Legendary Comics is still new to the publishing scene, but they've already amassed an impressive lineup of talent. The company recently debuted The Tower Chronicles from creators Thomas Tull and Matt Wagner. Back at SDCC, they announced new books from creators like Max Brooks, Mark Waid, and J. Michael Straczynski.
That talent pool grew even bigger at NYCC this week. Legendary announced that both Grant Morrison and Guillermo del Toro are writing comics under their banner. Morrison is prepping an original graphic novel, while del Toro is working on a tie-in to his upcoming film The Pacific Rim.
The film centers around the incredible adventures of Max Nomax; a sci-fi rebel anti-hero who’s condemned to a haunted prison orbiting a supermassive black hole, following an epic struggle against the all-knowing, all–powerful artificial life form VADA and his squad of deadly Annihilators. Found guilty of the Greatest Crime in History, Nomax has vowed to clear his name by discovering a Cure for Death itself and resurrecting his lost love.
But with deadlines looming and a recently-diagnosed brain tumor, Spass is running out of time and inspiration – until the real Max Nomax mysteriously appears in the world of 21st century Los Angeles with no memory of how he got there, only a terrifying warning of imminent destruction and a mission for Ray Spass."
As for del Toro's Pacific Rim, the comic will serve as a prequel to the film. The script itself will be handled by Travis Beacham, who also wrote the film's script. The story will be divided into three sections and explore the time between the first alien attack on Earth and the events of the film. While various characters will be featured in the story, the character of Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba in the film) will be a major focus throughout.
Legendary didn't reveal the artists for these books or specific release dates, though it's a safe bet that Pacific Rim will ship some time around movie's July 2013 release.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
Dark Shadows tells the sordid tale of Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), who is transformed into a vampire and entombed by a jaded witch named Angelique (a scene-stealing Eva Green – who's the only reason to watch the film). Two centuries later he awakens to find his family dynasty in ruins. Together with the help of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), her angst-addled kids Carolyn and David (Chloe Moretz and Gulliver McGrath), her shady brother Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller) and psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter, who seems more like she just stumbled onto the set), they attempt to reclaim the family's former glory.
There's one constant with Tim Burton films as of late. The more money he's given, the worse the project turns out. Dark Shadows was an annoyingly expensive gothic horror picture that, had it been made in the mid '80s, would have cost $30-40 million. But with glossy big-budget effects and Johnny Depp in tow, Dark Shadows became a needlessly expensive $150 million tent-pole title that needed to hit, or else.
But Dark Shadows wasn't meant for an audience of that size. After all, it was based on a beloved but admittedly only modestly popular cult soap series. While such material seems ripe for the picking for Tim Burton, the once outstanding director seems to have a bit of a problem with excess.
With enough money to make three or four '80s Burton films, Dark Shadows is a messy concoction of lazy storytelling, bad plotting and weak characters, all told under an expansive budget that allows for impressive sets and costumes and enough elaborate effects and production design to keep the eyes in wonder. Alas, with a meandering pace, no real story driving things, a villain who audiences sympathize with more than the “hero,” and a bloated, overlong running time, Dark Shadows represents some of worst work Tim Burton has delivered since, well, his last film.
As a die-hard Burton lover, this is wholeheartedly saddening. The once great filmmaker just can't seem to harness a story anymore and craft it into something compelling or memorable. Instead, Burton seems to be exploring the limits of his imagination, forgetting that some of his best work came from smaller budgets and more stress. I find it hard to imagine a film like Beetlejuice, for example, would work with the Burton we have nowadays.
Dark Shadows isn't Burton's worst film, but it's certainly a big disappointment, especially considering the gothic material. The idea of the film is funny on paper, but the execution is anything but compelling. Still, the visuals are quite dazzling and it's fairly obvious where all the money went. If only some of that cash had gone to crafting a more focused, compelling narrative, and if only someone had told Burton to dial things back a little, this might have been Burton's return-to-form. Fingers crossed for Frankenweenie.
Dark Shadows comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, encoded in 1080p/AVC and mixed in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. We'll be taking a look at the two-disc Blu-ray/DVD/UltraViolet combo pack for this review. There's also a single-disc Blu-ray/UV version as well.
With crisp, bold gothic imagery driving the narrative, it should come as no shock that Dark Shadows looks quite extraordinary on Blu-ray. The image is a bit intentionally soft at times, but it's also defined by perfect shadows, inky, rich blacks and plenty of moody texture and detail. The encode yields little-to-no flaws, either. No noise, banding or heavy compression was noted at all. While Dark Shadows does boast a soft, eerie palette that doesn't strike the eyes in the way other big-budget titles can, this is a stellar transfer that's well worth commending.
Audio is equally dazzling, from the film's minor action set pieces (the finale sounds incredible) to the film's quieter, character-driven moments. Rarely does this mix falter. No crackles, distortions or hiss were noted. Surrounds help paint a lively gothic atmosphere, and bass adds texture to the film's action cues and to Danny Elfman's score.
Extras are less impressive. Fans are treated to a relatively thin Maximum Movie Mode that doesn't actually play like a Maximum Movie Mode at all. Instead, it's just a picture-in-picture feature with some decent behind-the-scenes insight and about 40 minutes of Focus Points featurettes. While it's hardly terrible, it also fails to live up to the Maximum Movie Mode level of quality. Bonus features are topped off with a 6-minute deleted scenes reel.
Dark Shadows should have been a return-to-form for director Tim Burton, but with a bloated budget and way too much room to play, Burton delivers yet another wasted effort. The Blu-ray looks and sounds fantastic, but extras are a little disappointing. Rent this one before you buy.
Because of all the drama that arose around Spades he decided to quit Starcraft 2 in early June; 3 weeks later the new team has arrived. Currently Western Wolves are sponsoring five players: three Swedes, one Brit, and one Lithuanian. With this line-up it is obvious that the main focus of the team is Europe.
Two fairly unknown players on the team are Starnan, and Mini. The Swedish representatives had some good games in the past against people like ToD or Satinii during DreamHack events or in online cups, but other than that they are a mystery. During DH Summer they got to Ro64 and Ro32 respectively.
Fargo on the other hand is one of those gamers who have dozens of small wins in online cups and small offline tournaments, but nothing to be considered a new upcoming star on the pro scene; however, his strong performance online got him a few notable kills like Tefel, Adelscott, PoYo, and Origine. Now he’s waiting for his big chance in a larger offline event.
SortOf is one of the best on the team. The Swede took second place at WCS Sweden Nationals losing to ThorZain in the finals, but upsetting SaSe, NaNiwa, Bischu, and Cytoplasm on his road there. He participated in MLG, IEM, Assembly, and dominated big names like Haypro, Nerchio, Satiini, and more. This is the guy with full-package as a player, but needs a big win to make a break out to the scene.
Still, what surprises me the most about him is the consistency in winning online cups; mainly Playhem Daily, but you can see him tearing through the brackets of Go4SC and ZOTAC. If he’s going to keep up with practice he will take a big victory one day; maybe 2012 is going to be his year? You never know.
After winning WCS United Kingdom Finals, where he upset DeMusliM 2-1, qualifying for IPL Season 5, and his splendid performance during Dreamhack Open: Summer, where he played as a stand-in for JonnyREcco, it was just a matter of time until Ziktomini gets an offer he’ll be glad to accept. He made a huge splash in the UK scene this year, and is definitely hungering for more.
He is the one to lead Western Wolves to victory. Together with SortOf they are more than capable of taking down their opponents in IPTL Season 1, but are they ready for it? Most definitely!
Written by Albert Palka
The BBC has unveiled a new mini-adventure that will set the scene for Doctor Who's seventh season.
A new episode of the "Pond Life" mini-series will be released every day in the run up to the premiere of the latest season, which takes place on Saturday.
The first episode is already available, and future episodes will release at noon each day. The series promises to explore the domestic events that take place in between time travel, and will reintroduce the love triangle between Amy, Rory and The Doctor after the long break since the last series.
It culminates in the premiere of season seven, Asylum of the Daleks, on Saturday. Arthur Darvill, who plays Rory in the hit show, has revealed that the final episode of Pond Life will end in a cliff hanger that leads into the new batch of five episodes very nicely.
The Doctor's latest adventure kicks off on BBC One on Saturday 01 September at 7.20pm.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
It’s not easy to tell a good story in an MMO. While cut-scene story sequences of games like BioWare’s The Old Republic and Funcom’s The Secret World are more effective at evoking specific emotional responses, they don’t feel like especially social experiences. They tell very rigid stories that make you feel like you’re playing a single-player game, which is great for a change of pace after a round of questing, but can also take away from one of the chief benefits of the genre: the sense of community.
ArenaNet mixes numerous styles of story delivery, offering up highly structured main story content but also events, which are basically dynamic open quests that occur out in the main game world. When an event takes place, there’s no need to read a lengthy text box or ensure the proper quest is active and at the proper stage of completion. After arriving at an event area the quest is essentially auto-activated, allowing anyone to start fighting, collecting, escorting, or whatever the objective happens to be.
“A good dynamic event is going to bring people in just through the nature of what’s going on through visual effects, audio effects, what the NPCs are talking about, what the story is,” said ArenaNet’s Mike Zadorojny. “People are just naturally interested because they’re curious, they want to see what’s happening. Also because that’s where you’re going to get Karma, so there’s a reward system built into it to encourage people to go along that path as well.”
Of course simply dangling the carrot of Karma in front of players isn’t going to be reason enough to keep them coming back throughout the entirety of the leveling process. If the event involves staring at bunnies for twenty minutes, really ugly bunnies, chances are nobody is going to bother sticking around to earn the rewards. Zadorojny explained how the team goes about building the events to ensure the action is as much of a motivating factor as the rewards.
“We actually had the early dynamic event system working in the Guild Wars 1 engine before we could even work on Guild Wars 2. That’s how long we’ve been iterating on this process. A straight collection event isn’t necessarily exciting. A straight kill count event isn’t necessarily exciting. But when you layer in additional things, like you’re using a gun to collect something, or you’re using a gun that transforms creatures and then from there you’re collecting items. When you start layering additional mechanics it becomes more engaging to the player.”
ArenaNet links events with bits of fiction so it feels like one connected storyline, even as outcomes change depending on whether or not objectives are met. In the Asura starting zone, for example, there’s an Asura trying to repair a gate so she can travel into an ancient laboratory. “When she actually gets down there, there’s an event that basically escorts her through the location,” said Zadorojny, “and there’s a side objective where if you find these extra data crystals you can give them to her. If you give her enough data crystals, the follow-up event is different. If you don’t do the side objective, when she gets to the end there are golems that don’t recognize her as the owner of this facility so it puts her in a stasis field and players are defending her from the golems. If you give her enough crystals, she can fake the system into thinking she’s the original owner, and so the secondary event is no longer about protecting her from the golems, it has to do with destroyers that are coming up and causing problems. So you’re doing something with the golems instead of against them.”
In another event chain on the same map, a reactor explodes and it’s up to the group to help an NPC clean it up. If everyone manages to protect the NPC through the entire cleaning process, he explodes and a gigantic fire elemental stomps into the area and starts attacking all nearby. If the group fails to protect him, he gets captured by enemy forces and turned into a hostile golem, and his ensuing destructive rampage needs to be stopped.
“If you’re doing an escort that leads you into a new area and [the NPCs] set up shop, there’s a good chance that events are going to spawn off of those locations. Based on the states of the world, who’s located where, where safe havens are, you can start seeing this spider web of events that are trailing off to various other locations.”
ArenaNet doesn’t only allow one group at a time to experience this type of content. Many can join in throughout the course of an event, and that follow along with stories in a social environment with fewer restrictions when compared to many other MMOs. “We have a scaling system in place that handles a lot of this,” said Zadorojny, which is used to boost the difficulty level of encounters as more players join, adding in things like additional attack types for bosses and minions, to ensure encounters can’t simply be steamrolled over by superior numbers.
But there’s far more than quest structures to consider when telling stories in an MMO and setting a tone, as designer Ree Soesbee explained. “We want [players] to go find things and when they find something Asura kids telling jokes or a pirate house or just a really gorgeous vista we want them to feel like they’ve accomplished or they’ve discovered. And if you go there and it’s meh, then you walk off. It’s much cooler if you go there and these NPCs are reacting as well, they’re doing stuff.”
“It creates the idea that they’ve got their own lives,” said ArenaNet’s Jeff Grubb. “For our main cities we really wanted to give them a sense of place and a sense of being alive and we did that with a lot of voice over that is not directly tied to what you’re doing. You may encounter it and you may not encounter it, but that has a feel for the spontaneity.”
Depending on which are you start, ArenaNet hopes to preserve the distinct personalities of each race, from the warlike Charr to the hyper-intelligent, overconfident Asura. “The Asura are brilliant and confident and irritating,” said Grubb. “They’re a race of mad scientists as a result.”
It was important to ArenaNet to give all players a sense of all races, so it’s not necessary to play an Asura to know what the Asura are like. “In Charr lands you can still get an understanding of what the Asura are about,” said Grubb. “So I’ve played Charr and I know everything about the legions and I meet this little Asura guy and I go oh, that’s different. What’s that? Hey he’s smart. Whoa he insulted me. Hey what’s his story? You get interested in what their story is because those NPCs throughout the world are conceptualized from something that is really potently distilled so that it is a reflection of that. Then maybe you go and play as an Asura.”
To tell more directed stories, ArenaNet uses a personal story system threaded throughout each zone, which takes you to instanced areas and uses voiced dialogue sequences to tell the most important parts of the story, more in the style of a single-player game. These stories won’t be the same for everyone, but tailored to the decisions made through character creation as well as decisions made at crucial moments throughout leveling and questing. “You get three, three or four choices right off the bat,” said Soesbee. “More than that if you count things like your race and your class. Those things each spawn a little storyline.”
For example, if a player picks Sylvari and specifies during creation that the character dreamed of a white stag, a white stag is involved in personal story quests, and it might lead to a meeting with an NPC that would never otherwise happen. “You get this revolving cast of NPCs and situations that is very mutable based on what you’ve done in the world,” said Soesbee. “So either you’re going to go save that guy and fight a big boss who is holding him prisoner, or you’re going to save the town and the fight is going to be you against a thousand little guys who are trying to burn the town.”
Soesbee explained how ArenaNet had to be careful about how to tell these stories without fumbling the emotional impact. “We don’t want to tell you what your character feels. That’s kind of a no-no if I went up to you and said this guy died, you should feel sad. We try to just set the scene so that you do feel sad. We try to show that death or show that event in whatever emotional context it is and let you feel what you would feel about it and just tell the story around you and let you interact with it as much as possible.”
“We’re not above manipulating your emotions,” added Grubb, “but we do recognize that you can feel different ways about it.”
“That’s one way that the choices in the stories and in the personal stories can be very useful to us,” continued Soesbee, “because we show you two NPCs and one is really funny and one is really serious. And then we say one of them is going to die. They’re being attacked. Which one do you save? Well we’re not saying you have to feel strongly about this funny guy because you might pick the other one, but because you’ve chosen which one you like, we know that you are going to be more invested in that story of saving that guy.”
ArenaNet plans to build in more events and story-driven content following launch, though so far is only giving hints as to what that content might involve. “We’ve laid out a lot of hooks,” said Grubb. “I came in on end of Factions so I worked on Nightfall and Eye of the North. I did a lot of research on the basics of the world to figure out okay, why is this happening? What have we said? How does that help create the basis for new stories? One thing that Ree mentioned early in her movement of the world which was sort of like our story manifesto was that we refer to the various elder dragons. We talked about a sea dragon, just one line. We haven’t talked about it since. The fans haven’t forgotten about it. And will we talk about it? I don’t know. If we come up with you know good stories for it, yes we will.”
We’ll know for sure if ArenaNet’s take on story implementation is ultimately a good one overall after the game launches on August 28.
Japanese mobile game developer Kairosoft burst onto the U.S. scene in late 2010 with the smash-hit sim Game Dev Story. The title allows gamers to grow their own game development studio from a tiny indie making puzzle and trivia games for PCs into a massive operation capable of releasing its own game console.
The game’s not-so-subtle jabs at the real-world game industry made it an instant cult-classic with core gamers. To succeed players have to choose the right company to make consoles for – “Senga” and “Intendro” are two early-game choices. Players also must smartly match their game’s theme with the proper genre. I personally had a string of smash-hit motion-controlled romance games called “Love Touch” towards the end of my Game Dev Story career.
Game Dev Story was the company’s first U.S. title and remains its biggest success. Kairosoft’s story extends back far further, however.
The truth is that Kairosoft is a much older company than most people think it is. The studio was formed in 1996 and its small team of nine has been making simple simulation games, first for PC and later for mobile phones, ever since.
Kairosoft has released a steady string of sim titles onto the iOS App Store and Google Play Store since Game Dev Story became such a smash hit – 14 titles in just 22 months. But the truth is that many of these titles, while new to English-speaking audiences, aren’t new at all.
In the late 90s and early 2000s Japanese mobile phones were significantly more powerful than the brick-like Nokia handsets that were popular in the United States and Europe. Apple’s iPhone and high-end Android handsets have since closed the gap, but Japanese consumers enjoyed full-color, game-capable phones far earlier than the Western world.
Can your team make the next big hit?
Most Kairosoft’s sims that hit the App Store are ports of these original mobile games. Anyone that owns Game Dev Story can dive into the options menu to turn “pad on.” This will activate a round virtual game pad that hints at how Kairosoft’s games are played on lower-end phones that don’t feature a touch screen.
New games or old, many English-speaking gamers can’t get enough of Kairosoft’s breezy blend of simple strategy & simulation. The company is often criticized for its titles being too similar to one another. It’s not an unfair complaint – many Kairosoft games feel very homogeneous. Still, after spending enough time away many gamers find themselves developing the well-known “Kairosoft itch” and want to come back for more.
When the mood strikes, which items in the studio's ever-growing library of titles are worth your dough? IGN has your back. We’ve broken down and ranked all of Kairosoft’s English-language iOS releases below. Now you can buy the best and skip the rest.
Game Dev Story may be Kairosoft’s most-popular game, but it isn’t the company’s best. That honor goes to Mega Mall Story. The game features a huge volume of stores to unlock, keeping your mall varied and fresh all the way to the game’s conclusion. The endgame, traditionally the weak spot in Kairosoft games, is strengthened thanks to a few very expensive late-game investments and hard-to-achieve secret goals.
Kairosoft’s original hit remains one of the company’s best titles. There is less pure gameplay and decision-making in Game Dev than most Kairosoft titles – you won’t be hunting for combos or worrying about building placement. But the game makes up for these deficiencies with a much faster pace (there is always something to do) and a great sense of video game humor. It’s too much fun attending Game Dev’s version of E3 and hiring a celebrity to hang out in your booth attracting fans, or creating a hit franchise of Pirate Adventure games.
Like Game Dev Story, Dungeon Village is more fun than it probably should be thanks to its great theme. The game gives players the opportunity to build up their own RPG town. The more inns and shops you construct, the better equipped traveling adventurers will be. This allows them to defeat more monsters and bring back more loot to spend in town. It’s a great cycle. Plenty of RPG-style loot to collect is just the icing on the cake.
Pocket Academy is often overlooked due to its theme. How much fun could it be building and running a private school? Crazy-fun, it turns out. Most Kairosoft games seem complex at first glance but are actually fairly simple beneath the surface. Pocket Academy is one of the few Kairosoft games with true depth. Hiring the right teachers, giving students the right career advice and building just the right mix of facilities gives gamers more decisions to make than most of Kairosoft’s sims.
Epic Astro Story is a great concept for the Kairosoft “simple sim” treatment: pioneer an untamed planet in the distant future, clean out its hostile citizens and build up thriving trade with neighboring aliens to bring in the dough. For the most part the concept works brilliantly. There’s even light RPG combat mechanics. A few balance issues are the only issue holding Epic Astro back from brilliance and top-tier placement. It’s simply too easy to achieve every goal once a gamer figures out the title's ins and outs.
Pocket League Story is similar to Game Dev, in that players manage the progress of a small group of people (this time a soccer team), instead of developing an empty space with stores and decorations like most Kairosoft titles. These stat-management titles are usually simpler and more passive, with less choices for gamers to make. Game Dev succeeds thanks to its clever nods to video game history – something that Pocket League lacks. Passively watching dozens of soccer matches unfold also grows tiresome. Still, it’s very compelling to nurture a team of scrubs into World Cup champs, and Pocket League is very well-balanced, ensuring only very careful players will reach the Gold on their first loop through.
Hot Springs Story is the first Kairosoft game on this chart that’s hard to recommend wholeheartedly. Taking a tiny spa and growing it into a massive, award-winning business (complete with restaurants, message chairs and of course male and female hot springs) is fun, but it doesn’t feel as epic or clever as most Kairosoft titles. It’s also more repetitive than Kairosoft’s greats. To succeed you’ll have to place the same few decorations and stores over and over – there is less variety than a title like Mega Mall.
Venture Towns was supposed to be a match made in heaven: take Kairosoft’s tried and true breezy sim/strategy and marry it with the most classic of sim genres: the city builder! The results aren’t bad – just disappointing. Venture Towns has some good ideas but never quite recovers from its slow pace. Players spend more time waiting around for money to accumulate than actually playing. The generic theme also works against Venture Towns in some ways. Running a hot springs or private school might feel strange, but they’re also more memorable than developing a generic town.
In Grand Prix Story players must create the best racing team possible by managing staff, carefully upgrading cars and spending research points to unlock new parts. Like Pocket League Story, Grand Prix is a bit on the basic side. There are no buildings to construct or stores to arrange. But Pocket League has the advantage of a universally-loved and understood goal: reach the World Cup. Only major gear-heads will be as excited about competing in an ever-escalating set of races.
Oh! Edo Towns tasks players with building up a town in Japan’s Edo Period (1603 – 1868). It suffers from the same pacing problems found in Venture Towns, with the added disadvantage of a significant cultural gap to overcome. Like other Kairosoft titles, the basic strategy is to construct complimentary shops next to one another. But what is the logical thing to build next to a Straw Hat Shop, or a Public Bath?
Even with these problems and its placement at the bottom of the list, Oh! Edo Towns is still a lot of fun. It’s easy to get caught up in that all-too-familiar “Just one more month” cycle that all Kairosoft games feature so strongly. Your next building or expansion is always just around the corner, making the game very hard to put down. Oh! Edo Towns isn’t bad. It’s just the most skippable title among a library of very strong releases.
Kairosoft often alternates iOS and Android releases, showing each platform an equal amount of love. All Kairosoft titles eventually hit both platforms but some games can remain exclusive to either Google or Apple’s platforms for many months. So iOS gamers looking for a sneak peek of what’s to come should look at what’s already available on Android:
Pocket Clothier - (Buy)
Run your own clothing shop! Coordinate fashions, position mannequins and do everything else in your power to grow from a tiny corner shop into a world-class boutique.
The Sushi Spinnery - (Buy)
Manage and grow a revolving sushi restaurant! Set the menu, pick your amenities and pick the perfect décor.
World Cruise Story - (Buy)
Captain a luxury cruise liner! Develop entertainment options including casinos and restaurants, deck-out your ship, create lavish suites and travel to all the right ports to succeed.
Cafeteria Nipponica - (Buy)
Run your own restaurant! Find ingredients, discover recipes, hire your crew and set the correct ambiance.
Kairosoft’s Japanese website gives us a hint of what we can expect from the company in the coming months. Titles that have not yet been translated into English include games that allow players to run an arcade, run a video game retail store, become a manga artist, and plenty more.
Only Kairosoft knows for certain what is in store for U.S. audiences - the company is notoriously hard for the English-speaking games press to get in touch with. But it's a sure bet that the small studio has plenty more pixel-filled simulation goodness on the way.
Which Kairosoft games are your favorites? What idea would you like to see Kairosoft tackle next? Leave a note in the comments below and let us know.
Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He has been reviewing cell phone games since the dark days of Java flip phones. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is kind of a big deal. Initially appearing in Japanese arcades late last year, the game has been very popular in that scene, due to its appeal to both old and new fans of the series. “Veterans of the series who had been around for a long time and played all the Tekkens really seemed to enjoy it,” says Katsuhiro Harada, Game Director of the Tekken Project, and a member of the Tekken project for 17 years now. “And then on the other end of the spectrum there were the very new players who were good at memorising things and learning quickly and they seemed to really enjoy the game system as well.”
The initial arcade release is just the first step, of course. Letting it loose in the arcade wild gives the team valuable insight into how people are playing the game, any potential balance issues and what the fans would like to see. In the case of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (TTT2), the game has already seen an arcade upgrade, subtitled ‘Unlimited’. This, according to Harada, was designed to cater to “the more casual group who started with Tekken 5 or 6. A lot of these players said they could only really use one character, say Lili or a character like that, and there wasn’t a second character that was easily learnt. So we added the 'Solo' gameplay system; one-on-one. You could still pick two-on-two like before, or also you could do one-on-two. Since we implemented that we noticed that a lot more people across a variety of different player groups and styles really seemed to be enjoying the game a lot more.”
Tekken Tag: New Moon.
It’s this ‘Unlimited’ version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 that’s coming to homes around the world in September. TTT2 is still very much a Tekken 6 sibling, and if you have any experience with that game you’ll find plenty of familiar faces, and that most of your strategies translate well. However, the addition of the tag system brings so much more to the table, much like the original Tekken Tag Tournament did after Tekken 3, that this is indeed a deep game with longevity for both casual and long-time fans alike. Strategy-wise it’s a far cry from any other solo or team-based fighting game, as players really have to manage their resources. If one character dies, the team dies, which makes safe tagging a premium skill. Whilst the old-school ‘Tag Cancel’ is gone, TTT2 gives us a more strategic ‘Tag Crash’ – it costs you your recoverable life and your ‘Netsu’ (time-limited damage increase), but it gives you a near-invulnerable tag in.
In terms of damage, the more power to hurt you have, the more chance you have of stopping another player bringing in their other character. Juggles are as insane as ever, with tag-buffered launchers returning from Tag Classic. On top of this, players also have ‘Tag Assault’, which is a combination of the Bound system in Tekken 6 (slam an opponent into the ground during a juggle and they’ll bounce up and you can keep juggling) and the Tag Launch (your team member can come in and get in a string after the Bound). Sounds pretty complex, but it’s all pretty intuitive once you get going, and it won’t take long before you start doing juggles that include multiple tags, bounds, walls, wall breaks and any combination thereof.
The battle arenas in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 are similar to Tekken 6, with walled stages of various sizes and shapes – some with breakable walls – and a few infinite stages as well. TTT2 also sees the addition of tiered stages: smash your opponent over a balcony, and your team-mate is waiting at the bottom to continue the carnage. Damage scaling does kick in, but the possibility for insane juggles is virtually endless with all these variables. Players can look forward to new stages as well – there’s a Snoop Dogg one as part of the pre-order bonus content, and the team has promised more to come.
As far as the port from the arcade game is concerned, the gameplay is clean and true though the presentation may be a shade clunkier. There were definite moments of slowdown during hectic action in the code we played, but it didn’t inhibit gameplay and will hopefully be polished out of the final release. Playing through the game in Arcade mode it’s clear that this is a true representation of the game so many Tekken fans have been pouring money into at the arcades.
Of course, outside the gameplay systems, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for PS3 and 360 isn’t a simple arcade port – there are quite a few extras thrown in. DLC characters and stages have already been announced, with the novel addition of them all being free.
“We haven’t announced all of the DLC characters yet,” Harada tells us. “Regarding the characters we have announced so far, some of them are similar to existing characters, for example Jaycee and Michelle. This was actually done on purpose because obviously you can play solo with Jaycee, but if you were going to take her and try to find a partner, well you would have to re-learn strategy and techniques and such and it’d be very difficult. You couldn’t just pick Kuma and use him right away. Although on the other hand if you played Kuma, Panda is available; or if you use the Capoeira fighters you have them easily available, so we wanted to have similar pairings for other characters as well. They do have unique moves themselves, but their overall strategy - you don’t have to relearn how to use the character.”
The ultimate tag pair?
“There is some fan service obviously - bringing back some of these characters that people have been asking for,” Harada continues, “but we really wanted to get more people enjoying the tag system by providing easy-to-learn pairings. But that’s not all of it - it’s not that you just buy the game and play through it and you get the endings and it’s finished. We want people to enjoy the game for a long time. So after release if three or four weeks later a new character appears or something, that’s something to look forward to and everyone can enjoy it for quite a while and people will want to draw their friends in as well. It’s another tool to help people enjoy the game and stay excited about it for longer.”
The DLC bonuses don’t stop there though, with assurances that there is plenty still to come. “There are some characters that we haven’t announced that are quite unique," Harada says. "There are even some that I’m very confident people won’t guess, so there are definitely some surprises left. There are also stages, a few new ones that we’ve been announcing that have been geared towards pleasing various fan groups in different countries by giving them a stage in their country. But again, there are still some that we haven’t announced yet.”
This is all great news for the casual Tekken player – the player who wants to enjoy the game and learn their own character, but isn’t too keen to obsess about frame data and memorising duckable strings of other characters. In fact, ‘Rage’, the damage-increasing power-up from Tekken 6 was often seen in highly competitive circles as something of a ‘scrub clutch’ – an unfair equaliser that could hurt the more attacking, talented player more than it could ever help him. Harada-san holds a very different view on this.
“So actually Rage was quite popular if you look at the Tekken audience overall,” he tells us. “Some said maybe they felt they would lose to an opponent of lesser skill. But when you look at it overall, that just means that because of Rage sometimes accidents will occur if the player isn’t careful enough... Most of the people who play Tekken, say 70%, are part of that intermediate group – they know how to play the game a bit but not necessarily at tournament level. They enjoy it because they feel if they play enough, they’ll still have a chance of beating someone who’s better than them occasionally. And that really leads to them sticking with the game much longer. It’s funny that people who are big fans of the series and have been with it for a long time have that opinion because if they remember back to Tekkens 1, 2 and 3 the game was much more rough in that aspect. And that’s kind of what makes Tekken Tekken.”
One final question mark that remains is online. Not everyone has an arcade nearby or can drag friends over for competition in person. Online play is obviously the solution for those looking for competition. Tekken 6 was disappointing in this area, even though Tekken 5 had been more than passable.
“It’s funny you mention that because we just got back from an event in San Diego where we showed off the online code for the first time,” Harada says. “We had some of the more well-known players in the community come and check it out and they were all very positive about what they experienced. We took the code from Soulcalibur V and improved on that. We haven’t really announced much about the online modes but I guess we could say that most of what you were able to do in Soulcalibur V, which was very well received, was taken and implemented for Tag 2. And then on top of that we have the team function as in Tekken-Net on arcade, which we’ve kind of taken and adapted to consoles. We are still working on that and implementing it in the game, and we will have more details shortly.”
All told, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is shaping up to be a more than worthy new addition to the series. It looks to present compelling gameplay for both new and existing fans, has a roster of more than 50 fighters, throws in a healthy wad of additional content to be delivered free, and promises quality online play.
Are you looking forward to Tekken Tag Tournament 2? Tell us why in the comments.
Bryce McDonough is an Australian freelance writer and hardcore Tekken fan. You can follow the antics of IGN AU on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Awesome.
We open to a killer scene of some clearly distracted man eating chicken nuggets and trying different sauces in front of several—I don’t know—taste scientists; all of it in German. The scientists seem to know what they’re talking about, at least. It’s obtuse and sterile and kind of weird. Turns out this is part of Madrigal. Madrigal, if you remember the fake ad from a couple of seasons ago for Los Pollos Hermanos, is the distribution company for Fring’s enterprise. Fring used the distribution company to ship out meth and oh, yes, OK, now I get why this guy seems so despondent, he must’ve known everything.
The man, who we later find out is Mr. Schuler, grabs a defibrillator while law enforcement bangs at the door and he shocks himself to death. I didn’t know you could rig a defibrillator like that, and I’m a little shocked a corporate executive knew this, but it was damn cool (and a poetic way to go out—damned by his own tongue either way).
The entire scene was absolutely amazing, perfect in execution. It’s its own little universe. Even though the man doesn’t say a line, we know why he’s despondent, why law enforcement is there and why he kills himself. These cold openings have rarely disappointed.
The direction in “Madrigal” was gorgeous, the opening scene being a microcosm for it. The episode itself was a magic trick. We were looking out the peep hole waiting for our answer to come through the door and it came in through the back.
“Madrigal” dropped into our main storyline with Walt and Jesse talking to Mike. Mike started it certain he wasn’t going to join Walt and there was a good portion of the episode where it looked like Mike may actually not. There was a gateway where the writers could have followed him around to watch the aftermath of Walt’s decisions and tie in Hank’s investigating with Walt’s elusion. It could’ve worked. Meanwhile, Jesse was sent to find [ingredient name - anyone in the comments catch exactly what it was?] so he and Walt could start cooking again.
So while we were watching Walt make orders and Jesse run around, Mike saw 12—err, nine good people lose all of their money. And instead of repeatedly saying he’s doing it for his family, he’s just doing it.
There’s your juxtaposition—the long-awaited comparison between someone who’s actually doing it for his family (Mike) and someone who’s using his family as an excuse because he likes the power (Walt).
Mike: "Get rid of the magnets and maybe I'll come back."
Mike told everyone to stay calm, everyone's been prepared for a scenario like this, and Lydia, the woman at the restaurant -- who I thought was maybe an accountant -- turned around and tried to kill everyone that could connect her to Gus after the police shut down the international accounts. Mike then nearly dispatched her, but not before getting the one thing that could possibly bring him back in — the [ingredient name]. Turns out she’s a supplier for the chemistry side. Lo and behold, she has something Walt needs. Lo and behold, Mike needs money and needs money for His Guys. Mike is pretty awesome.
As an aside, how awesome was that scene between Mike and Hank? Great scene. And Mike being from Philly and a former police officer, being smart as heck, a seasoned pro, and an actual family man, it’s hard not to root for him. I hope he doesn’t die.
“Madrigal” also tied up some loose ends that were, well, big questions from the end of last year. Or rather, one question. What happened to the cigarette?
Walt got the cigarette back from Saul last episode (who had Huell lift it off Jesse in last season’s finale) and Walt attempted to plant a stand in cigarette in Jesse’s house and search with him. The scene opened with Walt dissecting the cigarette and taking out the poison and replacing it with salt—then hiding the real poison in his house behind an electrical plug in the wall — all while Jesse vented to Walt his anxiety over the phone. So stylized. So cool. So lean and efficient. When they found it — bringing back the roomba — Jesse broke down and cried because he nearly shot Walt. It’s been a long year or two for Pinkman.
This is the scene that ties everything together. Nobody, myself included, really thought about the emotional implications for Jesse, and it’s because we knew Walt manipulated Jesse. He then did everything in his power to hide it — and wow was that a long way — and Jesse, who’s been misguided, is now filled with regret for pulling a gun on Walt and nearly killing him, even though it was the right decision.
Walt attempted to console Jesse, but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t give a hoot. Probably because he’s become a complete liar.
This whole thing says to me Breaking Bad is still at its peak. It hid so well from us the meaning of that scene until it was nearly over because we, like Walt, were kind of lost in the details. What happened to that cigarette? What was Walt going to do with Jesse? Was this going to be a loose end until Jesse found out the truth? Et cetera. And it played with our heart strings a bit.
I’ve seen shows that can play with heart strings without manipulating and I’ve seen ones that fooled me really well. I’ve seen ones plan meticulously and I’ve seen shows deliver on punches while making the non-explosive parts just as interesting. I’ve never seen a show that put it all together as well as Breaking Bad; not The Wire, not Lost, not Arrested Development. Every show, I’ve had questions for that could never be answered — except Breaking Bad. Season 5 is perfectly in line with everything before it.
It’s good to be back.
