TEKKEN 7 Finally Gets Interesting (To Me)

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Happy new year!

Previous visitors will likely know this, but it takes something pretty significant to actually make me update this blog - or at least finish an update without just leaving it to rot (had a thing on all this year's big movies but couldn't summon enough energy to get all the way through).  They will also know that Nina Williams absolutely falls within the 'something pretty significant' category.

So yesterday's announcement of her long-overdue addition to Tekken 7 - in time for its Fated Retribution update (those subtitles aren't getting any less silly, Namco) - would be pretty much guaranteed to get my brain working, even if there wasn't something immediately obvious to talk about, namely:

...girl, the hell you wearin'?

Toy Review: TEKKEN BISHOUJO NINA WILLIAMS

 Silently wondering who the first clown will be to

try making a grab for the goods.

First things first, welcome to 2015 on the blog!  No, I didn't die in some nuclear catastrophe toward the end of last year, I just got caught up in a bunch of non-blog stuff that kinda torpedoed my drive to keep updating this page.  Plus, there wasn't a hell of a lot to talk about - I mean, I could've done a post on Smash Bros. but, why?  Do you need me to tell you it's good?  No, you do not.

But as ever, I'll always drag my arse back here when there's something worthwhile Tekken related to discuss.  And the release of the series' first lady in the Bishoujo statue line - shamefully 3+ years after the line debuted - feels like justification enough.

Let's hit it!  But not too hard, it might break and these things are expensive.

Opinion Blog: The Worst Bosses of my Gaming Life

 An all-too-familiar sight for Teen Me.

Look, I love games.  Of course I do.  My recent weeknights have been spent alternating between Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2, Lego Batman 3 and a return to BioShock 2 (in case you were wondering why updates are so infrequent).  Real life is dull and exhausting and full of rules nobody can explain but must all be followed at all times.  Games are lively, untiring and make their rules plain.

Even so, if there's anything more guaranteed to sour my mood than a BOSS FIGHT~, it's...probably my actual job, honestly, but still, bosses.  A good boss can be many things: that one last hurdle before the triumph of the end credits, a despicable sod you can't wait to pummel, the final exam for all the tricks you've learned in the hours before.  Sadly, it's all too easy for none of these ideas to stick and you end up with a bad boss, one whose presence cripples the game around it rather than enhancing it.  We've all got our personal hall of shame.  Here's mine.

Film Reaction: TEKKEN 2: KAZUYA'S REVENGE

 Hooray for lazy re-used art assets!

Okay then.  I can do this.  I can do this.

For those of you not as prone to chasing up every Tekken-related newsbit as I am, here's a quick catch-up: the earlier Tekken movie, released in either 2009 or 2010 by Crystal Sky Productions, made virtually no money in its super-limited cinema run before heading to DVD markets, but producers are a funny lot who can make excuses for anything, so somebody decided they really needed to keep hold of the license rights.  A couple years pass and some word-of-mouth goes around about a planned prequel movie titled Tekken: Rise of the Tournament, with Ong-Bak's Prachya Pinkaew set to direct.  Some people (me, mostly) get a bit excited.  This movie does not happen.

Months later, actor/martial artist Kane Kosugi excitably blabs about getting the lead role in Tekken: The Man Called X.  Most assume this is the prequel under a new title.  A few days after that, Kosugi's talent agency issues a retraction, saying the film is actually titled Agent X and has nothing to do with the Tekken license.  The production goes on with little to no further notice.

Finally, in August 2014, the film's trailers debut little over a week from its planned straight-to-video release...and announce it as Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge.  No sign of anyone called X anywhere but Kosugi is definitely front and center.  I have watched it.  Now you watch as I attempt to make sense of it all.

Further Adventures of Minimate Nina, part четыре: A Day Unlike Any Other

Nighttime, at a news office on the outskirts of the city...

(Don't ask which city.  There is only one.  The city.)

Nina:  Porn, porn, angry editorial about some spider-guy, weather forecast, porn, sports...ugh.

And this chair is tiny and really cramping my butt.  Guess it was a long shot

to expect this rag to have anything on new organised crime outfits...

though maybe I can break into the CIA from here - 

SUDDENLY THE POWER CUTS!

Nina:  This isn't going to be the good kind of surprise, is it?

???:  Miss Williams!  On the authority of SHIELD, you are under arrest!  Come out of the 

building with your hands empty and there won't be any trouble!

Iron Man:  You don't really expect her to go for that, do ya?

Captain America:  No, not really.  That's why you're all here.

AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!

Click through for more.

The Comic-Con 2014 TEKKEN Update Post

Behold the power of Unreal 4!

Old people have never looked more wrinkly!

So, it's Saturday the 26th as I type.  Namco-Bandai's had its panel at SDCC, and with it comes the biggerer, longerer, melodramaticerer Tekken 7 teaser and the first scraps of info regarding the game.  I debated whether they were meaningful enough to justify an entirely new post after covering the EVO trailer already, but then something else happened, and dear God I need to share it.  I need to.  To purge it.

Click through if your bowels are ready.

Thoughts on the TEKKEN 7 Announce Trailer

Om nom nom.

Well that took longer than it had any bloody right to.

But yes, for those who missed the news, on the last day of this year's EVO tourney, Katsuhiro Harada officially announced the next entry in the Tekken series, Tekken 7.  Yes, Tekken 7, not Tekken X Street Fighter, Tekken Square-Goals Virtua Fighter, Tekken Invites Battle Arena Toshinden to Come And Have A Go, or indeed Craig's Idealised and Completely Imaginary Tekken RPG.  (dang)  Even so, it's a new, full-fledged 'core' Tekken title, so maybe that'll be enough to shut up everyone who's been whinging about the devs spending too much effort on Revolution?

...no, of course not.  It's the internet.  But, while we wait for Comic-Con and hopefully some actual gameplay, here's my brilliant, senses-staggering insight into what this trailer tells me about the game.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT MISINFORMATION!!

Opinion Blog: Ranking the Tekken Fighters from Worst to Best

Does this look comprehensive to you?

Trust me - it ain't.

Ladies and gentlemen, all is quiet here at the Pillar of Justice.  The recent run of interesting game releases has dried up, in favour of the first few sad spurts of the next gen dribbling out onto the arid desert of consumer apathy.  The local multiplexes are full of those Oscar-baiting dramas that look more like the kind of thing you'd watch on DVD later (then never do).  And your humble host's comics reading has been so scrambled and scattered of late it's difficult to single out any one series for a thorough write-up, though I'm hoping to fix that soon.

But in the meantime, howabout an exhaustive and in-no-way definitive listing of every Tekken character ordered according to the relative merits of my personal favour?  No?  Well, tough, I had to Google all these images and cut half of 'em down for size, and after all that I'm gonna use them for something whether you like it or not.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT PRATTLE!

Toy Review: Play Arts Kai Faora-Ul

 Not a photo of mine.

You can probably guess by the lack of awfulness.

To start, hey look, my first post of 2014!  Hope everyone had a safe New Year's.

Anyway - as time passes, I find myself growing more and more irritated with Man of Steel, as seems to be the prevailing feeling amongst interweb dorks like myself.  This is the big problem with the tone and aesthetic that Christopher Nolan has bequeathed to Warner Bros.' nascent DC cinematic universe: when every character and place is presented as cold, severe and super-duper-serious it prompts the audience's thoughts to linger on the ideas and questions raised by the story rather than just relax and let oneself be moved by the flow of the film.  That's fine if you've got a tight grip on the tale and know exactly what points you want to get across, but if you don't - if the questions you're raising clash with the overall 'point' of the film, or if you're simply not elaborating them well enough - then all you're doing is giving viewers more time to chew over the film's problems.  And hoo boy did MoS have hefty problems delivering its themes.

Despite that, I still bought the damn blu-ray just so I could gawk at Faora-Ul in glorious HD.  That plus the hilarious sight of Michael Shannon's misshapen beanpole body being pushed through military-grade workouts in the special features was worth the asking price.  Thus my Faora crush remains strong, albeit ill-served by the movie's merchandising.  Sadly there's still no sign of a Hot Toys 12" $200+ wallet-killer fig of the lady (I remain hopeful - HT's Roadblock figure still hasn't been released and G.I. Joe 2 came out last March) and Mattel did their usual hopeless job on the main toyline, resulting in this disappointment with its cartoon face, borked joints and oddly squat physique.  Luckily, though, DC's licensing deal with Square Enix covers both comics and movie properties, and so the MoS subline of the Play Arts Kai range has stepped up to fill the void and maybe give Faora the toy she deserves.

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 3

It's been a while, but with more figures in the collection now I've got more Things Nina Can Hold, and more amateurish photos to prove it!

Further Adventures of Minimate Nina, part drei: Canada's Foulest Export

Somewhere in the verdant rainforests of, um, Alberta...

???: *sniffing noises*

Silent Interlude

TEKKEN X STREET FIGHTER: Wish List

I swear, these designs for Kazuya and Xiaoyu are ALL WRONG.

Dear reader, I sit down to write this today with a growing case of Tekken withdrawals.

"But how can that be, Craig," you might ask, "when there have been so many new Tekken games recently?"  Well, it's true enough that we are currently experiencing no shortage of Iron Fist branding.  The problem is that not a lot of it is what I want Tekken to be.  

Tekken Card Tournament (which I never got around to reviewing in full) is an interesting idea with some very simple, solid gameplay mechanics that just about anyone can pick up in minutes, a dedicated support team tirelessly working to sort out any issues brought up by the user base, and if nothing else has spawned an actual physical Tekken trading card collection, which will doubtless plague my magpie mind for a good long while yet.  But, it's very worrying that so many balance issues and tech errors are still being found in a game that's been available to the public for so long, and the in-game card marketplace - which lets anyone with sufficient real-world funds simply buy the best possible cards for their character right from the get-go and gain a ludicrous advantage - basically takes what balance there is and snaps it over its knee like a Venom'd-up Bane (I stand by the assertion that limiting premium purchases to the random booster packs, while perhaps frustrating for some, would be a major improvement).  On a personal note, the need for a constant internet connection kinda leaves me in the cold - I can't really play it 'on the go' so having the game on my Kindle is a bit meaningless, and playing the browser version feels odd because it's much too simple a game for a whole laptop...

Then there's Tekken Revolution (which I've already covered) and that hasn't really held my attention either.  In fact, I don't think I've gone back to it even once since posting that write-up in June.  That's partly down to snobbery - Nina's still not in it so I don't care - but mostly, it's because the game feels hollow to me.  Revolution is 95% copied assets from TTT2, which I already own; the stuff that's genuinely new is limited to flashier effects and some inferior music choices.  Yes, I know, as I said in my post, that this is a Tekken game for other people who are a lot less obsessed with the series than I am...but the fact that it's now taken up the lion's share of the developers' attention has resulted in me feeling like I've been left out in the cold.  Also: vampire Lili?  Vampire...Lili?  The prosecution rests, your honour.

So I've been thinking a lot about the future, and that inevitably means the still-gestating Tekken X Street Fighter, which will counterbalance Capcom's effort by forcing those movement-challenged World Warriors into an arena where the 3rd dimension exists on more than just a cosmetic level. (hey Harada-san, free idea - shoot a commercial for the game which solely consists of Ryu fruitlessly firing hadoukens at Heihachi, who dodges every single one by moving one step to the side while Ryu's eyes boggle and he screams, "WHAT KIND OF WITCHCRAFT IS THIS S***?!") After playing a hell of a lot of TTT2 and tentatively dipping my toe into the freezing waters of SFXT again, I've come up with a bunch of points that, IMO, Namco would do well to keep in mind as they plan their next opus.  GET READY FOR THE NEXT BASELESS SPECULATION!!

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 2

Thought about sitting on these pics a while longer, but it's a slow period right now, so here we go.

PHICEN Nina Armoury Post 1

If I didn't make it quite clear in my review, I looooove this 1/6 Nina fig, but if there is one department she lacks in, it's weaponry.  Her Glocks are cool, but Nina Williams is a master assassin, a spy, a saboteur, possibly a catwalk model AND a ninja all at once, so she knows a few more ways to kill folk than just through the John Woo school of twin-pistol dove-exploding gun-kata.  Hence this post, first in what will probably be a series*, showing off Nina waving around other various implements of pain.

Oh, and before we start, if you don't check my Twitter feed regularly (what is wrong with you):

Knife & strapped sheath sourced from 1/6 General Hawk,

by Sideshow Collectibles' G.I. Joe line.

I think we can agree that all versions of Nina need a superfluous tiny dagger that never ever gets used strapped to one thigh, right?  And yeah, I kinda wish I could attach it further down her leg, but the top needs to hook onto the belt to stay in place.  Anyhoo, click through for more pics.

* - it'll run until I can't find more weapons to steal off my other figures...which doesn't look likely to happen soon.

Now Playing: TEKKEN REVOLUTION

Wait, what?

Developed & published by Namco Bandai.

Released June 2013.

Digital download only.

Formats: PlayStation3 exclusive.

Ordinarily, the wait for the next Tekken game around here at chez Craig is one of the most prolonged, soul-sapping ventures through misery ever undertaken in the history of mankind, something that would likely be true even if the last 2 main entries in the series hadn't both been the subject of excessive delays.  My brain simply cannot cope with the notion that there might be a 'new' Tekken game out in the world somewhere and it's not in my possession yet.  There is screaming, a lot of screaming.  Things get broken.  People get hurt.  The police are called.  And then run away.  It's just not a nice scene for everyone, at least until the game in question arrives and I calm down.

This time, though, the wait wasn't so bad, since I (and everyone else) only found out about Tekken Revolution 4 days, tops, before its release.  That Harada-san sure does work his team like hamsters in wheels, doesn't he?

Toy Review: PHICEN LIMITED 1:6 NINA KILLER ver 1.0

From Twitter: Wesker getting kicked because reasons.

At this point, detailing my obsession with the Tekken series in general and Nina Williams in particular for the umpteenth time is a waste of bandwidth...but I don't know how else to start this post, so pretend that I said something meaningful and revelatory here as well as the usual 'gaaah nina so amazing and hot and badass, would gladly try and marry her even though I know it would end horribly, fuck everything about that other blonde girl who doesn't deserve to be named' spiel.

Of course, the downside to being a Tekken fan is that Namco have historically done a terrible job of pushing the franchise in terms of merch.  Oh, sure, if all you need to be happy is a custom fight stick, you're golden, but clothes?  Few and far between, usually convention exclusives.  Manga or comic tie-ins?  There were some hilariously terrible ones around the time of Tekken 2 but nothing worth mentioning since then.  Toys?  Palisades did a line of 5" figs based on Tekken 3 but they were generally pre-posed and had very little articulation, not to mention the sculpt quality is, well, of its day, which means they look pretty dated and simplistic now.  After that, Tekken figs have only come in tiny bursts; a group of rarely-seen 1:6ers based on Tekken Tag Tournament came and went, a group of tiny plastic statues with swappable parts styled on Tekken 5, and the still-running TTT2 additions to the Kotobukiya line, which takes ludicrously proportioned girls in super-skimpy outfits and makes their clothes more revealing, because Japan, basically.  Even with the advent of the TTT2 Play Arts Kai figures, it feels like there's been a lot of missed opportunities over the years - the fact that I can honestly say the best Tekken figures money can buy are the sodding Minimates from the SFxTK series says it all.  It's not so bad if all you're after are polystone statues, but...where's the fun in a statue?

So, when this little beauty cropped up out of the blue, I was very excited.  Of course, it's not officially endorsed by Namco on any level and doesn't mention Tekken anywhere on the box and is only COINCIDENTALLY similar to a character from Tekken with the same first name *cough* so it's totally okay to buy it so long as you make sure to never ever mention it to Harada-san and/or his lawyers.  We clear?  Okay, let's get down to brass tacks.

THE STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD ~!

...seriously, what a f***ing stupid thing to call anyone...

???:  HEY YOU!

Nina:  Hm?

Chun Li:  You hurt my friend!  Now it's time for me to get some payback, and you better believe it's gonna come - WITH INTEREST!!

Nina:  Uh-huh.  And you are?

Chun Li:  Like you don't know!  I'm Chun Li!  Interpol detective!  Master of the Spinning Bird Kick!  Panty-flasher extraordinaire!  STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD!

Nina:  Stop shouting, Chubby.

Chubby Chun Li:  No, it's CHUN...LI!

Nina:  That's what I said.

Nina:  I don't even know who your 'friend' was - 

Chun Li:  Cammy!

Nina:  That name means nothing to me.

Chun Li:  She was the super-awesome commando!  Y'know, with the, uh, braided pigtails and the leotard and the...weird paint splotches on her legs?

Nina:  OH!  Girl-scout sleazy apartment wrestler, I remember that one.  Thought I killed her.

Chun Li:  She's just resting!

Nina:  Yeah, resting.  In a pine box, in the ground.  Tch...

Nina:  Y'know, if I had anything else to do right now, I'd just walk away and leave you to stew.  But as it happens, my schedule's open, and this whole 'Strongest Woman' crap has seriously pissed me off, so let's do this, Chubby.

Chun Li:  Okay!  Get ready to feel the brunt of my ultimate technique!  HAJIME!!

Craig's Most Wanted Games of 2013 (So Far)

Does exactly what it says on the tin.  These most certainly won't be the only games I buy over the next calendar year - I've got a lax understanding of fiscal responsibility - but they're the ones I'm really anticipating, and would definitely put money aside for in advance if I had that kind of sense.

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacies (3DS)

The Professor Layton series has been a pretty recent obsession of mine.  I completed the first game, Curious Village, almost 2 years ago, then forgot about the series, and only recently remembered them in the run-up to the arrival of the most recent game, Miracle Mask (also the first 3DS outing, and developers Level 5 made the transition very well).  Since then I've beaten Pandora's Box, Lost Future and Miracle Mask and am in the midst of Spectre's Call.  Whilst the simple logic puzzles are addictive in their own right, it's the quirky world, characters and stories that form each game's framework that have made me a fan, and with the promise that game 6, Azran Legacies, will both wrap up the overarching plot of the 'prequel trilogy' and be the last game to feature Layton himself as the protagonist (!), I'm very anxious to get my mitts on this one.  It's due out in Japan in February, but given the massive volume of text to localise, I'm not expecting it to drop in the UK until much later in the year.  It'll be worth it.

Aliens: Colonial Marines (multi-format)

Probably the most imminent arrival of everything on this list, Gearbox Software's love letter to Aliens doesn't look to be the most original or daring FPS I or anyone else has ever played, but it does look set to play to the strengths of the Marine campaigns in the various AVP games (typically the best parts of those titles) and the universe of Aliens is the sort of world I never mind returning to.  It helps that the devs have been hyping up the Wii U version as the 'best' version, though what this means beside using the GamePad as a movie-accurate motion tracker is beyond me.

Further Adventures of Minimate Nina, part deux: Prelude to a Something

In which the groundwork for future stories I haven't bothered plotting out yet is laid!  GET EXCITE!!

Nina:  Time to go see 'the boss', I guess.  I hate this part.

N:  Seriously, he can't just have an office...?