If you really want to know... I WILL HOOK YOU UP.
Well, could you elaborate a little on that? You see, under normal circumstances, I would take GT over Ridge Racer any day and should therefore prefer Virtua Fighter.
Dr Evil hit in on the head saying that VF might be .001% more realistic. If you've never actually fought in a ring, it goes like this. Between fights you practise your technique and your strategy and you
prepare
to get better. In the ring you have to stay cool enough to apply your technique and your strategy and you
actually get better. Rinse repeat. IMO, Virtua Fighter has the closest balance of this to real life. Someone can jump in and legitamitly beat you with only a handful of basic moves. They can win on just timing and judgement. I personally think VF conveys the rythm of this closet to real life, but truthfully it happens in any good fighting game.
Could you explain the controls to me? And what logic they have? I couldn't see it in Virtua Fighter 4 myself ... are the blocks or counters maybe more realistic or complicated, in that you need to match the attack move better?
If you understand Tekken's hi/mid/low hit/minor counter/majorcounter then you are there. VF is EXACTLY the same. It feels stiff compared to Tekken for a number of reasons. First the attack strings are shorter and less numerous. So you are less likely to miss a button and still get an effective attack, or even get a combo totally be accident. Second, the input buffer in the game system is a good bit shorter, and a has can be manually cleared. Third, the game is much faster than it looks. In therms of frame advantages and descicion making it a solid step away from Tekken. VF has a well deserved reputatation for it's steep learning curve.
Of course, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, liking the individual characters better in Tekken (except the nice Storm-like Thai boxing lady first seen in VF4), there's also double the amount of them in the game. Good chance though that they'll trim that roster down again for the PS3 version.
The Characters in VF are an aquired taste. They are lame and goofy, but they are wrongly accused of being generic. They really grow on you. The character roster in VF is famous for it's enormous Variety. You are familiar with Tekken recylced characters and amalgam characters like Jin/Devil Jin, Kazuya+Jun=Jin, Law ~ Lee. Pretty much all Fighting games have that. Except for Virtua Fighter. The difference not just in the movelist (they all share 6-7 basic moves) but the strategy is immense. VF typically has the least amount of character switching amoung players in extended matches. In tournaments players typically only play one character. And the VFNet system only allows one character per account becuase alot of players ony play one character. The Skill ceiling is such that iit's hard to get bored because of your movelist. VF ads two characters per revision alternating two males or a male and female. Only one charater was ever removed and that was the Sumo wrester introduced in 3. He was one of the most popular characters but Suzuki felt guilty that he had not taken into account the properties of having alot of body fat. Taka-Arashi was removed for perfection's sake.
Please, I am genuinely interested to hear more from you about Virtua Fighter, as I really want to know - maybe I'm missing something! I thought people chose VF4 more because it introduced new features before Tekken did, and that Tekken was catching up in that respect. But I always cared more for the core fighting experience, and that's where I felt Tekken had the advantage.
I will talk your goddamn ear off about it. =)
VF4 came up in popularity for two main reasons. Tekken 4 created a massive backlash and VF4 Came to PS2. VF introduced every feature that appears in Tekken and to this day has many more. When Tekken attempted to leapfrog VF was Tekken 4. It was valient but it did not work. They backpedalled and now Tekken 5 is basicly just Tekken 3 again.
Tekken is a fine game and it's all the same shit as VF. There's alot to learn in Tekken but you will find yourself hitting a plateua sooner than you would with VF. Play VF when and if you ever desire "more of everthing".
@cthellis: yes, 'juggling' is definitely something I'd gladly exchange for other features, like more detail in the combos, more complicated defense patterns and contact detection, and maybe stamina and injuries. Only now in Tekken PSP I'm deriving some fun from trying to pull some set-pieces off in the Command Attack mode, which is like a timed 'simon says', but that's really more as a separate game than anything else.
I think juggling is a good metaphore for an ctual combination in the real life ring. Sometimes you catch a clean hit and 2 or three more just fall down on you. The effect is "what the hell was that... I couldn't defnd myself" Truth is you could have defended yourself by avoiding that first clean hit that opened you up. Jugling is a fantastic mechanic andtrust me nodoy ececutes a 75% damage juggle on
me without EARNING it. In any game.
As far as more complicated defense patterns that's one thing that really sets VF appart form Tekken and it's my favortie thing about the game. Defense is intense and very complicated! It's so fun!!! After a guardered attack you can buffer up to three throwbreaks a sidestep and a fuzzy guard!!!! I could go into all that if you want but suffice to say I play alot and I only use double breaks and sidestep/guard. The system is called "option select defense" and it's really really intense once you learn to use it. A player who can option select against a player who cant is just abolute slaughter.
Command attack mode. Never seen it but there's an extremely robust trainging mode in VF4/Evo that suprisingly goes into pretty high-level techniques, including option select defense. Try it. Evo is available tor ten dollars. The Single player game in both 4 ad Evo are bar none the best I have ever seen in a fighting game. If you like fighting games just get it. Don't worry about getting stumped, I can answer most questions. Seems like Vysez may be able to as well.