Games You Slept On: Virtua Fighter 5 Online (Xbox 360)

Virtua Fighter has been a classic fighting game franchise that has been played in arcades for many years, and is still present in the few remaining arcades around today. Many fighting game enthusiasts will tell you that Virtua Fighter is probably the most technically complex fighting game on the market, mainly because of it’s steep learning curve and unforgiving timing for button inputs. Viruta Fighter is a fighting game that is played in many tournaments both in the United States and heavily in Japan. Does the latest installment really bring it for the franchise?

From the get-go, Virtua Fighter 5 Online gives you everything that was in the original PlayStation 3 version. This includes the two new characters added to the already iconic roster of fighters, the real martial arts based actions, the newest changes to mechanics of character’s move sets, new arenas to fight in (with beautifully made backgrounds), a quest mode that allows players to collect items and customize the look of their favorite fighters, the traditional ranking system the series has had for the past few iterations, and a save replay option for recording memorable fights. While all of this is great, the biggest addition, and probably the most important to this version of the game, is the inclusion of Online Play over Xbox Live. Unlike in the PlayStation 3 version, players now have the ability to play against others over Xbox Live in both Ranked and Player matches.

Now that the good is out of the way, now let’s take a look at the bad. Virtua Fighter is a series for people that really want a complexity to their fighting games, where just simply doing a command input is not enough for winning matches. The learning curve can really turn a lot of people away, but should not be a problem for those who are up for a challenge to mastering a game such as this. But the real problem with Virtua Fighter 5 Online is the same thing it was made for, the online play. It is terrible. Now while one would believe that a game that has “online” in the name would have great net-code, this game seems to fall short. While playing a bunch of matches on both Ranked and Player matches, the matches were extremely laggy, and in some cases completely unplayable. There were times where the frame rate of matches would slow down to a crawl, and there would be a huge delay in button inputs. While this could be possibly due to poor match-making for people of specific areas, problems such as these should have been addressed way before the game’s initial release, especially if the main marketing ploy was the fact that this game can be played over Xbox Live.

Virtua Fighter 5 Online is a game that got many things right for people that are fans of the series. And it is important to note that it is a great port over from its predecessor on the PlayStation 3 offline. However the online play that was given a lot of publicity is not up to bar with any of the other fighting game franchises that are on the market. Good online play is a necessity for multiplayer games this generation, and it is a big disappointment that Virtua Fighter 5 Online can not deliver up to today’s standards. If you are a person who has played previous Virtua Fighter games, and are not concerned about the online play, then you will enjoy this version of the game. However, don’t expect to have too much fun online, you really won’t enjoy it.