Picking an opponent at one of the arcades.
In tournaments as well as in random fights youll be able to fight for items. Sometimes youll get money, sometimes youll get an orb for your orb ring, and sometimes youll get an actual item. Clothing for your character is incredibly expensive and youll have to fight an insane amount of fights to just buy a few accessories. Whats neat though is that these accessories completely change the look of your fighter. Youll enter some fights against CPU fighters only to say to yourself, Wait, what character is that?, only to realize its the same guy youve been fighting for awhile, its just he has a different style of hair and completely different clothes.


You got an orb!
The other modes available in VF5 are pretty standard and include Arcade mode, Dojo mode, VS mode, and VF TV mode. Arcade is just random battles, Dojo is where you learn and practice moves from the insanely huge move list, and VS mode is 2 player mode. VF TV lets you watch recorded matches that you have participated in as well as matches that come pre-burned on the disc. Whats really disappointing is that there is no online component to either the VS mode or the VF TV mode. How hard would it have been to setup an online system to share VF TV? Heres hoping they release VF5 2 with online support as its something most without fighter fan friends will miss.

The graphics of Virtua Fighter 5 are just plain amazing. From the highly detailed polygon models, to their clothes, and the collision detection between all of them, its truly a treat for the eyes. Its pretty incredible that this is the first fighting game where I have yet to see body parts intersect. Not only that but Ive never seen hair or flapping clothing intersect either. Well I take that back, I have seen extra baggy pants intersect a bit, but thats an extreme case. When you execute any kind of move, the animations that occur between the two characters are just plain flawless. How long have we been waiting for cloth and hair animations that dont fall into the players bodies? Its finally here!

Whats also incredible about the visuals is that the backgrounds dont slouch a bit. There are actual 3D people in many of them along with flowing water and great looking landscapes. From a stormy Midwest town to a tropical waterfall arena, every stage looks near perfect. Add on the fact that the menus are animated and drawn in an incredibly cool fashion and youve got the best looking Playstation 3 game to date.

On the audio side of things the player grunts that happen during combat get a bit old a bit too fast. This is especially evident in matches between the same character where youll sometimes hear endless overlaps of the same saying like, Take That! On the other hand, most of the other sound effects fit fine as do the menu sounds and the ambient background audio.