BATTLE ARENA MELBOURNE CONFIRMED AS AUSTRALIAN TEKKEN WORLD TOUR EVENT

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America in conjunction with partners at Twitch, Red Bull, and TBS are bringing TEKKEN 7 tournament events around Australia and delivering the game’s hard-hitting action into living rooms throughout the nation.

Through a variety of live events, TEKKEN 7 fans and serious fighting game players will be able to participate in a multitude of tournaments or simply revel and cheer for their favorite players – at the highest levels of competitive play – on TV and online.

2017 marked the official return of TEKKEN 7 to a global stage with BANDAI NAMCO’s TEKKEN World Tour. The tournament series held regional tournaments throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia in search of the best players in each respective region.

The competition and heated-action culminated in an explosive finale at the TEKKEN World Tour Finals, held in San Francisco, California, where a diverse collection of highly-skilled competitors from around the globe fought to take home a large cash purse and most importantly… world-wide bragging rights.

In 2018, TEKKEN 7 will soar to greater esports heights as BANDAI NAMCO continues to support the passionate TEKKEN fighting game community through exciting partnerships with the biggest esports content provider brands such as ELEAGUE and Red Bull.

BANDAI NAMCO, in partnership with Twitch, also returns with the TEKKEN World Tour for 2018 featuring bigger regional tournaments and a new global leader board system which will surely heat-up the competition around the world. These partnerships and tournaments are part of a long-term strategic plan within BANDAI NAMCO to drive esports growth through developing and publishing competition-ready game content and continued grass-roots support of the growing esports community.

“TEKKEN 7 has emerged to become one of the premier fighting games driving the esports growth we are experiencing in the video games industry,” said Eric Hartness, Vice President of Marketing at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc. “As esports continues to grow in popularity, relevance, and reach around the globe, BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment will continue to develop more blockbuster titles like TEKKEN 7 to provide exciting content for esports fans everywhere.”

Coming off last year’s stellar tour and earth-shaking finale, for 2018, BANDAI NAMCO continues its partnership with Twitch to raise the bar for this year’s TEKKEN World Tour.

The tournament series will take-on a truly global format which will pit players from the Americas, Asia, and Europe against each other through a world-wide leader board system with competitors accruing Ranking Points (based on their results) on a global basis.

TEKKEN World Tour kicks off its eight-month season for 2018 on March 16th, 2018 at Final Round in Atlanta, GA. with additional regional events taking place in Peru, Thailand, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Korea, Italy, Australia, Taiwan, and more.

The top 19 players who have accrued the most Ranking Points will automatically qualify to compete in the TEKKEN World Tour Finals event which will be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands in November 2018. One additional finals slot will be open for the lucky winner of a Last Chance Qualifier tournament which will take place at the TEKKEN World Tour Finals.

The TEKKEN World Tour event for Australia takes place at Battle Arena Melbourne 10, on May the 18th to May the 19th, 2018.

BAM10 is held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The post TEKKEN 7 SPREADS ITS WINGS AND TAKES FLIGHT appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Auckland City, New Zealand was alive with flying fists, high kicks and a brawl of epic proportions.

With the association of Logitech G Series, Let’s Play Live (LPL) showcased the national finals of New Zealand’s eSports Tekken Championship hosted by Skycity New Zealand and STG was not only invited but also supplied a Galaxy Note 8 from Samsung New Zealand to capture footage of the action (above).

First of Vodafone Warriors players tried their hand at Tekken 7, then it was on to the competitors from the Finals who after some warming up took to the stage and punched and slapped eachother digitally in Tekken 7 in order to advance to the next Champ Finals. The venue was deafened by the roar and enthusiasm of the spectator crowd, to the likes of a physical sports game, as the action played out on the stage.

Playing for a National Title aswell as a Prize Pool of 10K NZD the current Tekken World Champ; Choi “Echo Fox | Saint” Jinwoo from South Korea took on the best of what New Zealand had. The South Korean player was under immense pressure to retain his World Crown.

Consisting of the Top Four from previous bouts; Thomas “Kor_Nnova” Choi, Ajith “Blackout” Siva, Kavin “KYO” Li and Jamie “Zarzob” Joe, they all white knuckled the control-pads, with “Kor_Nnova” Choi taking on the World Tekken Champ Choi “Echo Fox | Saint” Jinwoo.

Jinwoo battled hard against additional qualifiers; Jaehee “BG” Jung, Chris “Mister Mysterious River” Hu and Se Hyun “H.TakeThis” Han to retain his World Champ title.

It all played out as a round robin, the players having their sets, fighting eachother until there was only one.

Unlike the U.S. and to some degree Australia, eSports is a fairly new thing for the small nation of New Zealand.

With a huge gamer based population Let’s Play Live are set to change that and have bought eSports to the population with all of the bang and sizzle of a Rock Concert, including live streaming on Sky TV.

New Zealand, eSports is most definitely here and here to stay.

The post Tekken Champs Finals w. Let’s Play Live! appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

For over 20 years, the Tekken series has been a fighting game that united fighting enthusiasts and casuals. Its control scheme that is easy to feel skilled with, but with space for depth for the more skilled players has appealed to the whole landscape, as well as its striking 3D models, as the series moved to a 3D world. The game has grown up with us, and now it is back in its glory with Tekken 7 to finish out the Mishima story.

The most notable change to the game is its Story mode, which has tried to do something truly unique over its predecessors. The story follows a reporter investigating the situation unfolding as the Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corps war intensifies, as well as delving deeper into the story of Heihachi, his return, and his past. Through this we learn more about how the devil gene made it into Kazuya’s veins, meet his mother who previously summoned Akuma, who is a crossover from Street Fighter, a demon to kill Heihachi and Kazuya. The story is slightly more cohesive than some previous titles, and puts a well-rounded bow to the end of the saga we have known for so long.

It’s not the story itself that is so interesting but how it is delivered. It uses extensive cut scenes, from beautiful CGI scenes telling the Heihachi portions, and generally still art with voiceover for the reporter scenes. This results in a significant portion of the few hour-long Story mode being these cut scenes, with fights dotted in between. Fights don’t involve every character, and are also limited in the fighting style you can use, which doesn’t make it the best Tekken mode, but makes it an interesting mode worthy of being commended, even if it doesn’t always work, culminating in some boring moments. Beating the Story mode then opens characters’ stories, which are short, starting with backstory, followed by a fight, then the cut scene. This allows us to get the classic Tekken style of each character having a cut scene, but keeping the main story untouched.

Then you have the classic vs battles to fight anyone you want, in whatever arena you want, but the shining star outside of the story for offline fighting is Treasure Battle. Tekken 7 has a huge customisation system with an extraordinary number of options, these are unlocked randomly during treasure battle. Treasure Battle fights have you ranking up and fighting greater foes, where after each win you get at least one treasure chest which opens to give you a random item for a random character, from tacky hats, to Law’s classic costume. As repeatedly fighting characters in Tekken 7 is satisfying, this mode wins on its own, slightly boosted by satisfying prizes throughout. Fortunately, these customisation option are only skin deep and doesn’t touch the fundamental game mechanics, so you can customise to your hearts content, or not at all.

Then there is the change to fundamental mechanic known as Rage Art which is new to the series. When your character’s health gets low enough your health bar lights up and you can do a Rage Art with R1. The Rage Art is a super move that shifts the camera angle to give more effect, usually resulting in many hits, and a significant chunk of damage being dealt. This move can be blocked, but not easily, so if you are about to be struck when you start it, you can still be beaten before the Rage Art starts, so timing is key to using, and stopping the move.

Another couple of things worthy of mention are the depth of Practice mode and the Gallery. The Practice mode allows you to set everything from Rage bar on, to how your opponent will react, to even recording your opponent’s movements so they will do what you need to try something out. This is a great way to test stopping Rage Arts for example. The Gallery is awesome as for the in-game currency, which you will get plenty of, easily, and you can watch all the cut scenes/endings from the previous titles, which is a fun walk down memory lane, adding some surprising value to the package.

Then there is Online mode, which consists of Quick Matches, Ranked Matches, and Tournament. The Quick and Ranked Matches are self-explanatory, taking me a few seconds at most to find a game, which always worked well. Tournaments on the other hand are both frustrating and amazing. It puts together a quick Tournament from the people signed up, which is easily done through matchmaking, and then you fight your way through a knockout comp. This is only frustrating because of where we are geographically, so it was common to be kicked out due to high lag when a lobby was full of people in Europe, but that was a minor annoyance at best.

The game has some VR modes added in which are either looking at your custom characters in the VR space, or practice mode in a 3D void. Neither of these are reasons to buy the game, and aren’t overly great, but as a free pack in, it’s worth a dabble for PSVR owners.

Tekken 7 is an outstanding culmination of the series, and its story line from the last six entries. Between its extras such as the gallery of cut scenes, the extra VR mode, its unique Story mode, Online or Treasure Battle, you can easily get your money’s worth without touching half of these. Tekken 7 is both the best throwback to the series, and the best entry in the series to date.

The post Tekken 7 (PlayStation 4) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

I recently visited the headquarters of Bandai Namco to see what is in store for us from this busy publisher.Where to start? Well I first got some time with some of the more creepy and intense games on offer.

Little Nightmares is an indie game from Tarsier Studios and while simple in nature offers some intense and heart pounding gaming. This platform puzzle game has you playing as a tiny, skinny and barefoot child… or at least that’s what I think it is. Either way the character definitely gives off creepy vibes with its little yellow raincoat and mysteriously obscured face hidden in shadow.

The game has you climb, grab and move things to solve puzzles. The environment portrays and captures the idea instilled by the title rather well. I felt it fun to play and was keen to see and experience more of this intriguing title. The puzzles are engaging and require a bit of exploration of the areas provided. The backdrops that you explore are wonderfully eerie and dark with a touch of cute to make it all the more unnerving.

The next weird yet spooky game I got my hands on was Get Even. This first-person game also keeps things simple but once again does a fantastic job of using simplicity to its advantage. You have two items at your disposal; a gun and phone with a few applications. You find yourself thrown into the story with little to no explanation at all as to what is actually going on, now don’t be too confused as the character your playing has just as little idea what is going on as you do. It is your job to discover and reveal what exactly it is that you are involved in.

As you play through the game you slowly begin to uncover clues to both who you are and what’s going on. Confined to somewhat abandoned buildings with broken pieces of information to guide you it really provides a well created level of intrigue.

The game also has a slight puzzle aspect to it in that the phone provides a few ways to view the environment from a black light that highlights a bloody trail, a map, and even a special scan mode that helps you find evidence.

Get Even seems generally linear in nature yet there enough environmental aspects to get distracted with. The setting seems willing to provide a bit more explanation to the situation you find yourself in, but only if you are willing to look. The notes and cluesthat you find are enough to give you just a bit more insight but thankfully not so much that it just becomes a tedious and skippable exercise. I found that these little extras really added to my emersion of the game that I was quite interested in the next tad bit of information.

I’m glad to say I loved every minute of Get Event hat I played and am quite excited to get my hands on the whole game come release on May the 26th 2017.

I did get small go at Tekken 7. It was quite pretty and easy to pick up even if you are bit rusty. I played througha quick set of games with a quite amusing new character named Lucky Chloe who could be described as a cutsie anime cat girl with some kick arse moves. I’m sure the rest of the new characters have their own personalities to bring to the game and I’d certainly be glad to verse them as Lucky Chloe.

Lastly, I got some decent time with their new game Nier: Automata. This Japanese Role Playing Game is a seemingly ambitious title with a lot of ideas on display and even more yet to be uncovered. The universe is somewhere between post-apocalyptic and steampunk with small other sci-fi elements thrown in. The overall tone seems quite sombre in nature with the implication of the situation being already in dire circumstances.

The combat carries a hack and slash vibe but does have a bit more depth to it. The slight complexity however does take some warming up to. I found, once used to it, it was enjoyable and I was soon destroying enemies in a practical fashion.

I can say I am curious to see where exactly this title is heading and what other ideas Nier: Automata incorporates to hopefully bring us an engaging and enjoyable JRPG.

Overall it was an exciting hands on preview session with the team from BandaiNamco and to see what they have coming out real soon for us gamers.

The post BandaiNamco Hands On Previews appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Bandai Namco has informed crowds at the Paris Games show that Tekken 7 will be releasing for home based consoles. The king of fighting games is back and ready to blow everyone’s minds!

Developed on Unreal Engine 4, Tekken 7 boasts amazing graphics that will push the fighting genre realism beyond the existing limits! These exceptional visuals will allow players to enjoy the grand finale of the conflict between the Mishima Zaibatsu and the G Corporation with the darkest secrets of the cursed Mishima family revealed.

Tekken 7 isn’t only about family feuds, world domination and darkness, it’s also about balanced 1 vs 1 bouts, skilled martial arts and above all, great fast paced mechanics. In Tekken 7 players will enjoy the world famous fighting system created, balanced and enhanced by the “Project Tekken” team.

“It’s coming. I told you to wait!” Katsuhiro Harada, Project Tekken Leader announced.

“For its 20th Anniversary, our Tekken brand has seen a massive success on Arcades thanks to Tekken 7, but also on mobile gaming with TEKKEN CARD TOURNAMENT. Our wish is to pursue this successful route and explore new opportunities with the game’s arrival on home systems!” Hervé Hoerdt, VP of Marketing & Digital at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe

More information about the languages, character roster and game mechanics will be unveiled over the next months, stay alert!

The post Tekken 7! appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. (SCEE) has recently announced the future of PlayStation 4 (PS4), with a huge range of exclusive software announcements from both first and third party studios, as well as brand new content announced for PlayStation VR.

On stage at the PlayStation Media Preview in Paris, France, SCEE unveiled new details and PlayStation – exclusive features for over 20 games, with 9 of these newly announced, demonstrating why PS4 is the best place to play this holiday season and beyond.

In addition to this, Jim Ryan, President and CEO of SCEE celebrated twenty years of play and the success of PS4, the fastest selling system in PlayStation history with a global sell-in set at 25.3 million as previously revealed (Number as at June 2015). In addition, he commented on the impressive range of network services offered across the region.

A number of exciting new exclusive games for PS4 were revealed for the very first time, including the latest title from critically acclaimed studio Quantic Dream, Detroit, as well as a brand new racing simulator from Polyphony Digital, GT SPORT. A beta test for GT SPORT was also announced for early 2016.

New footage from other exclusive titles was also shown during the conference, including the multiplayer premiere of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (SCE Worldwide Studios), as well as a look at the gameplay vision for Michel Ancel’s WiLD (WiLD Sheep Studios).

In addition, exclusive content was revealed for the latest installment in one of PlayStation’s most revered franchises, Tekken 7 (Bandai Namco Entertainment), with a launch date provided for Street Fighter V (Capcom). Finally SCEE debuted exciting new downloadable content for PS4 exclusive, Bloodborne (SCE WWS) and, DRIVECLUB BIKES (SCE WWS), which will be available either as a standalone or as an expansion pack.

PlayStation’s enthusiasm for the best games is also shared by the publishers of this holiday’s biggest blockbusters, with downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (Activision Publishing, Inc.) available exclusively for 30 days only on PS4, as well as a partnership with Electronic Arts to release a limited edition Star Wars Battlefront PS4 bundle this November (2015).

Away from PS4 software, SCEE also offered the latest glimpse of PlayStation VR, a breakthrough innovation that will take the PS4 experience to a new level of immersion.

New software for the system was shown, including a global announcement of Until Dawn: Rush of Blood from Supermassive Games as well as never before seen footage of Guerrilla Cambridge’s VR shooter, RIGS and a brand new title from Crytek, ROBINSON: THE JOURNEY partnering the famous CRYENGINE and the PlayStation VR system’s ground breaking technology.  SCEE demonstrated that VR offers a wide variety of completely new experiences above and beyond gaming, by blowing away viewers with a special trailer for the film that’s getting cinema-goers talking: The Walk (Sony Pictures Entertainment).

Demonstrating a clear vision for the future of PlayStation with blockbuster franchises and all new IPs, as well as revolutionary ways to play, the conference demonstrates why PS4 is the best place to play for next year and beyond. Jim Ryan, President and CEO of SCEE, closed the presentation by saying: “PlayStation remains devoted to the Players. We thrive on our ability to delight you with extraordinary games, franchises, and experiences, and we remain focused on providing you the most sought-after exclusive content and breakthrough innovations.”

With a focus on games, SCEE’s PlayStation Media Preview showcased a total of 22 games which are all either exclusive to PlayStation or feature exclusive content.

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