Earlier this year Tekken Producer Katsuhiro Harada conducted a poll for fans to vote on an original character to be added to Tekken Revolution. The poll ended with Tekken: Blood Vengeance‘s Shin Kamiya in third place, and the top two spots occupied by a sexy female Tekken Force character and a sexy female vampire (surprise, surprise).
Today Namco Bandai announced the character is now named Eliza, and she will be available to play on December 19th. In a series that already has boxing kangaroos and dinosaurs, karate bears, and cute robot girls with exploding heads… we should have all known they were going to get weird with the character.
I don’t know if Japanese fighting game producers have secret meetings or something; but what are the odds of two new games from different developers both introducing a narcoleptic character? Guilty Gear Xrd will have a character named Bed Man, which is literally a sleeping man nailed to a bed. Now Tekken Revolution has a narcoleptic vampire that randomly falls asleep during fights?
Once you get over the weirdness surrounding the character, there are actually quite a few interesting new mechanics going on. The first thing that jumps out is she has a normal fireball move, which is a total first for the Tekken series. Besides being blatantly lifted from Fatal Fury‘s Geese Howard, the move lets Eliza pop up enemies that have been knocked down to extend combos. This could be a “soft launch” approach to introducing a fireball mechanic for the upcoming Tekken x Street Fighter.
Of course she wouldn’t be a vampire unless she could drink blood… but either blood drinking or sleeping seems to have an effect on her anatomy. It isn’t clear on if this will increase her damage output, but it certainly increases her fan appeal (Morrigan from Darkstalkers move over!).
