Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown

A purist fighter. [Issue#220, p.79]

As a $15 stand-alone download, Showdown is an absolute steal. [Aug 2012, p.80]

The genre is as healthy as ever, and this Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is great news for fans of 3D fighting. Although it is a digital only title, it resist the comparison with its rivals, although the game itself is not that new and it lacks single player modes.

At £9.99/$14.99, there's no excuse for fighting fans not to try Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown. Intricate and occasionally obtuse though it may be, it's also wonderfully balanced and endlessly varied; those who get past its initial barriers rarely go back. One of the world's best fighting games at this price should not be missed.

For a very inexpensive price, you get a polished, well made fighting game that is well worth the money for newcomers to the series and the Virtua Fighter veterans alike.

As a whole, VF 5: Final Showdown is one of those games that I think of as top-shelf, but all the secondary factors like DLC and available options for it put an asterisk next to that when it comes to recommending it to others. If you love the series, you'll get whatever amount of money you spend on it back in sheer enjoyment. If you don't, then at least try the free PSN version or XBLA demo and see if it changes your mind.

It's a brawler, pure and simple. However, the more you put into it, the more you practice, the more it gives back, giving it an immensely rewarding quality that can only be found in truly great competitive online games.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown offers some of the best versus fighting on the market.

The most realistic fighting game is back and it is great.

This is a polished and proven fighter that still has a lot left in the tank.

The game's presentation might have aged but fortunately the fun it provides hasn't. Final Showdown is also a great gateway into the world of fighting games, as it's very accessible yet hard to master. [September 2012, p.57]

The original is five years old, which you will probably notice because of the awful sound effects, but it is still one of the most in-depth fighting games of its generation. And Final Showdown is by far the best version, including the possibility to play online against other players. [July 2012, p.92]

The netcode is strong enough to encourage sustained online play. The title doesn't do enough to highlight the strides Final Showdown has taken for the series – particularly for PS3 owners, stuck with Ver.B of Virtua Fighter 5 as opposed to Xbox 360's later release of Version C – but it's a still complicated, technical beast of a fighting game, and more than ever worth the effort of learning.

It's the less expensive and the most polished version of the Virtua Fighter Saga. Yes, it's not all that new either, but the original VF5 was a strong title for hardcore and elitist versus fighting fans, and this one is definitely a revision worth buying for them.