Another Tekken 5 rant

I've spent a bit more time playing Tekken 5 at my local arcade and I can definitely say I'm hooked. I'm not hooked enough to travel downtown where the REAL competition hangs out, because getting to that arcade from my home is a hassle, and 0.75$ a game is too much. I like T5, but I don't like it THAT much. Fortunately, I've had afew sessions with some players who post on tekkencanada.com and wanted to capitalize on the savings. T5 costs 0.50$ for the first game, and 0.25$ to continue. Basically, after two people make an initial sacrifice, it becomes a 25-cent machine!

During the first of those sessions, I started fooling around with Jack-5 and I fell in love. I just LOVE playing with big damage characters that still make you work hard for the win. Jack-5 fits that description to a tee, since he's probably the lowest ranked character in the game. His strategy seems to revolve around taking gambles. Jack-5 seems to be the first Jack character in Tekken history who can juggle like crazy, but most of his interesting moves get you killed on block. That means you have to poke and hope to annoy your opponent into letting you launch them (I haven't gotten the hang of Jack-5's throw game yet). Of course, since 90% of the roster can out-poke Jack-5, that's when the wins become harder to rack up. You HAVE to capitalize on ALL of your openings to the fullest or else you'll lose.



During the second session I had, the only wins I got were with King, and I spent most of my money on Jack-5 just trying to survive Paul and Anna's rushdown. And failing. Tonight however, I learned that I can consistently beat a Law masher with Jack-5. It may be insignificant, but it's still SOMETHING since Law is fast as hell. I was also surprised at the length of the juggles this guy could mash out once he had me in the air. Obviously, when you gamble, it doesn't always work and I ate a couple counterhit combos that ended up launching me. But in the end, even with my bottom-tier character, I ended up being KING OF THE ANTHILL!!

I can't wait for my next session with good players, because I don't see myself going downtown before the console release...