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So I got Tekken 7 a couple weeks ago, and have been playing that a bunch. I've always favored Tekken as it filled a nice niche between Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter. 3D and highly technical like VF, but not as slow seeming.

I like the addition of Rage Arts, super moves you can pull off when your health is low. It is a bit of a double edged sword though, especially against the CPU. Because that also means if you don't put the opponent down quickly enough when they're in rage mode, they'll pull one off and turn the tides. Particularly if you're both low, a rage art automatically takes off at least an eighth of your health bar. So if you're under that its an auto-kill.

I mean, they are blockable, but that entails memorizing everyone's rage art to know where it hits in the beginning. Well, and reacting fast enough to block it when you see it start up. There's also rage drives, which aren't auto-damage dealers, but I'm sure in the hands of an expert are more lucrative because you can combo from them. But, alas, I am not that good- like if I'm in rage mode, that means I'm about to die, so I'm going to go for the automatic damage to take them out before they take me out if they're also low, or to get some breathing room. Actually, I guess if you're both down low, you want to do the rage art, but if you're opponent is still healthy, a rage drive will give you breathing room and put you in better position.

Another thing I like is treasure battle. Its been a long time since I played the previous Tekken installment on the PS3, or even Soul Calibur, but I want to say customizations are WAY more affordable than they used to be. I mean, the unique stuff to each character is still somewhat pricey (1 million - 1.5 million gold each) or only won through a treasure chest, but everything seems easier to buy than they used to. And even 1m isn't that much. A base fight is already 25k, not counting the money you get from a treasure chest which can range anywhere from 1k to 500k. And your winnings only go up as you get on a streak. So you can easily get 1 million from just 10 fights if you're lucky.

And apparently everything unlocks once you do 2000 battles. Which one might wonder, why spend money at all in that case? 2000 battles is still a freaking lot. And you'll earn lots of money in the mean time, so why not drop money to get your customizations early so you'll get to enjoy them while doing all those matches? But more on that later.

I beat story mode, including the epilogue fight with Shin Akuma. I may not be the best player, but at least I was able to beat him. Though I still need to beat him in treasure battle to get a trophy. And the dude is cheesy AF. But he's the only one I don't have a trophy for beating of the special characters. In addition to the story mode, there's individual character "story" modes.

Which are just one freaking match with a less than 2 minute cutscene for beating. Heh, and I thought the individual story modes for SFV where sparse and lacking! Heh, the game describes it as fights to give further insight into individual characters, but that's BS, because some of those cut scenes are ridiculous and non-sensical.

Its also funny because some characters get more respect than others. I mean, the Mishimas and family, and by extension Nina and some of the other characters associated with the G Corporation, Tekken Force, or Mishima Zaibatsu are treated seriously. But Paul and Law, who have been staples from the beginning, have been basically reduced to assclowns. Like Paul's story is he's lamenting he'll have another match with Kuma in the tournament yet again. But there's a last minute change! He'll finally get to fight someone serious! Only the new challenger is... Panda. And heh, even if he wins, his ending is the crowd booing him and tossing stuff at him for beating up a lady Panda.

Which brings me to the characters. Since I've totally completed all the story stuff, I've had a taste of all the characters, but I've only really played with a handful. Which is one of the more overwhelming parts of this game. There's 38 characters, each with a unique moveset, and a large one at that, way bigger than what you have to deal with in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. So its hard to learn everyone.

But here's my takes on the one I've played so far:

Katarina Alves- Easily my favorite of the new characters. And what a babe! HOTT! As a Savate fighter from Brazil, she seems a little redundant since we have a kick heavy character in Hwoarang (and previously, Baek). But, she's more straight forward. The thing I dislike about Hwoarang is he has so many different stances, with changes built into his combos that he feels out of control. Like I just want to do a combo without all of a sudden being in a different stance where all the moves have changed.

Of course, her weakness is that she's easily punishable since her moves are predictable. Hwoarang's advantage is because of all those stance changes he's tricky to read. But like I said, the opponent might not know what I'm going to do, but neither do I because I changed stances when I didn't want to, and its hard enough memorizing moves without having to memorize which moves are available in which stance.

So against a skilled opponent, she's in for trouble. But its not as big a deal against the AI, which I exclusively play as. The other thing I like about her is she has some great customizations. I've made at least 4 distinct ones, because I was lucky enough to lock her good stuff- the Ranger top and skirt, shirtless, summer dress, and no-summer dress, i.e. the skimpy bikini. Its just unfortunate that she doesn't have her belly tat in the last one. But I did include the under-eye paint in Brazilian flag colors to all versions, because its cute.

So look 1 is the shirtless one paired with the Ranger skirt, accessorized with her bazooka, 2 is the summer dress, which I've colored into a nice black number with blue edges. Look 3 is the Ranger top with armored pants topped off with a beret, also with the bazooka. And the final look is the no-summer dress one, in red, with the diva short hair cut in pink. As I said, they all have the Brazil under eye paint, but I can't remember who has beastly horns or angel wings or the hippie band or rainbow hair or the katana.

Which I feel kinda lazy and uninspired that so many of my customizations include the katana and/or the shotgun over the back. Also, I guess that's the one disappointing thing about treasure battle, that you can't use the items.

Lee Chaolan- My favorite all time character in the series. The boy exudes style. Which speaks to me because I don't just want to kick ass, I wanna look good doing so. He's cool and flashy, and again against a skilled player I would prolly eat it. But against the AI I can spam the laser edge kicks to good effect.

He's another one I like because he has a lot of good customization options. Look 1 is his normal outfit, only with the jacket in gold instead of blue, with the venetian mask, colored similarly, and the golden aura. Look 2 is shirtless with leather pants, the beastly horns, angel wings, and one of the many, many sunglass options this game has, accessorized with the stun baton. Looks 3 and 4 are similar. I went with bulletproof vest, armored pants, sunglasses, and a beret for 3 and the vest paired with cargo pants and a cap for 4. Again, I can't remember which outfits I gave which, but they're either carrying the shotgun, assault rifle, plasma rifle, or katana.

And this entry is long enough, and I've been working on it for the past couple hours, so I'll continue my character takes in a later post.

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So one of the many Transformers I've gotten in the past couple of months is Toyword's "Assault", which is their version of Thrust. He's the same size as the Official Takara masterpiece Seekers in plane mode, as seen here with MP-11 Starscream:



However, he, and the rest of Toyworlds versions of the Conehead seekers are taller than the Takara ones. I'd do a comparsion pic, but since the masterpiece seekers are a floppy mess, I'm loathe to transform Starscream into robot mode. Particularly since I got everything nice and lined up in F-15 mode.

But yeah, Toyworld's conehead is a vastly superior product compared to the official seekers mainly because of the chest. In the Takara models, the chest parts are swinging freely all over the place, making it a bitch to try and line things up during the transformation. Assault (and presumably Combustor and Requiem, who are Ramjet and Dirge, respectively) has tabs and pegs and holes to make sure everything is where it needs to be during transformation.

Of course, that's a double edged sword, because those wings are secured pretty tightly in jet mode. The clearance getting the legs out is pretty minimal, so I'm scared I'm going to like snap them off trying to flip them forward for the second step of the transformation from jet to robot.

Which, the robot mode looks good, save for that hideous face (and the faces on the other coneheads aren't much better):



That's the one advantage I'll give to the Takara ones, they have much better looking faces. Well, that, and the clever way they did the arm cannons on the Seekers. The Toyworld models are like the original toys, you unpeg the weapons from the wings in jet mode and re-peg them on the arms in robot mode. The masterpiece seekers have a clever design where the guns are on a hidden little arm so you just do a bit of unfastening and rotating of the arm to move it from wing to arm. Its unnecessary, but when a design can get rid of some partsforming, it gets kudos in my book.

I would like to see Toyworld's take on the normal seekers (Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp) but it would take a bit of re-tooling. For the coneheads, they're able to easily hide the head in the nosecone. But the way the design is, there's no place to put the head for the standard seekers.

(no subject)

Continuing my Tekken character commentary:

Sergei Dragunov- Since I didn't play the Tekken games between 4 and 7 all that much, hadn't gotten to use him hardly at all previously. But now that I have, I like him. Strike wise, to me he feels in between Lee and Bryan, as you can see a lot of similarity in the animations- I'm sure when he first came out they cribbed a lot of his attacks from those two. But being a sambo practitioner, he's grapple heavy. I like that a lot of his attacks transition straight into throws on counter hit.

But he's another one with a lot of good customizations. His latest outfit is all WWII Hugo Boss designed German military officer style, but his previous outfit is quite smart looking as well. Plus he has the stealth suit, and has a lot of good accessories with the stealth goggles, stealth mask, gas mask, and cyborg eye, on top of the guns and swords you can equip. Alas, he doesn't get any special personal weapons like Katarina did with the bazooka, or Bryan and his rocket pod backpack or girder, he just gets a few remote control toy tanks.

Anyways, yeah, between his outfits and accessories I was able to make a bunch of distinct, bad-ass looks.

Bryan Fury- The bad-ass replicant himself. He was my main in Tekken 3, and he's still a hard hitter. He's another one with a lot of good customizations, since he has a whole bunch of varied tops and legs to go with them, plus extra weapons on top of the ones everyone else gets.

Look 1 is the standard head with the lower skull face bandana, metallic rainbow hair, night-vision goggles, the special version of his jacket with the skulls, carrying both the shotgun and assault rifle. Look 2 is the combat bionics body with the kevlar helmet and night vision goggles, the T6 pants with the ammo belts, and the rocket pod backpack. For look 3 I went with the ripped version of his T-shirt from the I wanna say.. Tekken 3 ending where there's a hole in it from the round the tanks shot at him, with his special camo pants, and the giant girder on his back. For look 4, I went with the green-ish cyborg body paired with his normal legs, plus a beret and skull face paint, and armed with the survival knife to give him a nice scary cyborg commando look.

Its cool that he and Dragunov have multiple unique distinct combat looks. I mean, everyone gets the bulletproof vest, so you can give any character a soldier look, but the two of them have their own thing going, looking tough and scary to boot.

Mishima-style karate guys- Heihachi, Kazuya, and Devil Jin. The karate bad-asses of Tekken. Say what you will about which video game fighter would come on top, but c'mon, at the very least the Mishima clan looks like they would wipe the floor with Ken, Ryu, Ryo Sakazaki, Jean Kujo, Ein, etc.

Its funny, because as the game progressed, they made sure to change up the properties and animations of what were previously shared moves so they'd all be distinct. But all of them seem to have lost the twin pistons. At least performed via d/f+3, 4. I think a Kazuya can do it while rising from a crouch. But to be fair, that was a cheesy move, since it was easy to pull off for decent damage and good juggling opportunity.

Kazuya is easily the best of the 3 in my opinion, since he has the simplified inputs for his godfists and the hell sweeps, plus the gut punch and easy tsunami kick (d/f+4,4). Honestly, you can get a lot of damage spamming the gut punch and following it up with the tsunami kick. Actually, following up a lot of his moves with the tsunami kick will get good results. I mean, there are prolly better combos to follow up on from a gut punch or wind god fist, but the tsunami kick is an easy follow up.

Devil Jin plays very similarly, gets all those devil moves standard, plus a few more tools from his mother. Which lies the problem with me, I like Kazuya because he's simpler, Devil Jin has a bit too many more things in his tool belt that my need to "try something different" and try moves and combos I'm not used to can get me in trouble with him.

Heihachi is one bad-ass looking old dude. Again, while he does share some moves with his son and grandson, he has his own thing. He used to be a combo of Kazuya and Paul, which is a pretty deadly combo. I mean, the wind god fist AND the hammer punch to fist of death? Which, the latter has turned into a palm strike that doesn't hit nearly as hard as Paul's fist of death.

I wanna say he comes with some more heavy hitting moves in his arsenal, but he's also slower and has less stamina. Actually, I guess he was my other main in T3, and its been disappointing how many moves they've changed or taken away from him over the iterations. Like my bread and butter combo in T3 was to stun them with a Demon Boar, juggle them into the air with a twin pistons, do a left uppercut, followed by Demon Massacre.

But since he no longer has Demon Boar (he has something similar) or Twin Pistons, I can't do that in T7. Not that he doesn't have a bunch of good tools in his toolbox. Its just he plays less similarly to his son and grandson then they do to each other. So I have to remember that he's his own man and remember the things they have that he doesn't and not to try doing them, as well as remembering he has some pretty unique moves of his own.

Outfit wise, they all have some pretty pimp looking outfits. Literally. I'm just sad Heihachi no longer has a hakama option.

But yeah, those are all the characters I've played for at least 50 bouts to unlock their first title. I've done 100 with Kazuya and Katarina for their second title. And yeah, all the titles unlock at 2000 battles, but since that's well 2000 battles, you're going to be playing 100 battles with at least 20 of these characters to get everything.