First Impressions: Tekken Revolution

Tekken Revolution is Namco Bandai's free to play fighter now released as a PS3 exclusive. This comes completely out of the blue as it was only announced last week, and confirmed it's launch at E3 a few days ago. However this is not the first venture into free to play Namco have taken as the rock, paper, scissors styled Tekken Card Tournament was released not too long ago.

Revolution unlike Card Tournament is a fully working brawler with a roster of 12 characters, 4 of which need to be unlocked. The game itself is probably one of the best sounding and looking Tekkens to date, with stylized menu backgrounds, flashy character intros (cheesey voice acting can be forgiven), and full HD combat arenas. Even the combat has been tweaked a little with certain moves blurring the character when moving to highlight the speed of the actions. The character selection screen also highlights key moves for each of the characters, giving the little bit of feedback so even new players can understand the basics behind each character's combat style.

The engine is one of the best despite being a free to play title

All that said the game is purely a solo affair as it lacks a local multiplayer mode, instead you are left with Arcade mode and Ranked/Unranked online matches only. Even the basic practice mode takes a back seat from the main menu, instead a very basic version can be found as the match finding lobby in Ranked online.

Arcade mode is a very basic affair in which you face around half a dozen characters with Ogre as the final boss. Sadly there is no difficultly setting and it starts out a little easy, even with my skills of spamming attacks it was still enough to beat that part of the game, even getting a handful of perfects later on, which normally this wouldn't happen in any other fighter for me. Long term play will likely suffer due to certain features in this title will likely trivialize arcade mode, but I will get to that later.

Thankfully the online modes are the stronger points of the game, the Unranked mode offers a full King of the Hill game system with both voice and text chat, whilst you watch your rivals face each other. The options into setting up a lobby are flushed out, with the option to not only filter language/region but also by ping as well, so the fear of getting a really laggy connection with one of the players is somewhat reduced. Another favorite option (for me at least) within Unranked is you have the option to set the maximum amount of wins a player can gain before both players change characters allowing for more variety in the match-ups.

Ranked is the standard Tekken system which you rank up based on your skills, like the Unranked version you can filter by language/region and ping, however you may also filter by rank bracket so you can limit to players around your skill level, or open up the floor to anyone to challenge you. One thing I was pleased with, was the lack of a Loss Counter as only your total Wins are shown, therefore it's less disheartening to play; safe from knowing I got completely destroyed the last time I played. On the other hand it does lead to a problem of a lack of information, I could not find any information about my rank other then what Tier I was in, and in every ranking match I would only find out if I was about to rank up when the match started.

Even on the main menu only basic Rank Information is given

The new feature to the game is the Character Enhancement system is which you can customize your selected characters capabilities. During the matches you earn 'money' based on your performance, not only that but also experience as well which gives you skill points when you level up. Both the money and skill points are used to upgrade stats on your characters; power, endurance, and vigor. Power increases the damage your attacks will deal, endurance increases your character’s defense/health, and vigor increases the likelihood you’ll land critical hits.

While this adds a semi-RPG twist into the game I feel in the long term it will destroy any balance in the game, which is key to these sort of games, and as mentioned before trivializing Arcade mode into just a cash grind. Further more as the skill points are only gained by leveling up, it becomes a hard choice in which characters you want to level up, more so with still locked characters as once you have placed points into a character there is no way to reset them.

In regards to unlocking the remaining 4 characters, you gain Gift Points in each match however the game is very vague on when you unlock these characters, again with a lack of information I can only assume it is when you reach a milestone in Gift Points, but knowing how is difficult without doing some heavy Googling.

The RPG 'twist' may completely ruin the experience

The final bit of this puzzle is the free to play element itself, Namco have opted for a timed 'power' based system normally found in mobile games. This is split into Arcade and Battle Coins, Arcade Coins allowing for one play through of Arcade mode per Coin refunded once every hour after use, a maximum of 2 Arcade Coins can be held at one time. Battle Coins allowing for one online match, either Ranked or Unranked, per coin with a refund every 30 minutes with a maximum limit of 5.

Premium Tickets, gained once every 5 matches online, can be used to play either online or offline modes net greater rewards then the Coins. Finally Premium Coins are purchasable from the Playstation Store and yield the same effects as the Premium Tickets. With a lack of information given in game, I discovered via other sources that if you use your Premium Tickets during an online match and win, your ticket is refunded. Personally I find the ease of buying Premium Coins from within game quite worrying, as its only a handful button presses of X from the main menu that results in buying them, making this almost as bad as a few mobile apps out there.

With the key word in your head being 'mobile' right now, I bring up the fact this game is PS3 only. With the timer limitation and the possible playtime only being in short bursts, this game shouldn't be a console title - it screams out as a PS Vita title to me. It just feels like the correct fit for the title on that platform as it's the perfect 'on the go' design to just pick up and play when you can, it's an exclusive which the Vita sorely needs right now. Sitting and waiting in the living room for the long timers to tick down with no other interaction with players outside the lobby system isn't for me, I would rather tab out to the system menu and play something else, more then likely forget about the timers and completely miss playing the game 'efficiently'.

Great fighter hampered by it's limitations

Overall my first impressions of Tekken Revolution is mixed, it's a good fighter for the short term play, but I feel it's on the wrong platform. That said it's a great start for people not used to fighting games, plus being free it's the better experience to introduce players to the Tekken universe. The lack of local multiplayer and timed limitations probably wont keep long term fans interested but it will at least fill a gap between titles.

Tekken Revolution can be found free to download on the Playstation Network

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