In the meeting room for Namco Bandai, they were showing off some interesting games such as Tekken Revolution and Project X Zone.
New to Tekken, but common in fighting games, is character enhancements. The more you play, the more experience/skill points you’ll earn to customize your favorite characters. The power category enhances damage. The Endurance category enhances health and the Vigor category enhances the ability to perform critical hits. If you and someone else are playing as Steve, an unlockable character; they could differ because my enhancements could be for power and you could enhance vigor. The more time spent playing, the more experience points you could earn and thus, making your favorite character quite powerful in battle. To go back to the unlockables, the order isn’t set in stone. Each player could unlock different characters at different times.
To continue the trend of free to play software, Ridge Racer: Drift Tokyo is coming to the Playstation Network on the PS3 and Steam sometime this year. You play with a pack of random cars and as the car takes damage, you’ll either repair them or not but if the cars take too much damage, you could lose the car the good. You can buy more repair kits or you can earn them by getting enough experience to level up. The higher your level, the more tracks you can race on. Players don’t need to be online at the same time to play against each other. You’ll race against a ghost of the other player, a la Mario Kart, and if you win, you’ll earn in game rewards. However, if you lose, the other player will earn the in game rewards the next time they log into their game. It hasn’t been determined of car enhancements will go from race to race but that’s why the game is still in development.
There could be more free to play games in the future, such as Soul Calibur, but how well Tekken and Ridge Racer do will be a driving force in determining if more free to play games will be released. Only time will tell on that factor but from what I’ve seen, Tekken and Ridge Racer will do well and a free to play Soul Calibur game would be pretty neat to see.
