Awaria is a tense game of split-second decisions. While its levels are brief, you will spend every moment gauging distances, examining your needs, and trying to figure out how to slip past dangers that are constantly creeping up on you. This probably sounds a bit more relentless than generator maintenance should be, but when ghostly smooches are on the line, you’re understandably more inclined to do everything you can to get the job done. Even if you die a lot in the process in this bullet hell kiss ‘em up.

So, you’re in charge of repairing generators to keep up shields that keep apparitions at bay. Seeing as they’re busted, though, the apparitions have arrived and aren’t keen on you fixing things. There are an array of ghosts that will attack you throughout the game, each having their own special attack patterns you need to dodge around. The ghosts will try to catch you and smack you, fling multi-directional shots around the arena, leave traps on the floor that you have to skirt close to so that you set them off, and more. These tend to change every single level, or quickly stack on top of one another as the ghosts work together in harder levels.

If you want to survive a level in Awaria, you need to fix the generators in each room a set number of times to restore the shields and make yourself safe. Thankfully, all of the parts you need to do your fixes are in the same room as the generators. However, the machines that provide the parts often have some sort of quick to make them spit up the goods. Some need you to manually click them and then wait for the part to be made. Some require parts from other machines before they’ll give you the completed thing you need. Not only this, but you won’t know which parts you need until you click on the broken generator itself.

Now, each level is contained to a single screen, so it’s not like these things are far apart. Once you know which parts you need and which machines will provide them, you can quickly plan your route. That’s good, as the ghosts are relentless in their attacks from the very start. They never let up on you, so you’ll need to figure out the best path to take that will get you away from ghost attacks while readying machines to prepare your repair parts or picking those parts up to be delivered to the generators. While the small levels make planning that route straightforward, the small stages also put you in constant danger as there is only so much wiggle room around the enemy attacks. And the stage hazards, because why not add some more danger?

This results in some fantastically tense play throughout Awaria as you continually adjust your path on the fly. You always need to be thinking about what parts you need and how you’ll reach them. You’ll need to change that plan when one of the ghosts comes rushing your way or if they’ve set some hazards in your path that you now need to skirt around. Juggling this while glancing at the generators to see what parts they need, keeping stock of which machine needs to be prepped to make the parts, and doing so while a fast ghost is filling the room with fireballs is exhilarating, dizzying, and incredibly challenging. Did I mention that you usually need to fix the generator on a time limit as well?

Thankfully, there are a few difficulty levels you can choose from every time you start a stage. Easy mode gives you a drone that revives you after you get hit, but has a short cooldown before it can be used again. Standard gives the drone a ten second cooldown (which is basically an eternity when things get busy). Hard cuts down the repair time limit and you die in a single hit. Even playing on Easy Mode was quite challenging (although very doable if you’re persistent), so don’t expect to have ghost kisses just come floating your way without effort.

You’ll likely be willing to put in the work, as the game’s story and character interactions hint at an interesting overarching lore somewhere beyond your character’s need to kiss the various ghosts that keep breaking things down here. While Awaria doesn’t spend much time on its story, it offers just the right amount to entice you to keep playing. The art style also makes for some cute, evocative characters, and it’s just fun to see how they all get along with each other. Despite the whole thing where they’re trying to kill you.

Awaria is just a tight, punchy package. Its tiny levels are crammed with challenge thanks to the ghost abilities, hazards, and part retrieval mechanics. Every moment feels like it needs all of your focus to get through, and you’ll spend many stages scrambling to finish. The story and characters manage a ton of charm despite only being on-screen for a few seconds between stages. The various difficulty levels give you something to strive for it you want to challenge yourself or if you just want to see the endings. It’s a great little game that costs nothing to play, so you have no reason not to get on it right now.

Awaria is available on PCs via Steam.

The post Review: Awaria Packs a Great Story & Challenge in a Tight Package appeared first on Siliconera.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero aims to capture the wild, acrobatic, over-the-top battles of the anime and its various iterations as characters vanish and reappear behind one another, counter each other’s counter moves, and fire off devastating blasts that leave the area a wasteland. When even the early story battles have that much mayhem in them, you’d better be ready for everything your opponents can throw at you right from the very first battle. Bandai Namco will throw some incredibly thrilling fights at you in this latest Dragon Ball game, but you’d best believe you need to be trained and ready before you start fighting against these ultra powerful characters.

I cannot stress this enough: if you have not played the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi arena fighter games, you need to head over to the Super Training menu and go over everything in Battle Training. I figured since I have a decent handle on fighting games I could give the commands a glance and hop right into playing the game. I was utterly wrong and got stomped immediately. I thought the game would at least let me learn the ropes by lowering the difficulty, but by the time I hit Vegeta in Episode Battle (the story mode), I was getting mauled constantly. I even turned on every possible Battle Assist, getting the game to help with combos, Dragon Dashes to catch up with hurled foes, and help with blocking, and it made next to no difference. You can’t just lower the difficulty and mash buttons, here. You need to learn the systems.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s systems are very satisfying and help you fall in love with game once you commit to learning them. Battle Training will walk you through each of your moves one by one, letting you practice them until you master them. Since there’s a lot to factor into every second of combat, you should take your time, here. For instance, basic movement involves far more than just walking around, as you can leap into the air and fly at will. You can also Dragon Dash to move far faster, allowing you to chase foes you’ve launched away from you or to make a quick getaway if you need to get to some cover to avoid an incoming blast.

This leads us to your Ki, the meter that fuels many of your handy abilities. Dragon Dash costs Ki to use (the yellow bar under your health bar), and while it recharges as you smack your foe around (or if you stand still and hold R2, which charges it fast but practically begs to get you smacked), you can burn through it fast if you Dragon Dash too much. Same if you use Ki Blasts to pepper foes with a few bursts of energy or if you hold the button down to launch a single, devastating one. You’ll also burn through Ki in a hurry if you use your character-specific specials (like Gohan’s Explosive Cannon). While managing a special meter in a fighting game isn’t unique, since it’s connected to movement and being able to use many of your best moves, it feels even more stressful to keep track of it in this game.

So, it’s got more in-depth moves and the special meter is tied into combat a bit deeper. Why would I be worried about getting trashed playing Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero? On top of this, there are in-depth dodge, clash, and counters system in play. If you’re about to get slammed up close, you can Vanish Assault to appear behind your enemy, trying to get the drop on them. You can also just hold Circle and use Perception to counter your opponent’s strikes. You can do a high speed evasion by blocking with perfect timing when you’re about to get hit, slipping away to hit back. Your throws, fast steps, and Ultimate Blasts can enter a clash state against your opponent, resulting in a short quicktime event where you’re suddenly mashing buttons to come out on top. You have lots of tools to quickly turn a bout around, but things can just as easily get turned around on you.

This all results in battles that are extremely chaotic if you don’t have all of these moves, skills, and combat possibilities firmly in your mind. Right from the start, and even at low difficulties, you and your opponent will be vanishing and reappearing around one another, entering sudden clash states where you have to switch what you’re doing, and alternating between chasing and hurtling away from one another. It all happens blazingly fast, too. The game gives you a fair amount of health to make it so the matches don’t end too quickly even while you’re getting the hang of this stuff, but it can still be a lot to learn and get the hang of.

But when you start to get it, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero looks and feels incredible. While I would argue that Dragon Ball FighterZ looks a little bit sharper when it comes to its characters and attacks, it doesn’t capture the feeling of movement and massive destruction that this game does. You will both be flying all over these massive battlefields, shifting from high-speed flight to an intimate beatdown where you’re doing dodges and counters against one another in the space of milliseconds. It captures this incredible spectacle because of all of these systems working in tandem – especially so as your attacks blow up the battlefield itself. If you slowed the game down to look at its visuals they don't look as good as FighterZ, but when everything's moving, it looks great. It’s relentlessly cool to look at these fights, and feels even better that you’re the one in charge of what happens.

Episode Battle is a good place to start practicing these skills; just don’t expect it to go easy on you. This story mode follows the narrative arcs of some of the major characters, capturing several major battles they went through. It manages to hit highlights from the various plotlines quickly and effectively without boring you with long plot dumps between fights, hitting a rare good middle ground for story that I didn’t see in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash or Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. The game gets to the point while still conveying the story and looking good while doing it, making Episode Battle pleasant to fight through. You can also bounce around several character arcs at will, so if you get stuck on a fight, you can switch characters and do someone else for a bit.

If you want something else that’s not in any previous Dragon Ball Z storyline, Bonus Battles offers some unique fights between characters in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. Maybe it’s just a hard battle where you are especially weak or it has some unique restrictions, but these offer special fights to test your abilities or just try out a battle between characters that would be different from the regular storyline. These add some extra fun for single player, but you can also design your own Bonus Battle for you or other players to work through.

Custom Battles sees you choosing who will fight and where they’ll fight. On top of this, you can set battle conditions for the fight. For these, you set a trigger condition (someone gets defeated, for example, or hits a certain level of health left), and then something will happen (they get transformed, lose access to certain moves, enemies will get harder, etc). You can also set up a story scene before, during, and after the fight, choosing effects, captions, announcer voices – basically creating your own cutscene (with some limitations). You can really do a lot with this – far more than I expected.

You can also post these Custom Battles online for others to play through, too. You can’t just create some miserable beatdown, though, as, like Mario Maker, you need to win the fight to be able to post it online. That said, players who want to set up creative challenges or to dabble with making their own limited Dragon Ball Z stories can do some neat things with this tool. It’s time-consuming, but is an incredibly neat extra for the game to have.

If you find yourself having trouble with some of the fights in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero or are getting frustrated that you’re not progressing, there are Ability Items you can buy in the game’s shop that can improve your character’s powers when equipped. I didn’t find these broke the game – more like they gave you a bit of an edge in a fight. Plus, you can only equip so many on your character. Still, they make a difference and are fairly affordable as the game gives you Zeni constantly for every little thing you do in it. Even if you lose, simply playing as characters and doing things in a fight gives you Zeni, so you’re always getting a little something from playing it.

After being unimpressed with Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash and Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, I was pleasantly surprised with Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. It looks spectacular in motion and really captures the scope of the franchise’s wild fights. With its many counters, fast movements, explosive field effects, and incredible blast moves, it makes you feel like you’re fighting for your life against relentless enemies. It will take some real training to get all of its battle expectations down, but it is absolutely worth it.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will be available on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC on October 11, 2024.

The post Review: Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is Delightfully Frantic appeared first on Siliconera.

Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection is a great collection of some fantastic, over-the-top, and fast fighting games. By simply putting all of these games in one place with an affordable price tag it was already going to be a worthwhile purchase for me, but with its wonderful additional content, it makes buying this collection a no-brainer.

This collection puts together seven different Marvel fighting games, capturing X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. Plus there is The Punisher beat ‘em up, which is an odd addition. But hey, why not? If you just want to bash heads to burn off steam by punching thugs after Cyber Akuma has stomped you flat for a few hours, it’s a nice thing to have. Having all of these games in a single package is fantastic for those who don’t want to have to hit the lottery to buy copies of them all. As well, having online without having to jump through certain hoops is really nice as well. Being able to launch all of these from one game is just really nice in and of itself.

There’s some fun extras to further entice you to pick up the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection. The game features a museum for each of the titles that contains old pamphlets, marquees, comic ads, design documents, rough stage/move/character drawings, and other fun oddities from the game’s past. While most of it is in Japanese, it was neat to look back on how a lot of the moves and stages came together as the games were created. The museum also lets you play through each game’s soundtrack as well, which is a fun addition if you just want to enjoy the tunes without having to avoid Wolverine’s Berserker Barrage.

The marquees in the museum are especially important, as you’re going to need to take some time to introduce yourself to each game’s unique mechanics and tools. If you want to learn about what the Infinity Gems do in Marvel Super Heroes or what the various assist types do in Marvel vs Capcom 2, you’re going to want to check out your move list or the game’s specific marquee. There’s not a ton of wild mechanics, but it’s enough that you’ll want to take a bit of time in the basic move lists to see what you’ll be running into in each game. A part of me wishes that each game had a little introduction to its mechanics (maybe just some still images) for new players to know what to expect, but what’s in place is functional.

With Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection, Capcom does offer new players (or Street Fighter 6 players who use Modern controls) the ability to perform easy special moves and supers. On Switch, hitting the L button plus a direction allows you to do a special move. Hitting ZL allows you to do your Hyper Combos and Supers (sometimes with a direction involved if you have multiple buttons). This allows you to do pretty much any special move with ease. What’s unexpected is that there doesn’t appear to be any change in damage to the moves if you use the regular directional input versus the one-button method. I thought this might be pretty controversial, but it is locked out for Ranked play online (but can be turned on or off for Casual Matches or Custom Rooms). It’s a shame this couldn’t be worked into something resembling Modern controls in Street Fighter 6, but given the catastrophic possibilities it would add to balancing the moves in these older games, I understand why it was done this way.

For those who want to get their execution down for Ranked play, the games all have their own practice modes complete with hit/hurtboxes, on-screen inputs, attack data, and some dummy behavior you can set up (including recordings). It’s wild to me that I can go in and set up a training dummy doing specific moves in games that are this old, but it’s a really solid training mode that is a welcome feature. Far better than what I used to do when I set it to two player mode and then just beat up on the second player. Holding up with your toe on the second controller to make them jump was always a pain.

And once you get your moves down, whether through practice or just fiddling with the one-button specials, you’ll be able to hop in and have a great time with all of the fighters in the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection. These are games I used to have a blast playing just by mashing buttons because they were fast and looked great. Each have their own visual quirks, but overall they are filled with big, detailed characters with flashy moves that are fun to see in action. I love them all in their own ways, so it’s fun to just bounce around them and enjoy how they look and feel. Considering you can queue for multiple games in the Online mode at the same time, you can also just see what games you get tossed into and enjoy.

If I had one gripe, it’s that the collection features a single quick save across all of its titles instead of having a save for each game. So, if you’re being menaced at high levels near the end of Arcade mode in more than one of the titles at once (or if you have a save in The Punisher), trying to save any other game overwrites it. It’s mildly annoying to be stuck having to finish one game before moving to another, but again, only a minor issue.

As for The Punisher game, it’s such an odd addition, but as far as a beat ‘em up goes, it’s good fun. Making use of guns periodically adds some good variety to punching thugs, and the enemy variety is fairly decent, digging into the character’s odd array of villains and some other weird Marvel bad guys. If you get kicked around by the enemies too much, you can even do a little rewind of the action by holding L and try again. Overall, it feels super out of place in this game, but as a little free addition that can be entertaining, I really can’t complain.

Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection is just a highly impressive collection of some of the most over-the-top and fun fighting games that have ever been made. By creating easier controls, it allows all of those button-mashing newcomers (like I once was) to hop in and have a great time. With its new practice mode, it allows those of us trying to get serious a means of practicing so we don’t get annihilated by the stone cold killers who’ve been playing the game for decades. It’s just a celebration of some of the greatest titles in the genre.

Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics will be available on Sept 12, 2024 on PS4, the Nintendo Switch, and PC. It will be made available on the Xbox Series X in 2025.

The post Review: Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection Is a Great Ride appeared first on Siliconera.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons offers quick, snappy roguelite deck-building for someone looking for a few quick hands of high-stakes cards. Strikingly simple, but with some great depth to the systems you can quickly pick up, it’s highly entertaining whether you only have a few minutes to play or if you want to spend a good deal of time in its dungeon depths.

As someone with no knowledge of the anime, the game offers a fast introduction to some of the characters that felt like just enough to get you rolling. I was concerned that I’d be totally lost after the last few anime games that I’d played when I didn’t know the show, but this title doesn’t really need you to know much. It gives you a handful of playable characters (as well as some other ones you meet), but all you really need to know is their play style and how they fight. As this game is light on plot, it feels like you don’t lose anything from not knowing the show and you still feel like you “get” everything that’s happening. That said, this game is extremely light on plot, but I didn’t find I needed a story.

Instead, I was more focused on the card play. In Fairy Tail: Dungeons, you get a small deck of cards to play with at first. You get a mixture of attack cards that deal damage to foes as well as defensive cards that will block incoming damage. These cards area dealt to you four at a time, and you’ll start each round with a full hand of four. You’re given three MP every round you can use, and you get to decide how you spend those MP with your cards (most of which cost one or two MP to cast).

As for what you should do with your MP every turn, that depends on what your enemies are up to. The game will indicate some damage numbers beside the monsters if they’re going to attack you. If they’re not, you can select an enemy to figure out what sort of defensive or buff spells they may be casting instead. Enemies can also prepare highly-damaging attacks that come with unique ways of stopping them (play X number of attack cards, for example). Knowing everything your opponents are doing helps guide you in what you should do each round.

And while you only have four cards to choose from each round, it feels like you really need to think about what to play – you’ll agonize a lot over that simple hand. Should you bulk up your defenses? Try to kill something before it hits you? Prioritize playing the right cards to stop and incoming big hit (always do this one)? Your life points persist across the dungeon, so you can’t just blunder through a fight and then recover afterwards. Mistakes pile on, and if you take too much damage over several fights, you’ll be back to the start of Fairy Tail: Dungeons.

You’ll agonize quickly, though. With only a few cards to play, things move briskly through the game. There’s only so much you can do with each hand, so things hurry along. You can spend a bit of your life to redraw your hand if it’s utterly useless, but usually you’ll want to play what you have. This means you’re not usually taking too long to make your decisions, but there still feels like there’s a great depth every round despite the small hand size.

The real depth lies in building your deck and planning what possibilities you want to have in Fairy Tail: Dungeons. As you explore the dungeon map by choosing tiles to visit, you can pick up cards after fights, events you can stumble across, or shops that appear. Now, I loaded my deck with high-damage cards whenever I came across one, and while it worked great for a while, it eventually meant that my defensive cards didn’t show up as much when I was in combat purely because I had more attack cards in my deck. It was a pure probability thing that I had foolishly ignored in hopes of just slamming enemies. Not that playing more defensively got me any further a few rounds later. Still, I really liked that I had to consider how I was composing my deck for probability.

And there are several ways you can shape your deck. You can improve some of your capabilities in combat or add better abilities to specific cards using an upgrade system that costs Lacrima, a currency you pick up as you play. You can also just outright refuse some of the cards you’ve been offered, as well as prune a card from your deck at specific points. After a short time, it felt more important to remove cards, refuse to take them if I felt I had too many high cost cards, or to focus on just improving what I had to better know what to expect each hand rather than continually expand and mess up a predictable probability of getting the cards I wanted.

Still, there are some cool things that may make you really want to take that new card. Some cards can play off of one another to cause improved effects (Magic Chains), so you’ll want to ensure you get those often. But is adding a new chain worth it if it bloats your deck? Alternatively, you might unlock a new chain in your upgrade tree that you’ll wish you had picked up a card for earlier. It gave me a lot to think about as I sat mulling over whether to take a card or not.

How you stack that deck also depends on the character you use in Fairy Tail: Dungeons. Natsu plays offensively but is still more an all-rounder, but Gray plays more defensively, stacking up huge amounts of protection against damage. Lucy offered some more buffs and support casts. The playable characters give some fun options on how to play and build your deck, and their abilities all look very different from each other’s adding some nice visual flair and variety.

You also have a fair amount of wiggle room in how you play based on the map as well. Not every tile you can reach is an encounter. There are spaces that have you meeting other characters and having events, tiles with Lacrima on them, and shops as well. You can only see so far ahead so you can’t fully plan your route, but you can shoot for paths with fewer fights to preserve life (or more if you want better rewards). How you walk matters as much as how you play your cards.

And when you die (and I died a lot), you gain points towards a rank that unlocks amulets for future runs. These rarely offered extreme bonuses, but can give you little boosts in health, the probability of getting zero cost cards, the ability to carry more items (which is limited gear that can also give you some nice effects), and more. They don’t really break the game so I never felt like I was gaining overwhelming power, but it was enough to get a little leg up here and there.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons feels like a straightforward, but still nicely tactical, deck-building game. Being able to play a few quick hands in a fight was great for moments when there wasn’t much time to play, and the ability to dive right in and pick up the rules in seconds made it easy to just jump right into. Even so, the systems underneath had enough depth that it kept pulling me back in to reshape my strategies for the next run.

Fairy Tail: Dungeon is available for PCs.

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Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is interesting in how it allows you to effortlessly do cool things. If you’re only looking for an arena fighter where you can just mash buttons and beat up on weird spirits, this game will have you covered for a little while. Even then, though, little nuisances will keep popping up throughout your play time. The characters all kinda look the same. The enemies aren’t all that challenging. Your partners get in your way instead of helping you. If you really love the anime and just want to brainlessly smack things then you’ll enjoy this to an extent. If you’re looking for anything more than that, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Having only watched a few episodes of the anime, I looked forward to playing through its wild battles through the game’s Story Mode. While I did fight some interesting spirits while playing this mode, most of my time was spent reading. The game lays out most of the storyline through text and still images, only stopping for a battle every few minutes. If you’ve seen the anime, I feel like these recaps would be incredibly dull as you waited for something to happen. If you haven’t, you’re ALSO going to find these a dull, lifeless version of a story that’s far better when it doesn’t feel like it’s being relayed second hand. I felt like I was just reading an episode breakdown on Wikipedia. It tells the story, but so in-brief that I can’t see it appealing to any audience.

While being brief, Story Mode still manages to be tedious in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash just because of how long it rambles on for. You play through small snippets of the story in individual missions, but most of these just consist of text walls for a bit that end with a fight. Some of them are JUST the text walls. And given that it’s not doing the story any favors, it just feels like the game is wasting your time for much of the time you spend in Story Mode. Thankfully you can just skip the story if you’re tired of reading through all this stuff.

Things get marginally better when you finally get to fight something. The game is fairly basic with its combat. Square, Triangle, and Circle all let you slap your foes around with different attacks, and holding down while hitting those buttons changes the attack. However, in Story Mode, you’re just going to want to hit Square all the time. Mashing Square leads to a combo that ends with a Cursed Energy Technique (a Super, basically, and where all of your damage will come from). There is literally no downside to hammering this button the entire time you play this mode.

You CAN try to put together something fancier in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash, but the janky movement and combat make it hard to make that stuff work. I’ve tried to put the other moves into practice, playing around with different strings or making use of the Cursed Energy level (basically a Super bar, except it charges absurdly fast as it’s necessary to do actual damage) in more intricate ways, but it feels like enemies are always right on top of you or flitting around someplace far away (and are flinging projectiles). Your best bet is to always be in their face launching your fastest attack, which means you’re mashing square.

So yes, you need to land a Cursed Energy Technique to do any damage. Regular strikes don’t hurt your enemies. So, having an auto-combo that leads into those techniques is kinda necessary. Anything else feels like you’re needlessly overcomplicating your life because you have to find some place to add one of those Cursed Energy Techniques yourself by hitting R1. If you get fancy with your combo, it might look slightly cooler, but you’re adding some risk without any real extra reward as that final Cursed Energy Technique seems to be the only strike that matters.

I’ve tried to see if the other combos will do more damage in the long term in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash, but a bunch of them I tried tended to knock the enemy so far away that the Cursed Energy Technique whiffed. I ended up losing patience and just stuck to the square button, and the game largely couldn’t touch me after that point. Any time I tried to branch out, I swear the enemies would just blast me from afar, teleport right into my face out of nowhere and combo me instead, or I’d miss with the only attack that would actually hurt the enemy. So, I hope you like the square button.

As brainless fun, it sort of works, but I still had more problems with it. The game touted being able to bring in a second character, but in Story Mode, you just give this character directions with the D-Pad. I was hoping for the ability to swap between characters to link moves together in intricate ways, but you just tell them to fight aggressively, defensively, or to try to coordinate with you. What I’ve found largely happens is that the pair of you constantly interrupt each other’s combos, knocking foes away before either of you land your Cursed Energy Technique. I ended up wasting ages on the tutorial stage of this paired battle because we were incapable of landing the big special co-op technique because one of us kept knocking the enemy away. So, having a partner usually meant doing no damage and getting beat up way more often.

I am genuinely struggling to find something positive to say about Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash and its combat other than that it is functional. The environments can be broken down for something that feels like a dynamic battle, but it just means stuff disappearing after it gets hit or breaking into a few pieces with no impressive effects, most of the time. Your character’s various Cursed Energy Techniques are fairly unimpressive as well, with only a handful of high level techniques doing anything interesting if you do. And even then, you need to charge it to full to do so, but you’re just better off landing smaller attacks and overwhelming your foe with basic strikes to do your low level attacks. This also tends to trigger special Joint Attacks with your partner that do solid damage (unless you or them knocked your opponent too far away) and look pretty cool. So, again, smashing square is the best thing you can do in the basic Story Mode.

The game has a few other modes if Story Mode is sounding deeply underwhelming at this point. An online co-op mode lets you and a friend fight several spirits in a row, with varying levels of challenge if you’re playing Rush Battle or Survival Battle. It’s more fun to have another person working together to fight intelligently, but only a little better. You can also do online battles against other players, and here, it would probably help to learn those combos. However, those fights lagged and chugged along so hard that I’m not sure how much the combos would help you. And that’s when I could even find a match.

If all you wanna do is smash buttons and beat up spirits from the anime, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is serviceable. That’s about it. If you’re looking for any more depth in any way, the game simply does not have it. Combat is overly simple, and when you try to make it anything more, you just get thumped for your efforts. The support characters actively hinder you. The story is doled out in the worst way I can think of. The online is barren when it’s not lagging horribly. It’s just a flat, tiresome game that is only good for some mindless action for those absolutely itching for anything to do with the anime.

Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is available for the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.

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Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes looked eerily similar to the previous game, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] when I first sat down with it. The characters all looked and, at a glance, seemed to play the same. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Tekken 8 recently showed the fantastic positives that come with being able to carry your skills from the previous games into the new entries. As I dug deeper into this game, I started to see the small tweaks, move changes, and visual details that made this fighter stand out and shine. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s a ton of fun thanks to some interconnected systems that add so much depth to which strike you use next.

Yes, it all looks deceptively similar to the previous title. That said, it feels like all of the visuals in the game have been sharpened and improved. All of the characters have some visual improvements to the already-impressive attack animations. Attacks seem just a little bit snappier or flashier. It’s the sort of thing that felt like a minor difference, but I felt my enjoyment of the game was a little bit higher. This was also aided by the clean user interface. Something about the fonts, win screens, character portrait appearances, and other fine details of the game’s framework looked really nice. It’s not usually something that jumps right out at me, but it was so good that it really improved the game’s presentation.

If you’re new to the series with Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes and you like pixel artwork, you’re going to be impressed. I cannot get over how smooth the movement is in this title and its pixel work. I would just watch Merkava, a monstrous humanoid creature, just breathed as it stood there before the match kicked in. A ton of care went into the ways the characters moved in this game, and I found myself watching replays just so I could appreciate the pixel artwork in motion.

That same care went into animating some new attacks. All of the characters have a few new abilities to add to their kit, adding some neat adjustments to what they can do. I was far from being a high level player of the last game, so it’s a bit beyond me to explain how these moves change the characters and how they play, but I know I enjoyed having some new surprises I could bust out. A lot of them could be used with relative ease, too, as the game’s combo-assist-like strikes allow you to string together some easy beatdowns by mashing your light A attack (the game’s buttons are assigned A B C D). Very easy to jump in with and do cool things, but you’ll eventually have to branch out lest you become predictable.

While each character has a good game plan you’ll want to figure out and implement (a lot of which are extremely satisfying to put to work), the GRD system throws a little chaos into the mix in Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes. The GRD gauge sits in the bottom middle of the screen, and consists of six diamonds on you and your opponent’s side. As you play aggressively and defend well, you will fill your diamonds up with color. Back off or play defensively and those diamonds will drain on your side. Meanwhile, a circle (the TS Gauge) steadily fills as the match progresses. Once it finishes a rotation, whoever have the most filled diamonds gets a 10% buff called a Vorpal state.

However, that’s not all you can use the GRD diamonds for. You can use Force Function to do a special character-specific attack (press B & C) that expends one diamond. If you get ahead on diamonds, you’re free to do some extra cool attacks as your reward for playing consistently and aggressively. You may not want to burn too many of these, though, as you can lose all of your progress to GRD Break, which can happen if you’re thrown or if you try to use a Shield Block (block while holding D) and screw it up. This means people might scramble for throws when you’re building up a stockpile of diamonds, or that your mistakes cost a whole lot more than usual.

Now, you also have your EXS Gauge, which is what fuels your special moves and your extremely powerful Infinite Worth attacks (Supers) in Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes. This builds through play, but during Vorpal state, you can also do a Chain Shift to dump your remaining diamonds into fuel for your EXS bar. The EXS bar persists between rounds and GRD doesn’t, so if the match is about to end, you can funnel that into your EXS bar so you can really slam your opponent during the next round.

What I really enjoy about these systems is that they throw extra things to consider into the mix. While you have a game plan you want to execute, you’ll need to pay attention to the GRD Gauge as you execute it. Did you have to backdash to escape something your foe was doing, and now the TS Gauge is almost finished its rotation? Better do a throw to nullify the opponent’s GRD advantage before that circle is complete. If you have a bunch of diamonds left and you’re in Vorpal state, should you dump those into your EXS bar early so that you have an advantage next round (or just to funnel into an Infinite Worth), or hold onto them this round to keep your current advantage? It made me continually adjust my game plan, resulting in some scramble-y matches (in a game where matches are already pretty wild).

Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes also lets you add further damage by activating Veil Off, which uses your whole EXS Gauge (you need 100% out of 200% minimum to use it, though) but gives you a 20% boost in damage (and this stacks with the 10% from Vorpal if you wanna go wild). This state lets you string together things that don’t normally work together as it lets you use EXS moves so long as you have a little bit of meter in the EXS Gauge instead of needing a whole bar, allowing for some of your nastiest combos while having a huge damage buff.

So, again, there is much to consider within the general ebb and flow of a match besides your character and what they’re capable of. All of these systems feed into one another in ways that can result in massive damage boosts or huge shifts in momentum (a couple of careful Shield Guards can give an opponent on the ropes enough advantage to get the buffs they need to turn the tide). I found myself constantly weighing options and changing strategies based on the GRD Gauge or the state of my opponent, and it resulted in matches that just felt very involved and interesting.

Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes has a solid tutorial to teach you all of this stuff, too. It’s a bit intimidating at first as you find yourself looking at a wall of text, but it is all laid out in very careful steps to help you understand the nuances. You can also try many of these moves out right on the spot. I felt it was set up in such a way that it made the complexities make a lot of sense fairly quickly, and it also offers some practice in the more complex elements of fighting games if you want some lessons on creating frame traps or stringing combos together.

That’s especially helpful with the two new abilities that were added to this game. Creeping Edge is a quick defensive move that lets you shoot forward towards your opponent (or through them), avoiding their attacks while closing distance. It costs GRD Gauge to use, so it’s expensive, but the ability to ignore their strike and start some trouble of your own is very useful. The other ability, Celestial Vorpal, occurs when you turn Vorpal but have all six bars filled. When this happens, you steal all of your opponent’s GRD diamonds, getting twelve diamonds worth of duration on your Vorpal state. It’s a huge, long advantage that makes the battle for GRD diamonds even more intense as they fill up.

With so many systems in play, and with the addition of the new ones, Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes is even more aggressive, yet still extremely complex and thoughtful, than ever. Adding great rollback netcode into the online play also made it feel extremely satisfying to play online. I rarely had many hiccups while duking it out (although I learned that I have a long ways to go to get better at the game). Having a solid online component alone makes this entry worth picking up.

That said, for all of the nice additions, I just kind of wish I liked the way more of the characters looked. This is a deeply personal reason to complain, but something about the character designs just doesn’t impress me. I love seeing them in motion, find their attacks and abilities to be really impressive, but I just don’t care for a lot of the cast and find it limits me on who I want to play as. I almost feel silly bringing it up, but so many of these characters look like lost teenagers on their way to school, or weird monsters and twisted people that are missing a key detail to make them really pop, that I just wish I could like the designs more.

Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes, as a sequel, might also feel like it’s a bit lacking compared to the bigger fighters out there due to a limited number of modes. You get your online ranked, casual matches, room and matches. For single player, you have an Arcade story, Score Attack, Time Attack, Survival, and Combo Missions, but there’s no large story mode to tie it all together. It feels like it’s lacking compared to some of the bigger games, but in the same vein, I also didn’t find I cared. The Arcade story was in-depth enough (although I don’t know the lore well and this game doesn’t do much to help you learn it) and the other modes were good enough to help me figure out the characters. It’s a good amount of depth as you have 24 characters to experience individual stories with, so I don’t feel single player folks will feel it’s missing much.

The one place I wish it had gotten a bit more was with characters. The game added three new playable characters (although more are on the way), and I didn’t much care for any of them, visually. Tsurugi looks like yet another lost high schooler, except he has a big shield. Kaguya has a suite of impressive gunplay attacks and movements that made her the standout of the new characters. Kuon is the big bad, and he has some neat strikes that send him behind the opponent, the ability to fly temporarily, and some nasty screen-filling strikes. They’re fun to play, but again, the character designs just didn’t impress me. It’s a small element that is going to mainly be a really personal problem, but I have to admit that it keeps bugging me in this game.

Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes felt similar to predecessors at first, but the visual cleanups, new attacks and details, nicer user interface, improved online, and a handful of new characters make it feel like the best possible package for this series so far. Whether you’ve played previous titles or are coming in brand new, this feels like the best version of the game to get. If you love complex fighters where the matches can get utterly wild from explosive characters and interwoven systems, you cannot go wrong with this game.

Under Night in Birth II SYS: Celes is available now on the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC.

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So, you’re new to Tekken 8 and you’ve got thirty-two possible characters to choose from. Who should you pick to start out with? With many of these characters having over a hundred attacks each, it can be difficult to decide who might be a good fighter to pick up as you try to learn about the game. I know I’m still having trouble settling on who I want to play in the long run.

While figuring out who I like the most, I’ve dabbled with each character, and in my experience as a newcomer, I’ve come up with a list of five characters I think you can pick up and have a lot of fun with right out of the gate.

Alisa

If you rip off your own head and use it as a bludgeoning tool in a combo, I’m at least going to try your character out. Alisa is a quick little android that is good at prodding at her opponents with some fast attacks in Tekken 8. You have some fairly simple combos that will blast foes across the ring while dealing solid damage, forcing them to come right back at you again. If they make a mistake while rushing in, she also has some simple, mash-able attacks that will send your opponents flying into the air long enough that you can do a combo (if you have one you’re already practicing).

Barring all that, you can just turn your arms into chainsaws and start carving your enemy up. It changes your attacks, but being able to mow through health with saw hands gives you some fun flexibility with the character. While this makes her feel like a complex “stance” character in a sense, I instantly know what to do with a chainsaw. I found her easy to pick up, enjoyed her good movement, and really liked being able to chew up enemies or send them flying. Or, again, smash them with my own head.

Hwoarang

Being a TaeKwonDo kid, I was bound to pick up this character at some point in Tekken 8. While he has some complexities with his stances, he is able to do some excellent combos just by slamming the buttons. As a lot of his stuff involves kicks, they have pretty good reach and speed as well. That can be a hindrance at times if your foe gets in a bit too close, but he has a handy little sidestep slap that can put you out of harm’s way and get ready to just boot your opponent in the face again.

And if your opponent is in the corner? Just absurd kicks. As a beginner I know these combos aren’t amazing, but just mashing a couple of kicks willy-nilly on an opponent stuck against the wall gave me some huge payoffs. Plus, the martial arts teenager in me will never get tired of seeing this kind of thing in action.

Paul

Paul just hits like a truck, and you can get a lot of mileage out of some very simple moves you can pick up really fast. He’s the sort of character where you don’t have to be right about your choice of attack very often in order to maul people (as a Marisa player in Street Fighter 6, this speaks to me). If you want someone who can stomp players with a few well-placed attacks while you’re getting to know the game, Paul can give you what you want. Just sneak in those highly-damaging strikes here and there so that you don’t get too predictable. As a new player, you’re going to fall in love with some of his big smashes, and you will absolutely start using them all the time. People will learn to expect them fast, but if you can learn to be crafty about where you sprinkle them in, you’ll likely have fun in a hurry with Paul.

Jack-8

Big robot does big punch. If you want to really hurt people from far away in Tekken 8, this machine will do it. Many of Jack-8’s moves just have excellent reach, and will put a major hurt on your enemies if you can string even a few moves together. He’s actually not as slow as I thought he would be given that he’s a giant robot, but he’s not exactly zipping around like Alisa. You will need to be careful and watch your opponent so you can sock them when they approach. Being able to control range with his abilities is great fun, although less so once they get in and start hitting you back. You’re also a bigger target, so expect more things to catch you. Still, I just like playing big characters with big hits as it feels so satisfying to just launch a metal fist into your foe’s face.

Sometimes, all I want is something simple.

King

King, our beloved wrestler, is unparalleled in the grappling department in Tekken 8. He just has so many different types of wrestling moves and grabs he can use, even chaining multiple different grabs together. As the opponent has to hit the correct button to break the grab, you can bend them into a pretzel while they struggle to escape. To me, he feels a bit slow with some of his offense so you can’t just go into combos, but knocking someone into the air and then catching them to pull them into a back breaking toss feels incredible.

Grappling is a bit more complex than regular kicking and punching, but there are few things that feel as good as catching someone with yet another of King’s surprise grabs. If you’re fighting someone who likes to block, you’re really going to enjoy making them eat the King Of The Ring’s highly-damaging tosses. King gives me that same sense of excitement that I get from playing Potemkin in Guilty Gear Strive, and that’s more than enough to get me to play him.

6 - Anyone Who Looks Cool to You

I know I said I had five, but there’s a sixth option I need to talk about for Tekken 8, and honestly, fighters in general. At its core, the choice of who to play, and what you find fun, is deeply personal. Some people like to get in their opponent’s face and never let up. Some people like to keep their enemy out with long-range hits. Some people love goofy characters or wild gimmicks. I love grapplers even though I am terrible at figuring out the right distance to actually grab someone. What jives with me may not jive with you.

When you find a character you really want to play, you will feel it. And this is honestly the most important part about a fighting game, and the most meaningful thing I do whenever I pick up something new. There’s almost always at least one character that simply clicks in my mind. They FEEL right to play as. And if I don’t find this character, I feel lost.

While having some idea on good characters to start with is helpful, I cannot stress enough that you need to find someone who feels right to you, regardless of how complex they are. Yes, that means they might be more of a pain to learn, but learning has the potential to bring so much more joy than picking up a character who is “easier” just so you can win matches. So, while I had a blast with the characters on this list and found them simple to pick up, many of them have huge depths that I’m nervous to explore. But I really LIKE the character. It feels fun to learn them.

So, play around with the cast. Look at how they play. Find someone that feels right for you in Tekken 8, and just see how far you can go with them.

Tekken 8 is available now on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC.

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New to the world of Tekken, but curious on where to start with Tekken 8? Like I said in my review, it’s pretty daunting walking into this game with little experience with the series. Even if you’re decent at fighting games, this title is definitely a unique beast that will take some time to figure out. While I’ve still got a lot to learn, I do have eight tips to help you get a foothold in this complex game.

Start with Arcade Quest

Play through Arcade Quest at least a little bit. The Arcade Quest is a playful mode where you’ll battle different CPU players across a variety of themed arcades. It’s different from the regular Story Mode that throws you right into a deadly clash between some long-standing characters. This is much lighter fare where you’ll have a few rounds against foes that won’t go too hard on you.

While it’s good that you have this so you can practice on an opponent that won’t blow you up if you show a moment’s weakness, this is mainly important because this is where the tutorials lie in Tekken 8. You’ll learn some basic things about your Heat meter (a powerful move that puts you in a higher damage output state once per round) and Rage Arts (a powerful move you can use at low health), as well as your countering Power Crush moves. It’ll even offer you some tips for whichever character you selected to get you started on some basic combos. It goes easy on you and gives you an explanation of the more basic skills to get you started.

As an added bonus, you get Fight Money for anything you do in this mode, which you can use to customize in-game avatars, your play screen, and most importantly, your character. It’s always nice to feel like you’re making some progress, even if it’s just so you can dress Jin up in a silly outfit.

Get to know the Tekken 8 characters with Character Episodes

If you want a quick introduction to each character without making a lot of changes in Arcade Mode, I found that Character Episodes were a nice excuse to try out each of the characters for a short time in Tekken 8. You play a few matches (at a difficulty level of your choosing) to get a feel for each person, as well as get some of their story. I find that personality can be just as integral as moves and look for a character – Paul kinda grew on me when I realized what a goofball he was when I initially wasn’t very impressed. So, hearing the stories helped get me interested in the characters, and all while I could try them out briefly in a few matches.

Watch your most impressive moves

While you’re doing this, I recommend turning Special Style – a style which allows you to mash buttons to do cool combos – on and off every few fights. While you can do neat combos with it, they’re fairly specific, so they’ll only serve you for so long if you intend to improve and try fighting folks online. It’s worth trying it out to get an idea which moves you can string together to make combos, though, and to also see if you like what the characters can do. Then, I recommend playing around with the characters’ basic moves, as the basic kicks and punches do some of the most important work in winning matches in Tekken 8. You’re going to want to see your basics and combos in action before you settle on a character. And you SHOULD only settle on one of two, as each of them have a lot of moves you’ll likely need to know to do well.

While playing the characters, you should also try their Heat Smash (a strong strike that you can do while in Heat Mode) as well as their Rage Art. Not only are these good for tanking through some of the nasty stuff your opponent is doing (both shield you from a hit when activated, although you can’t just pull them out while you’re being combo-ed) and are another core part of the character’s personality. A cool super is another part of why I love a character, so it’s worth taking the time to see if you like these moves. Plus you’ll just want to know how to use the moves to turn a match around. They’re easy to execute as they only require a button press, so you’ll want to put these in your arsenal fast.

Check your main techniques in Practice 8 in Tekken 8

That becomes immediately apparent when you look at a character’s move list in the Practice Mode in Tekken 8, which you should hit up next. It’s not the time to practice doing Korean backdashes or perfecting massive combos, though. You’re just here to look through the move list, taking a peek at your main techniques. These will show you a lot of useful moves that will be good to get started with, as well as an explanation of what they do. These greatly streamline the character, although it’s likely best to only really work on a handful of these. You just want to try out some things that feel good, that will let you poke at your enemy, and that can be used to clobber someone when they swing at you and miss.

I recommend activating Display While Training for the first move in the list and then just steadily going through all of the Main Techniques. You can watch demos and try them out one at a time, and by the end of it, you’ll likely have a feel for what the character does or wants to do. You can dabble with All Techniques if you like, but that will get overwhelming fast. At most, you can likely only learn a move or two at a time, so don’t feel any need to rush this. The mind can only work so much into your rotation. This will be a slow journey, so don’t try to hurry it along too much. Just build your knowledge piece by piece.

Play dress up

Once you have a character you like and some knowledge of how they work, I recommend taking some time in Character Customization. I really like playing with goofy-looking characters, so I find customizing my character really gives me a sense of attachment to the character. Plus, it’s here where you can dump some Fight Money into buying fun or cool customization options in Tekken 8. When you’re losing matches, it can feel nice to still earn money to play around with, so this can give you a little morale boost if you have some bad losing streaks.

Adjust your mindset

Speaking of that, if you go online, accept that you will lose. A lot. You’re learning the game. The best attitude I’ve found that helps this is to look at each fight as a series of interactions, and asking myself if I won or lost at the interaction instead of the match. If they took a big silly swing and missed, did I hit them back? That’s an interaction I won. Did I pick the correct move to hit the other player at a distance where they didn’t hit me back? Did I just block something that would have seen me eat a huge combo? It’s all learning, and you’re learning a ton of nuanced stuff, here. Try to give yourself credit for these small victories. If you build up enough of them, the match wins will come on their own.

Watch (and participate in) your Tekken 8 Replays

If you’re not sure where you went wrong in an interaction, go to your Replays and check out the tips that Tekken 8 has to offer. The game offers some advice on what you could have done better, or other things you could have tried. Also, you can just hop into a Replay and take over for your character at any point. If you got smacked for making a mistake, resume the replay from that point and see if you could have done something differently. You can learn a ton from watching your replays (I love making the same mistake several times), and being able to dive right into them again to see what would have worked better is a massive help.

Engage with the Tekken community

These steps should give you a good place to start out if you want to start getting to know Tekken 8, but like any fighter, the real knowledge and excitement is going to come from the community. Be sure to check out the Reddit for Tekken, Discord channels, or see what players are doing on YouTube. Find out where people are talking about the game or characters you like and see what they’re doing. A lot of skilled players will do things that may be beyond you, but you can usually see a few moves that go well together that you can add to your game plan. Plus, it’s always inspiring to see other players do amazing things with your character.

With that, you should have a good starting point to begin your journey with Tekken 8! Good luck, and I’ll see you in the ring! And I’ll be looking RIDICULOUS. Count on it.

Tekken 8 is available now on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Excelling in Tekken 8 appeared first on Siliconera.

As someone completely new to series, Tekken 8 was pretty daunting to walk into. Move lists that could have over a hundred attacks can leave you wondering where to start with your character. The paddlings I received online showed me that I wasn’t quite on the right track just by picking a character and winging it, that’s for sure. While the game does have tools to make it easy to hop in and start slapping folks around and its single player modes have tons of fun in store no matter what your skill level, it’s the satisfying journey of finding a character and delving into their incredible depths that really makes this game shine bright.

After picking up fighting games a few years ago, I’ve always had an interest in the series, but those expansive move lists always left me worrying. Yes, I know that when you have dozens upon dozens of moves, they can’t all be useful and you’re more supposed to just incorporate them as you slowly learn a character. Still, how do you play someone like King or Jin right out of the gate? What are the good tools? What are my pokes? What moves are good at catching the opponent when they miss? It’s a lot to put together.

If you’re not super sure and you don’t want to put in a ton of work to start having fun, Tekken 8 offers Special Style. This allows you to mash buttons to do some cool combos with each character. So, if you don’t want to commit a ton of time but want to start smacking friends, activate this mode by pressing L1 and you’ll be doing wacky attacks in no time. The really neat part about this mechanic is that you can turn it on or off at will. So, if you like some of the combos but still want to learn how to play your character with a bit more purpose, you can quickly flick them on if you need them and turn them back off when you’re done. It gives you a lot of flexibility in how you incorporate them into your play.

You can also just tank your way through some of your opponent’s strikes using Heat. When you activate Heat, you do a Heat Burst where you can absorb a hit and then smash your opponent right back. While in this mode, your character is stronger (but only until the bar runs out), you do chip damage with your strikes, and you gain access to unique moves (many of which are pretty impressive to see). You can also end Heat using a powerful Heat Smash, which stomps foes for a lot of damage if it hits.

Similarly, when you’re at low health in Tekken 8, you enter a Rage state. Here, your attacks do more damage, and you can also activate a Rage Art with R2 that just hammers your foe (while also protecting you like Heat does when you activate it). These are some of the most impressive attacks in the game, and honestly, being able to do these by simply pressing R2 at the right time is just great. You just have to focus on your timing without worrying about how to actually input the button presses.

While learning your character, you have a few single player modes that you can play on the lower difficulties (or if you just feel like beating people up with a character’s sweet moveset). Story mode, The Dark Awakens, lets you play on one of several difficulties, and also gives you infinite chances to play many single-round matches, so it’s a decent mode to mess around with. Plus, the story is fun (although a bit complex to understand if you’re new to the series even WITH the in-game explanations).

Story Mode largely focuses on Jin with some dabbling with other characters, which is fine if you like Jin but less interesting if you don’t. If you want more character experience, there are Character Episodes that have a handful of matches and a brief story for all of the characters in the game. You can also tweak the difficulty here to breeze through the array of fun side stories. It’s a great way to experience each character to see who you like, and you get a good amount of Fight Money (which you can use to buy customization items for characters and avatars, among other things).

Tekken 8 also offers Arcade Quest, a playful mode where you work your way through arcades across the country, fighting a variety of CPU players of varying skill levels. This mode is where many of the beginner’s tutorials lie, so you’ll want to pick up this mode and play through it if you aren’t sure how the game works. The light challenge, ability to pick whichever character you want to play, and then have some of the more basic concepts explained to you make it a great starting point once you want to start getting more serious about learning a character.

Having so many single player modes that can cater to lower-skill levels is nice, but what about when you want to start getting better? The game features a Practice Mode where you can look at move lists, how many frames each move takes to go out, your frame advantage for follow-up strikes, as well as properties and damage. You can play around with your attacks and use the frame information to string together some combos of your own, or you can check the same for moves executed by your opponents to look for gaps. Adding combo challenges and samples to the mix give you the usual fighting game tools to tinker with your character until you figure them out.

While I could flip through the move list and have the game demonstrate each strike, I still wasn’t sure where to start to take my characters seriously in Tekken 8. Luckily, many of the characters work fairly similarly to their iterations in the past, so if you have experience in the older titles, it will carry over. If you don’t, much of the knowledge out there on the older games can still give you some guidance. I found that looking outside of the game was a big help at first. While you have tools to learn within the game, connecting with the community is an excellent place to get started, too.

But say all of that doesn’t help you much, and you just start getting blown up online. The game features replays for your matches, which you can watch to check for your mistakes so you can plan to avoid them next time. If you’re just getting started, you might not have a good idea how to counter things. This title offers tips to help you figure out what to do, though. If you’re getting smacked, you can press R2 to bring up a tip about a better way of punishing something the opponent whiffed with, or a hint as to a better combo route. If you’re getting walloped the tips probably won’t have much to say, but it’s really cool to get some hints during a replay about what you can try next time.

Except, to hell with waiting for next time. Tekken 8 lets you take over your character during a replay to try your new idea live. You basically take control of your character (or the opponent, if you like) so you can play around with things that might stop you from getting stomped next time. There are so many matches that I lost because I couldn’t figure out what to do with one thing my foe was doing. Here, I can hope into a replay, stop when the opponent is going to use that ability, and start trying things to stop it. This is an amazing tool for dealing with specific problems against characters and opponents, and I love how quickly it lets you fix gaps in your game plan.

Finally, you can practice against AI opponents built from your own character and others in Super Ghost Battle. These AI enemies use movesets and attack strings based off of players online, so they’re a good way to dabble in online play without actually fighting people online, if you’re too nervous. More interestingly, you can play against your own character and see what the AI would do with your game plan. See my own play style in use showed me some depressing gaps in my play (why don’t I block more?) in a neat light, and makes for a cool addition to the game.

Being able to practice in so many different ways will be useful, as Tekken 8 features a massive, varied roster. The cast has a ton of playable fighters, each having a lot of personality in their moves and abilities. Most of them all look really impressive as well, and I found myself spending a ton of time just trying out many of them. In doing so, I found there were many that I gravitated toward. So many that I am still kinda lost on who I want to sink most of my time into. I usually only feel inclined to play two or three people in most fighters, but here, I liked so many styles and characters that I am still figuring out who I like best. I’m used to finding a lot of fluff in fighters with massive rosters, but here, it just feels like a ton of great characters that you can spend hours picking from.

You can also infuse these characters with all kinds of personality thanks to Character Customization. While you can make an Xbox Live-like avatar for Arcade Quest, it’s in customizing the actual fighters that things get really interesting. You can get all kinds of neat costume additions for free, or else spend Fight Money that you earn in-game to unlock many more (and you earn Fight Money fairly quickly through playing every mode). I decked out King in a flower-print suit with a dapper top hat and a donut in his mouth, and could then take that ridiculousness online immediately. No waiting months to get a single new costume for my actual fighter like a certain street fighting game. Just creative outfits right out of the gate.

That said, the main costumes look far better than anything you can create in Tekken 8. Even so, it feels like it’s the player expression that they wanted to focus on. Yes, the developer-created outfits are better, but the creators wanted you to be able to express yourself with the way you look. This pairs well with the massive move lists, which are also a way of telling your opponent about yourself. Yes, there’s optimal ways to play your character, but it’s all of the variety in the attacks and how you, personally, would work them into your game plan that make the character feel unique to you.

While that excess of moves is overwhelming for me right now, it also feels exciting because there’s so much nuance to the characters. I feel like there is a lifetime of discovery lying in each of those move lists, if I’m interested in digging into it. I could always just use Special Style and go wild if I don’t want that depth, but as I’ve started digging into King (as I love grapplers), I’ve been floored by the sheer number of neat things he can do once he muckles onto you. There’s just so much, and while it’s so much at first, just grabbing a few moves and working them into a match feels like I could play this character forever and keep finding exciting things.

Tekken 8 is daunting to get into, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the same kind of fear you feel when you start something new and exciting in your life. It’s like taking on a whole new hobby and you know very little about it. There are so many places you can go and so many things you can do with this new, thrilling entry in the series. There is just so much possibility and a community to be found. While I have a very long road ahead, this game makes you want to keep taking those steps with its helpful replay tools, great characters, stunning visuals, and its array of handy features to help me turn the tide when I’m in danger or to have fun when I need things to be a bit easier. There’s a wealth of wonderful fighting to be had, and it’s a fantastic time to take your first steps into Tekken.

Tekken 8 will come out on January 26, 2024 for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC.

The post Review: Tekken 8 Is an Extensive, Exhilarating Journey appeared first on Siliconera.

Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is a wild, frantic fighter with an absurd amount of playable characters to try out. If you’re just looking to be a ninja and smack some folks around with neat powers, this game will keep you busy for ages. As a more nuanced, thoughtful fighter, it feels more lacking, though. Combining that with a story mode that seems to gloss over a ton of good fights and you have a game that makes for a great diversion when you want to goof off, but that’s it.

As someone who’s never interacted with Naruto in any way before, this game is a bit of a strange experience. Suddenly being given access to 130 different fighters from across years of manga and anime was utterly overwhelming, and unfortunately, the game does not do a good job of paring that down into anything comprehensible. Flipping through the characters is the first thing I do with any fighter, trying them all to see who sticks. With so many characters to try, I found myself flitting aimlessly through the characters. I never realized that having too many characters could be a problem until now.

The other issue I found was that it didn’t feel like the character’s basic moves really mattered all that much in combat in Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. That’s because your main form of attack is to hit a single button a whole bunch of times. This button controls your close-up attack, and it’s your main form of offense. You also have Ninjutsu abilities that you can work into your combos, but as for basic moves, your combos all look like you’re just slamming the attack button as fast as you can while occasionally hitting a directional input. While the characters would all do different things and hit at different ranges, it just felt like brainlessly playing an action game.

The Nijutsu moves are where you see a difference between the characters in Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, and it really feels that some characters have good ones and others have bad ones. It doesn’t feel terribly balanced in this regard, so some characters just seem to have terrible specials they can do, making me wonder why someone would even use that character. I guess I’m not surprised that it is difficult to balance a game with this many characters, but it’s annoying to see that there are clear best characters.

Now, your enemies aren’t going to let you slam them with impunity, so it’s not without challenge. You and your foes can block and throw, naturally. You can also do a Chakra dash to close the distance to an enemy very quickly to catch them off-guard. If you’re about to get slapped around, you can do a Substitution Jutsu that lets you slip out of danger (but your enemy can do that, too). You also have access to support characters that you can call into combos to get more damage, as well as have them swap in for you so you can use different people in a fight.

This results in some scrambly matches in Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. You can find yourself rushing toward an enemy, only to have them close the distance to you in an instant with a Chakra Dash. Before they can start attacking, you use a Substitution Jutsu to slip behind them and start your attack. It’s easy enough to press that advantage since you’re mainly using one attack button, but you have to factor in the various speedy ways someone can get out of trouble. Given the array of ninja attacks you’ll see going off as players use hundreds of possible team combinations and attacks, the fights look pretty sharp and are really wild.

It's mechanically where it feels a bit strange. You’re constantly reacting to what your opponent is doing with your array of powers, always seeing who can get the drop on the other person. It looks pretty great, and it feels pretty good to surprise your foe and get your combo started (and it’s not too difficult to execute, as the inputs are very easy). The inputs felt just a bit too easy for me, though, and that I would often find myself mashing attack once I got an opportunity. It’s simultaneously cool and exciting, but also just a bit thoughtless in execution since I really just wanted to mash one attack button all the time with some special attacks sprinkled throughout.

This is where I started to find myself disengaging from Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. I tried a bunch of characters, and while their special moves often behaved differently, it felt like my plan of attack was largely the same. Rely on the universal mechanics, then slam the attack button a lot. Maybe do a special move if I was in range. For a game with so many characters, they all felt the same to play as far as inputs go. I know a lot of fighting games use similar inputs across characters and that those moves do different things, and that is also the case here, but it just ends up feeling like your plan of attack and the inputs are always EXACTLY the same. Which made the characters, despite their variety, feel exactly the same.

That might not necessarily be a bad thing for people who just want to mash buttons and slap people around. In fact, the game features a Simple control style where your character will do a ton of things if you just slam that attack button. Your character will Chakra Dash, do combos, and complete them with powerful finishers if you just keep tapping the button. You can also customize which of these steps get tied to the button if you don’t want the game to handle everything. So, you have lots of options to just screw around with the game and mangle foes if that’s all you’re looking for from Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections.

I had hoped that the game’s History mode would help me better connect with the characters. Maybe getting to know them would make me appreciate their differences a bit more. I was excited to use this game to dip my toes into this years-long story, too, finally figuring out what all of the fuss has been about. Unfortunately, what I got felt like a paraphrased take on the Wikipedia entries for the story of Naruto and Naruto Shippuden.

History mode is supposed to get players to relive some of the most important battles and plot points of the entire story. However, distilling years of storyline into a handful of brief chapters and fights just seems like it was too hard to pull off in Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. The story is laid out in extremely brief text and still images, covering whole story arcs in a few brief sentences with very little context or explanation. For a player who knows nothing about the story, it borders on incoherent nonsense and did little to convince me that I should try out the manga or anime.

Arguably, it’s probably not even that good for someone who knows the story inside and out, too. There were many moments throughout the brief story where the game would talk about something that sounded like it would be a neat fight or moment. Then it would dart right on past that to something else. Don’t get me wrong, the fights are still fun. There just feels like there are many missed opportunities for other exciting battles that could have helped the game feel more fleshed out. Although I feel like the developers just bit off a bit too much in trying to take this much story into the game at all. It feels like it was an endeavor that was doomed to fail, and as far as History mode goes, it did.

This leaves us with Special Story, an original story about Boruto in Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. This is where much of the game’s focus seemed to have gone, as you have full cutscenes and a storyline happening involving a mysterious group and a ninja video game made with ulterior motives. The story doesn’t get particularly interesting for a while, and even when it does, the pacing is plodding. There are a ton of cutscenes in between fights, so it feels like you really lose momentum between matches. Where the story is largely dull for so long, it makes this mode a real slog to go through for a while. Unless you skip the plot, which you can do, but then this mode feels like yet more disconnected fights.

You’ll likely have to skip some of the plot, too. For whatever reason, cutscenes froze constantly throughout this mode on the Switch version. They just kind of get stuck at certain points, but thankfully, the chapters are divided up fairly frequently so you won’t lose much if you restart the cutscene. You can also just skip over them, which I found myself really wanting to do after the fifth time it happened in an hour long play session.

When I finally got in some fights, I also noticed that a lot of your enemies will make you chase them for long periods of time. Perhaps it’s due to Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections going easy on players at the start of this mode, but it is excruciating to have to constantly Chakra Dash and run to catch up with foes just to have them dart away immediately. I ran out of time in a few fights simply because the opponent refused to engage and just stayed away. More aggressive foes don’t come with this issue, but every few matches for the first while feel like you’re just chasing characters constantly. This makes the fights terribly annoying and dull when you get into these types of matches.

As a mindless game about beating folks up with cool ninja powers, Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is pretty solid. I can also see someone enjoying this game if they’re interested in just messing around with the massive roster. However, as a fighter with depth, a compelling story, or a snapshot of years of Naruto history, it’s weak and struggled to hold my interest. If I want to turn my brain off and mash buttons, it’s something I can see myself playing again, but that’s about it.

Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is available now on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.

The post Review: Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections Lacks Depth appeared first on Siliconera.

I received some of the most vicious beatdowns ever in a fighting game during the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test. The element of danger – a back and forth where any mistake meant a vicious turnaround – made matches thrum with energy.

The Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test was the kind of experience where I was always leaning forward in my seat. Always on edge. I am utterly terrible at it. Yet I crave more. I got in quite a few matches during the play period over the weekend. For starters, and most importantly, every match played perfectly smoothly with no hiccups. If I was concerned about whether someone’s connections speed was going to be a hassle, I could look at an indicator to check. The game tells you how fast your opponent’s internet is. Not only this, but it’ll also tell you if it’s a wired or wi-fi connection, if that’s a big issue for you. Heck, it even shows how much processing power it’s taking up on the PC version, so you can see if someone’s computer is having a hard time running it. So, you’re always in the know about your opponent’s connection.

Having it run smoothly was wonderful, as the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test looked stunning in action and I wouldn’t wanted that messed up with slowdown or choppiness. Like Mortal Kombat 1, this game just looks staggeringly good. Seeing the fighters going toe-to-toe, brilliant flashes of explosives strikes and launching kicks erupting all throughout the match, made the game a treat to watch in action. The character models all looked fantastic, and the varied cast showed off great personality and detail. It’s great seeing what modern consoles can do for fighting games.

I got a lot of time to enjoy that detail as my character was sailing through the air, too. As someone who hasn’t played the series in a very, very long time, I was not quite prepared for how much you can make someone pay for making a mistake. With little emphasis on jumping, the game feels heavily focused on spacing and combos. If I wasn’t careful with what move I stuck out there, I would get caught up in a blender of kicks and punches that would leave me near-dead often. However, I could do the same to someone else if I caught them getting too greedy with their offense.

This emphasis on spacing made the matches feel tense throughout the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test. I’d be desperate to stick a move out there and start my offense, but if I got overzealous, I’d get stomped hard. If they did the same and missed something, that was my chance to got on the offensive. As someone who gets antsy during matches and just has to take a swing, this game was doing its best to break me of that habit.

Not that I didn’t have any options if I was in trouble. The game features a Rage mode when you are at low health. This kicks in automatically, and it increases your damage until you’re dead. It’s handy for turning things around when you’re almost finished. You also gain access to a Rage Art in this state, which is a highly-damaging super move that can really turn the tables (that only requires you to hit R2 to do it, so it’s also easy to pull off). These all looked incredible in action, so it always felt good to do one when your opponent was about to clean you out. These moves have saved me multiple times, and ensure that, even if you’re having trouble getting a combo going at low health, you still have one last trick to pull.

There was another mechanic in the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test, Heat, which lets you do some nasty things in a fight. You can activate your Heat Timer once per match, and can do so with a bit of a counter state to turn the tables on an opponent that’s rolling you. You start the round with this, so you can use it at any time. Once you do use it, your moves will do chip damage while Heat is active. You also gain access to a special Heat Smash move, which hurts a lot but ends Heat as soon as you use you. Naturally, you’ll want to save it for a special combo ender. It’s a neat mechanic that lets you turn the tide a bit like the Rage Art, once again giving more tools to ensure there is a dramatic back and forth between fighters.

The game also demonstrated that the developers have a good eye for the spectacle and tension of the end of a match. I had one fight where it was down to a single hit between myself and the other character. We both took a swing at just about the same time, and the whole game went into slow motion as my hit landed first. It was so exciting to see happen, and it loaded some real energy into the moment. I wish other fighting games did something like this, as it just made things so hype. Even though it was just me playing in my game room.

It also just felt really good to hit people in the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test. I know this is a fighting game and that’s kind of expected, but there’s just a great sense of impact behind the punches and kicks. The visuals and sound make you feel every landed hit, whether you’re giving or receiving. It made the moment to moment play feel really engaging, drawing me in with the promise of slamming folks even harder. Especially some of King’s vicious throws. Combo-ing into those from a few blows just felt amazing.

For other beginners like myself, there is a feature to help you out if you’re not tossing people around as much as you’d like. Special Style quickly ties a handful of combos and special moves to the four main buttons on your controller, allowing new players to easily put together devastating juggles that transition into powerful strikes. You can flick this on or off during a match as well, so you’re free to use it or remove it whenever you see fit. This turned it into a neat tool you could bust out at any time to help your combos if you were struggling.

Which I definitely was. I knew the series was complex, but Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test showed me just how complicated the movesets could be. I’m talking pages and pages of moves within the move lists to learn and put to use. There’s tons of depth here for those who want to explore it. It’s a daunting depth, too. I think Special Style will be a neat bridge to getting people through that depth, as you can flick it on if your combos just aren’t coming together that night so you can have something to fall back on. If you just want to goof off with buddies, it lets you do cool stuff easily. I like it, but I find I rely on it a bit too much when I am getting stomped in a match. I keep using it as a crutch instead of learning. So, for me, I’m going to turn it off and leave it off (probably) or I’ll never learn.

There wasn’t much room to practice during the beta weekend. You could hop on a machine and try out some moves from your list while you waited for an opponent, but that was it. I saw the Tekken Dojo, a location in the Tekken Fight Lounge where I could practice once the full game came out. I’m definitely curious how that will go, as, like I said, there’s a lot to learn. Given how robust Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1’s tutorials and training are, I am hoping to see an equally good training mode here. I sure could use it.

I was still getting currency even when I lost my fights, though. The game has a good deal of unlockable content that you can buy with in-game currency, and the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test was fairly generous with it. I easily racked up about 900k while goofing off for an hour, which allows me to buy a handful of plates and title plates to jazz up my profile card. You can also buy stuff for your in-game avatar (these remind me of Xbox Avatars). No monstrous creatures like Street Fighter 6 here, but there are some fun outfits you can buy if you want to play dress-up.

Overall, I had a blast with the Tekken 8 Closed Beta Test, and am extremely excited to play the full game in a few months. The action feels great, the rounds are tense thanks to all of the mechanics that let you turn things around, and Special Style gave me a flexible tool to let me do neat moves while I’m still getting to know the game. If it’s got a good tutorial to get me going, I am going to be all over this game on release.

Tekken 8 will come out on January 25, 2024 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The post Preview: Tekken 8 Excels at Creating Tense Matches appeared first on Siliconera.

Mega Man X Dive Offline is an interesting experiment, capturing years of content from the live-service mobile game Mega Man X Dive and turning it into a single-player experience. All that fretting about unlocking the characters you want in random draws? Gone. Just go get the character you want with in-game currency you unlock by playing levels. Missed a special event? Just go load it up. Cool skins, neat gear, and special unlockables are all at your fingertips just from playing the game. As someone who never played the mobile game, it’s so much fun, bite-sized content to play with. As a game, it’s a fantastic move toward preserving the history and efforts that go into many mobile games that normally disappear when they reach the end of service.

In this game, the digital world that contains the data from the Mega Man X series is a bit messed up. As the Player, you get called in to clean up the far-reaching mess that has spread throughout the various stages of the franchise. With that mess comes some strange placements for the various bosses and creatures you’ve fought over the years. Even the music itself tends to meander as you try to restore order to the place. The plot isn’t exactly deep stuff, but it’s enough to support the varied worlds you’ll explore throughout the game.

Mega Man X Dive Offline plays out over extremely short stages in its Story Mode. The levels rarely take longer than a few minutes to get through (especially if you rush). Initially, this had me feeling a bit disappointed. It feels a bit hard to settle into, at first, as it feels like you’re just getting into a good groove and then the stage ends. As someone who was juggling a house filled with sick kids while reviewing the game, though, I started to appreciate the brevity. I could play multiple stages when I had time to play more, or I could just leap into a short level when I only had a bit of time. It feels weird at first, but you eventually settle into something that feels right.

That’s not the only thing that takes some getting used to. If you’ve played the franchise before, you’re probably already comfortable with the dashing, wall-climbing, and general acrobatic movement of the game. That’s all there and it feels great. However, your weapons are VERY different. You can equip all sorts of different guns in the game, with dozens of options from basic Mega Buster shots to chain guns to sniper rifles. What’s even more different is how the game auto-aims for you. It aims your gun at whichever enemy is nearest, sticking to them until you finish gunning them down.

That SEEMS great, but it causes some issues throughout Mega Man X Dive Offline. For starters, it makes it difficult to prioritize another enemy when you need to. Say I lock onto a little trash foe, but some big, hulking enemy drops down behind me (which happens a lot during brief moments where the game locks you in an area until you clear out all the enemies). You have the option to manually aim to break the lock, but this is clunky to do in combat. I usually just tried to avoid the new enemy until the original thing I locked onto was dead. That can be even more difficult if you’re leaping around and your locked-on foe is on a higher platform or behind cover, resulting in taking some hits while you sort out an annoying situation that could be fixed if you just shot where you were facing.

That said, enemies come at you from all directions. Enemies that cling to ceilings or on higher levels don’t just get to take free potshots at you any more thanks to this auto-aim system. It’s very freeing when it’s working well, allowing you to hurtle through stages while shooting. It feels fantastic in those moments, and it’s only every once in a while where I run into the situation above. There’s also melee weapons you can equip that will swing close to your body, so there’s ways to work around it. I just tend to lean on the guns more, so the mechanic bugged me a bit during those times.

This problem can get a little more annoying due to the slightly dodgy hit detection. Mega Man X Dive Offline is very good about when your shots are striking enemies, but it felt like the hitbox on my character was a bit too big. I would get hit by things that felt like they should miss periodically, especially against bosses. It’s something you learn to adapt to by giving enemy attacks a wider berth, or by equipping defensive abilities through cards and chips (or unlocking weapon skills that protect you). It was a hindrance at first, but the game has systems in place to deal with the problem.

And there are A LOT of mechanics and oddball tools to go through. Weapons can be powered up by raising their Weapon Levels, increasing their rank by spending Memories of that weapon that you can collect or buy, you can upgrade individual abilities for that weapon, unlock and power-up unique skills for it, and connect Chips to give it unique quirks (and those Chips have their own levels, ranks, and Analyze mechanic themselves). Characters have ranks, skills, and cards they can equip, as well as a special DNA system that confers special power-ups. There’s a repository for your gear that also has a spot to create armor and enhance it (each piece has levels as well). There’s skills you can individually level and equip. It’s so much stuff to work through.

Mega Man X Dive Offline explains just about none of it. You will have to spend a great deal of time poking around menus and seeing what you need to do. Getting weapons and leveling characters is fairly straightforward if you just work your way through their respective menus top to bottom. It’s a lot of messing around in various areas to get your character up to speed, which can be annoying if you just want to get it over with and get into a stage. However, you’ll find yourself dying fairly quickly if you don’t take the time to figure out how the armor system works. Which the game never conveyed to me, and I had to look it up online. It’s a bit frustrating for someone coming into this game completely new, although if you putter around the various menus long enough, you’ll probably figure it out. I just wish it had been easier.

That said, you get lots of the game’s various currencies for just playing it, so when you figure out what you’re doing, you’ll be unlocking tons of stuff. The game constantly dumps Zenny (the basic currency), weapon experience, player experience, and Memories in your lap. I was gaining a level after beating every stage, getting new characters after a handful of levels, and had enough cash to boost weapons to extremely high levels. I could buy new special characters after only a few levels. I expected that wealth to end like it usually does in gacha games. Here, though, there’s no attempt to get real world money out of you. The game just offers you all of its content at a fairly reasonable in-game price and lets you go to town. So, that good feeling at the beginning of most of these games when you’re getting characters and stuff all the time. The whole game is like that.

And there is so much history contained in the unlockables in Mega Man X Dive Offline. There’s tons of characters from across the franchise, all of which have their own neat array of attacks on top of the weapons you equip. Magma Dragoon was a blast to dig out and use against the enemies after spending years dealing with his fiery strikes. I love the design of Zero from the Mega Man Zero games, so it was a treat to switch to him throughout the game. I also found I missed flying as Super Mega Man from Mega Man 6, which this game also busts out as a playable character. Since weapons and benefits transfer from character to character easily, it’s a snap to switch characters to the dozens of new possibilities in the game.

That’s where I found so much enjoyment in this title. I could freely grab a couple of new characters and just try them out for a stage or two. If I liked them, I could stick with them. I rarely did, as I could just unlock another few characters after playing a few more stages and try something wholly new. There’s just so much variety and fun in the available characters, and being able to afford them without parting with real-world money meant I could buy as many as I could afford. And I could afford a lot fairly quickly as the game is always loading you up with currency. Sometimes you might not know which stages you have to play to get them since the game doesn’t explain itself well, but you sort it out eventually.

That variety got me invested in the game. While I found myself bouncing off of Mega Man X Dive Offline at the start, that was because I was coming in expecting something that played closer to the Mega Man X games. This uses that franchise’s framework, but does so to create a Mega Man X playground that you can bounce in and out of. Once you learn its systems, it’s not terribly hard (although you can make it hard if you choose to by purposely ignoring the systems, so you can make it hard if you like). It IS a place where you can explore remixed versions of classic stages using unexpected characters while listening to various versions of the great stage music the series has had over the years. It’s just a lot of fun to mess around with.

Yes, I was hard on it at the beginning of this review. The auto-aiming is goofy. Hit detection isn’t great for your character. Stages can feel too short. There’ so many fiddly menus and things you need to level up before you’re really at a power level where you’ll survive. However, there’s so many different characters and skins and abilities and mechanics at play that are a lot of fun to mess with for a stage or two. You can unlock so much stuff just by playing the game that you’ll be hard pressed to exhaust it all without dumping a ton of play time into it. And the art and characters explore so much art and history from the Mega Man franchise in general that I was constantly delighted by what the game had to offer.

It took some time for me to warm up to Mega Man X Dive Offline, but it’s reached a point where I have a hard time putting it down. I had to boot it up a few times to verify details for the review, and the urge to play a single level or grab a character was strong. It’s a love letter to Mega Man, but it’s also something I hope to see from other mobile games as they reach end-of-service (although the NebulaJoy mobile global version isn't going anywhere right now). All of this art and creativity and passion would normally be lost, but instead, we get access to it for a low price and can unlock and play with just about everything. It’s just a tremendous joy to play. Not to mention it is an important piece of, and a tribute to, Mega Man history that I am thrilled exists. I just hope we start to see other mobile games follow suit.

Mega Man X Dive Offline is available now on PCs.

The post Review: Mega Man X Dive Offline Offers a Wealth of Ways to Play appeared first on Siliconera.

Mortal Kombat 1 revels in combos and complex beatdowns. Its character movesets have been lovingly curated to give you fantastic strings of attacks that will keep opponents reeling. Adding the Kameo System only makes those combo possibilities even more absurd, giving you many different tools to keep opponents flying through the air or to let you sneak in to get your strikes started. Combining all this with the best-looking fighter on the market, a wealth of content to unlock, and some playful modes easily makes this my favorite Mortal Kombat in years.

The story of Mortal Kombat 1 follows Liu Kang after he uses the Hourglass he won at the end of Mortal Kombat 11 to make everything a bit more peaceful. Things naturally don’t stay that way, leading you back into battle with our familiar gang of Ninjas and monstrosities. Not that you’ll mind, as it’s a fine excuse to throw down with the game’s combo-centric movesets. The game feels like its speed has been amped up since the previous title, with a greater focus being put on how fast you can execute an attack against your foes while sustaining punishment against them.

While I am still working on getting my timing down on combos, so many of the game’s moves launch or link into one another in neat ways. Mortal Kombat 1 feels like the game is naturally coaxing you into thinking about what you can do next with each of its attacks. When Scorpion teleports across the room and slaps someone in the face, what’s your follow-up? If you boot someone into the air, what can you do next? While I know this thinking is common in every fighter, Mortal Kombat 1's quick combat really encourages you to launch into a follow-up attack as often as possible. I always felt compelled to see what I could do next since things happen so fast, and foes are often reeling or flipping through the air.

Getting combo timing down takes some practice, though. Coming from Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1's combat can sometimes feel like attacks need to be executed together more quickly if you want to pull off a combination back-to-back. It’s a different kind of timing that makes me feel like my hands need to move a bit faster when compared to Street Fighter 6, so it’s been a bit of a learning curve. Thankfully, Mortal Kombat 1's combo training mode offers a variety of move suggestions to try and features timed button inputs on the screen so you know when to press them at the correct time. These visual inputs are a great teaching tool and have been a huge help.

Still, maybe you have some difficulties getting past your opponent’s fireballs to get your combo started. Maybe your combos are too short, and you’d like to extend them a bit. Or maybe you’re a bit sick of getting smacked around as soon as you get up from a fall. For help with any of those, you’ll want to make use of Mortal Kombat 1’s Kameo system. With it, you can grab an assist character who can do an array of different moves that can help with your own deficiencies or give you a boost to lengthening your combos.

In Mortal Kombat 1, a Kameo is an assist character that you can call in to do an array of different things. With the press of a button, you can quickly tell them what to do when they arrive in your battle. This can include actions such as having them show up to fling a fireball or smack an opponent with a devastating overhead strike. If your character doesn’t have a ranged attack, a Kameo will now allow you to counter a fireball-hurling opponent. Then again, you could also just call in Sub-Zero and have him cover you in ice armor to absorb the firey projectiles.

Mortal Kombat 1 is filled with creative Kameo moves that let you counter foes in interesting ways. If you find yourself in a spot of trouble and need to pull yourself out, you can literally call in Scorpion and use his spear to yank you back. Or maybe you just want to stir up some trouble and have Jax do an unblockable ground pound that punishes your opponent for not jumping. Maybe your foe is on top of you, and you want to call in Frost to push them back with a barrage of icy fist strikes. The Kameo system offers so many unique solutions.

Between the Kameos and the robust move sets, you’re going to see a ton of creativity in what is possible in this game. Players can essentially add several extra moves to their characters just by using Kameos. However, you can’t just abuse the assist system, as the Kameo gauge drains whenever you use it. The Kameo gauge regenerates on its own, but it does so at different rates depending on the move. Still, you start the match with a full bar so that you can go wild pretty quickly and can use a handful of these abilities each round. This means that players can create a whole unique game plan based on their character moves and the Kameo abilities they add to it. There’s going to be many surprises in your matches as you get to know this game.

With so much to do, you’re going to want to have some solid online play to test it out. Mortal Kombat 1 ran super smooth during my trial periods in online matches and was filled with fun surprises. You can play ranked of Kasual, with Ranked offering you points as you win matches that will steadily raise you through several levels. I seemed to be steadily gaining points even when I lost matches, but not as many.

You gain a lot of different kinds of points, currencies, and experience points for doing most anything in the game, too. For starters, you have player, character, and Kameo levels as you play the various match and game types. As you level your player, you gain access to profile backgrounds and little goodies (up to unlocking new Kameo characters). For the characters themselves, you unlock skins, color schemes, and even Fatalities for them to use (although you can look these up online for free and use them even if they aren’t unlocked). You get the same for Kameos.

There is a lot of free stuff you can unlock while playing Mortal Kombat 1. That’s something I really enjoyed about it, as much of this is stuff I would expect to pay for in most games these days. There are some genuinely cool new costumes and colors you can get from just playing as a character or Kameo (you get points for whoever you are actively using). You feel like you’re rewarded just for playing the game instead of always spending money on it. There are some premium costumes and accessories, but if you don’t want to spend anything, there’s still a lot you can unlock.

If online play isn’t your thing, you can still gain a great deal of player and character experience points in single-player modes. You have the usual Towers where you fight 6, 8, or 10 battles against an array of opponents. You also have Endless mode (beat as many as you can without losing) and Survival (beat as many as you can without health top-ups). More fun than those Invasions, which plays more like a board game where you kill people.

Invasions puts you on a top-down map in a variety of Mortal Kombat 1 locales. Here, you can walk to various nodes and do single-round fights with various characters. Most of them aren’t too difficult as you only have to win one time, but you can also purchase items (with in-game, in-mode currency) to make combat easier. You also gain levels that let you affect your stats in this mode, so you can crank your damage to rip through foes or give yourself more health to take more hits. The AI isn’t too bright, so cranking your damage is a great investment.

This mode is not just straight fights, either. You’ll have different hazards or effects in some of the rounds to keep things interesting. Having fire-breathing creatures flying around gives you something else to watch out for, but also gives you new opportunities if you time your uppercuts just right. It’s a lot of fun to mess around with, and is also a good, easy source of character and player experience if you want to get some unlocks fast. You can also do fights over and over again, so if one seems particularly valuable and easy, you can do it repeatedly. Be sure to end with a Fatality for a lot of bonus experience!

There is, of course, a Story Mode as well. In it, you’ll play through the events of a complex story involving much of the game’s cast. The story itself isn’t great, but getting a bit of experience with each character felt more valuable than playing World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6 as you got experience with characters and not just with various moves. It’s not terribly friendly to new players (you’ll want to immediately open your character’s move list each round, or to have practiced in advance in the training modes), but it’s fun to connect to the characters throughout the extensive tale.

It was nice to have a long story mode to go though, as Mortal Kombat 1 is downright gorgeous and the customizable difficulty of Story Mode makes it easier to enjoy the view. The characters and locations are covered with striking details and color, making the game a treat to look at. I had been previously impressed looking at Street Fighter 6, but Mortal Kombat 1 really shows off what next-gen consoles are capable of. There’s so much activity in the backgrounds of the levels and so much to see in the bright fields that I really enjoyed taking in some new detail each time I played a match.

The moves look really great as well. Sub-Zero’s icy powers are wonderful to behold, leaving characters covered in icicles. Li Mei’s lanterns give off a striking purple light as they drift through the air, ready to explode on your head. Liu Kang’s feet alternate between blue and orange fire as he spin kicks you multiple times. Scorpion calls up whirling flames around you. It’s nice to watch all of the moves in action with their vibrant uses of color, light, and detail. It feels better when your move is hitting someone else, sure, but they all look fantastic in action.

With that attention to detail comes some more gory Fatalities. Mortal Kombat 1 continues the proud, gross tradition of killing people in nasty ways, and with higher graphical fidelity comes further leaning into gross-out territory. Watching Mileena eat a brain is pretty stomach-churning on next-gen consoles, I’ll admit. However, seeing Scorpion boot someone’s skeleton out of their body is both funny and gross (just far less so). There’s a great array of creative ways to kill your enemies, and with each character having several Fatalities and Brutalities that all look great, you can choose one that feels right to you. Still, if you get a bit queasy at some of these, I don’t blame you. Still, it’s a Mortal Kombat game, so I doubt you’ll be surprised to know you can die horribly in this game.

The closest thing I have to a sticking point with this game is the return of Fatal Blows. These are those X-Ray attacks that you can use in a match to deal a ton of damage to your opponent in long-drawn out, slow-motion x-ray views of the bones and body parts you're tearing up. You can access them when you’re low on health, and given the absurd damage most of them deal, you can turn a match around fast. However, both you and your Kameo will do a bone-breaking attack when these are used. With two people doing these ruthless strikes, the moves just take ages to finish. You’re going to want to block these at all costs just because they take so long to wrap up. I like the comeback mechanic as it adds a ton of tension AND most players can access them easily if their timing is good. They just take so long to watch that I felt disengaged from the match and would have to get my mind back into it afterwards.

Mortal Kombat 1 looks incredible, has several fun play types depending on what you want to do, constantly rewards you for the time you spend on it, and offers so much customization to the combat through the Kameo system. While I might gripe about sitting through a Fatal Blow, I spend far more time just taking in the near-infinite possibilities that come from each character and Kameo combination. I feel like the ideas that come out of these systems are going to keep this game exciting for some time, and have made something that will be extremely rewarding for players to experiment with.

Fighting game fans are doing extremely well in 2023.

Mortal Kombat 1 is available now on the Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The post Review: Mortal Kombat 1 Encourages Staggering Levels of Fighting Creativity appeared first on Siliconera.

Pocket Bravery combos are a sight to see thanks to its pixel visual style. A whole lot of care went into the various pixel art special moves and acrobatic strikes you’ll get smacked with as you play this indie fighting game. While that art style looks good in motion, the game’s Neo Geo Pocket-inspired visuals and characters are a bit of an acquired taste. If that art style jives with you, then this game offers some solid brawling that is only going to get better with time.

This four-button fighter has a unique cast that comes with some neat collections of stuff you can do. Malika lays out trap fireballs (on the ground and in the air) that explode on contact, but that she can also use as teleport points. She can also reflect fireballs back at opponents. Sebastian is a boxer that can create ice walls you can blunder into. Arshavin is a Russian grappler, but one with some moves that send him rushing forward (including some lunging grabs). There feels like there’s some great depth to the characters and some interesting flexibility in their movesets, making them fun to dig into.

[caption id="attachment_983523" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Stratera Studio[/caption]

You’re going to need to spend some time on the characters in Pocket Bravery, as their movesets are fairly extensive. Each has their regular strikes, plus usually several moves that differ depending on the distance to your opponent. Not only this, but you have two types of meter: Super Special and Elemental. The elemental gauge allows you to juice up some of your regular special moves, but in doing so tends to completely change how they work. Nuno’s Explosao (close fireball burst) turns into a double-hitting forward strike. So, instead of doing a more powerful version of a familiar move, you can get something totally new. It’s a lot to recall, but it also means there’s a whole lot of depth to explore if you love learning characters.

The pixel artwork on these moves look fantastic, too. The characters really flow in some compelling ways. Mingmei’s Dacados Dragoes super special move sees her whirling fireballs all around herself like a fire dancer. Hector’s Bolado is this huge overhead clawing attack that just looks really sharp in motion. Hadassa’s Pro Chao is a leaping arm bar that takes the opponent, but shows so much detail and flowing movement in the strike that it’s just a pleasure to watch. The developers and artists definitely had a keen eye for combat movement.

[caption id="attachment_983524" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Stratera Studio[/caption]

You’ll likely get to see a lot of these moves in action from all of the characters, as the base difficulty in Pocket Bravery will still see your opponents using some wild combos. After getting stomped by a massive combo from the very first enemy in Arcade Mode, I had to poke around in the Options to lower the difficulty. The game does not mess around on the default difficulty level, but as I said, at least you get to see what your enemies are capable of as you practice your own attacks.

There are some robust training modes and options if you don’t feel like figuring out your combos in live matches. In the Combo Factory mode, you can play around with some predetermined combo routes to help you get started. You can also get frame data and hitboxes to help you figure out how fast you can punch and where that’s going to hit your foes so you can sort out your own. As you figure out your own combos, you can even write them out in-game and save them as a combo trial of sorts using the Build Your Combo tool. While it’s all stuff you would probably expect in a modern fighter, as a reasonably priced indie fighter, it’s not slouching in its combo tool department.

[caption id="attachment_983525" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Stratera Studio[/caption]

You’ll probably want to start working on those combos because Pocket Bravery is a low-damage fighting game. At least, that’s how it felt while I was playing it. It takes a whole lot of hits before a fight is over, so you’ll both be going at it for a noticeable amount of time. Having come to this off of games like Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6, it felt like rounds took a good long time to finish. That CAN be good as it’s technically harder to die from simple mistakes, but seeing that you can build some wild combos in this game, you can still eat quite a bit of damage if you get smacked. Your opponent just needs to land a much larger combo to do so.

You’re not defenseless if you’re getting clobbered, though. You can spend half of your elemental gauge to do a Breaker, which knocks your opponent back enough to get some breathing room. If you’re blocking when you do this, it only costs half the gauge. If you’re actively getting hit, you need to spend the whole elemental gauge to break free. It’s a useful tool you can use with heavy punch and kick quite easily (which is so much simpler than trying to breaker in The Breakers Collection). You don’t HAVE to get slammed if you have some resources. However, your meters carry over between rounds, so the price might be a bit high in some situations.

[caption id="attachment_983526" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Stratera Studio[/caption]

If you’re not quite sure if you can remember all of these moves and strikes in Pocket Bravery, the game does have a Street Fighter 6 Modern-like control scheme called Accessible. With these, you just hold one of the shoulder buttons to execute elemental, special, and super special moves. As long as you have the meter, they’ll come out. It’s even better than the one in Street Fighter 6, though, as you don’t lose access to any of your moves in using it. It’s just significantly easier to use Accessible mode because you have access to everything. It’s only available in Arcade and the Extra Modes (Survival, Time Attack, etc), though, so you can’t use it in Story Mode at the moment.

I am not totally sure if you can use it Online in either Ranked or Casual matches. The reason for that is because, unfortunately, I was not able to get into a single online match in the time I spent reviewing the game. I have gone online at several points throughout the day during the week and weekend, but was unable to get into a match. It’s a shame as the game is compelling and frantic, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough of a player base at this time.

Not that you’ll be at a loss for stuff to do even if you can’t play online. The game has a full Story Mode that has a long, involved narrative arc to move through. It will keep you busy for a long time and help give you some background on the characters. There’s also the classic Arcade, Survival, and Time Attack modes to give you more to practice with. There are also some combo trials that are, frankly, totally bonkers. I am not anywhere good enough to do most of these, but they’ll give you some lethal ideas on what your characters are capable of.

[caption id="attachment_983528" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Stratera Studio[/caption]

However, my main issue with the game was with the characters. This is largely a personal taste thing, but I just did not like the game’s character design. The characters are clearly inspired by the Neo Geo Pocket-style of fighting games with their squished, smaller fighters. It’s just not an art style I find appealing as it looks really weird to me, and it made it really hard for me to like the characters or find any that clicked with me. It feels like such a small thing to fixate on, but I really need to feel a connection to a character I like the look and feel of in order to click with a fighting game. Without that, I found it difficult to maintain that connection with the game itself.

Pocket Bravery is an impressive fighter that shows some wonderful detail with its combat motions. The varied characters and their vast movelists give you many options on how to mangle foes, and you’ll need to use them skillfully if you’re to hope to win. An Accessible mode goes a long way to making that possible, although it unfortunately does not do much for the empty online modes at this time. It’s a great game that is finding its feet right now, so if you can get past the character art style (or if it doesn’t bug you), then you’ll want to get in on the ground floor with this sharp title.

Pocket Bravery is available now on PC. It is slated to release on the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S in the future.

The post Review: Pocket Bravery Is a Complex, Approachable Fighter appeared first on Siliconera.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons once again sees the Lee Brothers punching out crime in the streets of New York City. This time, you don't need a second person to bring both brothers to the fight, either (although a pal never hurts). With the ability to swap between two chosen characters (with many more you can unlock), you'll have plenty of options as to who will join you on your crusade to mangle troublesome gangs. Mixing this with some roguelite features and the ability to gain restorative items by doing well in combat, it sounds like a solid return for Bimmy Billy and Jimmy. Unfortunately, while it's a decent game, the franchise once again fails to find the greatness of its past.

Delving into the past, the game follows an early excursion for the Lee Brothers. The world has been ravaged by nuclear war, and four gangs have risen from the ashes to bicker over New York City. The brothers get dragged into it when the mayor brings an injured Marian to their dojo. Thankfully, she quickly recovers and joins the fray along with Billy and Jimmy. Well, if you pick her as your tag partner, that is.

You get a choice of two characters you can use throughout Double Dragon Gaiden. You start off with the Lee brothers, Marian, and Uncle Matin. They all play a little bit differently, with Billy being a bit more defensive, Jimmy focusing more on offense, Marian giving you access to firearms, and more (especially when you start unlocking the new characters). It's a nice idea to be able to round out a play style by doing something like pairing Jimmy's offensive capabilities with someone who can attack from a distance like Marian.

[caption id="attachment_974138" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Secret Base[/caption]

You'll want to be clever about your choice of fighters since this game incorporates roguelite elements. If you get stomped in your journey to clean up the streets, you'll be kicked all the way back to the start of the game. To counter this new level of challenge, you'll be using in-game cash you stock up to unlock upgrades between levels. These will give you more health, make you move faster, or make certain moves do more damage. You can cater your picks to your play style to help you stay in the fight. That same cash can be used to revive fallen characters if you still get beaten despite your choice of upgrades.

However, that cash can also be turned in for Tokens that let you buy special items like new characters and artwork. If you're itching to unlock a new playable character (HINT – buy Abobo ASAP), you're going to want to push yourself to play well. You can even skip buying an upgrade for a cash bonus at the end of most stages, too, so you can take some big risks for potential big Token rewards while playing Double Dragon Gaiden. You still get to turn in your cash for Tokens even if you die, though, so at least your risks will kind of pay off no matter how well your run goes.

Now, if you're not feeling too keen on dying permanently, you are free to tweak the game's challenge level. The game begins with a screen filled with modifiers that let you adjust your health, the price of reviving, upgrade costs, and even enemy aggression. With each decrease in difficulty, the price of those reward Tokens goes up. If you make it harder, the price goes down. If you want those secrets, you may want to push yourself to make things more challenging.

[caption id="attachment_974139" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Secret Base[/caption]

That said, you may not want to rush into getting yourself beat down. Double Dragon Gaiden can get quite challenging in a hurry, and not necessarily in ways that feel fun or fair. Even with the difficulty cranked way down, foes will stomp you flat after a few screw-ups once you're a few stages into the game. If you don't prioritize health power-ups between levels, you might run out of money from revives before you're anywhere near the end of the game.

This difficulty feels fairly inflated for a number of reasons. For starters, the characters all play a bit stiff at the start. If you try to jump out of danger, it takes a moment before you lift off the ground. Many characters have combos where they will pause for an irritating amount of time before they do the final strike. Some of your special attacks have long windups. The game loves to throw huge numbers of foes after you, so if you haven't stun locked everyone on-screen with your attacks, you're probably going to get thumped from behind while you're waiting for your special move to go off or your combo to finish. This happens a lot.

Seeing as you take so much damage, you might feel that this is what the roguelite upgrade elements are for in Double Dragon Gaiden. These do steadily upgrade your character, but you only get one choice per level, and the increases feel fairly marginal most of the time. Upgrading health several times almost feels like a waste given how quickly enemies tear through your life. Damage upgrades feel solid as they kill enemies faster, but leave you vulnerable to getting hit since you aren't increasing your health. Increases in movement speed feel almost negligible. There are a few power-ups that feel worthwhile in specific situations, but a fair amount of them just don't seem worth taking.

[caption id="attachment_974140" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Secret Base[/caption]

There's another mechanic to keep you alive, though. Each character has special attacks they can do when you have a certain amount of Special Meter. These are their more spectacular strikes that tend to kill foes quickly. Any foe you hit with these drops more money, so you really want to be using these moves a lot (and the bar fills quickly so you usually can). If you hit at least three foes with a special attack, they'll drop a healing food item. If you can catch four or five enemies, you get greater healing things. This encourages you to constantly use those special moves to keep making enemies drop healing goodies and increase your cash flow.

Because of the unbalanced nature of the combat in Double Dragon Gaiden, it feels like that's all you're doing throughout the game. I spent the entirety of my playthrough kiting enemies toward one another so I could catch them with the Special Moves so that I would always have a healing item on the screen. And since that's also the best source of money, I would continue to lure enemies into groups to smash them to pieces. While it feels pretty fun to kill five enemies at once, it feels counter-intuitive to spend so much time luring enemies around in a beat 'em up instead of just getting in their faces and hitting them.

Hitting those big groups probably got annoying because the whole game grinds to a halt every time you do it. If you nail one of those big groups, a splash screen pops up with a picture of your combo number and the food you're getting, all while congratulations are shouted at you. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME you hit a group larger than two, so it constantly boots you out of your flow in combat. The interruption doesn't last long, but when it's happening every few seconds, it gets old incredibly fast.

[caption id="attachment_974141" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Secret Base[/caption]

Furthermore, grabbing food comes with its own dangers in Double Dragon Gaiden. You have to hit a button to grab your food from the ground. This is great for when you want to save food until you're injured. However, this is the same button as your character's slower alternate moves. As an example, this activates Jimmy's slow, extremely vulnerable grab animation. So, what usually happens is I try to grab some food, am not perfectly lined up with it, and instead go into an animation that is likely to get my character slapped around. Not really what you want to happen when you're at low health trying to snag a healing item.

All of this might be forgivable if combat looked and felt good, but it's okay at best. Smacking enemies around can feel pretty nice with some of the cast's basic attacks, capturing that pleasant beat 'em up feel. However, some of them, like Billy's flailing, shin-high kick feel laughable until you get a combo going. Your special abilities can also be pretty flashy, as each character has several to choose from (although they're varying in usefulness, so I usually found myself only using one clear best move with each character). The sound effects for hitting your foes feel all right, but lack that sense of real impact that really makes a beat 'em up pop. It's all fine, but very little in the combat felt better than that.

Some neat attacks can't save the art style in Double Dragon Gaiden, though. While the movements are smooth, there's something off about the strange big headed-characters. They look a bit too goofy for my own tastes, which stole some of the enjoyment out of the martial arts combat. The enemies have some decent variety to them, but you quickly start seeing a whole lot of same-ish foes throughout your journey. Each stage tends to give your enemies a new look unique to that level, but the enemy behaviors and attacks feel fairly similar. Every fight quickly feels pretty much exactly the same after only a few levels. Especially when combined with the need to always use your Special Attack to constantly get food to stay alive. Each fight just involves kiting slightly different looking enemies around, avoiding them the exact same way, until you get them close together for your special. Repeat this until you die or the game ends.

[caption id="attachment_974143" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image via Secret Base[/caption]

This game feels like it couldn't quite manage to find a solid hook for its action, and is mainly a pile of systems that just aren't satisfying. To justify having the roguelike cash/token system, enemies were made to deal more damage and your natural moveset was nerfed. Those roguelite upgrades you're saving for don't really change anything appreciable in the game. You don't get better moves or neater attacks, but rather just tweaks to numbers. So, combat feels stilted and lacking to support an upgrade system that doesn't feel like it adds anything special to combat. And since combat was made harder to support this roguelite system, it had to be balanced with a reliance on special moves. This results in feeling like you HAVE to do the exact same move over and over and over again to survive.

And all of this exists just to support a crummy system of upgrades. Well, those and the Tokens, and there's not really a whole lot you can buy with them in Double Dragon Gaiden. You can unlock nine new characters that do have some fun new play styles, but they're the only good thing to get. You're able to buy hints, artwork, and music, but while the tunes are pretty good, this stuff isn't terribly interesting to buy unless you're utterly loving this game. Mostly, beyond the new characters, there's just not much worth buying, which makes the tokens useless in a hurry.

All of this said, it is still a fun game as something you pick up and goof off with for a while. However, as I was playing it after spending some time with Final Fight, King of Dragons, Double Dragon Neon, and Turtles in Time, it just doesn't measure up. The weak art style, reliance on kiting, the unbalanced damage, the dull upgrade system, and constant interruptions made me crave my time with all of those other games. It's fun, but nothing about it ever makes it feel special or impressive. While competent, it's not something that is going to blow people away.

Double Dragon Gaiden is available now on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. 

The post Review: Double Dragon Gaiden’s Roguelite Features Drag the Game Down appeared first on Siliconera.