Virtua Fighter 3tb

"About as painful to look at as it is to play."

''It's realistic!''

I bought Virtua Fighter 3TB for the Dreamcast after reading stellar review after stellar review. They all said that it was without doubt the most realistic fighter ever, it had more depth than any other fighting game before it, and it was an absolute blast to play. Sometimes, I wish I were more jaded and calloused to other people's opinions than I am already. Still, the sheer quantity of people saying that it was ''amazing'' was enough to dispel any doubts for me.

Unfortunately, they were all wrong. Every website, magazine, and broadcast had lied to me. Virtua Fighter 3TB was the only game in my life I ever sold, and I'm glad I did. This game is an absolute load of crap that seems to have spread the digitized equivalent of smallpox to everyone but me.

Please, if you aren't sure what to make of it, hear me out.

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STORY
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''What's more realistic than contrived plot conventions?!?''

Virtua Fighter 3TB has less of a reason to fall back on lame, unbelievable story because of the road it took with the gameplay. In VF3TB, an assortment of characters gather to fight in the unoriginal titled ''Third World Tournament.'' The characters are fighting for a veritable medley of reasons, most of them more stupid than the names of Megaman characters.

Let's look at Jeffry Wild, the Jamaican fighting for money, which he will use to build a large boat in order to catch a shark that has eluded him for too long. Given Jeffry's mental capacity, I'm not surprised. There's also the punk-rocker Jacky who fights after he hears news of his sister, Sarah, who has ironically been reprogrammed by an evil organization to kill Jacky. We also have Akira, fighting for sheer enlightenment: the overdone ''I beat on people to meditate'' character, as well as his mysterious fighting partner Aoi.

However, I think the highlight of the story is how Sega managed to turn what could have been a uber-cool Ninja into a quivering mama's boy. That's right, Ninja Kage-maru has accidentally turned his mother into a shiny, ass-whooping fighter. Congrats, kid. Not only is that baffling, but also worse of a plot device than anything else in the game.

Unlike Tekken, which has a skeptical sense of reality further concreted by abilities just short of the X-men, Virtua Fighter's story has much less reality than the fighting, which produces an irritating discord. The fact is, I can understand why fighters are gathering to enter a tournament run by evil people every year when they're capable of turning into demons or setting people on fire with their fists. Unfortunately, when the Virtua Fighter gang is a bunch of sorry-looking misfits that are only capable of ''basic'' combat, the story falls apart.

Aside from the fact that none of the characters are immediately fresh, original, or likable, the main reasons they have for whooping each other are entirely dumb. If there was anything more to dislike about VF3TB, it could be that there are no individual endings, but rather one long and boring one. Bravo.

Story: 2 / 10
At least they tried, no matter how pitiful the attempt.

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GRAPHICS
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''Finally! A game to smooth the transition between the PlayStation and the Dreamcast!''

For any of you that were blown away too much by the leap in graphical quality from either the N64 or PSX to the Dreamcast, VF3TB is here to ease your sorrows. Virtua Fighter 3tb is possibly the worst looking game on the DC, or at least tied with Slave Zero for that distinction. VF3TB has many graphical failures, but for the goal of the Virtua Fighter series it does some justice.

I'll get the good out of the way first: the animations in VF3TB are top notch. Every punch, kick, and assorted attacks animate very well. It's not only limited to the attacking frames either: the true beauty of the animations lie within what happens to both you and your opponent when the move connects. Take for example, an overhead axe-kick. Hit the guy with it, and he'll crumple to the ground doubled over. If, however, he blocks it, your limb will be stuck for a while while you retract it. Several of the moves have eye-catching reactions to a block or a hit, which is something that several fighters fail to take into consideration.

In this manner, VF3TB supercedes even Tekken and Soul Calibur, whose characters continue with the same motion whether they connect or not. For a realistic fighter, the hit detection as well as the hit effects are excellently done. Additionally, Virtua Fighter's moves are drawn from various fighting techniques, so they are pretty faithful to the real-life counterparts, excluding big 4-story jumping and other creative liberties.

Also interesting are the backgrounds, which sadly are more interesting and lifelike than the characters. There are dojos, gardens, office-buildings, and rooftops that have a very realistic appearance to them. Also a VF3TB innovation, which seems simplistic really, is the varying of heights within the level, thereby avoiding the ''please place fighters on a flat surface'' malady of its peers. Again, the backgrounds definitely augment the reality within VF3TB, even if little else does.

Now that we have the positive over and done with, it's time to hit it in the kneecap with a baton made of sheer venom. Virtua Fighter's characters are so ugly, poorly designed, and low-polygon that they're painful to look at. VF3TB didn't take advantage of the DC's raw power at all, and consequently they're all blocky and goofy-looking. Realism?

To make the story even more laughable, the characters look about as silly as their reasons for fighting. Someone should slap a sticker on Akira that reads ''Ryu light,'' and put tired looking kung-fu characters like Pai and Lau out of their misery. I should mention the characters I wish were never ever committed to paper, graphics, or anything else. There are two in particular I hate: Jeffry, the big Jamaican guy that has dreadlocks and pants as his main selling points, as well as the dumb-looking Native-American wrestler Wolf, complete with detachable cowboy hat. This is realism?

To further nail the coffin shut, any character that isn't downright painful to look at feels like some guy off the street wandered in for a fight, like Jacky, Sarah, and Leonardo DiCaprio wannabe Lion. Sure, they're realistic in the sense that they look like everyone else on the street that I could care less about, but I'd like something more dynamic to fit in with the theme of the game.

The VF3TB cast is about the only group I can think of that makes me wish that there were less characters in a fighter. They look dumb, they have horrible reasons for fighting, and aren't even interesting to look at. Any desire to get good with certain characters is squelched when you see either how unoriginal they are or how utterly bad the character design is. Consequently, I used the Ninja more than anybody, because everyone knows that Ninjas are cool, right?

All in all, VF3TB is a failure outside of the attack animations and inspiring backgrounds. Characters are just bad, in every way that they can be bad from the standpoint of game characters. If you want a fighting game to showcase the DC's power, look elsewhere. This game will provide 13 character models of ugly, which is more than any masochist would ask for.

Graphics: 2 / 10
Close to being the worst-looking game on the system.

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SOUND AND MUSIC
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''Wanted: irritating fighting game announcers. Contact Sega for further details.''

Virtua Fighter VF3TB's music is possibly the best thing about the game's sound, which is sad considering how entirely banal and unspectacular it is. Again, I'm surprised that this game has come to so much critical acclaim. Urgh.

What's to ''Urgh'' about, hangedman? I'll tell you, you! For being a ''realistic'' game, they don't have any sound effects for people smacking each other that I haven't heard variations of for years on end. Hit someone, and you're treated with a generic noise that serves more of an indicator of a hit being blocked or connecting than it does someone throwing a punch into someone's face. Dropkicks, punches, slaps, and groin-level kicks are as boring sounding here as with every other game. Realism?

Additionally, any voice within the game feels to me like someone's trying to make my ear stop working with a coat hanger. Aside from the castrated announcer that's had too much cough syrup, you're forced to listen to the most irritating win-screen voice-overs ever recorded. Oh god. I've heard it all before. The smug guy with the high voice, the effeminate guy with the high voice, the big guy with the low voice, over and over. It sounds like someone's caustic impression of what the character would sound like rather than the character.

I'm not entirely critical of voice acting if it isn't outright bad, but this is. Nobody put their hand over the microphone and said ''do it again, that sounded like crap.'' Are you good at analogies, remember those things from the SAT so long ago? Try this one, kids!

VF3TB Graphics : Ugly :: VF3TB Sound : ?
A) Painful
B) Abysmal
C) Insipid

No matter what you picked, you were right.

Sound and Music: 3 / 10
I liked one theme. The rest was way below-average.

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GAMEPLAY
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''All of the bad was merely leading up to this moment.''

There's a large difference between realism and fun, especially SELECTIVE realism. Sure, VF3TB boasts real-life fighting styles, a meticulous attention to detial, and a complex system of gameplay despite a small amount of buttons, but is it fun?

SURVEY SAYS: NO!

Many will argue with me here, but I think that VF3TB is the bottom of the barrel. I have lots of time to play games, and I play lots of games in this time. Fighting games are my forte, and I love them to death. However, VF3TB is very very slow. I've seen faster fighting in real life. Many of your moves are sluggish, very bland, and do less damage than you'd expect for such a gigantic wind-up.

However, VF3TB pats itself on the back for bursting at the seams with an arsenal of sluggish, boring, ineffective attacks. Each character can perform a myriad of slightly-different looking kicks and punches, each of which is easily seen coming a mile away. But then again, they're true to the fighting style in the sense that you could see yourself doing them should you take a Karate class or similar equivalent.

What makes me angry is the fact that although there are many true-to-form punches, kicks, flying attacks, and throws, they're all beaten out by one thing: MASHING THE BUTTONS.
''Oh man, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. He must be utterly horrible at this game. Go play quake or something. Kill yourself.'' Yeah, I hear you. I'll admit, I am bad at this game, but I can explain why.

VF3TB is perhaps the most user-unfriendly game I've ever had the displeasure of playing. Even on easy, the computer knows some inside secret of how to hit you more frequently and for more damage than you could possibly comprehend, regardless of character. It's like playing paper-rock-scissors with Latoya Jackson. They already know what you're going to do before you do it, without you being able to learn from the mistake.

Ironically, the most damaging and quickest move for most of the characters seems to be a 3 to 4-hit lighting fast combo; three punches / kicks of good damage that often supercede anything else that is being thrown at them. When the computer wises up, go for a throw, because let's face it, all of the other moves are too unwieldy and cumbersome to do any good. Let's examine: an arsenal of meticulous and realistic moves are easily overcome by riding the punch button. Of course, this doesn't work on experienced players, or the computer past the easy setting... BUT YOU'RE NOT SURE WHY.

Try to use any of the other moves on the computer opponents or a skilled human player, and you're mopped up during the down-time after you miss with the move, or if it's blocked. Moreover, the defense in the game feels unrewarding and trivial. Blocking attacks never seemed to yield an opening, nor did moving out of the way with the itty-bitty sidestep.

VF3TB felt like an inside joke where there was always a right move to use in a certain situation (which the computer could demonstrate quite a bit), and I never knew what it was. I suppose if you play the game long enough these moves would surface and let you know the context in which they would be useful, but the gestation period was too long and too unfulfilling for me that I didn't get to that point, and I have a hard time seeing how someone would.

VF3TB is slow, unrewarding, and doesn't yield experience with play. It's hard at the beginning, and gives no indication on how to get better. A cause of concern is that there's no versus mode, but I don't think I'd want any of my friends to spend so much time with this game that they started to like the gameplay.

VF3TB seems to me to be an interesting proposition: spend enough time with a sub-par game, and it becomes less vile. Unfortunately, I declined on the offer in order to spend my time with better fighters of the same genre, like Tekken 3, Soul Calibur, and Dead or Alive 2, each having a system built of useful, fast, and interesting moves that actually gave me the perception that I was indeed getting better.

Gameplay: 2 / 10
Slow, unrewarding, and frustrating to learn. Supposedly it gets better, but I disagree.

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OVERALL
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''People supposedly like this game, you know.''

I feel like I'm a lone wanderer out there in game-land that hates VF3TB. I don't think the fighting engine works, I don't think that the game has any incentive to help me get better at it, and I don't think the fighting engine is interesting enough to warrant extended play, let alone MASTERY of this flawed and boring engine.

VF3TB continued to disappoint me even after I was resolved to sell it: at the used game store the clerk told me that they would pay me two dollars for a game with the original price tag of sixty bucks. Put in clearer perspective: I could have traded it in for a broken Sega CD system, if I had another dollar.

VF3TB: $2. Broken machine: $3

I think they've got their prices down pretty good, looking back. VF3TB is worse than trash, and has nothing that can drag up the boring and unrewarding gameplay. I've had more fun with free AOL CDs, and my VF3TB GD-ROM is probably rotting in a landfill somewhere, if not infecting some poor kid somewhere with garish visuals and atrocious gameplay.

Look at it through my eyes: I spend more money than I like for a game that's stated to be the deepest and most complex 3-d fighter ever made, and when it turns out to be the opposite of that, I'm expected to remedy all the problems by playing the game more. No dice. I played it, I didn't like it, I didn't get any better at it, the graphics were bad, the sound and music were below-average, and the characters made my eyes hurt.

YOU LOSE.

Overall: 2 / 10
Unbearably disappointing for the ''best and deepest fighter ever.''

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*Ninjas are much cooler when they aren't mama's boys.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/05/02, Updated 02/18/02