Virtua Fighter 4

Pros • Breaks, just a little bit, the old attack-two-three, block-two-three fighting game pattern • Deep combat system that still rewards beginners • Incredible range of moves • Great mix and balance of characters and fighting styles • Fabulous environmental effects • Challenging AI opponents • Create your own AI for a fighter is a cool addition	Cons • Creating your own AI rewards very slowly • Very difficult to begin unlocking items • Three-button combos are not very well suited to a controller, the game begs for an arcade stick • No 4-player tag option • Frictionless surface sliding to keep fighter spacing correct is too obvious, especially after a match is over • The sound and music are not, perhaps, as brilliant as the rest of the game
Bottom Line As tough and competitive as a pitbull, as stylish as any balletic Hong Kong fight film, and as fun as videogames get. Without even considering the morality involved; let's face it, getting punched and kicked sucks, and so does having someone slam you into the dirt; and, even if you happen to be the triumphant one doing all the swinging, there's a pretty fair chance of ending with a broken toe, sprained wrist, bloody knuckles or some other painful damage. Plus it is nearly certain that you will wake up in the morning sorer than you have ever been in your life. Yet, that one-on-one, fist-to-face competition where everything--physical integrity, self respect, sexual allure, and social standing--is all on the line, is the hulking primeval shadow lurking behind all competitive "play" scenarios. Just consider the millions of people around the world enrolled in martial art classes and the prevalence of glorified physical confrontation in the popular culture and media. Virtua Fighter 4 offers the perfect outlet, the very raison d'etre of videogames. It is as hard-nosed and competitive a contest as you will find; it provides the tension, pressure and sudden drama of a fist fight, yet allows any, even clutzy, one to perform with the amazing balletic skill and athleticism of Hong Kong fight films, all without any gauche violence, or even hard feelings; all good clean fun. Virtua Fighter 4 is quite simply as good as gaming gets.

A giant Australian snatches up the beautiful blond woman facing him and power bombs with such force that the floor tiles under their impact shatter. Both combatants roll to their feet and this muscular, sexy woman steps in, standing on one leg, kicking the giant with repeated, staccato heel strikes to the head, neck and chest; he doesn't know what way to react, one-potato, two, three, four, five, six, seven, more, knocking him, groaning to the ground. And on it goes: A muscular Canadian fighter airplane-swinging smaller opponents by the legs and flinging them down regardless, perhaps to land and form a twisted snow-angel indentation in the sand or snow; a petite, Shaolin monk, robes flowing stylishly behind his lightning strikes; A masked ninja; a punk French skateboarder; a drunken master downing wobbly-pops between punches; an enormously muscled woman throwing Muay Thai strikes; a petite Chinese beauty with legs of fury... The range of characters and fighting styles in Virtua Fighter 4 is diverse. There are thirteen fighters plus the final silvery boss to the arcade mode, each with an incredible range of very diverse fighting moves. That range of styles and attacks is a large portion of the fun and wow factor of Virtua Fighter 4. There will be lots of exited, "Did you see that?!"s when you and your friends gather around a PlayStation 2 and this game. Strikes, combos, throws, counter-attacks, different fighting stances; mastering the moves of a single character will take a player hours of practice.

Speaking of practice, Virtua Fighter 4, besides the standard arcade mode where you battle your way through to a final boss, includes a Kumite mode where you face progressively better fighters until you are hopefully able to defeat combatants who have unlockable items you can earn from them; and a good training mode that besides each character's moves, will teach you the subtleties of the game's combat system: evades, throws, guarding, timing, etc. It also includes a system whereby you can teach a fighter your own brand of AI by demonstrating to it moves and combos, and then coaching him or her through matches. This fighter can then be pitted against the AI of other people's AI fighters, which is an interesting concept, though it rewards very slowly, as it is quite difficult to teach a fighter good AI. Equally slow to reward is the Kumite mode, wherein it can take hours to finally begin to unlock extra costumes and items, unlike a game like Soul Calibur where one begins to be rewarded quite early with unlocked items, as well as with just plain more extras than Virtua Fighter 4 seems to offer.

As close as there is to a disappointment, though, in Virtua Fighter 4 is the lack of four-player possibilities. While most current fighting games such as Dead or Alive 3 or Tekken Tag Tournament allow four players to be involved in one match, Virtua Fighter 4 sticks doggedly to two.

Another outstanding element Sega has packed into this game, is the artificial intelligence of your computer-controlled adversaries. They can be really tough, and make obvious adjustments to your style of fighting. The same moves repeatedly will simply not work, forcing you to learn more and more of the depth of the combat system

And this is the element of Virtua Fighter 4 that best shows the skill of the developers: the complexity of the combat system. First, and easily, it marvelously rewards even non-gamers; you can pull your bookish girlfriend over to the PlayStation 2, help her pick a character she identifies with, and she'll be cheering herself within seconds, thrilled at the spectacular moves of her onscreen alter-ego. Later, while she reads War and Peace, you can spend those hours mastering the subtleties of evading, guarding, mixing up attacks to counter guards, culturing more complex combos, and learning to recover quickly from being staggered or knocked down. You can discover the combos of each fighter, get a feel for the rapid pace, and come to react within it. Virtua Fighter 4 is simply a brilliant fighting game, and it seems that the best thing that ever happened to PlayStation 2 gamers, as sad as it is, was the demise of the Dreamcast.

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