Virtua Fighter 5 (PS3)

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Yes, the media will have you believe that the next-gen consoles and handhelds of the world will turn us all into ultra-smart folks who enjoying spending time playing casual and benign games with our family. Sure, I want my brain to get as boosted as possible -- even if means having to wear a prescription hat -- but when I fire up my PlayStation 3, I want to drop a nasty combination on another dude or whip someone to the ground as if they were made out of rags. And now there's no better way to do it than with Sega and AM2's Virtua Fighter 5.

It's hard to believe that it's been almost four years since the release of the stellar Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution -- the enhanced and budget-priced version of VF4. While in my opinion, it might have been have been the best fighter of all-time, I have been itching to do some serious next-gen fighting on my new $600 toy. The spiffed-up Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection has let me scratch some of that itch, as has EA's jaw-droppingly beautiful Fight Night Round Three, but it wasn't until I slid VF5 into my PS3 that I was finally able to achieve true kicking-people-while-fighting-as-a-cute-Asian-chick Nirvana.

Check that. It wasn't until about 15 minutes after I slid the disk into my PS3. The game has to perform an initial install to the hard drive before you get to fire away. A drag -- but a one-time-only drag, and a drag that you'll quickly forget once you check out the looks of VF5. Graphically, this is a sweet game. Evolution on the PlayStation 2 wasn't too shabby in the polygon-pushing department, but for fight fans, the fluid movement of the fighters, the smooth frame rate, and the cool atmospheric flourishes like the water effects completely justify whatever eBay scalper hostage price they had to shell out for their console.

But it's more than just the pretty pictures that fight game fans will -- or, at least, should -- appreciate; it's the actual gameplay. What makes the VF games so cool -- and more like actual fighting -- is that you can't just adopt a button-mashing offensive mindset and expect to make your way through the thing. Just like on the street or in an actual dojo, you may defeat lower ranked and unskilled fighters this way, but when you have to go up against an opponent that knows what he or she is doing, charging in with arms and legs a-flailing will usually have you eating the business end of a foot or fist. VF4:E was possibly the first fighter where I took just as much joy in evading an attack as I did in landing one, and that same joy is back in VF5. Yes, on the offensive side of the fight, things are astoundingly deep, but all of those weapons won't help you if you can't get out of the way of a punch or kick.

Happily, this time around, the new players stress speed and acrobatics over power. In VF4:E, we got to deal with Goh and Brad. Goh was a plodder and Brad was fast, but essentially a generic striker. VF5 introduces us to Eileen, whose acrobatic style isn't quite as out there as Shun Di's Drunken Kung Fu. She's still a fun character to fight as and can be quite difficult to fight against -- especially at higher levels. Also in the mix is El Blaze, whose flashy costumes and even flashier takedowns make him worth a look. While you can take any of the characters through a generic run-the-gauntlet-style Arcade mode or work on some of the more complex attacks in the practice Dojo mode, the guts of the thing -- as it was in VF4:E is the Quest mode. Compared to the Story modes in most games, where you take a character through a contrived plot in which -- conveniently -- they have to fight their way through all of the other fighters in the game, the Quest mode here seems epic. Choose your fighter and then take him or her from a fresh-faced 10th kyu-level scrapper to a multi-degree-level black belt. The game's leveling-up process is done at various arcades where you pit your version of, say, Pai Chan against another virtual player's version of another character. You may end up fighting four Akira Yukis in a row, but they are different versions of the same guy. They may be different belt levels or they may even be the same level, but just fight differently. The game does a great job of simulating going to arcade and taking on a total stranger and the character as which he fights best. It worked in Evolution, and it's just as addictive here.