EVO Japan fighting game news roundup
This past weekend was EVO Japan, one of the largest fighting game tournaments in the world. On top of all of the high level competitive play, there was a slew of new information for both upcoming and existing games. I figured it would be easier to compile this all to one place instead clogging up the whole ~games group.
Game DLC
Street Fighter 6 - Akuma Gameplay Trailer
Tekken 8 - SEASON 1 Trailer
GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Season Pass 3 Playable Character #4 [Slayer] Trailer
Idol Showdown Next Fes: Overview Trailer
Granblue didn't have a gameplay trailer, but they did release some info about their upcoming dlc character Beatrix. News article and screenshots here.
New Game Info
FATAL FURY: City of the Wolve | Marco Rodrigues
2XKO At EVO Japan 2024
Iron Saga VS - Getter Robot PV
Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact PV1
There is probably more, but this is the main chunk of into.
I would be remiss to use the tournament's name and not also talk about the event itself. Brackets here and VODs here
Winners
Street Fighter 6 was won by MenaRD with Blanka/Luke
Tekken 8 was won by Chikurin with Lili
Guilty Gear Strive was won by TempestNYC with Leo Whitefang
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising was won by Rookies with Seox
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was won by Sho using Yun (against an army of other Yun players)
The King of Fighters XV was won by E T using Geese, Isla, Heidern, and Clark
Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes was won by Kyo using Gordeau
I'm not fully caught up with all of the footage because of my work schedule and time zone differences. I think I found the KoF and Grandblue finals to be the most entertaining. They seemed to find the right balance between community storylines and competitive sets.
So I posted about Tekken 8 in the game deals topic, but I'll try again here. Apologies if it's semi off topic.
Any fighting game players have an opinion on whether it's worth buying right now? Is it an enjoyable game online? I've heard a lot of problems with the online play, and some people complain the gameplay itself is pretty bad, all offense and mashing apparently? Is this all true? It's hard to get a level headed take tbh
I'm not really a Tekken head. I prefer staying on the 2D plane so I don't have the best answers to this but I'll chip in what I've heard and experienced.
The online matchmaking seems to have taken a hit with one of the most recent patches. I've seen people posting about how they've queued up for rank to only get matched up against the same player over and over again even in busy hours. This was not my experience at launch, so this may be a problem that gets a quick fix. The netcode itself seemed fine, I never had problems with any of my matches. The lobby system itself was a big pain point for me, as navigating the UI was unintuitive and the spectating crashed frequently. Attempting to hop on and play your buddies was a sometimes frustrating experience, but once you finally got in a match it was good.
As for gameplay, it seems fine. It's more offensively oriented compared to older titles because of the HEAT system, but Tekken was already a mashy game. Getting gimmicked by your opponent pulling out obscure shit from their hundred move movelist is just part of the game for any Tekken title. Tekken being fun to mash in has actually seemed to help it gain new fans rather than hurt it over the years.
IMO I don't know if it is worth full price, but I feel like the single player experience is pretty solid, and you'll probably have fun if you've got a friend or two to mash with. It's probably worth it in the 20-30 dollar range
I appreciate the review, that's just the balanced take I was looking for! You're probably right, 20-30 range I could stomach, I don't play many fighting games and wanted one I could really get into potentially, and a few friends are really into Tekken... but $50 for a game I'm on the fence on, is hard when most other games I buy are $10 on sale
I'll bet a lot of people really did have fun at launch, with all the hype and everyone learning the game together. I'll wait and hope they fix it up again