GVN Review: Killer Instinct: Season 1 (Xbox One)

Killer Instinct Season One
Xbox One
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Double Helix

Killer Instinct was a day one Xbox One launch title that in all fairness, was an incomplete game. Six characters, a limited online mode, no story mode, and oddly enough one of the most in-depth training mode around.  So to review the game on those merits alone would probably make people not even bother looking into the famed franchise.  So I figured it would be fair to review the game after it's final season one update which finally made Killer Instinct a full game.

For the younger generations, Killer Instinct was a crazy combo fest fighter from the mid 90's that was developed by Rare exclusively for Nintendo to help demerit their kid friendly image.  the first Killer Instinct was a great game in its intense twitch based combo system, counters, fatalities and fast paced gameplay.  A few years later, Killer Instinct 2 was released with more characters, more insane combos, a new auto-double combo system, and better graphics.  Needless to say that the franchise was dropped and completely forgotten by Nintendo and Rare since then.  Some years later Rare is sold to Microsoft, and the rumors start flying about a KI revival during the entire lifespan of the Xbox 360.  So just before the announcement of the Xbox One system, we received confirmation and here we are a year later.

GVN Review: Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown

It has been 5 years since Virtua Fighter 5 vanilla was released on consoles.  Since then there have been 2 new updates to the game.  Virtua Fighter 5R was released in Japanese arcades only, never to see the light of day on any consoles.  A valiant effort was put forth by many fans from the USA in the form of a 500 page petition to get the game in some form onto American shores.  I was among the ten thousand plus signatures.  The petition was hand delivered to Sega in person and for a while it seemed like they merely glanced over it and filed it away.  A few months later the announcement of Final Showdown was revealed and that it WOULD see a console release.  A full year after testing in the arcades, Sega revealed it would be a digital download release at the low price of $15 for both the PS3 and Xbox 360.  So 5 years we waited and finally received the latest update for Virtua Fighter 5, but how does it hold up?