There wasn’t a whole lot to do during the summer for an
11-year-old suburbanite with no money, so I spent my days the best way I could
imagine: finishing Sonic 3 on every save file the game offered. Sonic 3 wasn’t
my favorite Genesis game, but I had already played Streets of Rage 2,
Moonwalker, and Castlevania Bloodlines to death. Sonic 3 had some fun secrets
to discover and a snappy, oddly familiar soundtrack. And best of all, I had a
copy on-hand and ready to go.
Outside the pavement radiated heat and we didn’t have air
conditioning, so as Sonic splashed through HyrdoCity, I swam in a pool of my
own sweat. But as the day wore on, black clouds overtook the sunny summer sky.
I paused the game and watched as the heavens burst. Rain cascaded down my
streets as relief came in the form of an earthy scent and cool breeze.
It was one of those moments that defined the joy of
childhood for me. Back then, there was magic in video game a controller, and a
hot day, and an unexpected storm.
Today is Friday, October 27, 2017, and that means Assassin’s
Creed Origins has been released worldwide! I hope you enjoy your new game while
people in the storm ravaged areas of Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, and beyond
search for missing pets/grandmas, struggle with crippling depression, and fight
to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together. I wonder how many
bottles of clean drinking water $65 could buy?
Also, if you preordered Origins, you get the bonus
mission “Secrets of the First Pyramids.” Fun!
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
Release Date: 10/2015. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Syndicate is basically Unity in England with the game set
to “fun” in the options screen. Oh, and also a sweet grappling hook.
The game looks and plays much like its older, buggier
brother, but introduces a pair of main characters that the player can switch between
on the fly. Meet brother and sister duo Jacob and Evie Frye, who bring slightly
different skills to the table. Jacob, who specializes in combat efficiency, is probably
the most charismatic and likable murderous psychopath since Ezio Auditore from
Assassin’s Creed II. Evie, who specializes in stealth, is more of a generic
by-the-book assassin we’ve come to expect at this point. There’s a few Odd
Couple-style interactions between the pair, but their relationship is mostly
played for drama.
While Jacob has the better personality, it soon becomes apparent
that Evie’s skillset is more useful. That’s why it’s so infuriating that most important
missions are exclusive to her asshat brother. I’d suggest that Jacob is favored
by the game developers simply because he’s a man, but the Jack the Ripper DLC
(see below) is almost exclusively Evie’s show. Chalk it up to making a more
challenging game, I guess.
Anyway, the Frye twins spend the game building up their
own gang, the Rooks, and trying to reestablish the waning assassin presence in
London. It’s yet another situation in Assassin’s Creed where the storyline is
neither memorable nor what you’d call “good,” but the Fryes are surrounded by a
gaggle of excellent supporting characters to spice things up. From a pair of Chareses
(Dickens and Darwin) to transgender businessman Ned Wynert and badass Indian
prince Duleep Singh, it’s the endearing characters that keep cut scenes from
dragging, not the lukewarm tale of… whatever’s going on in London. And mercifully,
the present day interruptions are kept to a bare minimum this time around.
Anything that lets me get back murdering random people on the streets because I
don’t like their hat, or their horse is ugly, is much welcome.
Speaking of horses, buggies (no, not like Unity’s levitating
townspeople) are a big part of Syndicate. It’s a fast way to get from point A
to B, but it also leads to some of the dullest missions around. (Doesn’t every
gamer want to drive slowly to protect their passengers?) Other highlights
include recruiting gang members to do your brutalizing for you, the aforementioned
grappling hook that makes climbing easier but only works when it feels like it,
and shooting civilians off their rowboats on the Thames River and into a death’s
icy, wet embrace.
In true AC fashion, here’s literally hundreds of things scattered
around the industrial slums to collect and immediately forget about. It’s not
good game design, but it appeals to the completionist in me, so it gets a pass.
Other returning annoyances include paying real-world cash for in-game currency,
missions where you slowly follow some rando around until the game remembers it’s
an action title again, and load times that afford the player a convent break to
stop and make themselves a grilled cheese.
Overall, Syndicate is the game Unity should have been. Industrial
Revolution London is a lot of fun to explore, and there’s even a brief section
focusing on World War I for variety. Strangely, Syndicate’s biggest problem is
that there’s too much content on offer: the game was still giving me new
missions after I earned the platinum trophy. Had the more tedious aspects had
been lessened and some sleep inducing-missions cut, Syndicate could have been a
classic. But even as it stands, the game stands head-and-shoulders over most of
its AC brethren, stabbing its way nearly to the top of a long line of
bestselling, iconic games and also AC Revelations.
Assassin’s Creed
Syndicate: Jack the Ripper. Release Date: 12/2015. Available on Xbox One,
PlayStation 4, and PC
Oh, I say, BRRR!
Set 20 years after the main events of Syndicate, the Jack
the Ripper features a bite-sized chunk of Creedy goodness wrapped in a familiar
package.
Continuing the Assassin’s Creed tradition of
underwhelming DLC, JtR takes place entirely in sections of the game we’ve
already seen in Syndicate… or does it? In fact, there are several episodes in
this ten mission arc that take place in entirely new locations. Of particular interest
is Lady O’s mansion, which is an excellent playground for destruction. With
underpowered enemies, no place for them to escape, and plenty of dark nooks in
which to lurk, this mission starts feeling less like Assassin’s Creed and more
like a movie in the Halloween series.
The creepy atmosphere is enhanced by a wicked (like the
witch, not Boston) soundtrack, the cold, unforgiving landscape of London in
wintertime, and Jack himself, who looks like a cross between Charles Dickens
and Jason from Friday the 13th Part II, what with his burlap sack
mask and penchant for stabbing.
The new fear-based combat system rounds out the spookiness
by letting the player terrorize enemies. Unlike its parent game, the focus in
Jack the Ripper isn’t to kill the bad guys, so much as it is to brutalize them physically
and mentally. Sometimes, you feel more like Batman than Evie Frye. The
difference is, Batman never left criminals to die pinned down to the middle of
a busy road or scared them into shooting each other in face.
Some of the side missions are eye-meltingly boring, but
on the whole, staking around London in Jack the Ripper is great fun. Too bad
this one isn’t a standalone like Freedom Cry, or I’d have recommended it to
people who don’t feel like plunging into Syndicate’s plethora of content but still
want to take a short trip to Jolly Old England.
An Arbitrary
ranking of all main Assassin’s Creed Games
All right, folks. You had to know this was coming. You
can’t do a proper retrospective without a list of the author’s favorite and
least favorite titles.
Only entries into the main 3D series will be considered
for this list, so any handheld or 2D Creed games will not appear. Liberation is
not an exception to this rule since we’ll be reviewing the HD version on
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, not the PS Vita original.
Expansions and spinoffs such as The Tyranny of King
Washington and Freedom Cry are considered part of their originator game and
thus will not be ranked separately.
All games are ranked as they stand today, with all
stability patches installed. Basically, imagine a new copy of each game purchased
and played on October 27, 2017 with all updates applied.
The higher up on the list within the tier, the better the
game.
Now, without further ado:
LEGENDARY TIER – Great games worth playing for all gamers.
-Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
-Assassin’s Creed II
EXCELLENT TIER – Great games worth playing for fans of
Assassin’s Creed and maybe other gamers too.
-Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
-Assassin’s Creed III
-Assassin’s Creed Rogue
GOOD TIER – Fun games, but nothing special. Worth a play
for AC fans, or if you get ‘em cheap.
-Assassin’s Creed Unity
-Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD
-Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
MEH TIER – Not bad, but you’re not missing much if you
skip it.
-Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
AWFUL TIER – One of the worst games ever made.
-Assassin’s Creed I
Brotherhood ranks so “low” because it’s basically just
ACII again, but note that it’s still in a tier of recommended titles.
Assassin’s Creed III is aided by its expansion, The Tyranny of King Washington,
helping it to pull ahead of Rogue. Black Flag is unhindered by the shrug-worthy
Freedom Cry expansion and the Jack the Ripper DLC made the choice between
Syndicate and ACIII much easier.
####
So there you have it, folks. Now you should be all ready
for Origins! Or if you’re so inclined, take a look at the earlier entries in the
Assassin’s Creed series in Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of the
retrospective. Happy stabbing!
(And seriously, why not donate a few bucks to the Red Cross?)
Assassin’s Creed Origins, the latest entry in Ubisoft’s
much milked beloved franchise, is set to hit the shelves on Friday, October 27.
It puts players in the excessively lacey sandals of Bayek, one of the first
assassins, as he roams around ancient Egypt, presumably hanging out with pre-embalmed
mummies and building pyramids by stabbing them.
The release marks the 10th anniversary of the first
Assassin’s Creed title, the fourth anniversary of when Ubisoft should probably have
stopped making AC games, and the first anniversary of that time Russia assassinated
a major American election just for the lulz.
American Election 2016
Last time on Dragon Creed Z, the series’ first female
assassin, Aveline, played deadly dress-up in New Orleans in AC: Liberation; Capt.
Kenway went trollin’ for treasure in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and slave
turned assassin Adéwalé served up an afternoon’s worth of
forgettable fun in Freedom Cry.
Today, we wrap things up in America with Assassin’s Creed
Rogue before heading to France for the biggest and buggiest Assassin’s Creed
game yet!
Assassin’s Creed
Rogue. Release Date: 11/2014. Available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC
Rogue is what college kids eat at the end of the semester
when they’ve got a sack of leftover take out, a lone package of shrimp ramen,
an a half-eaten can of frosting from freshman year.
Using story and game assets shamelessly ripped from
Assassin’s Creed 3 and 4, Rogue acts both as a farewell to the Xbox
360/PlayStation 3 era and a semi-sequel to Capt. Kenway’s questionable
adventures on the high seas. Released the same day as Assassin’s Creed Unity,
which was the series’ first outing on then-next generation consoles PS4 and
Xbone, few expected this stopgap title to be anything more than a cash grab for
starving AC fans stuck with last gen tech.
And in a way, they were right: Rogue offers up a scant
six memory sequences in waters we’ve traveled before. Back are many of the
characters from AC3, as well as Black Flag’s seafaring combat, albeit in a
colder climate than its topical cousin. At first glance, Rogue is AC4 in a
parka, but then a funny thing happened: Compared to Unity’s buggy release (see
below), fans began heralding this side project as the better game.
It would seem that by lifting the burden of creating all
new assets and focusing on a side story entrenched in established AC lore,
programmers were free to come up with a fun game in short amount of time. Shay Cormac
is a good lead, especially by Assassin’s Creed’s low standards, and his
transformation from Assassin to Templar – a first for the series – is dark and
fraught with personal turmoil. It’s almost interesting, until the stupid
present day scenes disrupt the gameplay like always. At least we don’t have to
hear from that twit Desmond Miles anymore. (Spoiler: HE DEAD)
Rogue serves as a nice lead-in to Unity and a satisfying
wrap-up to the “Americas” trilogy, but not much else. It was a cheap attempt to
milk one last payday from the PS3 and Xbox 360 to be sure, but it hits the AC
sweet spot just long enough to keep players from caring about the reused
locations and déjà vu combat.
Assassin’s Creed
Unity. Release Date: 11/2014. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Despite a pretty good (if generic) Assassin’s Creed title
at its core, Unity was never able to recover from its infamously botched launch.
By the time I played it, Unity had been patched like a
pack-a-day smoker looking to quit by sundown – and it was STILL a ramshackle
mess. I got stuck in walls, characters’ body parts would disappear but they’d
keep walking around like everything was hunky-dory, NPCs would casually start hovering
three feet above the ground showing me their invisible crotches – the list goes
on and on. I can only imagine the injustices that early Unity adopters were accosted
with. So bad was the blunder that Ubisoft claimed sales of the subsequent
Assassin’s Creed game, Syndicate, had been throttled by Unity’s horrendous
reception.
So here’s where I should talk about the storyline. But even
though I played it long enough to get the platinum trophy, I can’t remember
what the game’s protagonist, Arno, looks like, sounds like, or even what his
motivations were. I’ve heard him described as a less charismatic version of
Ezio, beloved star of Assassin’s Creed II, but that’s an insult to
understatements. The best part about Arno is that his name sounds like Marno,
which is very nearly Mario, as in Super Mario. Too bad Arno doesn’t eat
mushrooms or jump on Goombas or have a shred of personality whatsoever.
The only thing I remember about Unity’s storyline, aside
from the fact that the game is set in France and Arno wants to bone some chick,
is that Arno’s dad was assassinated by Rogue protagonist Shay Cormic. Oh, and
there was a stupid companion app that took hours to play and awarded the diligent
with in-game garbage every so often. I guess that doesn’t have much to do with
plot, unless Unity was really going for that classic “forgettable game” story
everyone digs so much.
There was also a pay-to-win mechanic where players could
buy in-game currency, “time-saver” maps, and other shit that that drains away
all of the remaining challenge and charm from Unity’s single player experience.
So if you just want to finish Unity quickly and have the least amount of fun
possible, get 100 bucks worth of helix credits, buy a bunch of stab-proof
armor, and waltz though Paris murdering whomever you please until you run out
of story missions.
I’ve been pretty down on it so far, but Unity wasn’t all
bad. What I do like is the multiplayer. While pervious Creeds focused on a
ho-hum player vs. player system, the co-op multiplayer found in Unity lives up
to the game’s title. Up to four players can tackle exclusive missions, share treasure,
and generally wreck the Templars’ Saturday nights. There was also a great
looking sequence featuring hot air balloons zooming over Paris, and a “glitch”
that sent players barreling forward in time to World War II for some variety.
In the end, Unity is a good looking, decently
entertaining, and mostly forgettable title marred by poor quality standards. Let
me put it to you like this: I was introduced to the Assassin’s Creed series
when AC4 and Unity came with my Xbox One. I decided to play AC4 first, and
thank God I did – if I had started with Unity, you probably wouldn’t be reading
this right now.
####
Next time, the Assassin’s Creed series will stop for a
pint in jolly old England before taking on the legendary Jack the Ripper.
Evolution 2017, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, brought with it a lot of surprises - but not all of them involved major players getting sent home early, untimely technical issues, or come from behind victories on the main stage.
It was announced that Fatal Fury antagonist Geese Howard, famously kicked out of the top floor of a high-rise by all American pugilist Terry Bogard (twice), will be making his return to the ring by way of Tekken 7, Namco's newest entry in the long-running fighting franchise. Howard joins Street Fighter's Akuma as the second guest character to appear in the game since its release several months ago.
While most people are speculating on how dear ol' Geese is going to make the transition to the fake 3D world, all I can think about is this:
Today marks the second anniversary of the day Sony shutdown PlayStation Home, a virtual world experiment that all PlayStation 3 owners
could enjoy for free. The sting of Home’s closure has long since subsided, but
that doesn’t mean dedicated Homesters haven’t been on the lookout for a
spiritual successor to everyone’s favorite social hub/LSD simulator.
Some have pointed to Atom Universe, available now for
free on PS4, as that game. But I doubt it. Atom Universe embraces all the worst
aspects of PlayStation Home in one appalling package.
Nothing I can come up with is funner than the fact that this guy's name is "SpackerJacker."
To be fair, Atom Universe is in open beta. Also to be
fair, if PlayStation Home was some nerd’s awkward but charming party where
someone spiked the punch, Atom Universe is a handful of sweaty townies masturbating
in a dumpster behind a Long John Silvers, and someone pissed in the punch. And
that person was a gas pump.
There’s not a whole lot of clothing options for the new Atom
Universe player. Male avatars can wear leftover bodysuits from the first X-Men
film in charming colors like black, dark black, midnight, and neon green.
Female avatars default to some kind of space robot dominatrix, which looks like
it would be a real turn-on for terminators and replicants alike.
Players can enjoy one of two equally depressing game spaces:
The Hub, wherein users ignore nearly unplayable, carnival-themed minigames as
well as each other; and The Arcade, wherein players chose a single dance move,
then walk away from their PS4 seemingly forever, their freakishly dressed avatars
doomed to do the Hustle until the end of time.
In this photo, my overgrown leprechaun stares creepily at the rabbit woman's behind.
Atom Universe doesn’t have many players, so a lot of my favorite
PlayStation Home pranks don’t apply. Running past crowds of people exclaiming “I
slapped a baby” doesn’t work without the crowds, and sadly, the word “anus” is
censored. What if I’m a doctor trying to discuss the latest in proctological
advancements, the neon drenched world of Atom Universe as my backdrop? We’d be
forced to say “anu5,” and that’s just disrespectful.
Atom Universe tries to tap into the same zany charm that
was one of PlayStation Home’s biggest draws, but with so few players, clothing
options, and locations, it falls flat on its face. It isn’t a total wash, but
Atom Universe’s value lies almost entirely in its comparison to its predecessor. In
this case, lightning simply cannot strike twice. PlayStation Home was a shared experience
among PS3 players, a unique solution to the question of how to bring players
together in a social gaming setting. It was special. But Atom Universe aspires
to be nothing more than a PS Home clone.
It's hard to read, but someone ran by and said "I gotta find hoes."
Sometimes a clone can be just as good as the game that
inspired it. Saint’s Row is every bit as fun as Grand Theft Auto, Streets of
Rage stands tall with Final Fight, and Silent Hill 1 scares up some Resident
Evil inspired greatness.
But there’s only one PlayStation Home. And that’s okay.
It's always the Tekken with you! Enough with the Tekken already! Oy vey!
Yeah,
I thought I was done with Tekken Revolution too. That is, until I opened the
media gallery on my cellphone yesterday and found this:
That’s
a screenshot from a video I took at about 4:12 a.m. on March 21, 2017. When TR kept
running after the advertised 3 a.m. shutdown time, I was left recording
aimlessly, trying to capture the exact moment the game went offline for good. Since
I’ve only got a few gigs to work with on my old-ass phone, I deleted most of
the dud footage as needed.
Anyway,
I opened my gallery and there that video was, like the cat that came back the
very next day or the stolen clown nose from that episode of Are You Afraid of
the Dark.
I
know what you’re thinking. “So what’s the big deal? You forgot to delete a
video. This is the worst creepypasta I’ve ever inexplicably copied and emailed
to my former rabbi.” Not so fast, dear reader. Take a look at the WINS counter.
What do you see?
That’s
right, 401.
If
you read my last article, you know that I spent the entire final day of Tekken
Revolution fighting my way to exactly
400 wins. A little secret: I tried a few times to get to 401, but got ripped in
half by better, more awake players.
So
where did the last victory come from?
After
3 a.m., I joined random battle lobbies trying
to catch interesting footage while I fell asleep on the couch. Maybe in my
bleary eyed, up-all-night state, I entered a fight somehow. You could be
getting your ass handed to you in Tekken Revolution, but if you lost the
connection to you opponent, you'd win!
It's a pretty solid, if unspectacular, explanation. But
none of the surviving footage backs that theory up. I have a video that ended
at 3:44 a.m. and this one, as I mentioned, which began at 4:12 a.m. So at some point
in-between, I acquired this phantom win.
What
happened in those 28 minutes, I’ll never know. But I think there’s a reasonable
explanation: You ever hear of missing time? It’s a common experience among
those who have been abducted by extraterrestrials…
Tekken Revolution, Namco’s free to play
fighting game based on the popular Tekken Tag Tournament 2, hit the PlayStation
3 in June of 2013. Close to four years later, on March 21, 2017, the servers were finally shut down.
These are the final moments of Tekken
Revolution.
Welcome to the second
part of my Tekken Revolution retrospective. In Part 1, an earlier version of
myself faced the perils of young adulthood in a spectacularly ineffective
manner, substituting common sense for a bottle of vodka and hours upon hours of
Tekken Revolution. Fast forward to now, the final day that TR’s servers are
up and running.
I’d make a comment
about how much better I am at being an adult, but I’m currently staying up
until 3 a.m. on a work night to play a video game.
The Road to 400
Nobody
likes coins, not even Abe Lincoln. You want a dollar, not a jangly pocket full
of copper. I’d rather not remember my Tekken Revolution career as a sack of
change bound for a lonely Coinstar machine in some Midwestern Walmart, so I’d
like to accumulate 400 wins. My starting point was 339 on March 17. Now that I'm at
380 with a day left and precious few premium tickets, can I do it?
Let’s find out.
March
20, 2017 – 8 a.m. (19 hours left) WINS: 380
I
get three premium tickets for signing in today, courtesy of the good people at
Namco. It’s nice to see a developer still supporting players of a game that
hasn’t made them a dime since January 19, when all paid content was yanked from
the PlayStation Store.
Two
out of the five matches end with me losing the connection to the other player,
something that’s been plaguing the game since I picked it back up last week.
There’s no shortage of opponents at least.
March
20, 2017 – 7 p.m. (8 hours left) WINS: 383
Most
people still playing at this point are pros, with hundreds of wins to their
name and the skills to match. But also there’s this inexplicable trickle of n00bs.
Can you imagine having downloaded Tekken Revolution years ago, and you just
happen to sign in again on the last day?
Some
uneventful fights are punctuated by a crazy, random occurrence. This is the third
time it’s happened since Saturday. (See “Creature of the Night” heading below.)
At
8 p.m., the “final campaign” ends – which means no more crazy experience and
money boosts for the remaining few hours of the game’s life. Players had been
enjoying 10x to 30x bonuses since January 31. I think it’s fitting that Revolution’s
last gasps will be taken in the same pure, grindy fashion as its first
breaths.
I
get my last ever sign-in bonus. The game says I’m up to Day 81.
I
decide to go for some arcade mode action and give my PvP tokens a chance to
re-up. As I play, I’m reminded of the early days. Something I really liked
about Tekken Revolution in the beginning was that feeling of “we’re all
learning this together.” Now in the game’s twilight, I’m sensing something
similar: We’re all going out together, on a high note, showing off the skills
we’ve accumulated over these last four years.
Or
maybe I’m a sentimental old man who likes reading into trivial things. Either
way.
I’m
trying to make those premium tickets last for the next few hours, so I’ve switched
to player matches. In the tradition of the olden days, I’ve named my lobby “BABY
STABBIN’ DUDEZ.” I always wondered what kind of people would join a room with
that name.
The
answer is this guy.
It's tough to read, but it says "BABY STABBIN' DUDEZ" and that guy (top) wants in!
But
after that, I drift from session to session. None of them really feels right.
There are a few open ones, but it’s a far cry from the packed lobbies I remember.
I
haven’t been able to win any of my last six matches. The big boys are here,
they’re pissed, and they’re out for blood. Time to take a break and let my
coins re-up.
March
20, 11:45 p.m. – (3.25 hours left) WINS: 392
I
just won six matches in a row. I was using the same premium ticket and winning it back for what felt like forever. I’m still worried that I won’t be able to
make it to 400 wins by 3 a.m., but I feel a lot less frustrated now.
I
pick up two wins against a careless Bob player. But I’ve only got three
tickets left, and only enough time to regenerate four PvP tokens. That’s seven
chances for five wins. I’m not in love with those odds, but let’s see what we
can do.
I
get three more wins, but I’m out of premium tickets. I’ll have enough coins for
three more matches, maxing out an hour from now. Two more wins and three
chances. I guess I’ll play arcade mode to clear my head.
March
21, 2017 – 2 a.m. (1 hour left) WINS: 399
A
pathetic Kazuya player gives up a win, putting me one away from my goal. There’s
just enough time for me to regenerate two coins. Right now, I’m parked in a lounge, watching other players far better than me beat the hell out of each other. Not much
else I can do. Sure wish I had bought some premium coins when I had
the chance, but I suppose this way is more exciting.
No
more goals. There’s only me and the battle for the next half hour. I'm glad it went down like this.
March
21, 2017 – 2:59 a.m. (The end) WINS: 400
The end is nigh! Any minute now...
March 21, 2017 – 4:30 a.m. (1.5 hours after the game was supposed to shut down)
It's nice that dedicated Tekken players got a bit of a reprieve, but I have to go to bed.
The mind is willing, but the body is weak. This is as far as I can go. I'll check on this in the morning. I wanted to be there for the end, but I feel I've done my due diligence.
March 21, 2017 – 6 a.m. (3 hours after the game was supposed to shut down)
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
March 21, 2017 – sometime between 6 and 7:30 a.m.
I love you Tekken Revolution, but it's about damn time.
Creature of the Night
Remember
how I had about a quarter of the “blood seals” necessary to earn the one character
exclusive to Tekken Revolution, the narcoleptic sexpot vampire Eliza?
Yeah, THIS narcoleptic sexpot vampire
There
simply wasn’t enough time to unlock her legitimately. And yet, like a bolt of
lightning from on high, the Tekken gods saw it fit to bestow Eliza upon me.
Randomly, after losing a fight, a message appeared that I had earned
14,000-plus seals in one go. Normally I was lucky if I got 10 at a time.
Then,
the next day, it happened again. This time I got 69,000-plus seals at once,
which unlocked… a bikini. You know, like vampires wear. In the sunlight. Thanks,
Namco.
On
paper, a fighter who falls asleep in the middle of the game sounds like an
awful idea. And that is because yes, it is. But in all my tinkering with Eliza
over the last few days, I only ever found one move that legit put her to sleep,
and the player has approximately one semester at a lackluster community college
to wake her up before being countered.
Eliza
has some cool juggling moves, a classic vampire bite for her throw, and an
honest to goodness, Geese Howard style "Reppuken" fireball. I’m looking forward
to seeing her in Tekken 7, once that game finally comes to consoles in June.
Also
you could make her breasts bigger if you got enough blood seals, which if done without
boosts of any kind, would take anywhere between 16,000 and 160,000 fights. I
was randomly awarded a third time with 70,000 seals on TR’s final night, so I
got this the easy way. Lucky me?
Anyway,
here’s a video of Eliza in a battle bikini fighting lion-headed luchador, King,
because why not.
No Regrets
I
think one of the reasons Tekken Revolution has been so important to me lately is
that I was finally able to fix things, like unlocking Eliza. But the period in
my life I associate most with the game, living in that cheap apartment four
years ago, not so much. I can’t hop in a time machine and tell my younger self
to hang out more with my roommates because they were having a tough time too,
or to eat a carrot instead of an entire pizza, or maybe we don’t take a drunken
walk to Skeevymart at midnight to buy beer seven hours before I had to be awake
for work.
I
can’t retroactively make myself a better person, and now I can’t change
anything about my experience with Tekken Revolution. But I’m glad I took the opportunity
to pick it back up. It paid off, even if it was only for the blink of an eye.
Maybe
in this case, it’s not the worst thing that I can’t whip out Tekken Revolution and give it a quick play when I’m feeling nostalgic. I moved out of
the apartment in which I first played TR a long ago, after all. As we close the book on
TR, maybe I can put my misgivings from the past on the shelf too.
Thanks
for being there when I needed you, Tekken Revolution. Instead of mourning your
loss, I’ll look forward to new fights and better days.
