This morning, I finally got those hands on some beta time with Final Fantasy XIV. I didn't do much other than run around a desert city and talk to NPCs, but what I saw sure looked pretty. And seriously, desert cities in my Final Fantasies have thus far proven to be a recipe for my own personal enjoyment, so at least there's that. Sadly, I have some weekend freelance work lined up so that odds of me getting any more QT with it are looking mighty slim. Oh well, all that kicking and screaming for nothing, I suppose.
So let's talk briefly about Tekken Revolution. Call it a small review of a game that you may be enticed to play until you actually play it.
That is, of course, unless you're a Tekken savant. Revolution is a free-to-play (f2p) fighter exclusively for the PS3. Personally, I'm not a f2p hater; I've logged plenty of hours over the last decade into strange and borderline creepy Korean MMORPGs, and have forked over plenty of work hours in a previous life to whatever Kongregate had broadcasted on its front page that week. The times I've actually dropped money into these games for extra items or whatever have been remarkably scarce considering the chunks of my life that have been broken away in tribute to them. But that's where TR differs from the Runes of Magic and Cityvilles of the world: Like any other fighting game, your enjoyment is based on skill. If you're not good at this game, you're getting your ass handed back to you with a side order of shit talk coleslaw. As a f2p time investment, it makes it kind of hard to recommend.
Think about other f2p games out there. Most of them are are hedging their bets against you by basing all of their potential monetary gains on your patience. Don't want to wait for that Brony village to complete construction in 6 hours? Need some extra inventory space so you can throw down on a looting raid in Angmar? Think you could use some extra leveling because you're on your lunch break? Pay up, son. Under this train of thought, though, one could logically (though probably not enjoyably) stick it out and game the system. You honestly don't need that town built faster or that huge super sword to get a fire affinity, you just need a little bit if willpower to not spend the cash. You'll be fine if you just wander off and do something else.
Tekken, though, is a fairly complex 3D fighting game. The move sets available for each of the characters (8 at the onset, 4 more unlockables. A generous number, really) are sprawling, not to mention the time needed to adjust to the series trademark goofball physics where if you hit the ground ass over feet, you can still continue being pummeled. It takes serious work to become half decent at any fighting game, and that much more if you're unaccustomed to the likes of Tekken (or its rivals Virtua Fighter and, to a lesser extent, Dead or Alive).
In the state that it's in now, Revolution affords the green recruit few opportunities to put in that kind of effort. The game is built specifically for the online competitive ranked and unranked matches, with a modest single player "Arcade" mode. Play an online game and you eat one of your online "coins," which replace themselves every 30 minutes one at a time to a total of 5. Tekken matches, especially those unbalanced in the way of skill from one player to the next, can be over in roughly 30 seconds, though. Meaning that unless you're running into some decent fights, odds are high that you'll burn through your 2.5 hour allotment of online coins in about 10 minutes. Extra "Premium" coins can be bought with real world dough.
There's a way to extend it, but again, only if you've got your black belt in the ways of the Iron Fist. The way the game tries to throw you a bone is in Premium tickets, which each new player is given at the start of their struggles with TR. Burn through your coins and you can choose to use a Premium ticket, which will be replaced if you win an online match. These tickets are also doled out to you at intervals, like winning every ten online matches. This makes them ultimately precious and precarious. You're gambling extra time with the game based on your skill with it. Am I good enough to use this ticket in the hopes that I win and get it back? If you wind up liking what you're playing, it's a serious threat to consider.
Of course, if you like fighting games, and especially if you're an old-timey Tekken player, you will like what you're playing. While lacking some of the depth of the more feature rich and roster heavy recent releases like Tag Tournament 2 or even 2009's Tekken 6, each character is fully realized and balanced. They look great and move well, and the environments are sparse, though varied enough that fights will wind up tactically different depending on if they take place in enclosed or wide open spaces. If anything, it plays like something of a gimped 6 with the move sets and physics of Tag 2, and for the price of admission, it's a pretty nice deal.
But you're still stuck with a high barrier of entry, and no real way to practice. This is a real problem. While a single-player Arcade mode exists, it's full of AI opponents so stupid that they regularly run into your attacks, and it can be finished within 5 minutes. This would be fine, but the player is limited to a coin entry for playing it, and coins for this mode replenish once every hour, which means that after you expire your coin supply --a maximum of 2 for Arcade mode-- you must wait an hour before your next speedy turn through it, which limits any kind of offline training you may want to participate in. While waiting for an online opponent to sync up during a ranked match you're given a brief training mode to pass the time and to bone up on your moves, but this might last you 20 seconds or 5 minutes depending on how the online matchmaking is feeling at the moment (and how many players are online, of course), and this is still at the mercy of using an online coin to play, so it's an unreliable method for learning. A rudimentary offline training mode is in the works as an update at some point, but for now, you're stuck with either getting better on the fly against other opponents. It's basically like being in an arcade with a pocket full of quarters.
Part of me thinks there should be some charm in that, but really, I just feel lucky that I've played a lot of Tekken on and off over the years so I can hang with the online competition. A very basic character growth system exists to potentially alleviate this for beginner players by boosting a few stats, but in practice it only serves to widen the gulf between them and the old hands.
So what you're getting is a free Tekken with a high cost. Sure, it's still Tekken; a very good, fairly pretty, absolutely zany fighting game that you better hope that you're good at right away. Otherwise, cross your fingers that something good's on TV. You'll have some time to think about how much you suck.
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