Virtual-On Marz

"A big disappointment. A game about futuristic robots that doesn't even feel like it was made in the 21st century."

Here's my review.

I loved Virtua On in the arcade in the 90's, never had a Saturn, and liked the DC VOOT, with the exception of the control (I was too used to Twin Sticks). So I was gonna write a really long and explicit explanation, of my backround and my hour or two of playing the game (yes, an hour, that's how much I liked it). But instead I'll just try to be relatively concise. Again, I only played this for an hour.

-It supports a simulated Twin Stick configuration. Each Dual Shock stick is like an arcade stick, and the triggers can simulate Turbo and Trigger accordingly. In theory this is great but I found it awkward and couldn't adjust. My thumbs didn’t like it.

-Load times. In two words, mostly horrible. There are load times between choosing characters. Between choosing characters!? There's like a second or two pause for the stats and non-too-detailed characters to appear when you choose them. In the two-player mode the load time before the beginning of a battle is probably 4 or 5 seconds. Now I could maybe understand if these were graphics that pushed the PS2 to the limits, with huge battlefield environments, but there's neither.

-The graphics. When a game is good, you could care less if the graphics aren't state of the art, but sometimes the graphics look drabber than the DC version. This is no knock at the DC version by any means, but when your grass textures look akin to the grass from the PS1 FF7 overworld from six years ago, something is terribly wrong.

-The speed. Perhaps the biggest let down of them all. Virtua On used to be about high-speed mechas (well mostly) blowing the crap out of each other between using melee, and simplified fighting game-esqe attacks. But everything now feels, so slow you're guaranteed to notice it. Maybe not as bad as Armored Core, but it's like watching a once world-class sprinter in his 60's trying to win the 100m Dash in the Olympics (and you’re still wondering how he made it there in the first place).

-Two-player Mode. Well I already mentioned the speed and the load times, which really hurt. But also there didn't appear to be a ready option to change split-screen between vertical and horizontal. The only split that appears to exist is straight down the center of the screen.

Plus although no one was expecting it, why isn't there an online VS mode!? Didn't the Saturn version have online play in Japan?

-The gameplay. I honestly hadn't played it enough to really judge the mechanics of the game, fighting techniques and so on and I've already mentioned the speed.

What I can tell you is that since the speed is slower, melee attacks are easier to dodge. At the same time and for some reason I can't remember if it was in previous versions, but I think it was, I can't stand the temporary invincibility that a mech gets once it's knocked down and then gets up. It's almost like you have to flee because you're the aggressor. With the slower speed, it's even worse. Think of playing Virtua Fighter, Tekken, or Soul Calibur, where after you knock an opponent the ground, you can perhaps hit them, but then as they rise they are invincible for a second or two.

As for the whole team-battle thing, it really didn't affect me either way. On one hand it's a cool idea, on the other, I hope it's not the reason they slowed the game down.

-Overall, 3 out of 10. Sure there are worse games out there. Diehards might not care what I have to think, but I was a fan of the series (and still am but definitely not this game). I know some of you will argue that I didn’t give the game a whole lot of time, but if you think of it like walking out a movie that was so bad, because you knew it wasn’t gonna get better, maybe it makes sense. I brought my copy back less than 24 hour later and was fortunate enough to exchange it for another game.

If you're really desperate to play it, it's definitely a rent first game, if you can find it. I don't think it's a must rent game, because where I live rentals are like $6.50 before tax (damn Blockbuster Video). Or you could try to find a store that will let you return it if you open or at least give you an even exchange (of course make sure you ready to send that $50 to another title).

A big disappointment. A game about futuristic robots that doesn't even feel like it was made in the 21st century.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/03