Quick Look: Tekken Revolution

This needs Gon!

I want to pay money for the products I consume! Let me do that!

(Actually, I'll never play a fighting game either way, so it doesn't matter in this case.)

EDIT: OK, the Mr. Caffeines are intentional now; that was at least six frames.

The Sequel:

Tekken: Reckoning

or

Tekken: Rekkening

This game has the weirdest F2P model I have ever seen.

Its fucking nuts.

The F2P version of Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate sounds like it's gonna be pretty good.

Looks like my "not playing Tekken" streak will continue

I like me some Tekken, but I do not see any reason for me to get this. I already have Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 6. This seems like a good way of introducing people to Tekken, although there are better F2P models they could have followed.

This whole thing seems odd.

The energy system is just plain awful.

The stats system seems to be a good way to put off new players.

Is there anyone who is into this?

How long has the "still of Ubisoft's Mr. Caffeine before the video" thing been going on? I've seen it once or twice before, though I can't remember on which videos.

They should've gotten the Puzzle and Dragon guys on-board!

Indeed. Tecmo announced their pricing model before Tekken:R came out so I was kinda expecting it would follow suit in some form because it seemed like a logical structure these days. Needless to say, I was sorely disappointed.

It's a reel leader/countdown thing they do before the video, you tend to see it in live streams (seems like they do all the stuff live, rather than editing in the bumber thing after they're done shooting, so they use that to know when they can start talking I think), I guess some times they don't cut it out properly.

We'll make the energy and payment model so complex that they'll just default to spending in the most profitable bracket! BRILLIANT!

Stamina would be much better if the winner in a player match gets a ticket as well. If you win 5 in a row in a room, you either have to buy coins or forfeit. But its still a fun game, even though the stats break the balance and the price model needs a lot of work. I agree with Brad that either the Dota 2 or LoL model would be better.

takken, u know?

Finally Tekken has figured out its true worth... nothing! lol, jokes. I wonder if I can remember my old Paul and Nina combos, I used to be pretty good fifteen years ago.

Wait, doesn't FIFA infringe on Namco's patent by letting you shoot on goal while it loads? What a weird patent

Great eyebrows in the Tekken games.

Proc should NEVER be a thing ANYONE should know. Ever.

I was playing it yesterday with stats 0 - 0 - 0 and I was beating people with 20 - 20 - 10 pretty easily. And as Jeff mentioned in the QL, as long as you keep winning online, you keep getting tickets to play online matches, so I never really noticed that whole thing.

I did notice that people online had trouble blocking Kazuya's uf + 4444 so much more than in previous games, so I guess there's some new people at least trying it?

I love it when the videos start with Mr. Caffeine for a half second.

This is a cool idea. I wish the characters weren't so limited, but if their goal is to reach out to people that don't play fighting games, a smaller roster does wonders for them. A neat experiment for them, and based on what I saw when Uncharted 3 went free to play, a ton of people will give this a try.

@sanj: That's not fair, Tag 2 is fantastic and if you're not into tag battles Tekken 6 was pretty awesome. 3 is still the best however, but don't let this crap F2P game/model sway you away from the series as a whole

Runs at 720p60fps so it's a fine free game to test 60fps recording with, but are there any fighters doing 1080p60?
(click for full size, showing off my HDCP-removal HDMI capturing goodness)

Free to Play? or a glorified demo? i'd go with a glorified demo.

The criticism of the f2p sytem is very fair and the game is super raw. It desperately needs some new content that wasn't in TT2. With that said the gameplay is actually really fun. I play a lot of TT2, but it is very complicated and takes a lot of concentration to play. Sometimes I just want to relax and this more old school Tekken gameplay is a very fun alternative.

Would love a full release with this gameplay. Only real criticism is the stats system is really stupid. Seems like the characters become really overpowered as the stats increase.

Here's hoping Killer Instinct does the free to play aspect far better than this mess.

Anyone find the menu music for this annoying? Anyway, I hope the failure of this doesnt put off other developers from trying better F2P models. I know DOA5U has a proper F2P system but it isnt half as popular as Tekken so it doesnt have the same influence unfortunately.

Oh God, I just bursted out in laughter, when Jeff said "Injunction, sequel to Inversion"

If I pour energy drinks onto the PS3 hard drive the game is on, will I get more energy to play the game?

So does the f2p system work well, it's not pay to win? I haven't watched this video yet, I wanted to get into Tag 2 but learning two characters at once with so many moves was a bit daunting, even as a massive fan of Marvel 3. Might give this a try if my jadedness over f2p games is unwarranted. (which it was for LoL)

YES

@beachthunder: Seconded!

Just wait until Tekken: Requiem comes out, Giant Bombers.

It sounds good for new players except for the part where it teaches you nothing. I haven't played a Tekken game since 3 so going back in is pretty fresh for me so the only way to play is either the arcade mode or online where you don't know anything so you're going to lose.

The lack of versus and training modes in a fighting game is inexcusable, even if it is f2p.

Wow, that's actually super lame. I was actually kind of interested in Revolution because it seemed that Tekken, of all the fighting games looking to do a F2P version, had the right background to work with for an interesting model. TTT2 had something like 52 characters in the console version just by itself, and as I recall that isn't even all the possible characters or variants that have ever been shown. So I was expecting them to leverage the large pool of fighters they have and do a LoL-style model, where some fighters are free for a time, but you can pay to permanently unlock others, on top of cosmetic and other unlocks.

It's incredibly depressing to see that they instead went for an incredibly limiting energy system.

In fairness, I think Tekken Revolution is great for people like me, those who are interested in fighting games but not necessarily diehard fans of the genre. For the sake of 30 mins of digital stress busting a day (or more if you're willing to part real money for it) it holds my attention well enough. It's done enough for me to seriously consider buying Tekken Tag 2 and so to that end I think it's successful. A glorified demo it might be and certainly not one for Tekken veterans, but it seems perfectly suited for those who aren't and gets them interested in the series. Plus it's free, can't exactly fault it for that.

Namco is pretty dumb about not enforcing the patent outside of Japan. Do you really think that a Western IP court would not allow EA with all of its lawyers to just sweep this one under the rug should Namco Bandai decide to take them to task?

@beachthunder: Gon was actually a guest character, not a Tekken original. He's never coming back!

Also Jeff was probably finding it harder to find matches because his settings only accepted opponents with a connection of 4+ which I assume is close to maximum.

I support free to play models for fighting games, but I think they aren't taking the right approach. Why not make the f2p version more like a tutorial and training version of the real game?

Not enough fighting games take the time to explain mechanics to new players. The f2p version could limit the tutorial to novice and intermediate level skills and make people who want to be expert players buy the full game.

I'm with you. As someone who already owns TTT2, I don't see this as something I'm interested in playing, but if you aren't already into Tekken, a smaller, free version of the game is perfect to get you interested. Tekken Tag 2 is pretty cheap nowadays (even new), and if you go out and buy that game (which is a superb fighting game) after you've played this and enjoyed what you played of it, you're still supporting the Tekken team.
I'd say considering it a demo would be the best mindset. You could argue "well why didn't they just put out a demo for TTT2 then!", but if they did that, they'd have missed out on the people who actually don't mind the f2p system implemented here.

I still don't get the joke behind the faces at the start of each video. What am I missing?

I've been playing Tekken Revolution for the past...8 days or so and it's pretty cool. It was my first Tekken experience since Tekken 3 and it made me buy TTT2.

Namco got me good, yo.

@darkbeatdk said:

Yeah I second that.

I got bored of Tekken:R after 11 matches personally. I wish it was more interesting.

dat gil scott heron reference

I wrote a review detailing my thoughts on this and while the business model IS a bummer its still worth playing. Its just the kind of game where you pop on for fifteen or twenty minutes play a few matches then move on with your day. It put me in the mood enough to go re-buy TTT2 and I'll still be playing this because they both play pretty differently. There are some combos for characters that straight up you can't do in the other one.

A lot of the move properties were tweaked for this game. For instance Asuka's Up+ 4 is a hop kick launcher and in TTT2 the only viable combo option off of it is 2,1,2,1,1+2 but in Tekken Revolution you can actually combo into other things like df+1,2 ,2,1,1+2 Other combos like f+2, df+1,2,2,1,1+2, f+1+2 aren't do able in Tekken Revolution because of the missing bound system. And unlike @jeff said in the quick-look I've seen multiple people in other forums some Tekken related some not praising the removal of the bound system. Because the bound system CAN lead to some fucking insane combos especially combined with Tag Assaults in TTT2. Which, at times can be a tad frustrating.

Apparently Harada has tweeted a number of things indicating that more characters and customization options may also be coming along with a practice mode. As someone who has poked my head into the Tekken scene as of late I'm pretty hopefull for the future of Tekken. Also, the majority of people playing Tekken Revolution are absolute scrubs so you can seriously mop up some easy wins. I'm not even that great myself I'm a pretty mediocre Asuka player myself but the level of competition online in Revolution is much lower then where it is at with TTT2. Just my two cents.

The energy system can be great when done well. The only good Facebook game in the world, Marvel: Avenger's Alliance, is a pokemon-style game where you play your marvel heros like pokemon with 4 attacks each, and the number of battles you can have per day is dictated by an energy bar.

You can pay to win in that game, but there's nothing stopping you from winning just by playing normally. And the energy system keeps you from binging.

The only thing that ruins it is the "social" elements where you can get powerups if you spam friend requests. Now that is a bad system.

Its absolutely not pay-to-win sure you might get matched up against a dude that has 60 STR or something who can cripple your default health bar with a single good combo. If you're good enough though you have all the defensive tools to block, parry and dodge your way to stuffing him and winning the match anyways. The only thing you're paying for in this game is time. All stats and what not have to be earned through actually playing matches and winning money and XP.