A Virtua Fighter nerd explains the New Virtua Fighter EVO teaser at length

After months of buildup, the Virtua Fighter staff came up on stage at Evo this weekend, dropped about a minute of actual gameplay footage, updated us on continued support for VF5 Revo, and went on their way.

This is a clever way of handling things; we’ve started to expect that as these games get bigger, the really major announcements are made at larger, more mainstream events rather than a hardcore fan destination like a tournament. VF is a big AAA game, and the video we got promises more info at Tokyo Game Show, a much more mainstream enthusiast show. (Recall that new-VF was announced at The Game Awards, the industry’s biggest paid ad festival.) But we in the Evo crowd are also the most appreciative of the actual gameplay, the feel and the mechanics.

When you show a clip like this at an event like Evo, you are effectively inviting thousands of genre maniacs— people who have played the previous game for thousands of hours– to watch this footage over and over again, pore over every last detail and speculate– with a pretty decent degree of accuracy– what it all means for the new game.

And that’s what I’m going to do for you, because I’m exactly that kind of maniac.

The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. I spend the morning after Evo writing 2000-word pieces on one-minute videos for YOU. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!

Realistic weight and impact, and what that entails

The producers of this game have spoken a lot about “realism” and “innovation”. Innovation is apparent from this clip: this is visibly a new kind of fighting game building from first principles, a reinvention ala Guilty Gear Strive rather than a refinement ala Virtua Fighter 5.

“Realism” is everything about the way these characters move and interact. Look at the way they take hits: the strike lands with impact even when it’s blocked, and the characters block, parry and sway dodge strikes with precision. None of the block or hit animations appear generic; the characters look like they’re really reacting to the specific strike that is being thrown at them.

I don’t believe that we’ve seen this level of detail in hand-to-hand interaction, the contact and the impact, in a fighting game before. There’s a reason for that: it’s difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to motion-capture and animate all the interactions that make a fight look as believable and slick as one in a martial arts movie. That’s the domain of high-end, cutting-edge games… you know, like Virtua Fighter.

I’ll go through the video now

Almost all of the moves that are in this trailer are moves from VF5 Revo, a masterpiece which you can go play right now for cheap. I will even make note of the moves so that, if you choose to put a lot of effort into this newsletter post, you could even follow along.

I’m going to use numpad notation when I describe the moves, or we’d be here all day. There are a lot of places where it’s explained, so please look it up or use this visual aid I stole rather than write a description of numpad again.

0:18-0:19. Classic Virtua Fighter stuff. Akira opens with a crouch guard and Stella– who I’m just gonna call Sarah at this early stage to avoid confusion– opens him up with a mid standing elbow to high slap. (6P,P.) In VF, as is standard for 3D fighters, mid attacks hit crouch guards. The elbow picks Akira up to a standing position, and the second hit is guaranteed.

0:19-0:21. Akira waits a moment and tries the classic VF low punch, but it’s way too late and Sarah counter-punches him hard with a slap that launches him for a combo. Akira barely evades a low strike; the game suddenly goes to slow motion.

You barely see the VF low punch (2P), but it is there. Fast and evasive, it’s a strong and low-risk way to cut off the opponent’s offense. It doesn’t look like much, but as any serious 3D fighting game player will tell you, it’s a foundational move and VF has always had to balance around it. How the new VF handles it will be a big deal in competitive play. I suspect the devs will want it to be relatively weak.

Sarah hits a combo launch with a big slap (3P+K in Revo) which, as in VF5, slams Akira into the ground in what we call the “bound” position, legs still up so that the attacker can land an additional hit. She continues into a forward axe kick (6+K+G in Revo, another combo move) that slams him down again, but this time Sarah’s low kick narrowly misses and Akira pops back up to a standing position, with a bit of slow motion added to emphasize the near-miss. This is something Tekken started doing with 7 and is a well-received feature, especially by spectators.

There are more combos in this fight, but let’s stop things right there. The biggest thing to take away from this small combo is that Virtua Fighter has probably done away with the traditional air “juggle” combo system it invented in favor of more natural-looking combos. This has always been a criticism of the genre— hitting a floating body in mid-air is admittedly not exactly realistic— but the new game is looking for a little more realism here, too. You will see this throughout.

0:22-0:27. A series of strikes and defenses. Akira leads with a sliding low punch (3P+K in Revo) which Sarah crouches to block. Sarah counters with a big mid kick (3+K in Revo) which Akira guards: note that the force of it blows him back slightly. He counters with a high palm strike which Sarah sway-dodges by pulling back her head. She counters immediately with a successful jab and tries two big high spinning kicks (K+G, K in Revo), which Akira crouches and counters with a rising shoulder strike (2,3P+K in Revo) that sends Sarah slightly back. Akira follows with a double high punch (4P,P) that sends Sarah flying.

This long sequence very effectively demonstrates the kinds of back-and-forth defense that will exist in the new game. You still need to crouch to block a low. Particularly heavy moves will cause the opponent to reel a bit, even though they might have the initiative to strike first next, as Akira does. But Sarah reads a fast, predictable counter strike from him and dodges it on the spot using some kind of precision defensive technique that we don’t know about yet. You can still crouch right under your opponent’s big high attack and counter. This is all extremely Virtua Fighter, no question about it.

0:28-0:32. Sarah, sent flying, tries to roll out of trouble and get up, but Akira is there attacking her as she wakes up with a sideways shoulder strike (66P+K). She blocks and gets knocked a bit to Akira’s side, and tries to counter with a punch combo (6P+K, P, K) which Akira parries using another new defensive system we don’t know about yet. Akira lands the standard VF punch, kick combo (P,K), causing Sarah’s upper body to glow red. Black particles explode off her like she’s burning to ash. He backs up as a feint, and then delivers a double palm strike to Sarah’s face (possibly Byakko, 246P), breaking her guard. We’ll stop there.

The block is interesting. At first I thought Sarah was side-stepping, but she visibly takes the hit: what’s happening is that the side-facing attack pushes the blocking Sarah sideways.

We don’t know anything about those blue parries other than to say that blue effect sure brings Street Fighter III to mind. It definitely seems like when Akira parries Sarah he doesn’t have to worry about the usual blowback and thus reaction time of guarding, allowing him to immediately counter-attack.

When Akira hits that high kick it immediately causes Sarah to glow red. This looks to me like some kind of pressure-based offensive system by which you can get a big damage/combo opportunity by landing attacks in quick succession.

0:32-37. Akira sure enough lands a punch and a slow-motion palm strike, which appear to put Sarah into a defenseless stagger state. Akira puts her down with a dashing elbow (66P) followed by another double palm strike (P+K).

This is pretty clearly put forward as the kind of thing we’re going to see rather than air launcher combos. You get one free hit, then a second free hit, then you’re done. We don’t have a life bar here, but this is pretty clearly the big-damage moment of the match with an equivalent build-up to making it happen.

0:37-0:41. Sarah rises, side rolls and does a rising low kick as she stands. Akira rushes in for a throw, but she stops him with another low kick. Akira tries a parry that only works on punches (4P+K+G in Revo) but Sarah lands a big mid kick instead, stunning Akira.

The knockdown and rising states in VF are important and different from Tekken, where players are free to stomp on a downed opponent any way they like. In Virtua Fighter you can only do a specialized “down” attack (not seen in this video but likely to be in the game) while the opponent is on the floor. While they’re getting up they have the option to deliver a low or high kick, which forces overly aggressive attackers onto the defensive. Here Sarah uses that kick to slow down Akira a little bit, but it’s a completely different (and more realistic) attack than the sweep kick we usually see in this situation. It remains to be seen how rising attacks will work, but the one shown here looks a lot weaker.

Further, we’re seeing the recovery roll (different from simply rolling on the floor because the character catches themselves in mid-air and rolls) and that players will be able to use a rising attack out of their recovery roll. This is an important change: as an advanced VF5 player, you kind of want your opponent to recovery roll because they can’t attack you and you know exactly when they’re going to stand up, so you can easily press your offense.

We haven’t seen a throw yet in this video, but Akira here confirms that they exist in basically the same way as previous games: miss one and you’ll see the character’s arms grab out at nothing in a “whiff” animation. Akira completely misses— Sarah is both crouching and attacking— so we see a throw whiff.

0:41-0:43. The second big combo of the video. Sarah hits the stunned Akira with a backfist followed by a punch (4P,P?) and then the classic VF triple-punch kick combo (PPPK) to knock Akira down. Again note that we have a stun rather than an air launch; they are basically doing the same thing.

0:43-0:46. Sarah rushes in on Akira as he side rolls and grabs him.

Note that the grab animation is completely different from the typical one I described earlier: Sarah raises her knee, and when she catches Akira blocking, the throw animation plays from there. There are plenty of grabs with similar unusual wind-up animations in VF5, but this one is new and looks difficult to react to.

0:47 - end. Sarah rushes in with another big spinning high kick, which Akira blocks. Akira tries a knee (K+G) and Sarah sidesteps, using the large opening to finish with a slap into high kick (3P,K) that finishes off Akira with a very flashy close-up animation of his face getting smashed by the kick.

This is the first sidestep we see in the video, to the point where I was wondering if it was in the game at all. VF4 and 5 have very intuitive and easy side-stepping: you’ll see players stepping around each other over and over again almost on instinct. VF5 allows players to step around an opponent’s attacks to get at their side, where they’re a little bit more vulnerable to your attacks and throws. It looks like that’s right out of the new VF, as you can see that Sarah’s slap immediately shifts Akira to face her; this would not happen in VF5, Akira would remain side-turned. I loved the complexity that the side attack brought to the game and wish this wasn’t changed.

I admit that it’s clever to confirm a nerf to a complex system immediately before dropping the big attention-grabbing feature. Akira is wide open here so Sarah uses a simple punch-kick combo to KO him, and when that last kick comes in we get a triple instant replay along with a close-up shot of the kick absolutely jacking up Akira’s face.

That kick is not a particularly fancy move– in fact, both Akira and Sarah's biggest signature moves are noticeably missing from this demonstration– so I imagine most attacks will have this kind of KO animation for wherever they hit the opponent. Consider the amount of custom animations to be made just for this one gimmick.

Final impressions - so far they're delivering

I'm very pleased so far with what the new Virtua Fighter is offering. 3D fighting games in particular haven't had big change in a very long time, and if almost 20 years later isn't the time to try something truly new, then I don't know when is.

At the same time, they haven't thrown out the things that make Virtua Fighter itself. The core systems are the same. The attention to detail is evident: after all, I just wrote 2500 words on less than a minute of gameplay. I trust this team and I'm very much looking forward to what they're cooking.

The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!