I’m deeply ashamed
Recently, I’ve been playing - and enjoying - Tekken on the PSP. I’m really sorry about that, but it’s ok! Because on the PSP it’s not really Tekken anymore. It’s not about the fighting system, which is basically total garbage for anyone who can remotely play fighting games. It’s about the combos! And let’s face it - Tekken does good combos.
When people say they enjoy playing Tekken, what they mean is they enjoy doing combos. They enjoy doing huge floating moves and then doing another combo on the way down. They like the big explosions and the sound effects and the pretty graphics. They enjoy the feeling of destroying two thirds of a bar of energy with only a minimal amount of understanding of where their fingers are and what they’re doing. And that’s fine. That’s why it works so well on the PS2 - because you play it at home by yourself. That’s why I gave Tekken on the PSP a shot. On the PSP it’s a puzzle game. You can mess around with combos, try out a brazillion characters and unlock stuff. I even enjoyed unlocking Tekken Bowl! Which just goes to show - you can be one of the most technically-proficient development teams in the world, but you can still fuck up minigames.
I did get bored, though. Obviously. I mean - there’s just too many characters! And each one has combos that are huge chains! Meaning to form any sort of defensive game (I say game) you need to memorise a lot of sequential shit. And learning that kind of shit, my chums, is BORING. So fuck it off.
Perhaps if the movesets had any sort of underlying logic to them, I might have been able to learn about the system in general, and have a vague idea of how the AI liked to fight. Then I might have been able to put together a battle plan of some sorts. But hey, then you wouldn’t get the diversity of character that Tekken players crave.
I don’t know any Tekken players.
Also - I know your moveset is based on arcade controls but there really is NO FUCKING WAY to press right punch and left kick at the same time on the PSP. And the window for simultaneous button pressing is so narrow that even if I could get my fingers there, the rate of success for pressing those buttons together would be minimal, like when I try to throw or counter. So I have to assign keyboard shortcuts, which I hate. And I can only assign two of them. Surely it’s not too much to ask to fiddle with the commands for some of the moves to make some characters even simply feasible on the PSP. I mean, I did read an interview with you, Mr Developer, in which you said you didn’t want to make Tekken on the PSP unless you could make a fully-featured, real Tekken, and not some scaled down version. What you meant, though, was that you only wanted to make one if you could make everybody in the world sit up and say “holy SHIT look at the smooth scrolling on those graphics!” You failed. I can’t do half of the fucking moves, you fucking cunt, and I’m not fucking bad with a pad. Sure, I prefer a stick, but I can fucking well play Street Fighter 2 on the 360 without crying to my mummy. I can even do the claw position, for index finger and thumb action on the face buttons. But I can’t do half the moves in Tekken on the PSP.
But, you know, all of that aside, it’s not bad for a few hours. It’s a reasonable distraction. The character customisation is good for a bit, though I can’t help but think that in Japan, absolutely everyone’s Jin looks exactly the same. It’s no VF, that’s for sure. And there are a shit load of characters in it, so you feel like you’ve got your money’s worth. I think. I obviously didn’t pay for it. And it just feels so full to the brim with features! Which is what games should be - full of features.
Oh no, wait, I meant to say I FUCKING HATE THE TEKKEN FIGHTING SYSTEM.
Thank God I didn’t have to play it against anyone else.