Review #215: Injustice - Gods Among Us - Ultimate Edition

 And we're back!

  Back in 2013, I did an awful write-up on Injustice. Not to say that I'm good at writing, but I'm slightly less awful than back then. I cringed as I skimmed through it, and did some touching up. Just a little, I want to keep it as awful as it is! Afterwards, I would continue to play the game on and off with a couple of friends, but it spent most of 2014 unplayed, so playing it again reminded me of how awesome it was. I'm not particularly fond of DLC, which is why I never invested in it, plus, I knew that an Ultimate Edition was coming, and here we are.

 I stand by everything I said about Injustice in my previous review, but how did it held up? Marvelously. The game is fast, way faster than MK, which I really like, the combo system is fun once you get the hang of it, and I liked how they adapted the characters into the game. Graphics are slightly less appealing than before, some textures are muddy, and there's the occasional ugly animation, plus, some character models are just terrible(Wonder Woman and Sinestro come to mind). It's also a very drab game, with many greys and browns, while the rest of the colors look very washed out. Overall, it looks decent, it's not the prettiest fighting game out there, but it plays well and does the license justice.

 Why would you want to buy the Ultimate Edition? The 6 new characters, the 30 DLC costumes and over 60 new Star Labs missions. Word of warning, it doesn't include every DLC costume. It's missing the Injustice Mobile costumes(Gotta get people to play the game and tempt them into the microtransactions!) or the New 52 Black Adam costume(You have to sync your Warner account, or somethin' like that). As for the costumes themselves, they are alright, but... poorly spread out. Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman have about 8 skins each, but then there's Cyborg and Nightwing with 3 each, or Sinestro only has two. It's a bit surprising, as there's a lot of character history for them to have drawn from, but they probably just went with what would've sold well... which is disappointing to say the least, nobody needs 8 costumes for Batman! And the DLC characters? Everyone but Zod only gets their default look.

 The costumes may be disappointing, but the DLC characters is the reason why you would want this edition. Lobo is a mid-range grappler, he is fun to play, but his Personal Action(PA) is a bit boring, he just strengthens his next Shotgun attack. Batgirl is ANOTHER Batman character, but she is a blast to play. She is strong, fast and very easy to combo with, a perfect newbie character. An agile rushdown character, her PA lets her switch between electrified knucles or bladed ones, the former deal extra chip damage, while the latter deals more damage overall. Zatana is... is definitely the most complicated of the bunch, she can switch styles, momentarily, with her PA, but it's very easy to break her out of it. Martian Manhunter's PA allows him to extend the reach of his normal moves, has a lot of tools, but is a bit on the dull side. Zod is amazing. A rushdown/zoner hybrid that has some of the best, and most fitting, animations in the game. With his PA he can call forth a Wraith from the Phantom Zone to aid him, and it allows him to pull all kinds of shenanigans with his combos! Lastly, Scorpion, who sports a costume from Comic Book legend Jim Lee, he is a rushdown character that might be a bit overpowered, but it's very fun to use. All of them come with their own endings.

 Lastly, there's the 60 new S.T.A.R. labs missions, and I will echo what I said before: They are a neat diversion, but I didn't care much for them. Most of them are the 'mini-game' kind as opposed to handicapped fights, but the Red Son storyline is a bit amusing. This bumps the mission total to 300, which is not too shabby. Something that will cause a divide, is that everything comes unlocked from the start. Tournament Organizers and a few gamers will probably see it as a huge plus and timesaver, but people that like to unlock stuff might not like that. I didn't care for it... but then again, I had unlocked everything on my previous go through the game!

 Is Injustice Ultimate Edition worth it? Yes. The 6 new characters are very unique and add new styles to the character roster. My advice? Do what I did, sell your previous copy of Injustice and then buy this new, upgraded Edition, which is rather on the cheap by now.
 8.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Dragon Ball Xenoverse

'Nother year, 'nother Dragon Ball game.

 There's only three constants every year in my gaming life: A) I will play a Fighting game, B) I will a RPG and C) I will play a Dragon Ball game. As I've mentioned countless times before, I'm not particularly fond of Dragon Ball as a franchise, but I've always been drawn towards its games, particularly its fighting games..

 It's probably due to the fact that no matter the console, you can always trust on Goku and his friends to make an appearance, and I always love seeing how they will re-envision these characters. As for my favorite... it's a three way toss up between Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension, Dragon Ball Z Densetsu and Super Dragon Ball Z, yet the one I've spent the most time in is, probably, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, go figure.

 That said, when it came to the PS2 games, I always favored the Budokai games over Budokai Tenkaichi, and when it came to PS3, Burst Limit was where it was at. It's due to the fact that between Spike's Budokai Tenkaichi/Raging Blast and Dimps' Budokai/Burst Limit, it's the former that resemble a traditional fighting game the most. And I really dig fighting games. That said, I was a bit worried about Xenoverse, as much as I trusted Dimps' previous efforts, their last anime fighting game was Saint Seiya - Brave Soldiers, which wasn't... very good.

 First thing I liked: Cha-la head cha-la, as soon as the remix started playing, I couldn't help but smile the whole way through. Cha-la Head Cha-la kicks butt. Well, it got better, on the surface, the fighting seems very satisfying. Landing blows feels good, and I'm liking the combo system, or what I understood of it so far, even if it seems a tad simple. And then there's the graphics, which not only look good on a technical level, but as a lover of all things colorful, I'm really diggin' the oversaturated color palette.

 Then there's the Story Mode. Believe it or not, I'm still not tired of replaying and replaying the DBZ storyline. It beat the crappy 'What ifs' they come up with, plus, I always hate it when adaptations mess with the source material, not to mean that I hate absolutely every change, if it's good, I can roll with it. That said... I wasn't sold on the idea of 'saving the timeline', but after clearing the first scenario... I think I could, potentially, get behind it. I'm gonna reserve full judgement until I finish it, but... It could've been yet another 'evil clones' what if, so there's that.

 As for miscellanea, I couldn't helpt but notice that the Makankosappo scene keeps getting more and more censored! Budokai 1 had a textured fleshy red hole on Goku and Raditz, Burst Limit turned it into a textureless black hole and now... now they've no physical proof of having being pierced by an energy beam. I don't really mind it though. Then there's the fact that as soon as the game starts, they kinda throw you into the wild without any tutorials, kinda ballsy in this day and age! The three fights are dead simple, so that you can try every button in the joystick and get a feel for the basics. There is a tutorial later in the game, but it's short and straight to the point, so no biggie.


 Basically, Xenoverse is badass.


 Oh, and by the by, if you didn't make your first a character a Saiyan... you've no soul.

Review #214: Tomba! 2 - The Evil Swine Return

 Why won't these pigs play nice?!

 Y'know which game is even rarer and more expensive than Tomba!? Tomba! 2. Released about two years after the first game, Tomba! 2 is a bit 'by the numbers' as far as sequels go, it doesn't shake the formula too much, not that it needed to.

 The story has Tomba! and his companion Zippo the Fly, remember him from the first game in which he didn't appear nor was mentioned in the first one? Yeah, that Zippo, as they embark on a quest to save Tomba's girlfriend, y'know, the one that didn't appear nor was mentioned in the first one, from the Evil Pigs. Yes, it's basically the same story from the last game, Evil Pigs invade the Island, curse different parts of it, and steal(In this case, Kidnap) something of Tomba's, and now he must collect the different Pig Bags and challenge the five Evil Pigs. Yeah, we lost two Pigs, but never fear, as Tomba 2 is a bigger game than its predecessor. It's easy to tell that this time around they tried to have a better story, but both the script and voice acting are fairly terrible, and the translation's quality is quite... dubious. On the flip-side, you don't play games like Tomba for the story, so it's no real loss here, plus, the ending was so corny that I kept alternating between laughs and cringes!

 The game plays just like Tomba! 1 but with more bells and whistles. For the uninitiated, Tomba! is a 2.5 D Metroidvania-like Adventure game, in which you travel around an Island searching for items and abilities that will let you progress or interact with previously inaccessible areas or items. Remember how the last game had 130 quests? Tomba has 133, and an extra 4 if you have a cleared Tomba! 1 save file on the memory card. And here comes my first issue with the game... it does little to fix or polish Tomba! 1's shortcomings. While it is true that you get better hints as to how to complete most quests, it also has more quests that will require a guide than Tomba! 1. There's absolutely no way to tell where the 3 hidden Towers are, and the place in which they hid the Water Pig's Plate is just mean, protip: head for Circus village and travel underground to the Water Temple, you are welcome. That said, there's a lot more variety in the Events themselves, and some will have you travelling across the entire Island, which could be seen as a detriment if you really aren't digging the game enough to enjoy the backtracking. In my case, I didn't mind it, I went through the entire Island(Or what I had explored to the point) every time I got a new Key or ability-granting item, and I never got tired of doing it, a testament to how much fun the game can be.

 While it kept the last game's shortcomings, the developers instead opted on adding more stuff. There's more weapons, even though they are almost as useless as they were in the first one, almost, since now they have uses on the environment or to defeat elemental enemies that hurt you if you try to jump on them. Tomba also gets to equip different costumes this time around that grant him different abilities, like the Pig Suit that lets him talk with pigs or the Squirrel suit that let's him glide. I spent most of the game as Squirrel Tomba, since it's the most useful, but it's a nice idea non the less and some might prefer the swiftness of the Flying Suit, or would rather fall faster as normal Tomba. The laughing and crying mechanics from the previous games return, this time in the form of fruits as opposed to mushrooms, but they behave in the exact same way, and you can eventually get the same 'Mystery' and 'Normal' fruits so that you can change your state as will. And this is something that bothered me a bit, it revisits a lot of ideas from Tomba! 1, to the point of almost feeling slightly tacky. The four different keys for the four different chests returns, Tomba needs to get the swimming ability again, the grappling hook returns, the pig bags/evil pig dynamic, a frustrating on-wheels event. It is mostly a nitpick, as it's not a dealbreaker, but this being a sequel, I expected it to borrow only the basics, and then build as much as new things as possible. I though the Laughing/Crying mechanics were very interesting in the last game, but they really didn't need to return.

 It's not all bad though. I enjoyed the new Island, and it offers a lot more variety in environments than the first game. There's the initial beach, an underground city, a jungle, an ice-covered town and the Water Temple to name a few, and they all feature vastly different structures and color schemes, which makes traversing through the Island very appealing. It also does away with the life system from the previous game, instead opting for unlimited lives, and while you do see the 'Game Over' screen, you don't lose any progress. Boss Fights have been slightly revamped, for the worse I feel, as most of the time you'll be throwing the pigs towards the bag on the foreground, which works as well as you expect. They are not hard, but they can last a bit longer than they need to.

 While the last game used 2D sprites for characters, Tomba 2! only uses sprites for the items. The new 3D models look great, and the environments look just as good. It doesn't just look good for an old PS1 game, it simply is a good looking game. The music is delightful, with a lot of tunes that are still stuck in my head. The game also employs voice acting and it's.... it goes from passable to terrible depending on the character, but hey, at least it's fully voiced.

 I know that I ragged on the game a lot, but I actually really really liked it. It could've done plenty of things better, but what it excels in what it does well. Finding and clearing Events is as satisfying as ever, and sure, you may need some outside help, but I wasn't too bothered by it. It's probably not good as a sequel, since it's a bit too samey to it, but looking at it without the comparison, it's a great game, in fact, I liked it slightly better than the first one. It's definitely not worth the price that it commands now, but hey, if you can get it by other means(PSN, Emulation), it's a great PS1 game that deserves a go.
 9.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Tomba! 2 - The Evil Swine Return

 Talk about an improvement.

 So, the gameplay in Tomba! was fantastic, no two ways around it, but the visual presentation left a lot to be desired. Boom, pretty 3D graphics, and just the first part of the game alone is visually pleasing, with houses and moving hammers. Next area? An underground pipe facility. And I remember having it much more different locales. Already on a good track.

 And the music? I'm not sure if it's nostalgia, 'cause I couldn't stop smiling as I was reminded of the tunes and soundbits that play when triggering events... but either it's very memorable, or nostalgia is kicking back.

 So we are off to a good start already, good!

Review #213: Tomba!

 For some reason, I wanna eat some ham...

 Tomba! is one of those quirky PS1 games that are considered to be really good, but few people talk about it. It's also one of those games that had their price skyrocket due to how rare it has become.

 In Tomba! you play as the eponymous Tomba, a jungle boy that lives, seemingly, alone on a rather large Island. 7 Evil Pigs have banded together to cure the Island in its entirety, and after a run-in with Tomba, they steal his grandfather's bracelet. Now Tomba is out for blood, and the pigs will pay in blood. Or not. Turns out there are 7 different 'Pig Bags' in which Tomba must seal these Pigs, save the Island and recover his bracelet. Simple enough, the story is but a set-up for the adventure, so it really doesn't matter that it ain't particularly original, it never meant to. As with most games of the era, it's about the gameplay, not about telling a story. You'll come across NPCs and other weird folk that inhabit the Island, but none are particularly memorable or deep, not that they need to.

 Tomba! is a very interesting game, and it's a bit complicated to label under any genre, but I guess the best way to describe it is as a 2.5D Metroidvania with heavy Adventure elements. The Island is made up of many interconnected areas, and as with any good Metroidvania, you'll come across obstacles that you can't yet interact with until you get another ability, or as with Adventure games, people that need help, but you haven't found the item that you need yet. Most of these 'sidequests' are called 'Events' and can be triggered in many different ways, some you get automatically after clearing another one, some are triggered by talking with NPCs and some just by interacting with something, be it touching a bonfire or coming across a locked door. There's 130 Events in the game, which includes both Story and optional Events, although just how many of these are 'optional' I'm not sure, as many rewards from seemingly optional sidequests became necessities to clear the game. That said, there's a lot of variety in these, from getting a Jar to collect Tears from a Flower(On which you must use a special Powder to make it cry), to simply capturing an Evil Pig, you can always expect something new. And I really appreciated the creativity in the game,  take the Mushroom Mountain, which has Laughing and Crying fungi, if eaten, it will make Tomba cry or laugh, which will affect the behavior of the enemy flowers and the background flower, which will raise or lower the platforms in the area! That said, there's a tiny little issue I had with Events... when triggering them, most of the time, particularly when they aren't triggered by talking with an NPC, the only hint that you get is the name of the Event and nothing else, so, y'know, it might be hard to figure out what to do on your own sometimes.

 Being a Metroidvania, it means that backtracking is pretty much mandatory, but the game gives you multiple ways to make it less tedious. For instance, 'Charity Wings', items that can teleport you to any place you've already set foot onto, are in abundance, and finishing the Puppy's Event grants you an usable that acts as Charity Wings, but with limitless uses, then there's the four Bells of the old wise men that teleport you to their abodes. Basically, there are many ways to make the trips shorter. That said, there are some events that can boil down to tedium... for instance, there's three different 'experience bars' that, even when maxed at 10, do nothing for Tomba, but you need to get them to 10 if you want to collect three different Gems(Which make up 3 different Events, by the by), and in order to raise them you must defeat enemies by jumping onto them... and it takes about 100 enemies for each Experience bar. There's usually one or two areas filled with enemies that give a particular type of experience, but the fact is that you will, probably, have to grind. There's also an 'AP' counter, that is raised by killing enemies(In any way) or completing events, and these are used to open a couple of 'AP boxes'. It feels as something that they came up with at the last minute, as there's only two of these, that said, if you are like me and go for completion, you won't really have to go out of your way for these.

 Interestingly for a console game of this era, there's kind of a lot of leeway in how you complete objectives. For instance, the first Evil Pig you defeat has to be the green one, as far as I know, but there's a lot of Events that you can complete, or skip, if you so want. Afterwards, which pigs you defeat are pretty much up to you, minus the Navy Blue one, that has to be the last one. There's a lot of freedom in how you tackle most of the game, and that's pretty cool. However, sometimes it can be a bit hard to know where you have to go next, sometimes one of these seemingly Optional Events might be just the quest that holds the item that you need to open up more of the game. It bears mentioning that the game can get kinda challenging at times, some zones more than others. The Stormy Mountain is an absolute nightmare and it comes pretty early in the game, the Mushroom Mountain can get very frustrating, and let's just not talk about the Race.... While the game gives you plenty of lives, most of the times I chose just to 'Reload' my file, just in case, and I'm pretty sure I could've lost all of my lives had I not resorted to it.

 Tomba's main form of defense is to jump on top of enemies and then throw them below him or to the sides(Throwing an enemy onto another will kill both of them), but you can also find weapons in order to aid you. Honestly, weapons are kind of useless. For starters, killing an enemy with weapons doesn't grant you Experience for the Experience gauges, and secondly, killing an enemy with the BlackJack takes 3 hits, while jump-and-throw kills them instantly. There's really only two weapons that you'll use, the Grappling hook, to grapple around, and the GrappleJack, a fusion of the BlackJack and the Grapple that kills most enemies in one hit, but you get it fairly late in the game, kinda. Every Boss in the game is fairly easy, and while the obstacles and attacks change, you just need to jump on top of the Evil Pig and throw him into the rotating or moving bag, and you are done. Even the last boss is beaten in this manner.

 As far as the presentation goes, I was left fairly unimpressed. There's not a whole lot of variety in the jungle, as far as colors go, with mostly colorful greens and browns. I wasn't particularly fond of the 2D sprites either, they are not bad by any means, but they lacked a certain... punch? Or maybe more creativity in the enemies themselves? I can't quite put my finger on it, but the spritework in the game leaves a bit to be desired. The music wasn't very good, there were a couple of tunes that actually annoyed me a bit.

 As much as I didn't care for the presentation, the gameplay is solid, and the game itself is very entertaining, it does feel like an adventure. I liked its twist on the Metroidvania genre, and while some things could've used better hints, fumbling around trying to clear Events was pretty dang fun, to the point that I would often walk all the way through the entire Island on foot every time I got a new ability or Key. Is it 100$ worth of fun? Probably not, but if you don't mind the inflated price, it's a blast.
 8.5 out of 10.

Review #212: Street Fighter X Tekken(VITA)

 Oh boy, have I been waiting to write about this one....

 Street Fighter X Tekken was one of last generation's biggest fiascoes. Lemme paint the picture, the first teaser was released, Kazuya beating the hell out of poor Dan. That trailer alone was one of the reasons I wanted to get a then-current gen system. As time went by, the hype surrounding the game grew larger and Capcom spent a lot in their campaign, they even financed a reality-show that pitted two teams against each other. Fans from both Tekken and Street Fighter were hyped, Fighting Game pros would sing the game praises, the game was a sure sell. And then it released, and on the very same day, DLC characters and costumes were found on the disc. 'Wait, maybe it's just data for the characters'. Nope, the full models were found. 'Maybe they aren't finished' some hoped, heck, Ono himself talked about how he wanted Blanka to make it in but they couldn't port him properly... and the very next day, people found a way to make these DLC characters available, and they were completed in their entirety, they even had Prologues and Endings. And then Capcom came with their usual bullcrap 'It's to make it easier for people that don't but the DLC to play against people that do'. Whatever. Capcom wanted to make SF X T a DLC cow and milk it for all it was worth, and it backfired on their faces. What's worse, while the game was fun to play, assuming you forgave Capcom for screwing you over, it wasn't so much fun to watch. Professional matches would often end in time outs, and would end up as an stalling game. They patched it numerous times, but it was too late. Heck, one of the patches added a game-freezing bug that they didn't patch well until a week after the fact. Even worse, they would tell their investors that the lackluster sales were due to the saturation of the genre. Bullcrap. And this is where I'm coming from, someone who was unbelievably hyped for the crossover of two of his favorite fighting game franchises, and how Capcom screwed up in the name of money.

 Where do I begin? The game uses the Street Fighter's standard 6-button configuration for your normal moves, while inputting certain motions with the joystick and pressing a button will produce a Special or Super Move. Tekken characters get motion specials as well as some simple attack strings to try to reproduce Tekken's strings. I think it worked well, for what it was. As far as unique mechanics go, the game borrows Tekken Tag's ruleset: You pick two characters, and as soon as one of them loses all their life, you lose the round. Now then, being a Capcom game, of course you get a three-tiered energy gauge, EX moves consume one bar, while Super Moves consume two. Alternatively, each character can charge one of their Special moves in order to get a free Super, it's very impractical, usually. Using all three bars you can use a Cross Assault, to summon your ally for a while and pummel the enemy two-on-one, or use a Cross Art, a move in which both of your characters use a Super Move on the enemy. Since you do pick two characters, you can tag with them by using Switch Cancel, which consumes some energy gauge, or use a Cross Rush, by double tapping a Fierce Kick or a Strong Punch mid-combo, in order to tag out while leaving the enemy in a juggle state. Worth mentioning is that the combo system is much more lenient that Street Fighter 4's, probably to make it easier to juggle, and I quite liked it. Then there's the Pandora Mode, by sacrificing a character with little health left, you can strengthen your remaining character, for a few seconds, and if you fail to defeat your enemy before said few seconds are up, you lose the round. Pandora is a terrible mechanics, that they patched a couple of times, but never managed to make it any useful. Lastly, Gems. The least we say about them the better, the Fighting Game Community shunned them, and casuals didn't care for them, it was just Capcom trying to make money by selling you stat-enhancing KBs of data.

 Capcom was so invested in milking the most money out of the consumer that they made the features as awkward as possible. Take Customization, which should have been awesome, for example. By the time this version was released, a ton of colors had already been released on the Console, but out of the box you only get FOUR measly colors. Let me remind you that these colors are ALREADY ON THE DISC, but they were made free DLC for two purposes: A) Get you into the store, which is one of the Menu options by the way, to try to break you into buying DLC and B) Making you think that Capcom was giving you stuff for free. Customization should've been awesome, instead you first have to spent five minutes activating over 10 different individual Color Palette downloads through the slow as molasses interface. It's not a fun experience. The worst part about it is that the colors are fairly limited, and they aren't even organized, why not put all the yellows together? It's so stupid, a Color Wheel would've been a much better, smarter way to allow for customization. But if they did it that way, they wouldn't have made you think that you were getting extra stuff for free, or you wouldn't have the need to even get into the Store. Heck, you get a Trophy for entering the Store. Capcom was that DESPERATE into getting you in the Store.

 I'm not done yet. Each character gets two costumes, and most of these are downright stupid. They were sold $1 a pop(52 characters x 2 = $104. Plus $15 for the DLC characters. Plus $ for the base game. Then there's some the gems...), To be fair, the idea behind the 'Swap Costumes', having Street Fighters cosplaying as Tekken characters and vice versa, was genius, but they went for either Humor or Fanservice, making most of the quite ridiculous and unappealing. The PSP version only includes the 12 DLC characters, costumes must be bought... unless you got a new copy, which includes a code that nets you costumes for 38 characters. What?? Let me remind you that both the Console Discs and PSVita card have EVERYTHING already on it, so... why do we only get 38 costumes? Why? Money, that's why. Money so that you can download 100 KB unlock keys for stuff that's already on your disc/card. Way to go, Capcom, way to go. Low Sales were definitely due to saturation of the genre.... the DLC genre they must've meant. Why make such a big deal about the DLC? Because Capcom made a big deal out of it, they wanted their DLC cow so badly that they compromised the game's integrity, heck, their integrity as a company, in order to make more money.

 As far as ways to play, it's actually fairly decent. There's the Arcade Ladder, Kumite(Survival), Training, Challenge Mode which houses; Trial, each character gets their own set, Mission, which has you fight certain fights under certain rules and Tutorial; and the already mentioned Customization. As far as the VITA port goes, they also tacked on forced touch controls for customization and traversing the gallery. They aren't too bad, but the fact that you are forced to turn the VITA 90 degrees every time you want to set gems or colors is pretty annoying. There's also optional touchscreen 'buttons' to allow for shortcuts when battling, this I'm OK with, it's optional and can be pretty convenient. That said, I felt the PS Vita lent itself well Street Fighter X Tekken.

 I also want to talk about characters. Street Fighter characters get a very few new faces(Hugo, Poison, Elena and Rolento), and the rest of the cast got very few new animations. This I wouldn't mind had the DLC characters not been, well, DLC characters. Which on the PSVita they are not, so it's kind of a moot point, but I wanted to mention it. The Tekken characters were done relatively well, I loved seeing them in Capcom Style, and I felt the translated them well. However, for some reason the animations for the dashes look... off, on every character, both Street Fighter and Tekken, almost... unfinished? These look fairly weird for some reason, which is inexcusable. Furthermore, you might recognize some of the animations on the Tekken cast as... borrowed, from other Street Fighter 4's characters, heck, some people claim that some of the Tekken's models borrow from some of SF 4's cast.... Regardless, as good as their overall appearance is, I feel as if story-wise, Tekken characters got misrepresented immensely, particularly poor Xiaoyu and Elena, Tekken characters are like caricatures of their other selves.

 But the thing is, are the 12 new DLC characters worth it? That's the only reason you'd want this version over the Console ones, and... they are, kinda. As far as the SF side goes, you get Elena, which is alright, but almost every DLC Tekken character offers something unique to the table, which I really liked. Elena and Wulong were particularly fun to use. And, hey, as 'vanilla' as Bryan's moveset is, he looks so insanely badass. The game also has some gorgeous cutscenes, for the Opening and Endings, but for some reason they ran very poorly on my VITA. I only read about one other instance of this, but no one seems to be mentioning it? Plus, the game will drop some frames every now and then, this wasn't a total deal breaker since it was fairly rare, but more competitive players won't like it.

 As far as content goes, the VITA version nets you 55 characters. There's the 38 base characters, the 12 DLC characters and Sony's bonus five. Pacman I didn't care for, and Bad Boxart Megaman is living proof that Megaman fans can't take a joke. No, Capcom is not 'teasing' you that you are not getting a Megaman game, knowing Ono, he just thought it'd be funny. As characters, they are both terrible. Then there's Kuro and some other cat dressed up as Ryu, they are both terrible characters as well. Lastly there's Infamous' Cole which is actually pretty good. Still, Xbox players aren't missing out. There's also 11 stages, 10 without counting the Training Stage, and they are... meh. They are swarming with character cameos, but I would've preferred something that... referenced Tekken and Street Fighter locations instead of... of what we got. And yes, 10 stages is pretty lame, they obviously spent all their budget on the pretty cutscenes, amazing promotional story-videos(Which are not included in the Gallery, for some reason) and the reality show.

 Expecting a handheld port to look as good as the Console version is just silly, however, it looks pretty darn good, occasional FPS drop aside. As a matter of fact, it looks leaps and bounds above the 3DS port of SF IV, clothes actually have physics now! Stages have lost some animations and other minor details, but, once again, they are much better looking than the Street Fighter 3DS port's stages. Basically, it's not just a 'good looking port', it's a 'good looking game'. The music is fairly good as well, and so is the voice acting, both Japanese and English.

 Street Fighter X Tekken is the perfect example of everything that is wrong with Capcom, nay, gaming as of late. That said, would I recommend it? Yes and no. Competitive players stay away, the framerate isn't locked at 60 and what you really want is an Arcade Stick, but casual players like me? I gotta say, having all 55 characters is pretty darn tempting, but it also means losing out on playing against other people(Unless you coerce them into buying a VITA and SF X T). Basically, it's a lose-lose situation. The sad part about it? I liked Street Fighter X Tekken, I had fun with the pseudo-juggling system, I enjoyed the simplicity of the mechanics, I loved seeing the Tekken characters in Capcom style, I had fun customizing the colors of the character... but Capcom did it darnedest to let you know that they were trying to get into your wallet, and it's hard to shake it off.
 6.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Tomba!

 What a Pigpen!

 Tomba! is a game about pigs. It's also a game that I've longed to play for quite some years now. I first heard, or rather, read about Tomba! back in my N64 days, when I used to read Gamepro and Xpert Gamer, and would run across ads for Tomba! every now and then. Funny story, I eventually got my hands on Tomba! 2 and I can clearly remember being surprised at the 3D graphics, I was expecting 2D sprites as the ads for Tomba! 1 promised! Regardless, I would eventually enjoy Tomba! 2, even though I never did finish it(Something that I plan to change this year), it made me want to play the prequel.

 And today, for the first time, I played Tomba! and it was glorious. Well, not quite, it's fun, but I'm still not completely sold on it. I like the look of the game, I like the structure, but the game is a bit... it kinda throws you into the wild, so to speak. It's also a joke, since Tomba looks like a Jungle kid, but I digress. Y'see, the game explains little to the player, you have to find out about equippable items by yourself(Not that it's anything close to Rocket Science, but still), heck, the 'Events' are but a name, and you have to figure by yourself how to figure them out. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the lack of hand-holding, but I think the game might be a bit too vague at times. Like Experience Points, what the hell do they do? I'm level 4 already and I haven't noticed any change to Tomba!

 Surprisingly, I'm digging the Metroidvania-like elements, getting the Jump shorts allowed me to reach new places, and I've already been promised a Swimming ability, which will open up another route. I can get behind that. Seems backtracking is the name of the game, and as long as it's fun, I'm cool with it. Bottom line: I like the game, but I'm still not OK with everything. As fun as it is, is it 100+ bucks worth of fun? ...I'll get back to you on that later.