A small glimpse of the future for the Virtua Fighter series?
It’s crazy to think that Virtua Fighter 5 first showed up in the arcades in Japan back in July 12, 2006. Nearly 19 years later, Sega is still updating the game with their latest version of the game, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. At long last, Virtua Fighter 5 is now available on the PC.
Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. offers rollback netcode, 4K visuals, and a new balance patch for the first time in 13 years. This is just a taste of what’s to come as Sega has also recently announced that development has already begun on a new Virtua Fighter project.
Although I’m a complete newcomer to the series, I have to admit that what I’ve seen of the new Virtua Fighter looks very interesting. Sega was kind enough to give me a review copy of Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. a few days before it was released to give me an opportunity to learn the ropes.
As mentioned before, one of the main features that the R.E.V.O. version is adding to Virtua Fighter 5 is the rollback netcode. Unfortunately, online play wasn’t available before launch, but I was able to spot a nifty setting that allows users to adjust the rollback frames in order to best optimize their online experiences (do note that this is labeled as a “beta” feature).
Despite this, I still had access to the game’s training mode, arcade mode, and versus mode (though with nobody around for me to play against). Within the training mode, I found a very useful tutorial function that teaches how to play the game.
On the surface, Virtua Fighter 5 appears as a simple game to jump into. There are only three buttons that do anything — punch, kick, and guard. By default, the other buttons just serve as macros of commands consisting of the three aforementioned inputs.
In reality, Virtua Fighter 5 sports some pretty intense execution requirements. While the game is easy to pick up, truly mastering it is something that will prove to be quite the time investment due to its intense depth.
As for the arcade mode, it offers players the opportunity to practice against the CPU, but is fairly barebones otherwise. The player must play through a set number of matches, but doesn’t come with any sort of story attached to it.
Of course, it’s amusing to note that there was a non-playable boss at the end that pretty much just destroyed me before ending my arcade runs after just one attempt. It’s been a good while since I last got “one-and-done’d” by an CPU like that, but there it is.
Virtua Fighter 5 was built for the arcades and it definitely shows. Having said that, it’s important to understand that the developers have already talked about how they’re building the next Virtua Fighter for home consoles, to the point that they’re not even thinking of an arcade port right now.
Regardless, Virtua Fighter is pretty interesting for what I’ve been able to do within it so far, but it will be necessary to play against opponents online in order for me to say anything about how good the netcode feels. Still, I think it’s worth picking up both for longtime players of the series and those of us wanting just jumping in for the first time with the announcement of the new entry that’s eventually coming out.
Click images for larger versions
Source: Event Hubs
