Virtua Fighter 2 Review

There are several reasons why fighting games continue to dominate arcades around the world, and Sega's Virtua Fighter 2 is one of these reasons. What began as a revolutionary 3D fighter in 1993 culminated the following year in a graphically astonishing sequel that took Japan, the United States, and everywhere in between by storm. And now, years later, one of the most successful arcade games in history has hit the PC in full stride. And the good news is, Virtua Fighter 2 still packs a big punch.

Virtua Fighter 2 boasts some of the most detailed 3D characters ever seen on the PC. All ten fighters are expertly motion-captured and texture-mapped in great detail. You can even watch their facial expressions change and their loose clothing rustle in the wind, lending a strikingly realistic look to the game that easily outclasses any and all competition. And speaking of class, Virtua Fighter 2 takes itself seriously; you won't see any blood spilled or bones busted. Just fast, furious, lifelike, hand-to-hand fighting.

Think your computer's the baddest polygon pusher on the block? Just toggle all of Virtua Fighter 2's graphics settings to maximum and watch your sorry machine groan in virtual agony. Even a top-of-the-line MMX-powered Pentium can't deal with everything Virtua Fighter 2 has to offer. Granted, this PC conversion theoretically allows you to recreate the arcade game (powered by Sega's mighty Lockheed Martin-powered proprietary Model 2 hardware) in full detail. And while it would be great to play the unadulterated arcade game at home, these high-level graphics options simply aren't practical and aren't even available unless you go for the whole-hog full install that demands upwards of 300 megabytes of disk space. Fortunately, if you set your sights a little lower, you'll be able to find a perfect middle ground between graphic detail and playability. If you set background detail to a minimum, you can play in high resolution and still witness the action at nearly 60 frames per second even on a low-end Pentium. Every sound sample and music track from the arcade translates intact to the PC version, but the arcade didn't sound particularly special in the first place - unless you want to count the mysteriously inappropriate English ("I'm faster than lightning!" exclaims Jacky Bryant) spoken by the non-Asian characters in the game.

Virtua Fighter 2's play mechanics translate perfectly to the PC, though you'll need a good gamepad to take full advantage of the precise control. The easy-to-learn punch/kick/guard button scheme belies the depth of Virtua Fighter 2. Each of the ten characters has dozens of different moves and combinations, including throws, counters, pursuit attacks, parries, and reversals. Most of these aren't difficult to accomplish, but the trick is rather to keep all of them in mind and to know when to use what. Fights typically consist of a best-of-three-rounds game, where you win either by beating the stuffing out of your opponent or shoving him out of the ring. Mastering but a single character is no easy feat, and chances are you'll want to master them all - Virtua Fighter 2 is a remarkably well-balanced fighting game where any of the ten characters can be deadly if used properly. Several new gameplay modes exist in the PC conversion, most notably Internet-ready multiplayer support. Like any good fighting game, Virtua Fighter 2 is at its best when two expert players battle it out against each other, but the computer opponent is no pushover and offers a great challenge in the meantime. The computer learns your tricks and patterns and won't hesitate to show you a thing or two of its own if you're not careful. Other goodies, including a sound test and an art gallery for each character, help pass the time when you're not duking it out.

Virtua Fighter 2 is unquestionably the best fighting game on the PC, and certainly one of the finest fighting games of all time. Those who enjoyed the arcade game will be more than pleased with the near-perfect PC conversion, which rivals even the excellent Sega Saturn console port. Otherwise, those who don't have as much experience with the coin-op will discover that Virtua Fighter 2 is hardly a mindless action game but rather a highly technical and totally fast-paced battle of wits. If you're a fighting game fan or if you're wondering what the fuss is all about, don't pass it up.

Soul Calibur Review

Let's get one thing out of the way: Soul Calibur is the best 3D fighting game ever released in the arcades. Better than Virtua Fighter 3. Better than Tekken 3. If that weren't enough, the Dreamcast version one-ups the original arcade release in just about every way imaginable. Now that we've established that, let's explore why, and what it is about the Dreamcast version that raises the bar on fighting games in general.

From its debut at the 1998 Electronics Entertainment Expo, tucked away in a remote corner of Namco's booth, it was obvious that Soul Calibur was something special. Namco had pushed the PlayStation-based System 12 hardware farther than anyone had a right to expect from such a modest chipset. Namco took what it had learned from Tekken 3 and built on the ambitious, but limited, Soul Edge fighting engine. Soul Calibur was not only a substantial leap in graphics, but in gameplay as well. Employing a new eight-way directional system in conjunction with a physics engine that took weapon weight into account, Soul Calibur's gameplay reached new heights in both complexity and depth. Perhaps one of the most crucial additions was the inclusion of the tech-roll found in Tekken 3. No more lying on the ground as your opponent rained down attacks from the sky. Just a quick tap of the guard button and you were back on your feet, quick as a whistle. Graphically, the game was a fireworks display of particle effects, complex polygonal character models, and a light-sourcing tour de force, all running at a blazing 60 frames-per-second.

The short of it is, if you haven't played Soul Calibur, you need to. For sheer adrenaline working in tandem with eye-melting graphics, nothing could touch it. What then, does the Dreamcast version (Namco's first "real" game developed for archrival Sega in ages) of Soul Calibur do to leapfrog past its arcade counterpart in every way possible?

To begin with, the most obvious enhancement are the graphics. Despite the lack of a prerendered FMV intro, the likes of which we're used to seeing from Namco, the opening offered here will drop more jaws than Muhammed Ali. Think of the intros usually seen in Capcom games like Marvel vs. Capcom, but rendered in full, hi-res, 60fps 3D (with a splash of Samurai Shodown thrown in for good measure), and you're not even close to imagining how awesome the intro to Soul Calibur for the DC looks. Picture a first-person camera zooming in over some sandy horizon, as weapons slam into the foreground. Keep going until the weapons are replaced by a swiftly approaching Kilik (the staff user in SC). Trigger an impressive sequence of character cameos and a dynamic soundtrack, and there you have it. This has to be seen in person to appreciate. It looks so good it might as well be CG, because five years ago, graphics like these were impossible. The reason the arcade version couldn't be ported home to the PlayStation was due to hardware limitations. Despite the fine conversion of Tekken 3 to the PlayStation, Soul Calibur on System-12 used an extremely high amount of RAM to enable effects like Z-buffering and other processor-taxing effects - effects that were not present in Tekken 3. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, represented the perfect solution to Namco's problems. With hardware roughly ten times as powerful as the PlayStation, the DC can not only manage Soul Calibur's graphic fireworks, but also enhance them by leaps and bounds. With characters boasting not only improved polygon counts, but high-resolution textures, each member of Soul Calibur moves around each stage looking larger, tougher, more solid, and more detailed than ever before. For example, Astaroth's alternate costume sprouts Godzilla-like spikes out of his back (these spikes wobble as he moves), along with a tall Alfalfa-esque hairdo that swings and sways depending on what direction he's moving in. Soul Edge alumni and Siegfried's alter ego, Nightmare, wields the Soul Edge itself, with an eyeball set in the center that looks around at the proceedings independently of the sword. Details like hair, clothing, and accessories all move in rhythm with an extremely realistic physics model. Improving the quality of the characters wasn't enough for Namco's programmers though. They also added a muscle-flexing system that causes pectorals to ripple during victory poses, breasts and buttocks to jiggle realistically (read: subtle, not exaggerated as in Dead or Alive), and skin to stretch in a most natural way, with not a polygon tear in sight. These characters look incredible, and some benefit from the enhancements more than others (Lizardman's tail no longer looks like a polygonal mess). Everything looks perfectly smooth (especially faces), with minimal blockiness, putting the models in VF3tb to shame. This is an extremely solid-looking game. The characters have also been outfitted with an extensive set of facial expressions that add greatly to the game experience. Take Mitsurugi, for example. With every sword slash accompanied by a grunt or yell, his face synchronizes the appropriate expression as well. Even during win poses, each character mouths his own victory speech. Even little things like fingers are individually rendered.