TEKKEN 7 ~ The Story (Spoilers!!!)

After having played Injustice 2, and seeing how good a fighting game could be in regards to story direction I was taken aback by the sub-par experience that TEKKEN 7 held. TEKKEN 7's story mode is lazy. Pure laziness. It's a mixture of slightly animated art panels complimented by emotionless voice acting, and further told through equally emotionless CG cutscenes. There's even a rehashing of old cinematic sequences from past TEKKEN games thrown in as filler material. Some of which look better than the current CG scenes. The story that's being told is unnecessarily drawn out with fights that feel less than heightened as well. It's as if they were thrown in as filler material themselves. One fight in particular, the climactic battle between Akuma and Heihachi, has Akuma playing like a weakling while Heihachi manages to completely avoid direct hits, and sponge up a majority of the damage thrown at him. One would expect Akuma to dominate his arse, especially in context with his forced role in the story, but Akuma takes a distant second seat to Heihachi in regards to battle prowess early on. Particularly in the player controlled portion of the fight.

An Open Letter to Fighting Game Developers

It has come to my attention that the fighting game genre, in general has been adopting some very bad mechanics, and character rosters that cater to the worst sorts of players. I firmly believe that fighting game developers have become so desperate for money that they are reaching out to the "CoD" community with fully exploitable features intact for the sole purpose of appeasing such gamer types. There's simply no other viable explanation. Take the latest release of "BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma", for example. The game is so broken in structure that it's damn near impossible to get into a fair fight. In the game the blocking, and recover mechanics are so severely limited, because of a special meter that it leaves you open to infinite attack strings with no way out. The character roster in BBCP is another thing that does the series a huge disservice. Most of the characters have exploitable projectiles, or have zoning attacks that make the "in & out" tomfoolery a piece of cake. Characters like "Izayoi", and "Arakune" who have the ability to phase in, and out of existence make landing combos, or hits a trying ordeal, especially when the gamer using them is playing a heavy keep away game.

An Open Letter to Katsuhiro Harada

Mr. Harada,

My name is Brad (OtakuDante). I'm what you'd call a serious fighting game enthusiast, and fan. I've played many fighters in my time including that of the TEKKEN series. As a long time fan of the "TEKKEN" series I have followed your work rather closely, and have bought each release. For the most part the experience of playing TEKKEN has been fun, and has been something I've been glad to return to on a regular basis. From 'Tekken 3' onward I often times got lost in the local competitive aspects of the game, and even got into some of it's latter online offerings for the PS3 & Xbox 360. There's no doubt that you, and your development staff are gifted in the areas of fighting game creation, and that you know how to make a proper fighting game. With that being said though this latest free-to-play release on the PS3 has become an experience not worth revisiting, in my personal opinion. The online is overrun with the worst sorts of gamers who are all intent on winning in the cheapest way possible. This cheating opportunity which I speak of is available to them for several reasons. One reason in particular is that the "free-to-play" format often times attracts gamers other than your tried & true fans. Online gaming is severely competitive now, and younger, more annoying gamers often times get into competitive online games just cheat their way to the top of the leaderboards.

OtakuDante: "Tales of a Fighting Game Fanatic Vol.1"

After some thought, I decided I would go over my fighting game history for all of my readers here. I have been gaming for over 20 years now, and many of those years have been spent on playing fighting games. My beginnings were modest, and actually began when I got 'Street Fighter II: Championship Ed.' for my 13th birthday. In all honesty it wasn't easy convincing my mother to let me play the fighting games when I was young considering she came from a christian background, but she has been very supportive of my gaming habits over the years. Without the support of my family, and friends I probably wouldn't have pursued the fighting game genre as long as I have. My entire fighting game history spans over multiple gaming consoles, and even in time I spent at the arcades when they were still around in my area. Over the years I have gradually advanced in skill level, and can hold my own even against some of the higher online ranked gamers. Even so I still have a lot to learn, and continue to do so each time I put a fighting game into my console.