Final Fury

There are a lot of things that Kluge Interactive, the developer behind the stellar VR music-wave-simulator Synth Riders, is doing right with Final Fury. But the biggest thing Kluge is nailing right out of the gate is the price point. I don't often consider price when writing a review, but after playing Final Fury I found myself nodding that yep, 10 bucks feels just about right. Final Fury is launching in Early Access, and though it works really well, I think most gamers will agree that there is a satisfying amount of content in this early version for 10 dollars. If they were charging 20 bucks? Maybe not so much.

Final Fury is a VR fighting game, but don't get it mixed up with the plethora of boxing and fitness titles you can download on Meta Quest 3. Instead, picture something like Street Fighter or Tekken, but played out in first person. The players get fun little intros, then they are dropped into the ring, with about 10 yards separating them. The camera shifts so you are looking out of the eyes of your character. After that, it’s entirely up to you to use the tools at you disposal to beat the snot out of your opponent. 

There are a number of standard moves that each character has, and they interact with each other the way you might expect. Your basic light attack is executed by throwing punches with your controllers in your hands, but of course, some characters have a much longer range than others. Throwing your arms out to your sides and then forward in a hugging motion initiates a grab, which sends the camera out for a birds-eye view of you pile-driving your opponent. Put your arms up in front of you to block, just like you would in real life. Additionally, each character has three specials, which are generally triggered with a simple arm motion, sometimes accompanied by a button press. All simple, all easy to learn and execute. Best two out of three wins, then it’s back to the character selector to try again.

The structure of the game will feel very familiar (though kinda basic) to fighting fans. There is a brief campaign that you can play through with each character – it took me about a half hour per run each time – with unlockable skins as rewards for completing it. The first time through, you unlock a character and an arena, which brings the total of each to six. There is also online multiplayer, with both quick matches against randos and hosted private match rooms if you want to take on a buddy.

The multiplayer works very well. I jumped into a session with Gaming Nexus’ Joseph Moorer, and we had no problems whatsoever hopping in and out of matches, using the Quest 3’s built in call function to talk smack. We played enough rounds that we each had a chance to try out every character in the game against the others. Though I had played the campaign already with several fighters, playing in multiplayer really brought the differences between the characters to light.

For example, in single player I favor Glitch, a robot character that has a variety of ranged attacks. Glitch can shoot heat-seeking missiles at opponents, and toss timed land mines down onto the ground, which can lead to some fun combos where you kinda drive enemies into trapped areas. I found that I was pretty much able to wreck the campaign with Glitch, which was fun but started feeling borderline cheap after a few runs.

So the first round I fought against Joe, I brought in Glitch against Joe's selection of Diesel, a sort of rock-and-roll orc with limited mobility and range. I absolutely annihilated him. But then Joe pivoted to Tempest, an ice-based all-around character with a few ranged attacks, and suddenly I found myself on the defensive against a flurry of attacks. Joe found ways to counter my cheap nonsense, and before long I was on my back looking at the ceiling, listening to his taunts.

In true fighting game form, there are ways around everything, if only you can remember to use them and pull off the timing. Punches can be blocked for a time, grabs can counter blocks, ranged attacks can be countered or dodged. But beyond this rock-paper-scissors dynamic come the individual character stats. If Joe had managed to barrel through my barrage of projectiles to get his rocker-orc close enough, he would have absolutely laid me out with his overpowered punches. Diesel has no range, but he’s ludicrously strong.

The point I’m making here is that even with just six characters, there is some depth to Final Fury that requires a bit of practice. Each of the characters plays differently enough that not only do you need to figure out how they move, but also how to use them against each of the other characters. Yes, you can cheese the campaign by running away and shooting missiles, but a thoughtful human opponent will make Swiss cheese of that strategy.

Kluge Interactive is not the sort of developer to just dump something on the market and walk away from it. They already took Final Fury back to the drawing board once to rethink the basic controls, and you can bet (if their constant content drops on Synth Riders are any precedent) that they will continue to add more characters and content – and therefore more depth – to Final Fury. I would expect that as the game grows, that 10-dollar price that I find so reasonable might eventually go up a bit. So the Early Access release might be the best time to hop in, both to start learning the ropes and to lock in one of the most reasonable deals in VR gaming.