A double-edged sword?

Alright, let's start with the basics:

Storyline: Well, there's this tournament you see, and this guy needs to.. oh nevermind.. there's 13 fighters (11 from the previous games in the series, plus 2 new ones), pick one and beat up everyone else.

Graphics:
This game looks great. The characters are well detailed and well animated. From their motions around the ring to the details of hair and robes blowing in the wind, it all looks quite nice. A minor complaint is a tendency for the characters to occasionally look like their skin is made of chrome, but it's no big deal. The stages are well done as well, with lots of little details like snow and sand that moves around as you walk through it, and some nice rippling water effects.

Audio:
The audio is decent, but nothing groundbreaking. The sound effects are appropriately kung-fu-movie-esque. The music is a fairly forgettable mix of rock and techno tracks. They're not awful, but you won't be humming them in your car anytime soon, I'd wager.

Gameplay:
I'm going to cover the game modes and the actual play itself all in one lump, since they're both involved in what I have to say. In spite of the simple 3-button (punch, kick, guard) control scheme, Virtua Fighter 4 offers to you what I feel to be the most deep and rewarding gameplay in any fighting game I've ever played. When you really learn to use a character's moves, the fights come together in a truly beautiful way. This leads me to the 'double-edged sword' in the title of this review. My point is, for you to really enjoy this game and all it has to offer, you will have to put a lot, and I mean a lot, of effort into it. I called the control scheme 'simple' earlier, but that's a misnomer; it only seems simple on the surface. Once you get a load of the dozens of available moves for each character, and the different ways of guarding, evading and reversing, it quickly becomes apparent that 3 buttons and a directional pad do not necessarily constitute a simple control scheme. So this is the problem I find with Virtua Fighter 4; for the average pick-up-and-play gamer, the true joy of this title will probably be lost. Playing at a low, button-mashing level is nowhere near as enjoyable as playing at the higher levels when you have a more solid grip on the massive amount of techniques available to you. This is apparent in the Kumite mode, where you can unlock different items and clothing to modify your character. It seems like a mode that adds a lot of replay to the single-player game over and above the plain-vanilla Arcade mode, and indeed it does; but again, only if you're willing to really put some time in to learn how to play well. If you don't, the higher ranking computer opponents will tear you apart.

In this way, Virtua Fighter 4 shoots itself in the foot. Since playing when you don't really have any idea what you're doing isn't really all that great, not to mention intensely frustrating, the average gamer might see no reason to devote a lot of time to learning the game at a much deeper level.

So, in my opinion, here's the question you need to ask yourself before buying this game: are you willing to put a lot of time and effort into a game in order to arrive at (what I consider to be) the most rewarding video game fighting experience yet, or would you rather be able to pick a game up, learn a couple of moves, and have simply a decent video game fighting experience. If you answered yes to the latter part of this question, then Virtua Fighter 4 probably isn't for you. However, if you answered yes to the first part, then in my opinion, Virtua Fighter 4 might be right up your alley.

Like most things in life, the greatest rewards come from overcoming the greatest challenges. Make no mistake, Virtua Fighter 4 is a challenge, and a great one at that. The training modes will help you along the way, and if you work hard, Virtua Fighter 4 will pay you back in a big way.