Title Virtua Fighter 5 Date 02.28.2006 Genre Fighting Platform PlayStation 3 Developer Sega Publisher Sega

This early in the PS3's life cycle there are maybe one or two games that worth owning on Sony's new box. Even the few games that someone might buy on a whim on the PS3 so that you have something to play could be found on the Xbox 360. However, something you can't find on the 360 right now, not until August 2007 from what I understand, is AM2's latest game, Virtua Fighter 5.

As you can probably glean from game footage and screens around the web, the visuals are top-notch. The way the characters animate and execute their moves really is a step above any fighting game or any other game up until this point. A nice little touch I found was when the characters are knocked out of the ring is that they actually react and don't stand there in their fighting position. The detail in the characters and clothing they wear is quite good as well. Nearly all the clothing on the characters will move with them. The spectators in the background in some stages just don't looks like flat cardboard cut outs. Overall, the environments are quite good, whether you're fighting on a raft that's moving downstream or in a cage on the streets. Speaking of which, the various puddles in some stages react quite realistically. But the real meat of Virtua Fighter is the game play and the game delivers it in spades.

The quest mode, just like quest/kumite mode in VF4, will surely keep you busy for quite a long time. This mode's biggest draw is buying various items so that you can customize your character, as well as move up the ranks from 10th kyu to 1st dan and then up. At various points you can also participate in tournaments to win items or money. Overall, in the game the difficulty seems to be a little more forgiving this time around. Definitely, not a bad thing and it shouldn't bother the hardcore VF players too much because once you get into the higher dan levels the A.I. opponents are quite tough. Even on the lower dan and kyu levels it's no cake walk and you won't be able to mash your way to victory. Virtua Fighter 5 also offers the typical arcade, versus and also VF T.V. There is also a commentary track that can be turned on or off in the game. Depending on whether your system is set to English or Japanese you will get it in the respective language. It's a neat little feature that tries to give you the feeling that you're participating in a Virtua Fighter tournament but it's a novelty more than anything else. Despite all the good AM2 did with the PS3 version they made some questionable decisions with it.

Despite all the positives this game brings to the table there are definitely quite a few nagging issues. First and foremost is that you can't bring your character to your friend's house and play your customized character against his/her's character. The heart of soul of any fighting game is playing against real live human opponents. With that feature not in there it makes the lack of online play even worse. It's quite obvious why AM2 decided not to put online play in the game due to latency issues but it's still unfortunate. Another problem is that it's quite hard to earn the money to buy items to customize your character. That's really what keeps you going in quest mode. It's really not hard to go on a losing streak once you get to the higher dan levels but it's a unfortunate design choice.

Despite these nagging issues, nitpicks really, I would recommend Virtua Fighter 5 to any fan of the series. In fact I would whole heartedly recommend this to any fighting game fan. Virtua Fighter 5 still isn't for the casual fighting game fan but if you put the time in into mastering a character you will get quite a big of enjoyment out of it. Saying that Virtua Fighter 5 rewards expert play isn't a tag line, it's the truth. It's quite different from a Tekken where you basically mash your way to victory. Virtua Fighter 5 is the best reason to own a PS3 thus far.

Game Score

A-

Reviewed By: Contributed