Good fighting game with gorgeous visuals!
User Rating: 7 | Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown PS3
Hello everyone in the Gamespot community! Before I begin my review of VF5: Final Showdown, I'd like to thank you personally (the reader, duh!) for taking the time to read my review! Seriously, thanks bro! Anyway, VF5: Final Showdown was originally an arcade only release after VF5: R. It first debuted in Japanese arcades in 2010 and hit PS3 and Xbox 360 on June 5, 2012 (PS3) and June 6, 2012 (360). As a huge fan of the Virtua Fighter series, I was a little let down at the fact that this was merely an add-on. It only added two characters, a few new stages, and some new items to customize your characters, however, what I won't do is criticize the game on how it could be better, I'm reviewing what it is, not what I personally want it to be. Let me get the bad of this game out of the way first. The game cost $15 on the PlayStation Store (or free if you are a Plus member like me) and 1,200 Microsoft points. From a consumer standpoint, that's a little pricey for an add-on that is labeled as a game and for that $15/1,200msp you are basically getting VF5 with a few new bits and bobs. Character customization is non-existent unless you pay for character item packs for each individual character (which totals more than what you bought the game for). The single player arcade mode is very lacking in the fact that each fight can be over in a minute (difficulty pending) and you feel as if you fighting someone just to fight them, there's no sense of drive or cause of you fighting as there was in the other VF games (the cause for fighting in those games was to win the numerous World Fighting Tournaments and to find out more about Judgement6 who funds the tournaments). Those were my main problems with VF5: Showdown, now, onto the good of Final Showdown! VF5: Showdown (albeit it's more of an add-on, to me) still continues to uphold Virtua Fighter's reputation for setting the standard of a 3D fighting game with its gorgeous visuals, easy to grasp controls, and a classic tournament style feel where one can lose a round by being knocked out of bounds. It is highly addictive, I earned all the trophies for the game and I still go back to it just to kick some ass online or offline. The game does a great job at making a fight feel fair as opposed to other fighting series such as Street Fighter where one can spam "Hadouken" and win. Sure, you can spam the same combos in Final Showdown, but you can get around the people who overuse a certain combo with ease. To conclude, the game is good, but not worth the price. The single player arcade mode is lacking, there is no way to customize characters unless you spend more money on the game, and that can total up to more than the game itself. There seems to be no cause or drive for the numerous fights you will be getting into. As I said previously, this expansion of Virtua Fighter 5 continues to uphold the well deserved reputation of being a ground breaking 3D fighting game. The combat is very addictive, yet, technical. Overall, if you are a fan of the series, buy it, you won't regret it! If you are not, just go buy Virtua Fighter 5, you'll have a better time with that and it'll be cheaper as well.
