Getting Ready For The Next Battle?

Here I am with another blog post about one of my favorite topics: videogames. (Music reviews will resume shortly).

I’ve been rotating among many games without really sticking to just one from start to finish. Those that are on my “now playing list” include Fallout 3, Tekken 6, Real Heroes: Firefighter (looks terrible, but plays quite well), Need for Speed: Shift, Colin McRae Dirt 2 (was on a racing games fix last week), Dragon Age: Origins, and Borderlands. I’ve spent the most time playing Fallout 3; in fact I can tell you that all other games I play are from the times when I’m exhausted with Fallout 3 and want to step away from its “post-apocalyptia” for 2 hours. Except for Tekken 6, I haven’t played the others long enough to have solid opinions about them, which is why I’ll only talk about Tekken 6.

Let me get the history out first, because it’s significant to my comment about the game. Originally, Tekken 6 was set to be released somewhere in 2006-2007 as one of the exclusive PlayStation 3 titles, I guess so as to entice gamers to buy the mammoth Sony console instead of its Microsoft rival’s. Eventually it got confirmed for Xbox 360, but both gaming consoles went Tekken-less for the next two years, and meanwhile the game came out on the arcade as an attempt to revive the languishing arcade industry. To placate frustrated Tekken enthusiasts who want to play at home, the final product came with two additional characters that weren’t in the original Tekken 6, although this update was also released in the arcade a year earlier with the subtitle “Bloodline Rebellion”.

While I am a fighting game nut, as I’ve repeatedly stated in my past posts (and even compiling my top 10), I have always admired but not grown attached to the Tekken series. I played Tekken 2 and 3 a ton and repeatedly saw the endings of all their fighters, but I’ve never gotten to the point when all I could think of was how I could be better at either games, or when all I could obsess about was that I either play their sequels or live being less of a person. Games like Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Guilty Gear XX, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs SNK 2, Soul Calibur 2, Last Blade 2, and most recently, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, I anticipated like a kid waiting to tout his A+ report card to his parents. I never felt that way waiting for any Tekken games.

Yet, I felt bummed about Tekken 6’s delay because 2007 was a dry year for fighting games, so in the meantime, my then-newly bought Xbox 360 had only those gray shooters. But I didn’t begrudge Namco, because better that it spends a longer time to create a much-refined game, than a shorter time to release a buggy game, right? Meanwhile, let’s look at the arcade copy and hope that the home release is even better!

Two years, and what did Namco add? Two fighters, and a “scenario campaign” mode. Could I even tell you how much I despised waiting two more years just for those?

Okay, the fighters. From a design standpoint, Tekken has always distinguished itself with characters that look more urbane and “fresh off the streets” (well, except for the kangaroos, bears, and dinosaurs) than other fighting game series, but not lacking in personality as it tends to be with wrestling games or Virtua Fighter. Its fighters also fight in ways familiar to those keen to martial arts – either by personal involvement, or by watching movies. It has mostly been like that since the first Tekken, and the four original Tekken 6 exclusive characters like Bob, Miguel, Zafina and Leo did not deviate from that tradition. They don’t look especially inspired, but whatevs. Lars and Alisa were the two characters they added in Tekken 6’s home release, and what exactly do I make of them?

That dude is Lars. He wears ridiculous spandex, has a ridiculous hair, and probably thinks he’s a superhero. He also has amnesia, which is always a trope with Japanese stories, which of course reduces the cool factor of said character by 100. He fights by jumping and running all over the place. Fascinating.

Alisa at least got an exciting fighting style going for her. She’s a cyborg, boosters can come out on her backside and chainsaws on her arms, and she can even remove her head (!). That said, I think she, as with Lars, looks goofy.

Why is it that Japanese games these days can’t design a character that don’t look like one who leapt off from the pages of fashion magazines aimed for the most annoying Shibuya hellspawns? Final Fantasy XIII? Devil May Cry? Kavin Glavier from Apollo will-the-real-Ace-attorney-please-stand-up Justice? All the recent King of Fighters? Kingdom Hearts? The World Ends With You? I’m sick to the stomach of seeing that kind of design. Sure, Lars and Alisa do not represent the whole game, but dang I had to wait two more years just for them and just so I can see their story in the Scenario Campaign mode.

Oh and the bloody Scenario Campaign. I play fighting games for instant gratification. I take up the controllers, beat people up, end of the happy lovemaking. I did like the little story sequences that occur at the beginning, middle and end of each playthrough in Tekken 5 because they gave each fighters some character, but they’re short and snappy, and the portions when I’m playing the game felt like how it would play on the arcade – short, but satisfying. In Tekken 6, I cannot see the each fighter’s story without having to play the Scenario Campaign mode, which is loaded with long yet boring cutscenes (of Lars and Alisa) that take themselves so seriously, they even had to quote Nietzsche (and wow, thanks for making it about the two least engaging characters of the game). To make it worse, Scenario Campaign doesn’t play like a fighting game, but more like a beat-em up a la Streets of Rage, minus the multiplayer and minus the moves that clear swarms of enemies when I’m surrounded by them. This chore, to unlock the fighter’s brilliant story mode, right? Well thanks to the genius of Namco, the story mode is only four battles long (as opposed to Tekken 5’s eight). It never feels satisfying.

But you’ll be wrong if you think that my only issue with Tekken 6 is that it spent two more years to add mediocre contents. Regardless of when this gets released, I would’ve been griping about the way Tekken plays. One of my biggest Tekken peeves is that the game tries to look realistic, but the fighting is anything but realistic, especially when a fighter launches an opponent and juggles ad nausea. Tekken 5’s juggling was too much, but Tekken 6 just had to make it worse thanks to the new “crush” moves. Whenever I use the “crush” move on an airborne opponent, the opponent would bounce off the ground and can be juggled AGAIN. So in a competitive match the winner is determined by who abuses juggling the most. The fighting feels even cheaper now.

When I play a sequel there are certain things I expect; first, is that it has to improve the series, and second is that if it gets delayed then the “alleged” upgrade must justify the delay. Tekken 6 achieves neither, so while I still like playing it, I can’t imagine myself being dedicated to this game the way I am with other fighting games, or even the earlier Tekken. Bummer, but I’ll get over it.