(Pre-Eddy review)

Tekken 8 is the long awaited sequel to the 2015 title Tekken 7, and puts on an incredibly fresh coat of paint to a franchise that's been left to rust for almost a decade- welcoming players who are eager to learn their first fighting game as well as returning veterans who yearn to make their name known through tenacity and grit in the battlegrounds of Ranked. Tekken 8 makes the leap from Tekken 6 to Tekken 7 look like a complete joke. A truly impressive and unique gameplay experience that has never been seen before in any iteration of the game.

... so why did I give it three stars?

Tekken has always been notorious for being an incredibly complex and difficult game to learn, with most characters averaging at around 100+ moves for you to utilize. This challenge alone is enticing enough for people to play the games for decades on end, adapting and creating entirely new fighting styles that you typically wouldn't see in some 2D fighters. This alone is why Tekken 8 falls a little flat, as it promotes playstyles that no longer rely on timing and spacing, but instead how efficiently you can exploit a character moveset or some of the newly tuned mechanics, especially for something as simple as throwing.

Unrelenting aggression and pressure is the motto of the new generation, as we've seen in recent big name titles like Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1, and even Guilty Gear Strive. Every single one of these games has one bona fide thing in common- defense is no longer a priority in the new age of fighting games. Tekken 8 has systems in place that reward you more for attacking rather than blocking the attack, namely the new Heat system. Think of Heat as what V-Trigger was in Street Fighter V, except you're able to utilize it at any point during a round instead of near KO, which gives some characters like Jun or Devil Jin an easy set robbery simply because they pressed 2+4 before you did.

That being said, defensiveness is still entirely possible within the game, but compared to it's predecessors like Tekken 6 or TTT2, you're better off forcing your opponent to constantly guess 50/50s rather than learning a matchup in full. The developers are acutely aware of this change, seeing as how some characters have reworked moves to account for the aggressive nature of the game, like Kazuya for example, giving him access to his Mist Step (crouch dash) after inputting 3,1.

"But, hasn't Kazuya always been a 50/50 vortex monster?" Yes. Oh, absolutely yes. But even with his strong 50/50 tools, you were still able to contest players without utilizing a more gimmicky hellsweep-filled playstyle, and instead played around his strong punish game with moves like Demon God Fist, Abolishing Fist, or his famous EWGF (or PEWGF if you're skilled enough :3).

I think I rambled. Anyway, my point is that the game strays away from the more defensive and strategic gameplay that the franchise has been known for. While it does feel fresh and unique, it opens up a lot of more obnoxious, nearly braindead playstyles that get abused on the daily, which makes veteran Tekken fans having to adapt to game feel that contradicts the legacy the franchise has had set.

It's still a fun game though. Just wish the exploitative rushdown mentality was more of an outlier than the staple way to play.

Plus the story mode was a letdown in most areas. UNFORTUNATE! I'll update my review once Eddy comes out, there'll probably be a couple balance changes once that happens.

I don't like Asuka players.

20 Minutes Till Dawn (or 20MTD) offers a surprising amount of depth with every run from beginning to end, and accomplishes to supply a full rogue-lite experience in a very short timeframe. Though a difficult game, there is enough balance (or lack thereof) to make you, the player, able to progress through each run without feeling like you've been beaten senseless by the developers.

Everything but the dirt you tread will try to kill you- trees included! The difficulty of this game isn't to be understated, whether the factors that make up the difficulty are intentional or not. An unintentional hurdle that you have to jump over is the visibility of the the character(s) you play as, and the enemies that you face. The color palette the game uses emphasizes a very specific aesthetic that's seldom seen in other media, but it can harm the player by disrupting the gameplay flow as the timer gets closer to completing a run. Enemies can and will overpopulate the screen, which while it may seem like an arbitrary nitpick considering the genre of the game, it can confuse a player as to where they can and cannot move simply due to the different entities blending in with one another as well as the background. There have been a lot of moments during my game sessions where my run will suddenly end, and the only thing I can think of is "What even killed me?" Fortunately, the developers have circumvented the visibility issue by adding a toggle in the settings that enable outlines for you, and the enemies. I highly recommend enabling this option!

The depth of the game comes from the ability to pick a character along with a weapon, which is a huge feat over other games in the genre like HoloCure or Vampire Survivors. This allows players to craft and experiment with different builds that are vastly different from one another, and increase the games longevity tenfold simply due to the fact. Personally, a build I've been having a lot of fun with is using the character Spark with a shotgun, and upgrades that revolve around effects applied to my character/summons upon reloading such as Holy Arts, Fresh Clip, or every upgrade under the Electromancy skill tree.

20MTD offers an engaging rogue-lite to players who are simply looking to accomplish a lot in little time, or those seeking a challenge that rewards those for their competency. I'm surprised that the game is as cheap as it is, which is currently selling at $5.00 USD at like Steam or the Epic Games store. Play it if you haven't yet.

The Finals shows promise in being the next big PVP shooter, but lacks the depth that would keep a casual player from coming back. The systems and gameplay are fresh and intuitive, which can be a hard thing for small studios to accomplish (in direct comparison with their competitors), but the output is simply underwhelming. The TTK in The Finals feels like an arbitrary way of balancing every weapon, which I guess works, but for a fast paced game like this it just doesn't fit in.

Plus I'm not exactly a huge fan of the AI Voice Announcers, though it does fit with the setting completely.