Review #419: Tekken 4

 The Black Sheep of the series takes a step forward...

 Tekken Tag Tournament was more than just another Tekken game, it was a celebration of everything that had come before it, but when it came to the next numbered iteration, they knew they needed something new, fresh, different... and thus came Tekken 4, which now earns the title of the black sheep of the franchise. But me? I think it's one of the most alluring titles in the series.

 Being a fighting game, it offers the usual assortment of modes: Story Mode is an 8 to 9 VS ladder with a narrated prologue and an animated ending for each of the 20 characters, Arcade and Time Attack are two variations of the time-based enemy ladder, VS, VS Team, Survival, Training and a Practice mode in which you can attempt to perform the simpler strings while timed for each character. There's also a beat'em up mini game, Tekken Force, which is rather good, for what it is, and gets really challenging near the end. It's a good offering, and it's bound to keep players busy.

 Returning characters have been entirely redesigned, while new moves are to be expected, Jin Kazama now has an entirely different style. The new characters bring their own new styles as well, except Christie Monteiro, who is just an Eddy reskin. While previous games had open-ended stages, now every stage has a lot of personality: They have walls, different widths and heights as well as uneven terrain and different objects that serve as walls for you to pummel your enemy against. While it has been called unbalanced by the pro-gaming scene, I find it to offer some of the more diverse and memorable stages in the entire series. All these new redesigns and these fantastic, diverse new stages make for a Tekken game that feels very different from one another. If I were to complan about Tekken 5 and 6 is that they tried too hard to be like Tekken 3, Tekken 5 and 6's art design being almost indistinguishable from each other. That personality, that uniqueness is what makes this entry so special.

 That said, there's a little big issue with Tekken 4... the fact that Tekken 5, 6, Tag 2 and 7 exist. As much as I adore it, the game has expanded every character's movesets massively, after playing future games it's hard to come back to the smaller movesets. While I'll defend Tekken 4 for the rest of my life, it's hard to recommend to someone who has already skipped it as something else than a curiosity.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Tekken 4

 AKA Now playing: My childhood.

 While I first came into contact with Tekken with Tekken 2, Tekken 3 was when I finally got to play it at the comfort of my house. Tekken Tag was bloody great, and then came Tekken 4, a thing of beauty. My boy, Kazuya, now featured this baddass formal clothes, and we had all this fantastic stages and fresh new designs for the rest of the cast...

 But sadly, most of the aesthetic changes would revert back to a more Tekken 3-ish design, most classic characters would return for no reason and the uneven terrain was axed for Tekken 5. Tekken 6 followed suit. If you asked me to differentiate between Tekken 5 and 6 I wouldn't be able to. And it's a shame, and that's why Tekken 4 feels like a proper sequel, while Tekken 5 feels like Tekken 3.5 and Tekken 6 like Tekken 3.8.

 As much as I liked both 3 and Tag, 4 was the game I had the most beloved memories of, and having played with both Xiaoyu and Hwoarang through story mode, I remembered why. Everything looks so good, so fresh, and not only thanks to the beautiful graphics, but thanks to the new character designs. Characters evolved and changed! The biggest flaw with the game is the existence of Tekken 5, 6, Tag 2 and 7, simply put, characters lack a ton of moves that they would eventually gain.

 That said, this game is a blast, and I would not subject myself anymore to the trash that is Battle for New York DS.

Now Playing: Spider-man - Battle for New York(DS)

 I'm THIS close to abandoning this one.

 Before you consider playing this one: Don't. Ultimate Spider-man(DS) was already a flimsy base on which to build upon, now we've got tighter arbitrary time limits on hostages, and even worse touch-screen minigames. The Simian boss was awful too, I'm still not too sure of how I got past him.

 Regardless, the game is terrible. Terrible. Avoid, avoid, avoid!

Review #418: Spider-man - Battle for New York(GBA)

 They did it. They actually messed it up.

 Ultimate Spider-man on the Gameboy Advance had single-handedly redeemed the handheld Spider-man games, and ushered into a brave new world of decent handheld Spider-man games. And, y'know, when you hit it out of the park, you get lazy, so you recycle the last game's engine an build upon it. They did, and they messed it up.

 Battle for New York is a very loose, VERY loose retelling of Ultimate Spider-man's first issues, but swapping Electro with Silver Sable, since they had a Silver Sable sprite they could re-use... and, somehow, she has the power of flight now. It's a decent story, and told via beautiful, original, hand-drawn stills that look as if they were ripped straight out of the comic. Like before, two characters are the focus of the game: You'll be doin' some rescuing as Ultimate Spider-man and doing some smashing as Hulk's look-alike, Ultimate Green Goblin.

 The web-head plays almost exactly like he did in Ultimate Spider-man, he can punch, kick, throw webbing, stick to walls and ceilings as well as web-swing. He lost the unlockable Uppercut and High kick, both being replaced by a web-hammer, done by tapping up and punch, it deals a ton of damage but consumes a bit of web fluid. It's an OK change, I love having a high-hitting move and having a penalty(web fluid) to it, I certainly used it more than I ever uppercutted in Spider-man.

 Ultimate Green Goblin takes Ultimate Venom's role of villain powerhouse, and unlike Ultimate Venom, Ultimate Green Goblin isn't constantly losing health. He has three different types of Fireballs, but why would you use any other besides the giant, bouncy fireball is beyond me, as well as a pathetic little punch with little to no range. He can't crawl on walls, but will cling to surfaces. Ultimate Green Goblin's are horrid, enemies come out of nowhere and have huge range on their attacks, eventually I figured out that the best tactic was blindly spamming the fireball whenever I had to run through a hallway. The punch is pretty pathetic, but the collision detection can sometimes be off, so lest you want your fireball to go through the enemy, you might have to do a bit of punching if enemies get too close to Gobbie.

 Finding upgrades is a thing of the past, this time around every few couple of levels you'll be allowed to put 2 upgrade points on four different stats: Health, Melee strength, Fluid amount/Fireball recharg rate and web binding time/Fireball strength. I kinda liked how the upgrades worked in the first game, but this system is not too bad, although to be honest I didn't really feel like my attacks were getting stronger, but the extra health was nice.

 Level design can be hit or miss. As before, most of the time you're given a compass to aid you in your tasks, and when you're not the mazes are usually simple enough. That said, as previously mentioned, Goblin's levels are pretty bad thanks to how enemies and obstacles remain hidden from view until it's too late. As for Spider-man, a few of his last levels are kinda tedious, forcing you to defeat X amount of easily defeated, but time consuming damage sponge baddies.

 I've stopped talking about graphics and sound in my blog since those are very subjective, so besides a passing mention I won't dwell on those, but my god, the music in this game deserves a special mention: Most Spider-man stages feature a horrid music that sounds like an alarm. And a few of Gobbie's levels feature the exact same tune. It's grating to the ears, and I can't fathom anyone agreeing to it being on the game. There's a white enemy that has the wrong standing animation, so he'll magically turn from blue to white when he moves. Hilarious.

 I had fun with Battle for New York, I mean, it IS a good engine. But it's not quite as good as Ultimate Spider-man on the GBA was. Green Goblin's sections are more annoying than anything, and the music really got on my nerves. But, even though I can say that I had fun with it, I can also say that I didn't like it all that much. Bummer.
 5.5 out of 10

Review #417: Ultimate Spider-man(Playstation 2)

The King of Swing. Web swing.

 Free from the constraints of movie tie-in-nes, Treyarch were free to use their creative muscle and thus decided to bring the then popular Ultimate Spider-man comic to the world of videogames. Featuring a teenager Peter Parker, the Ultimate universe offered new takes on popular and not-so-popular characters, and this game was set to involve a new and canon plot featuring Venom... but eventually the Ultimate Comics dealt with it in another, more half-assed way.

 The story focuses on Ultimate Peter and Ultimate Eddie Brock, tied together by the experimental organism their fathers left behind after their death. Said organism turns Ultimate Eddie into Ultimate Venom, who is hell-bent on killing Ultimate Peter, but it won't be that easy since other parties want Ultimate Venom for themselves. The story is pretty good all things considered, and is told through beautiful cutscenes that do a fantastic job of emulating a comic book, truly a thing of beauty. The entire game is under a slick coat of cell-shaded paint, aiding further in selling you this out-of-the-comic world.

 While it follows in the footsteps of Spider-man 2 in offering an open world New York for Spidey to swing-in, a lot has been reworked in the game's favor. Swinging feels better than ever thanks to the tweaks the system has received. Holding R2 makes Spider-man stick his web on a building, and will continue to hold on to it until you let go, you can then press Square, to boost, X to jump and gain altitude or triangle to climb your web. It works really well and you'll be swinging through the buildings in no time. Combat has seen the most changes, there's no more evade button, and the Web-head gets back his Kick button, so now you can punch and kick. L2 is used to throw web at enemies, although your options are now more limited as to what you can do to a webbed enemy and no longer can you use his body to hit other baddies. And now you must web fallen enemies unless you want them to get back up again.

 Upgrades now work a little differently too. Spidey's repertoire of moves has been dialed back, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter, I mean, did you ever go for the fancy stuff in Spider-man 2? No, you didn't. So now there're three types of upgrades: Health, Swinging speed and number of attacks. The first is increased by doing Combat Tours, side-missions in which you must defeat various foes. Swinging speed is increased by defeating the Human Torch in a race, which is done by clearing race side-missions and the latter is enhanced by progressing through the story. I kinda miss getting to buy the upgrades, and finishing all combat tours for your health upgrades can be rather tedious.

 Something that may irk some players is that they gated story progression behind busywork yet again. Every story missions requires a certain amount of races and combat tours to be cleared, a certain amount of Tokens(Collectibles hidden throughout the city) and 'City Events'(Random 'quests' that pop up every now and then in which you must defeat enemies, save citizens, etc). I knew that there were unlockable costumes and that they pretty much required you to do a ton of those, so I had all the requirements for every story mission cleared before I decided to begin playing the first story missions, but I can't help but notice how irritating these chores are. And let's be honest, without all that fat the game could pretty much be over in 3 hours. All in all, while I can't say that this bothered me, I know that it's bound to an

 Know what? Every now and then you'll get to play as Ultimate Venom too! He can't swing with his webs, but he can pull off massive jumps, or use his tentacles for a boost of speed. Venom is constantly losing health, but he can feast off enemies... or civilians. Ultimate Venom sections are very short, but they're relatively decent and offer a nice break from the main meat(and fat) of the game. Clearing the game allows you to switch to Venom at any point.

 While the combat may not be as good as it was before, and while I still find a few design choices questionable, the swinging is all kinds of amazing. You can lose yourself just traversing through the city, just for fun! The story and presentation are both fantastic, it's an interesting tale and it feels very in-tune with the source material. Regardless, I still believe that this is a better game than Spider-man 2. It's not perfect, it doesn't do everything better than Spider-man 2, heck, some things are worse, but as a whole, it's a better game.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man - Battle for New York

 A trip to the bathroom turned into another step forward with the Spider-manathon.

 The Ultimate Spider-man were pretty good overall, so naturally when the time came for another Spider-man game, a follow-up was the natural course to take. Surprisingly it didn't see a home console release, but both the DS and the GBA saw their own versions of the game, and since this one uses the same engine from Ultimate Spider-man(GBA) I'm guessing it's gonna be th same for the DS iteration.

 Instead of Ultimate Venom, we now get Ultimate Green Goblin taking the place of the hulking mass of muscle, and hulk indeed, if you squint your eyes you might think it's actually the Hulk, purple pants 'n all. I only got to play two levels, and both had me playing as Ultimate Green Goblin. It's pretty easy to see that it's basically a reskin of the previous game, albeit with a different playable villain.

 Basically, I'm guessing it's gonna be pretty good, worst case scenario, an unremarkable sequel.

Now Playing: Ultimate Spider-man(Playstation 2)

 I might've oversold this game.

 On every chance I could, I wrote about how I remembered Ultimate Spider-man to be this Ultimate game that trumped above Spider-man 2. I might've remembered wrong.

 For starters, the swinging has changed, it's slightly, sliiiiiiiiightly simpler, but I think that as a whole, it's much better. Combat wasn't Spider-man 2's greatest asset, but it worked for the game and the character, the new combat feels more stiff, Spidey's moves just don't flow as well and smacking enemies around doesn't feel as good, and a lot of the fun physics-based-web-slinging-enemies moves you could do are gone.

 Progressing through the game is, once again, locked behind busywork, but I've a feeling that it might be less tedious here. Maybe. Since it requires a number of activities instead of points. Also, costumes are back, thank god, no Spider-man game should be lacking in alternate costumes! Although finding the tokens required is kinda challenging, since they seem to be very well hidden.

 For what it's worth, numerous times throughout this early session I thought to myself 'Alright, gonna quit now and do what I haveta do'... yet I couldn't stop playing through the city. The swinging is so much more fun now!