True Masters of the Fist
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/71046/virtua-fighter-5-revo-world-stage-switch-2-review
The transition from 2D to 3D in gaming felt like a hard reset. Outside of PC gaming, flat polygonal shapes and basic color templates were a revolutionary shift, not only visually but from a fundamental gameplay standpoint. While this was true for 3D platformers like Super Mario 64 and RPGs like Final Fantasy VII, no genre may have been impacted more directly than fighters. Never before did we have to consider not only the distance of a kick, but also the sideways arc of the attack. It brought a new dimension to a genre, like how beat-em-ups became a dumping ground for also-rans that took the template and created a weak facsimile or a novelty gimmick that doesn’t work. While the original Virtua Fighter game did not offer a fully realized 3D plane, it was the first one to feature fully-polygonal 3D characters. They may have been Cloud Strife-like in detail, but in the arcades the game was there to wow. This long-standing series has grown and evolved with the 3D fighters since, but the grandfather of the subgenre’s recent release of Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. is proof that the founder is still the master.
Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. (World Stage) is the most grounded of the established 3D fighting franchises. You won’t get fireballs, don’t get weapons, and can’t fly across the screen in a furious volley of split-second chain combos. Matches are best two out of three, with defeats coming at the hands of your opponent or disqualification by getting pushed out of the ring. With Virtua Fighter being the progenitor of the Ring Out, there’s something immediately gratifying about making characters stumble out of the ring by applying overwhelming offensive pressure, and there’s a bit of strategy to getting them in that position. The match pace is measured but smooth. It won’t match the furious pace of your average tag battler but is more fluid than some of its counterparts. Punches, kicks, grabs, and counters are tied to a simple four-button layout and look and feel like something you could see in real 1v1 combat (or at least within the bounds of an action movie). The combat is up close and personal because there’s nothing that can be achieved from a distance – you bear down on your opponent and really oppress them with your presence.
It’s hard to convey just how awesome this game is in action. The 19 rostered characters are distinct visually and performatively; all have their own center of gravity, mobility, and flow of movement. While each has learnable combos, a keen observer can follow the arcs of punches and kicks to follow-up and disorient your opponent even when improvising. Because damage is only possible within arms (or legs) reach, the game gives you no quarter. Beyond the first two matches of arcade which are glorified crash test dummies, the difficulty escalates gradually enough to learn the ropes of a character by the time you’re hitting the real skill checks. The limited button inputs give every player a basic toolkit, but grabs/throws and more explosive strikes that are triggered by tapping two buttons at once expand the breadth of options engaging with the enemy. That intimacy of action is what brings the tension, requires snappy action to keep yourself standing, and is so, so thrilling.
Among other things, I appreciate the workmanlike approach to navigating menus and accessing the different modes. While I spend a healthy amount of my time in Arcade, the World Stage mode provides an expanded gauntlet of challenges, including a ranking system and boss battles that give a solo-focused player like me plenty of meat on the bone to chew. Online is a simple click from the main menu, and after choosing your character and setting up a player profile and controller settings, the game sends you into the queue while giving you a CPU to practice against. Post-release, I’ve rarely had to wait more than a minute to get matched with an opponent, and I did not witness any noticeable issues with stuttering or skipping. That may be due to the integrated rollback netcode, which has been a long-sought standard for fighting game aficionados like me. There are also tournaments that are posted for specific scheduled times, a mode I look forward to making time for but haven’t had the opportunity to participate in as of review. I’ve grown sick of hub worlds and bloat that keep me from the action, and Virtua Fighter is the antithesis of that.
It can’t be overstated how important game performance is for a fighter like this. Nintendo-first gamers are used to the compromises that come with it. For every great port like Doom, there’s a mess like Mortal Kombat 1 that buckles under the weight of performance requirements and looks like a horror show for all the wrong reasons. Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. has the benefit of being a port native to Switch 2, but that doesn’t discount how great a job Sega did to focus on gameplay performance first and foremost. That’s not to say the game doesn’t look good on Switch 2. It looks great on television. The visuals take a dip in handheld but surprisingly hold up on consistent framerates in action. Some of this is up to preference and tolerance for getting the highest fidelity output on devices. I’m personally reaching diminishing returns on how much I care about graphical prowess, provided a modern-ish game that’s meant to look relatively recent is closer to a chunky PS2 game. This is much like the Street Fighter V port where its close approximation to the heftier consoles and the action is such that if you’re counting pixels then you’re not focusing on what’s important.
When writing reviews, I caution myself against hyperbole or overselling a game, even when I enjoy it quite a bit. In the age of hot takes and reaching for engagement, the temptation is there to elevate games in a bombastic, eye-grabbing way. That said, I can’t help but lavish this game with praise. Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. (World Stage) is a fighter’s fighter from people who made such a fundamentally strong game and combat so deeply rooted in a style that strives towards realism over flashiness that it could be overlooked. But it is for exactly those reasons that this game whose original ports come from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era feel as fresh and powerful as ever. This is a hell of a package at a modest cost of entry, and the best Switch 2 fighter to date. What are you waiting for? Fight me.
Topic: Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage (Switch 2) Review (Read 13 times)
