Monday Impressions: Tekken Revolution

tekken rev MIWhat? A free-to-play Tekken game? It may sound too good to be true but it is. And it's pretty darn good too. Tekken Revolution is a free-to-play game released exclusively on the PS3 via the PSN in June 11, 2013. It uses the same engine as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and various assets from the same game such as art, music, stages, character models and move sets.

There are 8 playable characters available from the get go as well as 4 more characters to unlock.

They are:

  • Marshall Law
  • Paul Phoenix
  • Asuka Kazama
  • Kazuya Mishima
  • Lars Alexandersson
  • Lili Rochefort
  • King
  • Jack-6

Unlockable Characters:

  • Alisa Bosconovitch
  • Leo Kliesen
  • Steve Fox
  • Bryan Fury

If your favorite Tekken character didn't make it, more characters are planned to be added through future updates.

You may ask yourself "if this is free, why would I buy Tekken Tag Tournament 2 then?". Aside from the small roster of characters, what sets this game appart from Tekken Tag 2 or even Tekken 6 is the lack of the bound mechanic. A bound is that extra bounce that allows you to extend combos. In Tekken 6 and Tag 2, you are allowed 1 bound per combo string. In Tekken Revolution, moves that would normally bound a grounded opponent would allow you to combo after it if it is the starting hit. If you try to perform the bound mid-combo, it just knocks the opponent to the ground instantly. The removal of this may not sound like a big deal but seasoned Tekken players will understand the difference the lack of bound would make.

You will also notice that some moves have special tags on them like a red or blue star. Red star moves would signify that this move has invincibility during a portion of the attack and usually causes a hard knockdown. Blue star tagged moves allow for critical hits which can add a significant amount of damage. You can tell which moves these are as they are identified on the character select screen as well as having special visual effects on screen when the move is performed The inclusion of these attributes definitely move the game to a more casual level as the invincibility moves, though unsafe onblock, are very strong and can award some fraudulent wins (I know I have).

As with any casual free-to-play game, there are things you can buy with real money. That being the premium coins. You see there are 4 types of consumable points, two of which require time to recharge. Red coins, called Arcade Coins, are arcade coins which let you play arcade mode to grind for a bit of experience and gold and is replenished every 60 minutes. You can stack up to a maximum of 2 Arcade Coins. Blue coins, called Battle Coins, are spent for playing online, be it ranked or player matches. You can stock up to 5 of these and each replenish every 30 minutes. Premium Tickers are a bit unique as they can be spent to either play Arcade more or online matches if you've run out of the red or blue coins. If you win an online match using a Premium Ticket, you are award one back. A nice risk and reward chance when using premium tickets online. Lastly are the Premium Coins. These coins works the same way as Premium Tickets and can only be purchased from the PlayStation Store.

Earning experience levels up your account which then awards you points to power up your desired characters. The gold is than spent when applying these points to 3 power up slots. Power, which lets you deal more damage. Endurance, which increases your starting maximum health. And Vigor, which increases the chances of critical hits.

What I like about this game is that there is no true "pay-to-win" aspect here as you'd still need to actually play the fighting game in order to grind experience and gold as opposed to simply buying points for the power ups. Sadly, there is one downside to Tekken Revolution and that is there is no real Training Mode. The complete move set for each character is listed but you can only really access it when playing in Arcade Mode. While waiting for an online match, you are thrown in a sort of training mode against the very dumb AI as the game searches for an opponent. While a nice inclusion, you cannot access your move list or pick the stage. I've only brought what little combo knowledge I have from Tekken 6 and Tag 2 and modified them a bit to make up for the lack of bound.

Is it worth a try?

Of course! It's a fully fledged modern Tekken game, albeit without bound, that is free-to-play. No pay-to-win, no Freemium bullroar. The coins may sound like they take a while to recharge but I'd say it's handled well. I usually start with 1 arcade coin, burn through the 5 online coins, use another arcade coin. By the time I'm done with that, I'd usually have another online coin already recharged. Another good reason to try this game out is that it uses that magic online infrastructure as Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I usually find 3-4 bar connections where you barely feel any lag.

Monday Impressions: Xbox One reveal

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Last week, Microsoft finally revealed their next console naming it Xbox One. It was an hour long presentation. A presentation that answered one question, but created many more leaving viewers either disappointed, or confused. I was both.

When the event started, Microsoft didn't waste anytime at all. After a brief introduction, they revealed the Xbox One. Unlike Sony's reveal of the PS4, they showed the console upfront together with its new controller.

Xbox-One-logoAfter looking at the console for the first time, I got excited. But all that excitement went away when the presentation went forward. The features were now being talked about, and this is when the confusion started. They started talking about the improved voice recognition, that allows you to quickly switch from game, to TV, to movies with a simple voice command. To sum it all up, the new features for the Xbox One are features gamers would ignore. They are indeed neat features, but I'd rather have an in-game demo of the console's power rather than a demonstration on something I might use a couple of times in the console's lifespan. These features gave me mixed signals, giving me the impression that they didn't focus much on what the device will be used most of the time, which is as a gaming device. I stopped watching TV when I was introduced to the internet, just letting you know Microsoft.

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They then moved to EA Sports. At this point I was thrilled we are now moving towards games, but then I got disappointed at what was shown. Again let me sum it up with the order of which how they revealed the new titles - Sports games, Forza 5, one new IP, more sports talk, then Call of Duty: Ghost, that's it folks! And each one were just trailers of the games, not actual demonstration was done during the event. It's obvious that they are holding back on the games for other events because they did mention Xbox One having 15 new exclusives in the first year, with 8 of them being new franchises. That's great to hear, but I don't understand why they needed to hold back on the games, especially when they reveal the console for the first time. And as much as they want xbox to be more than a gaming console(that's what I got out of the presentation), it will always be treated as a gaming device.  I buy consoles based on the games that will be on the console, not because of Kinect 2.0, or any of the features shown during the event.

It should have been a no brainer for Microsoft to focus on why people buy their consoles in the first place. I was expecting game demo's, graphics demonstrations, neat features that would enhance the gaming experience, because at the end of the day, majority of your consumers are gamers, and that's what they want to see. The presentation didn't feel like it was catered to that kind of crowd. Microsoft did mention that during this year's E3, its going to be all about games, but I still can't get the concept of them leaving nothing substantial to create a good first impression, because one thing is for sure, Call of Duty: Ghost is not an eye catcher since it will be available in almost all platforms.

Horray for highly detailed dogs for next-gen Call of Duty!

Putting the presentation aside, The Xbox One, based on the specs given, it could match what the PS4 can generate, but the problem is at this point, there's was no demo given to really have an idea of the Xbox One's performance. The new Kinect, which apparently is required at all times with the Xbox One, has went through a lot of improvements in terms of how accurate they capture your movements. The new controller has no new gimmick included in it as well. I like the new design, but aside from that, nothing much has changed. They are still deciding on what to call the select and start button which is funny because if there's one thing that shouldn't be changed, its that.

Will you buy the Xbox One?

At this point, I'll have to wait. I can't base the console on this lackluster presentation. But honestly, I think everybody that is considering a next-gen console should wait before making up their mind. How long? Until E3 at least, because that's when the big three companies go all in. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft will definitely go all out in their games during the big event, so it all depends on what they have in store for us on the first week of June. Microsoft dropped the ball on their reveal for me, but I won't count them out yet with E3 only weeks away. Right now, PS4, and even the Wii U is ahead of Xbox One, but all that can change with one big event. The console wars has officially begun!

Did you watch the Xbox One reveal? What were your thoughts?

Monday Impressions: The Amazing Spider-Man

monday impressions amazing spider-manIron Man 3 just hit theaters and strangely enough, we haven't seen a Marvel movie game tie in after The Avengers. The most recent Marvel movie game we got was The Amazing Spider-man, the Spider-man game that was thought to bring life back to open world web swinging. The Amazing Spider-man was developed by Beenox, the same studio that did the two previous Spider-man games up tp this point. Now while I can say that Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions was a decent game and personally have not tried Spider-man: Edge of Time. Edge of Time looked boring just from the few gameplay trailers that came out. When majority of a game's trailers do not show gameplay and only show developers talking about how "good" it is, it's usually not.

Shattered Dimensions had you control four different Spider-men across different universes and Edge of Time had you control two Spider-man from the present and the future. Both games had web swinging but were not open world. The Amazing Spider-man returned you to the city of New York where you are free to swing around where ever you please. The previous Spider-man game that featured and open world was Spider-man: Web of Shadows, which I honestly think is a good game.

amazing spider-man 01The story takes place after the events of the movie where Doc Conners is in jail and Oscorp continues his research and mutates animals into familiar Spider-man villains. The mutation becomes a virus that the animals spread around the city turning people into monsters and it's up to Spider-man to stop them. The story fits the movie's lore and the voice acting is also pretty spot on. But maybe they should have picked a different person to voice Spider-man instead of using Donatello from the 2003 TMNT series.

Alright, my main gripe with The Amazing Spider-man is the web swinging control is far inferior compared to Web of Shadows. Jumping, wall crawling, web swinging, and web zipping are all very floaty. In the context of the open world just being a medium for you to travel to the mission areas, it's functional but after Web of Shadows and Spider-man 2 giving such a fulfilling web swinging controls, this very gimped version of swinging is a step back. Oringinally I thought that it was fine since there's not really anything in the open world for you to do but then I found out that there are collectible comic book pages that you can find to unlock comic book issues in the gallery mode. Instead of zipping to the exact building or water tower I want, I end up going to the wrong building 3 blocks down and losing sight of the collectible.

amazing spider-man 02Combat is pretty mundane as well, being a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum's counter system where Spdiey's spider sense ripples would appear above his head when an enemy is about to strike. It's not bad by any means and the ripples makes sense with Spidey's power but it just doesn't feel right. Combat is floaty, there are no combos to speak off aside from hammering the attack button and occasionally hitting the circle button to web enemies to the floor or walls. Landing counters feels very vauge as well since the animations for combos and counters look very similar.

Long story short, The Amazing Spider-man is by no means the best Spider-man game out there but it's decent and is probably the best Spider-man game from Beenox. If you can get this game for a good price and like the wall crawling hero then go for it. All my gripes mainly stem from my liking of Web of Shadows.

Monday Impressions: Video Game Reboots Trending...

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Reboot trend Do you feel it? The sudden shift of reboots being released and announced more frequently? Believe it or not, this is a good thing. Just like other entertainment media such as music and movies, this is inevitable, and some franchise or series must be repackaged for the current generation. Some are turned out really bad, but the recent ones show way more promise than their originals. This is a risk worth investing now. We are slowly moving to the next generation, and more reboots will actually help the industry in the long run...will it?

it's good to see reboots happen now in this industry. If you talked reboots 10 years ago, everybody would laugh at the idea since it seemed a bit early. Now, it's about right. We have crazy famous titles going past the number 5 mark already, and we have titles that come out yearly now like Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty. It's not a long wait anymore for the next release of your favorite title. It's a different time, and some games actually fall behind because publishers consider it a risk to release a new one, because again, its a different time. That's why reboots are now essential to bring great franchises back into the spotlight, with a fresh new coat of paint of course.

For the past 6 months, we get the taste of how effective reboots are right now. One example - XCOM, a game completely out of many gamer's comfort zone caught them by surprise how a turn-based strategy that punishes you with a single mistake could be fun. The 1994 original was a cult hit and I consider the old XCOM: Enemy Unknown to be one of the founding fathers of great turn-based strategy games. Thanks to efforts at Firaxis, a franchise was reborn.

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But not all reboots are performed well. You wish for an example you say? Syndicate is the one game that only comes into mind. If you want to reboot something, the worst thing you can do, in my book, is change how it's played completely. The original Syndicate was  actually a Real Time Strategy game, but thanks to EA being...EA, it converted a beloved title in the most generic form of gaming today, an FPS shooter. Was it a forgettable experience? Yea. sadly, it was. It had great potential, but it was poorly executed, and the push to convert it to FPS was the worst idea I've heard. What's the point of rebooting if you won't stay true to the original? Yes?

Reboots can be tricky, especially with a strong fan base. Let's put Tomb Raider at the spotlight shall we? Tomb Raider, which was released just last month got a lot of praise, but prior to the release of the game, everybody was nervous on how they would react to the final product. Even the developers were anxious to see if their years of commitment didn't just destroy the most iconic female protagonist in gaming history. It was bold of them to take a project like this, and the end result is quite impressive(working on the review right now, just bearing the MP). One way to notice if a reboot has succeeded is not by the sales, but if both the old and new fans are happy with the new version of the game, and Crystal Dynamics I believe hit that.

Tomb Raider is actually the best example of how a reboot should be. Mostly familiar, but updated in terms of mechanics and visual appearance. The classic Tomb Raider games were great in its time, but were restricted in really bring that Indiana Jones adventure. Now, rebooting the series since it's now possible just makes a lot of sense, and making an orgins story made it much sweeter. Thanks to Uncharted showing us that third person adventures can be just as big as a hollywood movie, their timing in bringing back Lara Croft was perfect. Of course, we all know Tomb Raider was actually the original Uncharted and that the Uncharted series was inspired by it, so it's kind of fitting for Lara to go through all those hollywood-like action scenes. Even though she was way more punished compared to Nathan Drake.

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Another great reboot that showed up recently is the reboot to Devil May Cry called DmC" Devil May Cry(still have no idea why its called that). It got a bit of heat because of Ninja Theory's and Capcom's decision to make Dante more... emo.. But if you shake off the new look and just play the game, you'll quickly notice everything that makes Devil May Cry is intact. A bit more simplified, but definitely still fun to great to experiment different combos with Dante's arsenal. thanks to the whole look, I think I can say they created a divide, with people preferring the old to the new, which is not the best position Capcom was hoping for sure. Regardless, at least gameplay isn't messed.

Reboots are trending from the looks of things, and we will see more of them. If they do, they came at the right time since it's the right time for some franchises to get the recycle treatment. You shouldn't consider reboots a sign of the industry running out of idea, but consider it as keeping iconic franchises alive and providing different variations for the old and current generation. All forms of media do it, and the fact that we see more in video games means that the industry is moving forward. There's still a lot of series' that deserve a reboot, and I'm pretty excited what shows up in the future. Will this trend turn out good in the long run? Well, anything can happen but its off to a good start.

Since were talking reboots, got anything in mind?

 

 

Monday Impressions: StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm(Zerg campaign)

SC2 HotS Two weeks ago, way before the long weekend thanks to holy week and way before BioShock Infinite blew my mind, I was playing a game on my PC. A game that just went live with it's expansion. Thanks to it updating your game client to the most recent version of the game, all I needed was an account that had already activated that expansion. Thankfully a friend graciously offered me to try it out when he's not online, so I took the chance and started playing Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm's Zerg campaign.

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I'm pretty grateful a friend of mine Moe, gave me this opportunity since with the crazy 1st quarter line up of games coming out, I wanted the expansion but it wasn't my priority. Heart of the Swarm expands the Starcraft 2 game with a continuation of the game's story and added units for both campaign and the crazy famous multiplayer that is all over E-Sports right now. My focus is the campaign mode. I enjoyed what Blizzard did in the Terran campaign, so I was quite curious how the Zerg would play out.

The gameplay is nothing new. Everything is quite familiar and that's a good thing. Minor visual aids are added into the game such as showing the number of harvesters you have in a given hatchery, but aside from that, same game, just different skin.

If you haven't finished the Terran campaign, then playing the Zerg campaign will be an instant spoiler for you right off the bat. Heck, the new menu screen is spoiler enough. So if you have no idea about the story, skip the paragraph below, or simple read at your own risk.

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With Kerrigan no longer the Queen of Blades, she regains her memories and actually has no recollection of her ever being the  Zerg queen. It's as if that part of her was ripped out of her when you activated the Protoss device. Apparently her ability to control Zerg is still there, but nowhere near as her old self. Through the course of the game, you slowly see Kerrigan regain her control as the Zerg queen, placing all her focus in getting revenge from Mengsk, the Dominion leader.

From what I'm told, I am halfway through the story and its pretty much straightforward really. A bit of Kerrigan romance with Jim Raynor here and there, and her getting a grip of the Zerg swarm once again. The story has nothing fancy or anything that would make your head hurt. It's a personal vendetta for Kerrigan to kill Mengsk, and that's mostly the main angle. The real overall threat introduced in the Terran campaign still lingers in the story's background, which made me to believe that part in the story will conclude during the Protoss campaign, or Blizzard says otherwise and adds more expansions to extend the game's lifespan.

The missions in the game play out very similar to the Terran campaign. you are usually given two planets with different variety of missions, each having a new unit introduced and unlocked for the player to use. A bit of player choice was given there but its more of what you prefer doing first than anything else. One planet and mission introduces the Mutalisk unit, while the other unlocks the banelings.

Just like the Terran's upgrade feature, which allows you to add a certain upgrade to improve or add an added effect to the unit, the Zerg has evolution and strains that change certain zerg units to your liking. each unit in the game has three abilities you can pick from which can be changed at any time outside of a mission, like giving zerglings increased movement speed, or more health regeneration to roaches. But since you have to pick one out of the three available, it boils down to how you want to play that unit.

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Customization becomes a bit deeper with evolution. As you progress through the campaign, you are given two choices to evolve that given unit permanently. The choice you make on this one disregards the other evolution. Some are pretty hard decisions since both come out strong, while some are just a no brainer. It's a good addition and encourages an additional playthrough to try different evolutions.

Hero leveling is something new in this campaign. With Kerrigan slowly getting her powers back, doing side objectives or moving forward into the campaign gives kerrigan levels which improve her damage and health. Reaching a certain threshold like level 10 for example, allows you to pick a new ability . There's always two choices when you reach a certain point, and you can only pick one at a time. But there's room to experiment since you can change her abilities anytime outside a mission.

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Missions in the game is quite similar to most RTS. Some are full on base against base, while some are limited unit missions with Kerrigan, or survival missions that require you to hold off for a given amount of time, the usual seen in RTS games. I'm playing on brutal difficulty because I like giving myself a hard time, and I'm definitely  getting the challenge. It felt like a refresher course for me since I'm originally a Zerg player and playing on that level kept me at the edge or my seat. The computer is relentless.

The added evolutions and the mix of old and new units make the campaign worth playing. As you upgrade and evolve your units, you might feel a bit overpowered, but it's really just another angle on how you play that certain unit. I still think the drop pods of the Terran in the first campaign is one of the strongest upgrades, and I'm still on the lookout for something as strong.

I don't plan on touching the multplayer exclusively anytime soon though, sad to say. I was completely addicted to the MP when Starcraft 2 first went live and I just don't have time to get used to the meta all over again. Starcraft 2 can be complex, and believe it or not, it involves a lot of practice and skill to rise up. I've done it, and again, I just don't have time. Maybe ill do a few rounds just for fun, to try out the new units on each side, but my reaching the top division days are over.

The campaign is fun but nothing groundbreaking is seen here. But one thing is for sure though - As much as Starcraft 2 is the same game way back when the first game came out, the game is still so much fun for any RTS fan. It's formula is so simple that a casual or new player can pick it up and have fun, but at the same time complex and deep that it can also satisfy the professional and hardcore. Blizzard really struck gold with Stacraft, and they maintained it so well that the sequel and its expansions will have the same, or even longer lifespan as the original. be it campaign or multiplayer, Starcraft 2 is still the king of the RTS genre. It's that simple