Reality Fighters is a videogame, and videogames can deliver some great experiences when it’s obvious that a game has been built around the host machine’s controller and what it can do. Think about how Super Mario 64 made it fun to simply move around the gameworld with the N64 controller, or how Mad Maestro for PS2 features one of the most novel uses of the clickable DualShock sticks in any PlayStation rhythm game. Novel functionality can’t guarantee a hit though, and when something like the PlayStation Vita comes along, there is so much potential in the device’s features that you’re inevitably going to find some gimmicky titles as well as gems such as Tearaway. If you’re one of the people who bought a Vita on day one, you’ll remember that the European launch greeted owners with traditional games such as Wipeout and Rayman…and then there were games like Reality Fighters. Whilst it takes advantage of other Vita features such as motion control and touch-based interactions, the USP was the ability to take a photo of your face and put it on a fighting game character.
Reality Fighters is nonsense
Before I go any further – how does that even make any sense? In fighting games, the characters aren’t just central to the gameplay, they also provide so much of the game’s identity and help to make it so memorable. No-one outside of hardcore NFL fans would care about the identity of every player in a Madden game, but before you get a feel for a fighting game character’s moveset, you might just pick the one that looks cool, or wacky, or outlandish, or different. No, the real value in the photo-faces comes from taking pictures of celebrity images so that you can have brawls between Taylor Swift and Channing Tatum…but I digress. Swapping faces in a fighting game doesn’t revolutionise the genre, it changes the graphics slightly, and so once the novelty has worn off you’re left trying to enjoy whatever gameplay is there.
Reality Fighters is rough
And it’s not great. Normal moves are limited in their application and variety, hit spark effects are weak and feel slightly delayed, your character jumps like they’re on the moon and backdashes feel oddly sluggish. Even if you can get used to the fighting (mercifully, special move and super inputs are fairly easy to execute on the d-pad), the Vita gimmicks present in Reality Fighters still prevent you from having any fun – tilting the handheld makes the camera look around freely rather than locking to a fixed plane, and so if you move the handheld a bit too much or are on a particularly bumpy bus journey you could quickly find yourself looking at the characters’ feet and not knowing what’s going on outside of the shot. In fairness, the Scenario Lock options offer some control over this, but there’s still no way of switching this tilt feature off completely, and even with the lock you can still be backed into a corner and not see everything that’s going on.
Reality Fighters – in conclusion
I get it – Reality Fighters is a Vita launch title designed to show off the hardware gimmicks… but this should have been a free demo with two characters, one stage and basic AI, not a retail game that someone actually put in a box and gave to store owners to put on their shelves. Anyone looking for a decent fighting game is going to buy Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and anyone looking for novel experiences that are only possible on Vita will play Tearaway. Still, if you’re willing to put up with the weird tilt camera and don’t mind a simple button basher, it’s still easier to get on with than other AR titles such as Invizimals.
Reality Fighters is currently available for free during March for PlayStation Plus members