Reality Fighters is one of the launch titles for the PS Vita meant to show off the AR capabilities of the little console. Plus it’s also, you know, a fighting game. The prime question is, however: is it fun? Let’s punch through this review to find out.
Fighting games have been the darling genre of video arcades for decades. The first of these games, Heavyweight Champ, came in 1976, and actually used boxing gloves in the arcade machine. Later games, such as Yie Ar Kung Fu (1985) refined the competitive nature of the fighting genre, and separated it from brawler-type games (which featured a single player versus hordes of AI opponents). The early to mid 1990s saw a golden age of arcade fighters, and brought us games that were arguably the pinnacle of the fighting genre, such as Street Fighter II in 1991, Mortal Kombat in 1992, and Virtua Fighter in 1993. By the end of the decade, though, the decline of the video arcade was evident, but fighting games were still hanging on toward the end, and the first game in the Soul series, Soul Edge in 1998, saw a recent, popular sequel in Soul Calibur 5. The rise of the home console saw many of these games become extremely popular outside of the arcades, and it’s commonly accepted that the phenomenal increase in processing power in home consoles was the proverbial Mr Stabby for video arcades. The ported fighter games are still seeing a ridiculous number of success in sequels, HD re-releases, and crossovers. I’m not going to even start delving into the anime fighting game territory, because then we’ll be here forever.
Reality Fighters is developed by Novarama, who are no strangers to Augmented Reality games (they also brought us Invizimals for PSP, and Eye of Judgment and Start the Party! for PS3). The “Reality” end of the title comes from two factors: the game’s ability to import any real person as a fighter, and from the environments. When you fire up the game, you’re prompted to create a character out of your own face. Feel free to use any number and combination of willing and unwilling victims, however.
Once the camera takes your picture, it maps your face onto a virtual body, and you’re ready to dress up your avatar in whichever amalgamation of ridiculous clothing and features you want (the game boasts over 400 pieces of clothing, from clown suits to Borat-style swimwear to…well, just about anything you can think of, including a few you can’t). You can even choose one of the various fighting styles within the game, from boxing, to Kung Fu, to styles you’d be hard-pressed to find in a real dojo, never mind anywhere outside of the campiest of camp B-movies. These outfits are not just for show, mind. They actually affect your fighter’s performance, so it’s in your best eventual interest to unlock the best gear. Progress far enough in the game, and you can unlock weapons to use in your fights, giving a little more incentive to play often, since gear costs a lot of points! The silliness doesn’t even stop at the weapons: you can purchase some interesting stuff, such as garden gnomes, air horns, and even shopping carts and washing machines.
After you have a fighter configured, you can either jump straight into the action, go through the solo story mode, play an unending stream of challengers, or look online for non-AI opponents. The solo mode, narrated by a terrifying likeness of Pat Morita’s Mr Miyagi from the Karate Kid (with a passable imitation of his voice—it would have been nice to have his actual voice, but seeing as how he’s not quite as alive as he used to be…), takes you through a series of bouts with the game’s built-in fighters. And this is where the other half of the “Reality” bit of the title comes in. Should you choose to, you can use one of the AR cards that shipped with the PS Vita (or a reasonable, hand-drawn facsimile thereof) as a base for the arena. Wherever you place the card becomes a battleground. You can put the card in as many bizarre places as you’d like to see fights. Or not. The game also has a number of pre-selected environments for you to play in should you not feel like digging around for the AR cards.
The AR card version allows you to move around the action as much as you like, and even zoom into and out of the action. It looks very impressive, but it can be oh-so-distracting. And as we all know so well: looks ain’t everything, kid. You could also forego the card itself and just poke your PS Vita out a window and start the fight up, but without the AR card to provide a sense of scale, your mileage will vary lots and lots. The pre-loaded environments are not as interactive as the AR card version, but there’s still a surprising amount of interaction: you can actually look around you in this virtual environment, including looking at the sky and the ground. These environments range from such lovely places as an English countryside to a Chinese courtyard. Also, in this day and age of simply everything being a lighter shade of CGI, it’s lovely to see environments that are actually photographed and stitched together so beautifully.
The fighting itself is a fairly simple affair, since the game aims to mainstreamify things for a wider audience than simply Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, and Tekken fans. Reality Fighters allows you to use either the standard button-based fighting mechanism, or use the touch controls for something different. The standard controls are no different to what you’d expect from regular fighting games: buttons for high and low punches and kicks, and analog stick for movement. The touch controls simplify complex stick waggles and button combinations, making a simple fighting scheme even simpler for those who don’t like to remember “quarter-turn toward opponent + high punch”.
What I liked about Reality Fighters is the sheer silliness of it all. Here’s a game that does not take itself seriously in any manner, means, way, or form. The movements are silly, the clothes are silly, the weapons are silly, and the narrator is silly. I never thought I’d find this much mirth in a fighting game, which is normally such a serious genre. The other great aspect is the fact that the game is accessible without being oversimplified. Sure, timing is not the critical issue here, but it’s still fun to pick up and play for shorts bouts of time when you’re feeling bored and need something silly to entertain you until the ad breaks on TV are over.
On the down side (and like the top of any good mountain, there are several down sides), the game’s single-player campaign can be beaten almost on the basis of one button. The opponent AI can be figured out very quickly, and each fighter in the roster tends to fight in a predictable enough manner. You’re likely to find far more enjoyment in going up against human opponents, though; just as much to see what strange combinations of costumes other people have come up with as for the fighting. Reality Fighters is integrated with Near, allowing you to use Near to find nearby players, so that’s handy.
The other downside is that playing a fight can get a bit weird, given that, even without AR mode, you have to move the PS Vita around to see the playing field. The battle can pretty much go everywhere around the environment, meaning that you have to swing yourself left and right to follow the action. You can mostly confine the fight to the screen via a setting in non-AR mode (this setting can’t be toggled in AR mode) and even though the action is confined, the camera still jiggles when you play.
Another, admittedly minor, issue, is that you can’t delete custom fighters, although you can edit them seventeen ways from Thursday and back again, taking the back route via Saskatoon. So if you’ve created someone you don’t like, it’s a simple matter to replace them. But you can’t delete them.
Despite the downs, there is still a lot of fun to be had, especially if you’re able to take photos of faces of people you don’t like and use them as opponents in the game. There’s something blood-calmingly cathartic about beating up a virtual avatar of an annoying person. The wonderful thing is that it even works on photos and drawings (although I had some trouble getting the face recognition to recognize anime faces due to their freakish proportions). So if you want to have George Bush in a fight against Lion-O, it’s a simple matter of hunting down the right photos.
Overall, Reality Fighters is little more than an amusing distraction that will keep you entertained for short periods. The fighting isn’t anything complicated, but the most fun you’ll have with the game is likely creating and dressing up characters. It’s also a great game to show off the AR functionality to other people, and it’s also one of the “bargain” level PS Vita games, so at the very least it’s worth a look if this sort of thing is your brutal cuppa.
Final Score: 6 out of 10 alternate reality, fighting prawns
Detailed information:
Developer: Novarama
Publisher: SCEE
Distributor: Ster-Kinekor
Platform: PS Vita
RRP: R299
Age Rating: 12
Website: http://us.playstation.com/psvita/games-and-media/psv-reality-fighters.html