Quick Look: Tekken Revolution

@mrcraggle said:

Well it can teach you how to play but in a conveyance perspective but to be fair it can be challenging to visually represent things like how low parry's are utilized, why a particular launcher can crush lows, Korean backdashing, etc. I will say if you want to see how Tekken has been mechanically, go find a video on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Fight Lab.

@ptys said:

Well those combos might not apply nowadays especially in Tekken 6 and Tekken Tag 2 due to the bound system and their ease of use. Tekken Revolution removes that system yet feature move properties from T6 and Tag 2 so it makes characters easy to use a bit harder.

A demo to what exactly? Maybe you can consider it as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Lite due to things like 1v1 system, no bounds and other properties but TR is it's own thing.

DOA5U and KI utilize very similar models which are more or less the full game in partial form that can be progressively bought to add more. Tekken Revolution is a different model where it provides a necessary barebones approach to content and mechanics. TR primarily encourages winning instead of paying due to its pick up-style approach.

The main problem with TR isn't its model specifically but rather the lack of explicit learning aspect to teach newer players an appropriate perspective on how the game works. Newer folks or terrible players won't last long in this game because they won't understand why some stuff works in the game or can't digest the game's conveyance. Experienced players will go back to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 due to the newer players not giving them a challenge, TTT2 being the main game to currently compete in for tournaments like EVO, etc.

If you want a decent F2P model in a fighting game, check Xuandou Zhiwang/King of Combat.

I wish they had spent some more time with this. They don't have the mindset at all for what makes this free to play game enjoyable.

I've really been enjoying this. I haven't played Tekken in a long while but this has been a blast. If you're someone with a full time job, you rarely even want to play more than 5 online ranked battles a day. But jumping on daily to get 5 fights in and maybe rank up is a fun little thing to do. No, this isn't going to replace Tekken Tag 2 for people who want to play it constantly but for those of us who don't necessarily want to pay for a full Tekken game because they won't play it that much, this is near perfect. They just need to expand the roster.

I don't like the Arcade style F2P systems of this game. If they had just done a MOBA style F2P system with cosemtics and characters costing money would of been WAAAY better. This just felt cheap to me when I played it. There is a really solid fun Tekken game in here but the F2P stuff makes it kinda ass.

Maybe DOA:Ult-core Fighters will be better but who really likes DOA?

As someone who played Tekken 5 casually during lunch breaks, this f2p deal is exactly enough Tekken for me.

Though I totally get that I'm in the minority here.

@demoskinos: your review was spot on. You're right, the game is quite different from TTT2.

I jumped back on TTT2 today after playing Revolution for the last 2 weeks and I just really like the Revolution system minus the stat bonuses. While I love TTT2, it just has so much going on that trying to have a consistent defense is really hard. Even after over 600+ ranked matches I still can lose matches to spammers because the long strings and combos take forever to learn to defend. You only learn to defend them through pounding them into your muscle memory/reactions. Basically, spamming strings is way overpowered in TTT2 and it only starts becoming an ineffective strategy at high levels.

For the intermediate player, I'm guessing the Revolution system is probably more enjoyable because you should be able to win more consistently and feel more in control of the matches. Obvious strings and invincible moves are much easier to punish. Personally, I feel like I win and lose the matches that I should in this game. Plus each match doesn't take 4-5 minutes.

I feel kind of bad for that guy he just beat on in multiplayer. He was just lying on the ground getting kicked and kicked and kicked. Poor guy...

WOW! It's a Fighter based around my least favorite part of recent fighting games: vital DLC! Thanks, Scamco!

The best way to have this free to play system work is to have a retail version parallel to the free to play version and make the work together that way you can have the F2P version act as a demo game with online combat while also selling a full version with all the characters and a bunch of neat stuff. Kinda like the "founders pack" structure for Marvel Heroes.

But what the hell do I know the last Tekken game I gave a crap about was Tekken 2 and that was back in the day when the bowling alley arcade always had people pressing the cab.

Man, Tekken still sucks... I love the characters, but the gameplay itself is still the worst fighting game gameplay around in my opinion... Who thought it was a good idea to have every hit do like 15 - 20% damage...

because it encourages offense, the matches are fast, and there are a lot of movement options in the game so it isn't that bad, and rounds are usually set to 3/5 instead of 2/3 as well.

barely anyone playing online..
..costs money to play online..
..players who pony up the cash to play online.. dont have players to play against.. online.

GOOD THINKING NAMCO

i remember when japanese game developers had a clue. Its 2013, online games have been around for well over 10 years now, not being able to string together an online game that appeals to the western market is no longer acceptable.

ugh

That's not enough reasoning to why you believe Tekken sucks. You are really exaggerating on damage. You are making it seem every move has the singular damage of a good launcher on counter-hit with rage enabled like an EWGF and at the most a low damage unblockable. Due to the combo system in the game, the scaling hits hard and with Tekken Revolution, people have to make combos count from the launcher since bounds are removed so it's harder to get damage. Also the game's design has good defensive mechanics such as sidestepping, block punishing, low parrying. etc which work excellently.

In a competitive Tekken situation, and even every other 3D fighter (maybe even almost every fighting game), players keep their distance from each other and slowly try to attempt to hit each other with small low damage pokes that can recover fast and cannot be punished through a block. Eventually a high recovery move such as a powerful launcher gets blocked, it whiffs through a sidestep or too far away, or even beaten by a low/high crush move. It's the reward for the knowledgeable player that understood the situation but the opponent still has a chance and has the same amount of tools especially from the defensive perspective.

For reference, I recommend checking a video on TTT2's fight lab mode, a guide by Tekken Zaibatsu, and this example match video of many...

@sk0ney said:

Actually people are playing Tekken Revolution. I was playing for an hour one day and encountered about 10, even if mostly bad, players. It doesn't even cost money to play online primarily, Namco is not forcing you to pay for the universal premium coins unless you lose your battle coins or premium tickets. They are encouraging you to win so you can keep playing and if you lose your coins, you just have to wait 30 minutes or so. It's not really intended to be played on long periods unlike Tekken Tag 2 where the online has much more freedom, outside the online pass.

It's from the countdown at the start of a live quick look.

They should have called it Sexolution

It's the best fighting game around in my opinion. I really like its hardcore approach. One mistake can take you out. I recognize that's a system that isn't for everyone, but I and millions of other people really like that.

That said, this sounds pretty dull. Pay-to-play is a dumb FTP model. I really like the look of those vigor moves though. I hope they translate that into Tekken 7 and/or Tekken X Street Fighter.

@somejerk: Try Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection on PS3, It is natively 1080p and runs consistently at 60 frames per second.

@liquidprince: You're really exaggerating the base damage. Once someone powers up in this game yeah it can get crazy but that is also why you're supposed to be upgrading endurance as well. Balances things out in the end. And also provides a bit of a gamble to how you want to build your character out.

Juggles are and will always be a part of Tekken. Launchers are almost always pretty obvious moves so the reward for actually hitting one is getting to pound your opponent in the air. Its risk vs reward you can slowly poke your opposition to death if you'd like but where is the fun in that? Its all about who is going to make the first big move.

Hopefully if anything this will just serve as a nice way for people to try out Tekken and see if they like it.

If so, they should buy Tag 2 (as suggested) or, if tag isn't your style, just get Tekken 6. Tekken 6 is a great game too. Also both those titles have fantastic character customization options built-in.

That's a Mortal Kombat crossover right there, i would play that!

I take it you haven't played a lot of F2P mobile games then.

They took the Tekken Card Tournament System and inserted it into this game essentially and thats why this is kinda crap right now. Harada said things are going to be changed and be added like a free training mode and other things.

There's a rumor that this game is the reason Harada dissappeared for a while a month or so ago but that's internal Namco stuff we'll never hear about.

I'm not the sort of person who can play fighting games for hours on end, so I don't mind this at all. I haven't played a Tekken game since 3 aside from maybe a few ultra-brief occasions here and there, so it's a nice way for me to get back into it, so to speak. So while I can see Tekken enthusiasts finding this useless, I could see myself playing a few matches a day or something.

Just as with Marvel Heroes, this seems great for those of us with restraint or the good sense to avoid buying too much into the money sink side of the F2P model.

@aishan: Namco also runs a F2P Japan only Gundam multiplayer game on PS3. It has been reasonably successful for them, I guess from their perspective it makes sense to apply this model to other franchises.

@brad: You can adjust the HUD to reposition the life bars. Usually we raise the life bars often times during streams but not too high in order to fit the overlay for the name's of the players as well as the number of wins. By default usually the life bars are somewhat lower in order to fit the lowest screen resolution and avoid running the game the first time with the life bars being partially hidden in some screens that have a lower resolution or smaller size.

There are other Free to Play games (particularly mobile) that are far more insidious.

Unlike Marvel Heroes though, it's not really Pay to Win. Your success still hitches more on your skill against others rather than how much money you can spend or the stats you have (the stats help though). Besides, the only things you can buy are coins used to participate in a match in the same way as tickets, and the most expensive bundle for that is $5 for 30 coins, which is plenty if you're good enough.

The F2P aspect of this seems an awful mess.

It's really good.

Tekken can be a intimidating fighting game to get into due to its large number of characters, systems, and moves. TR helps the new player in a number of ways:

1. The removal of the bound system makes the game less combo-heavy than TTT2, and more about spacing and punishing. Hence it's more about getting the basics right than learning long combos.

2. The reduced roster helps settle on a character early; the selection contains the main Tekken archetypes.

3. Important moves have been made obvious by making them invincible or adding the possibility of a crit. This helps the new player learn the game as they act as "go-to" moves. After a while the new player learns not to just throw them out as they are all really punishable, and so it helps channel the player into formulating strategies.

On top of this, the net-code is fantastic, and the coin system makes the online really exciting.

Personally I don't think the f2p model it uses is a mess; If I start playing I get 20 minutes or so of online before I have to delve into the premium tickets and coins; when using the premium tickets and coins each win means I get a "free" game. Each loss means I either stop playing or pony up a quarter to have another go. That's fine with me and makes each win the sweeter!

I'm glad they used this model instead of paying for new characters.

Saying all that, I think a training mode wouldn't go amiss.

Brad's deadpan delivery of "My fight money" absolutely made this for me.

Game looks completely unnecessary, though I DO like the emphasis on more skill/less juggling that I'm hearing about. That alone ain't enough, though.