nuskadamo

[sto lavorando ad un video, indovinate su che gioco]

I've known about Tekken 5 DR and its many improvements over the original pretty much since it came out, but i haven't started taking fighting games more seriously until long after i gave away my PSP, meaning that i'd have to play DR through emulation. There was no reason for me to spend any time with vanilla 5 knowing there's a much better version of that same game out there, but man... PSP games look horrendous when played on a monitor, and for each game i gotta come up with personalized settings on the emulator so that they look the least horrendous. Hard work.
Wouldn't have procrastinated for as long as i did if the PS3 remaster included all of the single player content, but here we are. And what the fuck, now that i've seen firsthand what DR looks like, why was i so picky in the first place? I've played worse looking PS2 games.

My hottest take about the entire franchise is that i never thought vanilla 5's intro movie was all that good. Yeah, on a technical level it's undeniably stunning to this day, but Heihachi's fake death scene is such a weightless hotshot. It's just not as grand of a moment like it deserves to be, even knowing it was a fake out all along. It's like Harada watched the intro from MK Deadly Alliance and said "let's do that, but without committing to the bit". Definitely enjoyed the new intro a whole lot more, keeps it simple and does a great job at introducing the 2 newcomers, Dragunov and Lili, characters that don't play a big role in the overall narrative, but it would be unthinkable to have a new Tekken entry without either at this point.

The rest of the new content is cool. Everyone gushes about the Tekken Dojo and the return of Tekken Bowl, and the new stages with their bangin' music, as they should, but Gold Rush is deserving of some praise too. Sounds like a simple mode on paper but making sure you don't deplete your lifebar over the course of 30 seconds is no easy feat in this game if you aim for a good reward. The CPU as a whole is tough as nails on the higher difficulties, actually. This and Soulcalibur Broken Destiny must have been made by the same team because the frequent use of side-stepping, combo juggling and stance-based offense is really impressive not only for a PSP game from 2007, but even compared to the ghost battles that are present in Tekken 8. Imagine if Broken Destiny had content, wouldn't that be badass?
Shame about Devil Within being excluded from this port, even if they would have left it unchanged its absence is the only thing preventing me from giving DR a perfect score.

Playing DR made me also realize something, something that maybe i knew all along, but wasn't willing to recognize. Tekken 8 is kinda lame, the characters i mean. Everyone gangs up on Paul for that stupid Karen haircut, but he's far from the only character who is at their absolute aesthetic worse in that game. Eddy Gordo got lots of slack too, looking and sounding like a youtuber who covers gaming news, then we have Nina Williams in her bitter lesbian aunt getup, but it's the more subtle downgrades that i think not enough people bring up. I don't know what they've done to Raven man, but he doesn't look cool anymore. Outfits are way too busy... Claudio, Lars, Lee, Jack-8, just graphical horsepower for the sake of it, no vision whatsoever, and it's all the more clear after seeing how much better the now underpowered machines containing vanilla 5 and DR can make these characters stand out.

RIGHT AND I FORGOT TO MENTION. DR doesn't do that stupid stoplight thing from vanilla where the UI would change colors depending on if its loading something or asking for confirmation or anything like that. It looked SO SO SO ugly and i know you guys agree but never found the occasion to express it.