Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O could pick one of the best fighters ever up off the mat

digitaltrends.com:

My favorite feature in Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O., a new PC port of Sega’s classic fighting game, isn’t its rollback netcode or 4K visuals. It’s that you can watch other people play matches from the main menu.

I don’t know how this works; whether it’s real-time, whether it’s pulling replays, or some other kind of wizardry. I kind of don’t want to know, to be honest. All I know is, whenever I fire up Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O., and I’m deciding what I want to do (do I want to practice some combos with my boy Jean? See if my friends are up for some games? Venture online? Try out somebody new?), I have to actively pull myself away from that screen. You can even watch the matches in full-screen if you really want.

It’s a great feature, and I wish every fighting game had it. Every time I watch another match, I learn something new, whether it’s something I want to try myself or something I want to learn how to beat. That’s what makes fighting games great: mastery, watching yourself improve, seeing something new, and saying “I wanna do that.” And it’s right there, front and center, as soon as you boot it up. Players from all over the world, playing Virtua Fighter together.

• Virtua Fighter 5 is returning for the first time in 18 years, sort of
• Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown coming next week as a PS4 exclusive

Maybe R.E.V.O. is trying to make up for lost time.

Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O. is kind of weird; it’s the latest edition of Virtua Fighter 5, a video game that first released on consoles in 2007 and in arcades in Japan in 2006. It’s important that you understand this. Street Fighter IV is widely credited with reviving the fighting game genre after a (relatively) lean decade in 2008. I’ve never liked this story; there were plenty of good fighting games during that time: Guilty Gear, Tekken, Soul Calibur, and yeah, Virtua Fighter, had excellent entries during that period, among many others.