During a recent episode of viewer-haemorrhaging TV show, Hell’s Kitchen, coming second to Brian Dowling after a typically un-PC gaybashing verbal exchange, Jim Davidson remarked, “Well what happens to me then? What happens to people who say what they want?” It was tear-jerking stuff and, indeed, the first time we’ve laughed at Jim Davidson in years, but it got us thinking about people from a bygone age that have no place in modern society – people like button-mashers.

Mashers are folk who feign skill in games like beat-’em-ups and aimlessly press buttons in the hope of stumbling across an annoyingly random chain of moves to better their on-screen opponent. In the past, games such as Tekken have contained a window of opportunity just wide enough for such chancers to triumph. Virtua Fighter 5 slams that window, pulls down the shutters and cackles like a 50-a-day smoker from the other side. There’s no place for the mashers here, so please go away.

So why is VF so serious? Let us examine the opposition. The PlayStation’s flagship fighter, Tekken, has established itself as a ripped, snarling, savage of a beat-’em-up, full of diverse characters and aesthetically rich locales. But the rubbish, stapled-on storylines and ‘mashing’ opportunities have damaged its credibility and the fact that it contained at least one standout character who was significantly better than the others distorted the balance. Old Xbox fave, Dead Or Alive also had all the right moves and was a belting showcase for whatever gaming platform staged its scraps. But often the interactive scenery and ‘jiggyness’ diverted attention away from what was otherwise an accomplished arena-pleaser.

So what about Virtua Fighter then? The series has long-time been heralded as the most perfectly balanced fighting game around, and has never relied on gimmicks to aid in its assault. Instead it’s just two combatants, a square arena and hundreds of intricate little fighting moves that need to be mastered slowly, Shaolin monk-style, over time. Execute, repeat, execute, repeat… Only when a move has been nailed and can be pulled off as instinctively as breathing can you move onto the next, because a handful of moves, how ever seamlessly executed, won’t cut it here. You need to learn more and more still, clearing your mind of trivialities such as birthdays, anniversaries and phone numbers to make space for the info you’ll need to ingest in order to mix it up with your mates. Have we scared you yet?

The crux of Virtua Fighter 5 is that for every move, there are two to counter it. And four more moves to counter those two and then another eight to counter the four, and so on. A sprawling chain of possibilities is open to you and that’s just scratching the surface. How do you know what move to lead with? How many frames of animation before it connects? You need to know this because timing is everything. One wrong move and you could be punched, swung around, flung, stomped on and… well, whatever atrocities the credit left on your life bar will permit. The upshot is that you will probably only ever have enough hours in one lifetime to fully master one character, two if you abstain from drinking. And this is where it differs greatly from other fighting games featuring a gaggle of girning Goliaths that you can happily pop lips with in the time it takes for you to master a ‘fuzzy guard’.

It still sounds as though we’re trying to put you off, right? Not so; there is plenty to enjoy here for novices and ultimately you get back what you invest. It’s just that to appreciate – really appreciate – the work, fine-tuning and evolution that has gone into this product, you have to get good at it. Thankfully, though, this means the game is packed with modes to help mould you into an accomplished player.

The ‘Dojo’ is where you go to learn moves and practise them against a programmed opponent. And you can move or attack in whatever manner you wish in order to improve your move sets. This is all well and good, but a quick sniff around reveals a faint pong of ‘elitism’. It seems that if you haven’t learnt your basic buffering, combos and cancelling from Yoda-like grandmasters with nicotine-stained teeth down at your local arcade, then you ain’t gonna learn them here. You’re just given a list of moves to work your way through with no explanation of timing and rhythm – two key factors you have to learn if you are to graduate from noob to necromancer. Thankfully, Quest mode is more enlightening. A school of hard knocks, if you will, this mode allows you to trawl arcades and fight opponents of similar rank and ability to you.

You start off by selecting a fighter and assigning your own username to them. You are then presented with a world map outlining local arcades that you can visit to take on opponents. The rank of these opponents determines their skill level and how likely you are to beat them and you can skip one-sided bouts against lesser-skilled foes in favour of more tantalising tests. The AI of your opponents is surprisingly sharp and they certainly don’t suffer fools gladly, getting wise to repetitive attacks and countering with lightning-fast efficiency if they feel you’re beginning to mock them with ‘cheap’ tactics.

The more fights you win, the more experience you’ll gain, and the quicker you can level up the ladder of worthiness and start sniffing out the 10th Dan real deals that frequent the more hardcore arcades. Quest serves as both an engaging oneplayer game and a steady learning curve (you’re not punished for your mistakes and shortcomings as brutally as in the standard Arcade mode), but the main attraction with this version – and what will ultimately set it apart from its PS3 cousin – is the online multiplayer that allows you to test your might against the world’s best for the very first time. So significant is this mode that we’ll be featuring our own standalone review when it goes ‘live’ proper. But sampling the fluidity of the game and being only too aware of the intricate, frame-reliant moves that bind it all together, we’re gnawing our nails in anticipation of how well it will work.

On present evidence, though, there is little not to like here, although we could turn on the graphics if we wanted to score a few cheap points. Born in the arcades, the look of VF5 is polished enough to please the eyes of spectators, crowded around the coin-op hoping to pick up a few tips from the experienced combatants hogging the sticks. But look harder and several things are amiss. Fighters seem to hover – mere millimetres, admittedly – above the ground, giving their lower limbs all the apparent stability of a Thunderbirds puppet. Certain garments that make up the character’s ensemble are also flat-looking and, in the case of the dangly ones, move unconvincingly. But to kick a game like VF5 for not being realistic enough is like marking BioShock down for not having a snow level – aesthetics count for little when the gameplay is so tight.

That said, even though the arenas don’t play as big a part in the proceedings as they do in the DOA games, you’d have to be made of stone not to appreciate Wolf’s snowy-mountain stage. Covered with a freshly laid blanket of brilliant white cloud powder when the fight begins, it all gets scuffed up as you shuffle around and you can even make snow angels by slamming your foe onto their back. In truth, there is neat attention to detail in many of the locales, but none so apparent that you can notice it while your bloodshot eyes are trained in anticipation of your opponent’s next move.

We could also argue that VF5 can afford to shed some of its coin-op presentation when ported to the home (do we really need to see sweeping shots of the arenas every time the match begins, especially if you’re on your sixth ‘continue’?), but ultimately this is as perfect a conversion as you’ll ever see. Having said that, though, it’s still a game that only the most machine-gun-minded martial artists with time to invest will reap the biggest rewards of. Execute, repeat, execute, repeat…

Ryan Butt