Almost a week later and I’m still trying to wrap my head around Nintendo’s E3 press conference and the newly announced Wii U. Name aside (its dumb part 2), I’m still trying to gauge if the Wii U has potential or if it’s literally going to be a Wii HD with another gimmick tacked on. I’m not making my final judgment on the Wii U just yet since we haven’t seen a single full-on game in action just yet, but I’m not sure if tapping a screen to throw ninja stars is something I’ll immediately want to experience. Nintendo didn’t have much to show of the Wii U from an internal or 3rd party perspective, but something I did find cool, though not to the point of complete excitement, was Tekken’s debut on the Wii U.
The immediate visual prowess of the Wii U may not have been noticeable in the Tekken video Namco Bandai chose to release, but something that did stick out was the customization options that were shown. Tekken has heavily featured customization in the previous few games but with Tekken’s debut on Nintendo’s next-gen platform things are being taken to the next level. Not only will gamers have a chance to edit the costumes of their characters but they’ll also be able to draw their own designs to place on their characters. It’s somewhat of a gimmick based feature, but this new video explains the system a bit more and it honestly sounds rather cool if not completely mean.
Being able to draw your own tattoos or logos in Tekken may not be an immediate system seller for those who have previously played the game on the PS3 or Xbox 360 but the team at Namco Bandai is doing something very interesting. Ok, so let’s say that you’re playing a match of Tekken online with whatever online infrastructure Nintendo devises for the Wii U and you’re victorious in your match. Instead of just obtaining some additional XP or improving your overall online rank after winning an online match you can choose to tag the face of the poor sap you just beat. So on top of beating the crap out of someone you don’t know you can further demoralize them by drawing whatever you want on their face and deciding how long that tag drawing will remain on their combatant, which reportedly can be up to a year.
This online drawing mechanic will undoubtedly lead to people rage quitting even more or people going the somewhat predictable and slightly sophomoric route by opting to draw a penis on the forehead of a loser or something equally as embarrassing. Maybe the Tekken community will rise above the pre-conceived notions that most of us have concerning the attitudes of online gaming, but I still expect a few rather saucy or completely unacceptable things to pop up via this new tag feature.
The Tekken team may not be really swaying gamers towards the Wii U version of Tekken with the online tag feature, but perhaps the Stage Editor will win a few people over. For the first time in the series, gamers will be able to create their own stages in a way. The exact scope of the Stage Editor wasn’t exactly touched upon a lot in the video with Tekken Lead Katsuhiro Harada, but it does show that we’ll at least have the ability to place objects on the level to make the battle lean in our favor. Considering that it’ll be possible to upload user stages online I expect that there will be a fair amount to do in the Stage Editor but we’ll probably far from receiving a feature akin to LittleBigPlanet for all of us to go crazy with. The stage editor does look rather cool in brief glimpse that was shown in the video so I’m hoping it’s not an immediate Wii U exclusive since such a thing would be a shame for the core Tekken community.
Tekken’s debut on the Wii U isn’t exactly shaping up to be a completely different experience compared to prior Tekken games, but it looks like Tekken and will likely play like Tekken so that’s probably all that matters to gamers. Tekken Wii U hasn’t been given a release date or window just yet, but the game will likely be a key launch title for Nintendo’s new system once it drops next year.
