Fighting Games are Awesome But......

I love a good fighting game and fighting games are probably one of the most fun genres around.  Grab a couple of friends and just beat the shit out of each other all night long over a few drinks, it's a damn good time.  Doesn't matter if it's 2D like Street Fighter or 3D like Tekken, generally speaking whacking out a fighting game at a gathering of gamers is a guaranteed good time.

As you may have been aware from my ranty post about how much I hate Tokyo, I'm currently stuck here on job training.  One weekend me and my buddy hit a game centre and I had a quick blast on Capcom Vs SNK 2.  That game is awesome and I was able to beat the whole thing with one coin which was pretty nice.  Following our little run at fighting games in the arcade, we went back to his place with some cans of beer and fired up a bit of Street Fighter Alpha 3.  We ramped the difficulty up to 8 (max) and took turns working our way through the games arcade mode.  We had to continue a couple of times but it wasn't too long before we made it to the end.

Now if you think I'm telling you all this to show off, I'm not.  In fact it's quite the opposite, I love fighting games but I fucking suck at them really hard.  Sure, I'm good enough to beat down the CPUs in an arcade or on a home console version but if you put me in front of someone who even remotely knows what they are doing, then I'm going to get smacked the fuck down.

I remember first coming to Japan in 2010, me and my friends had been playing an absolute shit ton of Tekken 6 and we were extremely excited to jump on an arcade version and try our hands against the denizens of Nagoya.  Generally speaking, there was little to not competition at our university with everyone who came play being embarrassingly bad with the exception of our group.  We were sort of successful online but coming to Japan and playing the people here was a completely different ball game.  We got beat down.  Hard.

Despite my complete suckage it hasn't turned me away from the genre.  I find the competitive scene for this genre absolutely fascinating and the dedication it takes to learn a fighting game well enough to play at a tournament rivals that of speed running.  All the things such as frame and hitbox data as well as how to use each character effectively is amazing and it's a great thing that people take the time and effort to learn this stuff in great detail.

Fighting games are great and the people who play them well are a treat to watch.  I only wish that I was better but I just can't wrap my head around that shit.  If I sat down and played one for a significant length of time maybe I could get good but between speed running and my backlog I don't think that will be happening for a very long time.  Guess I'm just destined to be the ultimate scrublord for all of time.

Pokken? Are you fucking Serious?

This is a joke right?  It's not serious, is it?  This is some sick joke being played by some cunt with bad taste?! RIGHT?!

Shit

I had a completely different topic planned for this evening, something positive where I was going to praise a game that I've been playing recently but then THIS shit fucking happened and I've swung right back into being an angry shithead on the internet.

Google the term "Pokken" and word going round is that this title has been officially announced.  Now just read that stupid fucking title, "Pokken", you guessed what it is yet?

A TEKKEN GAME WITH FUCKING POKEMON IN IT!

I have never heard anything so bullshit in my entire life.  Is there nothing sacred in this fucking industry.  Is there nothing I can enjoy so much without it turning into complete shit and betrayal?! 

Now why am I so angry?  Well Tekken is a great game and Pokemon is a shit game.  Tekken is a game made for people who enjoy competitive fighters and Pokemon is designed for people with brain damage.  All the depth that can be found in Tekken is going to be stripped out and the game dumbed down so that the title can cater to Pokemon's target audience.

So you might come back at me and say "well if you don't like Pokemon just ignore it and don't play it, it's not like it ruins Tekken as a whole or anything".  Well you may be right there but this game is getting a release in fucking ARCADES so I have every right to be pissed off.  All the space being clogged up by this fucking disgrace of a game is space that could be used for something that doesn't suck...or a vending machine.  Hell, I'd even take a giant 6 foot deep hole in the floor filled with shit than cabinets for this game.

First they come along and piss all over Nobunaga's Ambition with "Pokemon Conquest" which was a total failure as a monster breeding game and a total failure as a historical strategy game.  Not content with shitting over RPGs, Strategy, Dungeon Crawls and other genres they have now turned to fighting games to try and milk this crappy series for more Yen and Dollars.

Fuck Pokemon.

DLC Wars: Tekken Tag 2 Vs Skullgirls

Before we start, let me direct your attention to an old post of mine

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2013/08/skullgirls-dlc-is-disgusting.html

If you don't want to read it then it's basically a rant I made about how stupid the Skullgirls palette swap DLC is.  Basically, you have to may money for the artist to use the fucking fill tool in paint, it's stupid.

Anyway, today I was talking to my friend and he brought up an instance of DLC in a fighting game that didn't make me want to kick someone in the head.  If you own a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 then there is a bunch of DLC you can get for that game completely free, including new characters of all fucking things!

I don't own a copy of Tekken Tag 2 (I will do soon though) so I had to go do some googling to find out what the deal is.  Turns out that the producer, Katsuhiro Harada thinks that modern day DLC is a load of horse shit so he's trying to right the ills of the world by providing a load of awesome shit for free.

THIS, people, is a good developer right here.  He's no small fry in Namco Bandai, he's a guy who works as the producer for the fucking Tekken franchise, I'm pretty sure he's under quite a bit of pressure for his games to make some fucking money, probably more so than any indie developer is.  Yet despite this, he's providing all this shit for free, absolutely NO MONEY.  Costumes, characters, multi account usage, stages and god knows what else for £0, $0, ¥0!

Then you turn your head the other way and see Skullgirls charging for the use of the fucking fill tool, it's disgusting.  If you're going to charge people for something, fucking put some goddamn effort into it.  Hell, as long as it wasn't on disc, I'd be willing to pay for a new character or a new stage, some guy somewhere drew that shit, rendered it in 3D, made it work and all that jazz, some credit for the effort is deserved and yet Tekken just GIVES that shit away.  In this day and age of almost every company using DLC to just wring money out of you, this is a breath of fresh air.

Skullgirls looks like a good game, I'm willing to support it, but they can take their palette swap DLC and go shove it up their arse.  Finally, Katsuhiro Harada is a fucking beast and it's a shame that more developers don't follow in his footsteps.  Capcom could learn a thing or two here.....

Game Centre: Serious Business

So despite having a cold (again) I went down to the game centre today and while I usually play rhythm games and top down shooters, I decided to play something I haven't touched in a long time, Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

I played a lot of Tekken 6 at university, hell, I even played a lot of Tekken 6 back in Japanese arcades in 2010.  Me and my buddies would do both pretty well online and we would even do pretty good at the game centre from time to time.

Back when I first arrived in Japan I had a few goes of Tekken Tag 2, and my local places are usually pretty quiet mid week so I spent most of my time against the computer but occasionally I'd get a game against another person and I'd do OK.  Didn't win them all but I held my own out there.

So I sat down at a packed out bank of Tekken machines today, put my 100 yen in and was instantly paired up with the guy on the other side.  Of course, the huge lack of Tekken in my life led to me getting destroyed so completely that the whole thing felt embarrassing, despite no one really giving a flying fuck.  This guy beat me down so hard that the 2 rounds I did get on him felt like cause enough to celebrate.

But this is true for pretty much every game in the game centres here (by here I mean places like Nagoya, Tokyo etc.).  If you're gonna go there you better bring your A game if you want to have any chance of winning because if not you're going to lose that 100 yen so fast that you may as well just be pouring change down the gutter.

I think with my next pay cheque I'm gonna grab a copy of Tekken Tag on the PS3 and exact some revenge on the Nagoya arcade goers.  This shit is serious!

Pachinko and Slot Machines

Some people like to do a bit of gambling from time to time.  It may to be try and make a big win and walk away with lots of money, or some might just like the thrill.  Well in Japan you can go fuck yourself, that shits about illegal as it gets, but that doesn't mean there isn't something else in place for you to pump money into.

Dotted all over the country are these Pachinko and Slot places, that I have seen many times, but actually have very little experience with.  But what you have to realise is that these places aren't for gambling, not really.  You exchange money for medals (slots) or little round balls (pachinko) and as you play you can win more.  When you are done, you convert these medals or balls into a ticket, which you can then "cash in" for prizes.  Think of it like those ticket arcade machines, but instead of shitty plush toys you can get beer and cigarettes and stuff, hell I've even seen game systems behind the prize counter.  So kind of like gambling but not really.

That said, I've only ever seen pachinko, and I've only ever tried slots once.  I mean I don't mind heading to a casino in the UK to play some card games, but things like slot machines have never appealed to me.

However what does intrigue me is why almost all the machines are themed around some kind of video game or anime series.  When I think about the kind of person that would be into this kind of gambling, I don't think about gamers or anime fans.  These kind of people, at least in my head, would rather spend money on anime and video games than fucking slot machines.

The above picture is the only slot machine type I have ever tried, and I mean look at this fucking thing, it's all Neon Genesis Evangelion themed and stuff.  But they are ALL like this and it's not just slot machines too, there are Evangelion and Tekken themed pachinko machines too! The strangest one I've seen on YouTube was a Shadow Hearts themed machine, I mean goddamn is there anything they won't theme a machine after?

So yeah, that's the phenomenon of pachinko and slot that I just do not comprehend at all.  I've heard that you can go trade your prize ticket to a guy who will then give you cash, but the guy might be yakuza or something, I don't know I've never seen it.  If anyone does have any experience with this stuff I'd love to hear it, I don't really want to spend my money to find out.

OK Tekken...What the hell are you doing?

I love me some Tekken, with the punching and the kicking and the boom boom POW! It's great!  The amount of hours me and my buddies at university spent kicking the shit out of each other, the amount of assignments left unfinished due to the online mode of Tekken 6, it was a good time, and then Tekken Tag Tournament 2 got announced and I was excited as all hell.

I've seen it running in the Japanese game centres near me, but I've yet to have a go as I was more intrigued by all the rhythm games and that Persona fighter that just came out recently, but Tekken Tag 2 looks like more of what we love.  But then we have a problem, not a huge problem that will stop me from playing the game, but a problem none the less.  I was browsing Gametrailers late last night when I came across this video


http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/17bpoj/tekken-tag-tournament-2-big-bikini-bundle-trailer

This is a video for some pre order bonus you get, that involves putting the entire cast into swimwear.  Now you may be asking why is this a problem?  Well first of all, I don't mind the concept, it's not like the women in Tekken have ugly designs, and putting them in swimwear just makes it even easier on the eye.  It's also not some feminist view that doing this demeans women in video games, because it ain't that either, the men are just as scantily clad as the women here, so take your "boo hoo women in games" bullshit elsewhere.

No, my problem is that this kind of thing just doesn't really belong in a Tekken game in this form.  Sure, sex sells, I get that, everything will use sex appeal to push copies but Tekken was one of my go-to games when trying to explain to non-gamers that fighting games aren't all about just mindlessly punching the shit out of people.  Tekken is a game that does require some semblance of skill to be able to play well with learning combos, juggles and making sure your timing is right so you don't get your head kicked in by the other guy.  But now it feels to me that it's starting to slip into that stupid Dead or Alive mindset, where the only way to push sales isn't to have a good fighting system, but to just put lots of pixiliated women in swimsuits and if I'm trying to use this as an example of gaming being a good thing to any naysayers, this isn't helping!  Leave the bikini fan service shit to Dead or Alive and keep the focus on the fighting here in Tekken, thank you very much.

Maybe I'm over reacting here, I mean the game is still really good and the fighting engine is as solid as it ever was, but if this new direction does start to bring in new players, then I have a fear that future games will be dumbed down to accommodate the newer audience, and that would be a shame.  We don't want Tekken turning into DOA basically.

But that's not my only problem here, right at the end of the trailer there is this!

So let's look carefully here.  4 playable fighters, sure that's fine.  Big Bikini Bundle...don't like the direction your taking Tekken here but OK, I'm sure there are many people who will like it. Snoop Dog Stage?  FUCK. OFF. with your Snoop Dog stage, now you're literally pulling anything you can out of your ass to make this game sell.  Is Namco Bandai so worried about sells of Tekken Tag 2 that they start having to pander to people who like rap music?!  What place does Snoop Dog have in a Tekken Game?  Also, if he has a stage, does that mean the game is going to have Snoop Dog's shitty rap music in there too?! Fuck THAT!  I'm not anti-rap, but Snoop Dog is just garbage.  Why don't they focus on making the home version of the game even better for all the loyal fans that have been buying this shit for years by giving us more features to make it seriously competitive or something?  We suffered through Tekken 4, we don't deserve this shit now! 

The arcade version looks really good, but I have concerns for whats to come...