors and motivations are nothing new: beat up the opponent before they beat you up. The short default time limit was suprising at first, but the matches are pretty quick as it is, so it works out well. The fighting system is more realistic than games like Tekken and Street Fighter, which is nice is many ways but at the same time I worry I'm missing out on some kind of super-special-attack that could be really helpful.
Visuals:
The shaders are a little strange (like how Venessa looks totally shiney and smooth like glass), but the deep animated surroundings and carefully detailed characters are a treat for the eyes. The snowy stage allows the players to leave footprints in the snow, which I found to be a nice touch above Dead or Alive 2. Lighting was pretty dated, however.
Intelligence:
It's difficult for me to tell with fighting games. I did notice that the Akira AI was highly over powered, so what would normally be an easy pass-though of Arcade mode suddenly becomes needlessly difficult. Boo.
Immersion:
The voice acting is unforgivably terrible, like someone spilled coffee on an original Monet. The intro sequences that run while the machine load the characters is a nice stab at creating the illusion of short load times, but being able to interrupt only after the next character appears on screen is pretty lame. The music is passable, but the detailed visuals and fast pace of the game are what will hold a player.
Cameras:
The camera was alright, though it would swing wildly when certain quick throws were done near walls, where the camera would normally move around to get a better view but runs into a wall.
Control:
The controls are pretty simple, which allows players to learn it quickly and hold their own with relative ease. The lack of any tutorial makes it very frustrating to learn, however, for those of us who refuse to learn controls from the controller options screen.
Ideas:
Kumite made me laugh out loud: Tekken 5 ripped it off later, and since Tekken is a more popular series, most players won't have remembered this mode from VF4. It's a fun mode that lets players feel a sense of ownership, thanks to earning the right to customize characters (Tekken 5, you sham!) against AI players with imaginary skill levels and statistics. Training AIs seemed interesting, and after a few minutes playing around in the training mode, I found myself confused as to how to fight against this AI I'd created, and also how to load my player profile for use in arcade or Kumite mode.
Memory:
While the core gameplay of this game is very well balanced, and the graphics are pretty, the extra features are difficult to navigate and figure out with the limited on-screen documentation. The realism also pulls some of the fun out of the genre, which only really picked up when kids played Street Fighter II and everyone was telling everyone else how to do flashy special moves.