The homage to Sony's title continues in the Cross-shaped status bar in the top-left, with two energy meters - one for health, the other for magic - replenished by collective coloured orbs left in the wake of dispatched foes, or prised out of chests with a few rapid taps of the circle button. And he's an agile chap, too, clambering across walls and up and down ropes with athletic ease. As with God of War, you can mash your way through these encounters untroubled, but your attacks can be finessed with mid-air grabs, throws, juggling combos and so on. Initial waves of enemies, skeletal fiends that spawn from the ground like a Harryhausen movie, are thrown our way to get a feel for the controls. Sometimes less is more.Ĭontrol of Dante is fluid, responsive and satisfying. We don't doubt that these will look spectacular (as the trailer attests), but it's not always necessary to throw money at an effects studio to make an impact. Disappointingly, we learn that the animations are only placeholder, with the usual ILM-smashing CGI mini-epics promised for the final release. Hopefully they can iron out the network issues, and if they do, I’m confident we’ll have a great new combatant for the King of Iron Fist Tournament.Before the playable stage, there's a suitably dramatic cut-scene rendered in a distinctively charming medieval tapestry style, with stirring music and extracts of the poem intoned with ecclesiastical menace. But I can only relay my experience, which was not always optimal.Īfter a few days of learning a few things, getting the ever-loving tar beat out of me, and then managing to squeak out some wins, I’m even more excited for Tekken 8’s final release. Game Director Katsuhiro Harada tweeted over the weekend that this was a known bug, and again, I must stress that this is a Network Test, and is designed to work out kinks they find with online play, so hopefully this will be remedied in the final release. Long stretches of time would go by where matches would fail to connect repeatedly, or not match me with anyone at all. But that won’t stop all the online issues, as matchmaking was also a bit spotty. Thankfully, the connection screen gives a WiFi indicator, so you can avoid those players altogether if you wish, and I would strongly recommend plugging in an ethernet cable. I’m not sure if this was a network issue or a performance issue, but it was very distracting nonetheless. There was also an issue with stage transitions where they would hitch almost without fail. You can change the rollback settings to Prioritize Graphics or Prioritize Response (I chose Response), but it’s really just a pick-your-poison selection as you’ll be dealing with more delay as a tradeoff for less hitching. It’s hard enough to judge spacing when someone has a handle on Tekken’s complex movement, but when they suddenly appear to teleport, it made me feel like I was taking a counter hit to the face in real life. While about half of my matches were great, and this is very specifically a network test, some of the connections were downright rough, especially against WiFi warriors, with rollback artifacts and hitching both present. Unfortunately, what had me less excited across the board was the online performance. Rumors of Jun's death were GREATLY exaggerated. Finding new ways to activate my Heat, using the buffs it provides before it runs out, and then finishing it up with a Heat Smash, all made me excited to jump back into training mode as soon as I was able. I felt like I was barely getting a handle on what Jun could do in this first weekend, but I’m excited to explore more of her kit during the next test period.īoth characters gave me a lot of confidence that the Heat system is ultimately going to end up being a great change for Tekken 8. But if you activate Heat mode, you can use those moves freely without damaging yourself, and even do extra healing, giving her an extremely powerful toolset with no drawbacks for a limited time. She can use powerful attacks and strings at the cost of her own life bar. Another character that stood out to me was Jun Kazama, returning in her first canon appearance since Tekken 2.
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