Week in Gaming

[R-9]

The North American market doesn't give a shit about Virtua Fighter, let alone Yu Suzuki for that matter. That's why you can get both Shenmue (1/2), a Dreamcast and VF4EVO for less than the price of a new game.

The actual release date for Virtua Fighter 5 has yet to be announced in Japan. It currently only exists in an early beta form.

[ROMate]

No excuse. VF4 comes with a tutorial. The game wants you to be good at it.

DOA and Tekken have training/tutorial modes. And guess what? It's STILL easier to play those games, even without training mode. Kids these days don't want to think about what they're doing. It's much easier to button mash and see cool, damaging moves come out. VF doesn't support that in any capacity, so NOBODY's gonna play it.

[LordRyunson]

Unless they give Virtua Fighter any upgrades like that... Yeah.

[King Zarkon]

i once watched an hour long game of vf4 where two experts just sat there at full health countering each others moves.

[R-9]

i once watched an hour long game of vf4 where two experts just sat there at full health countering each others moves.

Which, interestingly enough, is what high-level martial arts can be like, until one of the combatants gets tired and has a lapse of concentration.

[Ellendesu]

Yeah, Virtua Fighter is pretty badass, I had a copy of VF4 until my damn brother lost it.

[Regdren]

I wouldn't consider the ability to button mash and get cool moves to be an upgrade. However, it's decently possible to do that by picking Lei Fei. Because of the way the game works such a player would get pwned by anyone who knows how to sidestep, but at least you'll get some decent flailings out of him.

This week I'm playing:

Ragnarok Online. Duh. I didn't become moderator of the RO boards just from not posting on Hyper's forums for weeks. I would have quit after a coulpe of days were it not for the private server's 13x experience rate. Even then, I often spend as much time chatting with guildmates as I do actually playing it.

Super Robot Taisen OG. Once you have a decent grasp of how the game works, it's pretty easy even in hard mode. It's still a lot of fun and the translation is surprisingly solid. And guess what? The sequel won't have four-year-old GBA graphics! It's also, by most accounts, much much harder than the first one. I'm looking forward to that.

Alien Soldier: You've probably never heard of this Genesis game since it never came to the States, but goddamn it's cool. It was made by Treasure shortly after Gunstar Heroes, and it's essentially one really long chain of boss fights with a few short stages every now and then for variety. Not many game designers can allow you unlimited invincible screen-long dashes but still have a game that's both hard and fair. If I ever figure out how to record gameplay I'll post a vid of this the first chance I get.